Artoo: Ruby on Robots - <AUTHOR> http://artoo.io/ <comment><USER2> Ruby has put food on my table for the better part of the last fifteen years and there's a lot I love about the language. But it also feels increasingly unlikely that it will escape the Rails ecosystem to any significant extent. In the dynamic language space Javascript seems unstoppable and with the ES6 and ES7 features and vastly better performance I don't see much advantage in sticking with Ruby in the long run other than the excellent Gem ecosystem. And for larger codebases I think opt-in typing a-la Typescript is a huge win.

I'll always applaud creative projects like this but I'm not optimistic about the longer term health of Ruby at this point.

<comment><USER3> What I can't understand is why Ruby's standard implementation still has such terrible performance after all these years. Yes, the language is quite complicated, at least syntactically, but semantically it's similar enough to Smalltalk, and most Smalltalks have fast jitting VMs, including Squeak and Pharo (CogVM). The Ruby community is enormous by comparison and full of productive, opinionated developers who write tons of code, books, and blog posts, and yet the standard implementation (MRI) remains abysmal (sorry).

It's really unfortunate that the MRI devs won't support Rubinius or event adopt RSpec to ensure interoperability with it:

[http://rubini.us/2014/12/31/matz-s-ruby-developers-don-t- use...](http://rubini.us/2014/12/31/matz-s-ruby-developers-don-t-use- rubyspec/)

<comment><USER2> I've wondered about this too and my best guess it that writing a good optimizing compiler for a dynamic language like Ruby or Javascript is quite difficult and beyond the abilities of most developers. The JS engines in the major browsers are only fast because tremendous resources have been devoted to making them fast. I don't think PyPy or Rubinius have had anything close to the same level of investment. This is why I think JS is pretty much guaranteed to "win" the dynamic language race in the long run.

<comment><USER4> You're reasoning is taking a bit too much for granted that the best engineered solutions will be the ones coming off big corporations investments but in this field this has been proven wrong many times... that's not always the one and only win factor.. fortunately.

<comment><USER2> It's true that LuaJit is mostly the work of one person, as far as I understand. Maybe talent _does_ take precedence in most cases. But the incentive for browser developers to improve and optimize JS is just vastly stronger, despite its flaws, for practical reasons. The impact of the work is just orders of magnitude larger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A word of warning for those wanting to use this on Raspberry Pi.

Firstly I love what the folks are doing with 'thehypridgroup'are doing with Artoo however:

I teach Raspberry Pi Workshops in Australia (raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/workshop). I initially used to teach the workshops using Artoo, however I found it buggy.

I've since migrated the workshop to Python. I'd prefer to do the workshops in Ruby, but the gems have not kept up to date with the new hardware.

I also don't believe this will work with the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B (the current generation Raspberry Pi).

I haven't tried on other platforms recently.

<comment><USER6> Not sure how you feel about Go, but thehybridgroup also have a Go port [1] of this lib (and a node.js one, I believe).

They gave a pretty cool demo @ last year's GopherCon [2]

[1] [http://gobot.io](http://gobot.io) [2] [http://youtube.com/watch?v=Va- NE55AqBs](http://youtube.com/watch?v=Va-NE55AqBs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is cool, but "on Robots" is a bit dishonest. Really it can only control robots, the "robot" has to have some exposed interface for a computer to control it, like the Firmata firmware for Arduino.

I forgive them though because they probably just call it "Ruby on Robots" for the parallel pun to "Ruby on Rails" rather than to make people think it actually runs on the robots.

<comment><USER8> Artoo actually can directly run on single-board Linux computers, such as the Beaglebone Black[1] or Raspberry Pi[2].

Running on such a device, it can in fact control other supported platforms connected to it, such as the Leap Motion or Sphero (with addon hardware as applicable).

For simpler stuff like the Arduino (or other micro-controllers), however, Artoo needs to run on a beefier host platform and connect to the device remotely.

[1]: [http://beagleboard.org/black](http://beagleboard.org/black) [2]: [http://www.raspberrypi.org](http://www.raspberrypi.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is excellent for application developers looking to quickly make a proof of concept with hardware. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems like Go would be a good fit here - true parallelism would have to handy since I'd imagine you'd often want to have several control routines running at once.

<comment><USER11> "True parallelism" is not a problem in Ruby at all.

If you stick to threads, then there is the global interpreter lock, yes, but that has much less impact than people tend to think unless you depend on lots of poorly written C extensions. Especially on small systems without lots of cores.

And you don't need to stick to threads.

<comment><USER10> "True parallelism" is EXACTLY _not_ having a GIL.

<comment><USER11> It appears you missed the last line of my comment:

And you don't need to stick to threads.

Anyway, the GIL makes _no_ difference to the level of parallelism of most Ruby apps unless you're on a server with lots of cores, so all you're really saying is that "true parallelism" is irrelevant for most use cases.

On a server with lots of cores, it can start becoming a constraint if you can't use multiple processes for some reason, but if you become constrained with it on the type of small systems this is intended for you're doing something _very_ wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What would be the advantage of Artoo vs something like ROS?

ROS has some pretty significant infrastructure laid down, and has bindings for C and python. It probably wouldn't even be too hard to create a Ruby binding if Ruby is your thing.

<comment><USER13> There are already a ruby client for ROS: [http://wiki.ros.org/rosruby](http://wiki.ros.org/rosruby)

However, I'm not aware of any significant ecosystem software written in it, so it's definitely of the experimental flavour.

That said, the ROS 2.0 plan is to build generic header interface to the standard client library so that the language support is a matter of generating bindings rather than reimplementing serialization code and so-on.

<comment><USER14> The current serialisation code needs to die, and be replaced with something usable and already existing, e.g. zeromq + msgpack.

There are currently horrible bugs in the very foundation of ROS, the spec of the serialisation format and its hashing, that are in `wontfix` status because the maintainers are idiots _.

_ The arity of a field (value, array [and its arity], list) is not part of the hash of a message definition. Thus it is possible to change a message definition breaking existing protocols without the clients noticing. This is a hard to detect bug, that I've seen several times in the wild. But it won't be fixed because it would break old precompiled packages (yes one would have to recompile things _gasp_ ). So instead everything is left broken.

But hey I heard they want to change the messaging protocol to CORBA for 2.0, what could go wrong with that...

<comment><USER12> Well, my company uses ROS for two different robotic systems currently in production.

We use ros serialization quite intensively and I would have to say it "works fine". I previously came from a more enterprise-centered environment working with a rabitMQ/Protobuff&Json stack, so I probably wouldn't have created ROS serialization the way the maintainers did, but it hasn't gotten in our way at all.

I don't think it's that great of an idea to place too much validation in a serialization framework, as your are just asking for rigidity, which is why Json went the way they did and is much better for it.

<comment><USER14> I agree 100% with you. Rigidity is something you don't want, but this is something entirely different.

ROS serialisation format is basically a C++ struct that gets send over the wire. You specify your .msg definition, tell the (horrible) build system that you want to use it, and the build system will compile it to deserialisation code in your language. During deserialisation of C/C++ this code will just try to recast the message from a void* buffer to a valid .msg struct.

So O(1) message parsing, nice in theory, but also what causes the rigidity that makes it harder for dynamic languages that would easily be capable to deal with a self-encoding message format.

But because you end up with this unsafe recasting "parser", you _really_ want to feed it what it expects, and this is why during tcpros handshake between two clients they will exchange hashes of the msg format that they speak.

Note that this is fundamentally different from JSON where you are adding fields. JSON _will still work_, as long as the new message is a superset of the old one.

But with ros msgs a command might end up putting your nice robotic arm into the table/human because you changed the LED from a green one to a multicoloured that has a field `color[3]` instead of `color`. The field will use up more space, and the field that came after it, say `arm-height`, will now have the color value in it.

But we got the hash of messages to protect us from this right?

NO! Because the build system does a half assed normalisation step on each .msg format in which it removes comments, reformats and reorders fields and tries to find the canonical _textual_ representation of messages. Sadly somebody forgot to keep the arity (variable/tuple/list) in there. So it gets thrown out and is not part of the hash.

Source: I build a ros-msg deserializer from scratch for clojure that can import message definitions at runtime, compiling them into ad-hock deserialisers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If Lucasfilm sued Verizon over a word so innocuous as "Droid," I expect this to get slapped with a trademark suit at some point.

<comment><USER16> The idealist in me would like to think that this industry would allow a playful homage.

<comment><USER17> The problem is, it isn't easy to distinguish between "playful homage" and someone cynically trading on your goodwill with products designed to trick customers.

Especially if you have to convince a court to stop _that_ company from doing something which seems identical to what you've already allowed three other companies to do.

These things are always so easy to see, so _obvious_ , when you're one person; the moment you have to convince others, things so obvious as to not require elaboration become serious points of contention.

<comment><USER18> well but there is a difference between a free project run by unknown people and a for-pay product run by a huge multinational product. E.g. there has been a C3PO project in java for more than a decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have started and coached a new FIRST Robotics Competition team last year for 2014-2015 season and wanted to use Java. Initially I thought the programming would be very complicated for the high school students, many of whom didn't have any prior programming experience.

How can you control the speed of the robot proportional to the pressure applied on the joystick for example?. However, I was very pleased with the WPILib framework that comes with the kit. This can be accomplished by essentially a single line like (ignoring the variable initialization),

        myRobot.arcade(stick);

[http://wpilib.screenstepslive.com/s/4485/m/13809/l/145307-cr...](http://wpilib.screenstepslive.com/s/4485/m/13809/l/145307-creating- your-benchtop-test-program)

</comment><comment><USER20> How actively is this being maintained? I noticed that the last commits were a few months ago. Maybe it's in a pretty stable place and doesn't need much work these days, but I like seeing Ruby used for more than just Rails so I'd love to see this stick around.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm familiar with Tessel, which is something similar, but with their own hardware and node.js. One of the implicit selling points is that Node is uniquely suited for soft realtime stuff because of its completely nonblocking nature. Is most Artoo code blocking?

<comment><USER22> If you're really about soft-realtime stuff, look into Erlang/Elixir by way of the Nerves project:

[http://nerves-project.org/](http://nerves-project.org/)

The hot code-loading is really impressive; I've seen quadcopters update motor controllers in-flight to fix bugs. I think that that's probably the future. The non-blocking stuff in Node is more a function of the library style than the language itself (though the closures make life easier). I don't think there's any reason why the Ruby stuff _necessarily_ has to be slower and blocky.

Artoo has some nifty stuff in the vein of testing:

[http://artoo.io/documentation/guides/test-driven- robotics/](http://artoo.io/documentation/guides/test-driven-robotics/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any plans to support Romo? [http://www.romotive.com/](http://www.romotive.com/)

</comment><comment> gr8b8m8-88 This is awesome! I myself am a former mechanical engineer who now does Ruby (and JS), and now that Ruby is finally on other embedded machines, I can finally start building some gay robots.

<comment><USER22> I too believe that robots running Ruby would be quite happy!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Google Drive/Office 365 alternatives - <AUTHOR> My partner runs a small charity in the UK whose office infrastructure is based on Google Drive. (Sheets, spreadsheets, email, etc). Her trustees are advising that since Google cannot guarantee that her data is being stored in the UK (apparently?), they need to migrate. Like seemingly every organisation these days, they're looking at MS Office 365. But having a partner with GNU and emacs stickers all over their laptop, she's wondering what alternatives are out there. It'd need to be low (or better no) maintenance, comparable in cost to Office 365 and quality too. It could be web-hosted or based on Next/OwnCloud or something, as long as it works without a load of pain points. Oh and UK-hosted too. I assume others here must have thought this through already, so thought I'd ask the hivemind! <comment><USER3> Seriously, just use Office 365. Otherwise you'll forever be dealing with a constant low grade stream of interoperability glitches.

Yes, file formats are usually interchangeable. No, that interchangeability is not perfect, especially once you get away from word processing and into spreadsheets and presentations.

The majority of people your partner has to work with outside of their charity will be using Office so these small issues will constantly cause friction and frustration.

Does your partner want to waste time on those issues or do they want to focus their energy on the good work of the charity?

And, since we're talking about a charity, O365 is probably available at a reduced price, or even free.

<comment><USER4> Since this is the top comment, I want whoever stumbles here to be aware Office 365 isn't all that smooth either. There are things that Google's and Zoho's offerings do much better than Microsoft's.

#1 This is 2020 and everybody's collaborating on a single doc with comments. But how do you point someone to a comment with a link? In Office 365, you can't.

#2 Until recently office 365 didn't even have a grammar checker / proofing assistant.

#3 You've worked on a document and intend to quickly send a pdf over to an email? You download the file, convert to pdf and email it. Even a simple "Send this file as an email attachment" isn't available in their editors.

#4 Talking about file-format compatibility, like someone else has pointed out there's no guarantee that documents created in the online version is compatible with their desktop editors. Too bad.

#5 In version history, how can you compare two versions of the same file? Well, you can't.

Remember for Google and Zoho, cloud based document editors was their target, right from idea to finished product. For Microsoft, it was an afterthought. And it shows.

<comment><USER5> The biggest downside with Google's offering (I don't know about Zoho) is that there is no way to easily export all of your documents to an array of bytes that can be saved in another system – also known as a file.

Seriously – if you use Docs or Sheets and want to move off, you've either got to manually export everything to an interchangeable format, or just give up and leave a bunch of stuff behind.

This is a particular pain when shifting between Google accounts, or closing an account down (for example, at the end of a job.)

<comment><USER6> I don't know what specific issues you're having, but for me I can simply do a select-all in Google Drive, right click and hit Download.

After some time of processing it'll eventually give me a .zip which contains all the documents and files. Google Docs documents are exported as MS Word .docx files. I don't have any spreadsheets to hand, but I believe they're exported as .xlsx format files too.

e: I see Google Takeout also allows you to export these, too in choice of formats: [https://takeout.google.com/](https://takeout.google.com/)

<comment><USER7> Yeah. It's pretty easy. Google Takeout is great.

BACK UP YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT PERIODICALLY. GOOGLE CAN AND DOES RANDOMLY DISABLE THEM WITH THEIR CHAOS MONKEY ACCOUNT THWACKER. If they detect suspicious activity -- and their algorithms aren't particularly good here -- they WILL close your account, wipe your data, and there is no support.

<comment><USER8> Fear of that is why I migrated all of my primary stuff off of Google during lockdown while I had more time.I used everything google had too at the time, even google Fi. My services are a bit more spread out now, but they are also more robust and don't have a single catastrophic point of failure, besides my fragile body.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> UK registered charities get Office 365 for free. In my experience it's currently the best choice.

I supported all the technical aspects of a friend's charity in their early days. Originally set them up on Zoho for cheapness before they were a fully registered charity. Zoho worked but caused plenty of pain for their less computer proficient users (volunteers and trustees). The Zoho UX is very clunky and the team required a lot of support. Migration to Office 365 made everyone very happy because of the familiarity (everyone is used to it from work). The charity requires less support time now and no longer complain about Zoho's limitations.

</comment><comment><USER10> Note that since 2018, Google _does_ allow you keep your data in Europe, though not specifically in the UK:

[https://support.google.com/a/answer/9223653?en](https://support.google.com/a/answer/9223653?en)

(Though this may involve upgrading to a paid business license for G Suite, if your partner is currently using the free charity tier.)

Just because of the headache involved in transferring, I'd ask her to check with legal again. It would be very unusual to require UK-based storage specifically.

If that truly is a requirement, then cloud storage is basically not an option. Just keep everything as Office documents on a local network hard drive and set up recurring backups to an off-site location (probably your partner's home).

<comment><USER11> > though not specifically in the UK

Since Google doesn't have any datacenters in the UK, Google clearly cannot guarantee that your data is stored there. In fact it is guaranteed that your data is not stored there.

[https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/](https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The answer is pretty obvious - use a desktop based office suite. It's very hard for smaller players to compete with web apps like Google Apps and expect similar quality. With desktop apps you have full control. I would suggest looking into OpenOffice (or LibreOffice I guess), or simply just paying for Microsoft Office. Then you can use Office365 but download the apps and store files locally (or somewhere shared).

<comment><USER13> OpenOffice is not very well maintained, I would go with LibreOffice these days.

<comment><USER14> We have both at the office. I have found the opposite to be true. OpenOffice is able to open certain xlsx files where as LibreOffice cannot open them. I cannot just downloaded the latest versions. I am stuck with what is available on RHEL.

<comment><USER13> If your version of RHEL supports Flatpak, I would suggest using that (or the AppImage posted by someone else).

[https://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak)

Either way, the fact remains that the OpenOffice development community imploded and takes a long time to even fix security issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We recently moved our Office365 data to Uk. [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/microsoft-365/enterprise/mo...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/microsoft-365/enterprise/moving-data-to-new-datacenter- geos?view=o365-worldwide)

Google apps are a good alternative to Office365 but we haven't found anything that matches Excel. We're a fintech so there's no way around excel. You'll also have to deal with users who are using excel files locally.

<comment><USER16> Agree. Having an Excel, Powerpoint and Word license together with Storage is a killer feature. Mostly because I need it in the corp environment.

<comment><USER17> Microsoft seems generally very good at supporting data residency for their customers, didn't know they have a UK Geo (never had to check but knew about the Swiss one) but it is 100% sensible for their customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Get a self hosted cloud like nextcloud and create accounts for each user. Nextcloud will allow you to expose directories as webdav shares which you can mount on each user's computer. Then just use desktop office suite like libre office to do all work that will be inherently saved online. Users will be able to share their documents freely between each other.

You will never the conveniences of the a paid powerhouse developed by thousands of people over the years, but for next to nothing cost and a little bit of effort you can be just as productive.

<comment><USER19> I am no expert but Nextcloud requires a bit of set up and maintenance. With the server exposed to the internet, shared folders and multiple users, you have to worry about security if you could be a target. You need more than one server for back up.

I would still suggest this approach; just saying it takes a bit of work.

<comment><USER18> While it does take considerable effort to set it up in the beginning, maintenance later on, at least in my case, is next to nothing. Updates happen via single click from the Admin UI and only happen when you invoke them, at your convenience.

For security it does allow 2 factor auth and the admin account has all the tools to manage users and query what they have shared.

While it's not an enterprise solution... but for their use case, and with the amount of features it offers, i think it's something worth considering even with the non trivial initial setup tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why? O365 is free if she's a charity, look into tech-soup, which is the distributor for o365 for non profits.

Oh, GNU/emacs? Well, You can run your own OSS openoffice/sunoffice (whatever it's called nowadays) and file sharing but it's alot of work and not no maintenance.

site: [https://www.techsoup.global/](https://www.techsoup.global/)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Her trustees are advising that since Google cannot guarantee that her data > is being stored in the UK (apparently?), they need to migrate.

She should push back on that, since there is no legal basis for it (except in very specific circumstances).

It would be cheaper to get competent legal advice than do a shift like this for many offices.

<comment><USER22> This is correct. Current legislation (GDPR and the UK's implementation in the 2018 Data Protection Act) does not require data to be stored in the UK. G Suite is definitely GDPR compliant, could the trustee be raising vague concerns without good cause (they do that). There are other reasons to switch from Google, but that's not one of them.

<comment><USER23> Is the UK still bound to the GDPR though (considering Brexit) ?

<comment><USER24> Yes. GDPR is the EU regulation, but member countries incorporated it into their domestic legislation. In the UK that's the Data Protection Act 2018.

To remove GDPR from the UK we'd have to change the data protection act.

<comment><USER25> Do you know if the Brexit would invalidate the act?

I am not an expert on UK Law but I also wondered if it is possible that the reference on the GDPR would still be valid

<comment><USER24> No, brexit will not invalidate the act. It's now UK law.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the clarification; most EU countries just made some kind of diff to the GDPR and did not make it an explicit law

<comment><USER26> Regulations are laws that directly apply across EU, unlike directives (which bind member states to make a law that achieves the goals of the directive).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_(European_Union)#De...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_\(European_Union\)#Description)

So you can make legislation around a Regulation but can't override its effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In [next|own]cloud you can install libreoffice online and have a sheets/documents/presentation with online editing.

<comment><USER28> Yep, it is called Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE). Here's the website [1] which also contains installation instructions.

[1] [https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice- online/](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> You'll have to check with their support about how the location is selected, but [https://zoho.eu](https://zoho.eu) exists and I'm happy with their services.

I'd check the specific requirements though. Even DPA doesn't really require hosting in the UK, but UK or country with matching privacy requirements, which in most cases means whole EU is ok.

<comment><USER4> I work at Zoho. I can confirm, all accounts signed-up at [https://zoho.eu](https://zoho.eu) have their data stored within Europe and complies with GDPR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora- online/](https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/)

not related to them, not even a user.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been using Kolab [0] for years for self hosting the email, calendar and tasks. There is an official integration with Seafile which gives you a "Google Drive"/"One Drive" experience (you can also integrate it with NextCloud), while recently there's been Libre Office integration available which gives you word processing, spreadsheets and presentations in your browser; I'm also using it.

The overall experience is not as smooth as with Google or MS, but I do have Exchange protocol, file storage with management and online document editing and it works.

First time it took me almost two weeks to setup everything, but I've been doing the same setup for my friends, for their small to mid sized companies for less than a week.

Their main website is not managed well but they have a pretty active development community, very useful mailing list (you can browse the archive) and somewhat dated documentation but the changes are not that hard to figure out.

Once everything is set, the update process and maintenance are almost automatic through the native linux package manager.

[0] [https://www.kolab.org/](https://www.kolab.org/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I worked IT for a small org one summer that used the Synology suite for all their internal operations. It is basically a self hosted completely OOTB clone of Google Drive, Docs, Gmail, etc I now use it personal stuff as well.

Pros:

\- All the creature comforts of mainstream suites such as realtime collaboration, comments, history, etc.

\- 2-way compatible with Office and Google so you can import docs to and from those suites.

\- Encrypted document support

\- Self hosted

Cons:

\- Requires you to own a synology NAS to host it.

[https://www.synology.com/en- us/dsm/feature/office](https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/office)

[https://www.synology.com/en- us/dsm/feature/mailplus](https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/mailplus)

[https://www.synology.com/en- us/dsm/feature/drive](https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/drive)

<comment><USER33> I had a buddy that has a Synology NAS and he runs a DB server on it... it's horribly slow. Speed-wise how do these compare? It may not be an apples-to- apples comparison, but it was unbelievably slow even for small operations.

<comment><USER34> It depends on your NAS processor. I have the cheapest one drive Synology at home, it's unbearably slow. At work I bought a faster one and it's OK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As the user rootsudo mentioned, you might be able to use O365 for free if its a small charity.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/microsoft-365/nonprofit/offi...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/microsoft-365/nonprofit/office-365-nonprofit-plans-and-pricing)

[https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/nonprofits/eligibility](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/nonprofits/eligibility)

You can create an account and upload the documentation [https://nonprofit.microsoft.com/en-us/getting- started](https://nonprofit.microsoft.com/en-us/getting-started)

</comment><comment><USER35> I believe charities can use G Suite for free, plus I know for sure there is a setting where you can tell them to store your data in the EU, US or no preference. However I don't believe there's a way to tell them to use the UK specifically.

</comment><comment><USER36> Libre, apache, onlyoffice, google, microsoft and someone mentioned zoho. So many players in the market. Wonder if there's a player that can complete with the likes of office365's feature set .

</comment><comment><USER37> [https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/list/](https://degooglisons- internet.org/en/list/) I guess, they are in France though.

</comment><comment><USER38> There's OpenAppStack [https://openappstack.net/](https://openappstack.net/) . It is currently in beta but very promising.

</comment><comment><USER39> ProtonDrive coming soon: [https://protonmail.com/blog/protondrive- security/](https://protonmail.com/blog/protondrive-security/)

<comment><USER40> It sounds like this charity is looking for an entire software suite (spreadsheets, documents, etc) not just email and cloud storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm not sure if this meets all your needs around data sovereignty, but Quip is an alternative that does collaboratively-edited documents.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm not sure what features nextcloud has, but mailinabox.email does have it as well as email and is very easy to manage. You're going to need someone who can run the updates, but other then that I've been using it for the last 5 years and it has been VERY easy to keep running.

I'm running ours on a $10 DigitalOcean box.

<comment><USER43> Thanks! I found this helpful.

To anyone else also just learning about Mail-in-a-Box:

"Mail-in-a-Box is based on Postfix, Dovecot, Z-Push, Roundcube, Nextcloud, Apache SpamAssassin, Postgrey, Nginx, @konklone's nginx config, and more."

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Check PrivacyTools.io's recommendations.[1] Disclosure, I'm a team member there.

1\. [https://www.privacytools.io/software/productivity/](https://www.privacytools.io/software/productivity/)

</comment><comment><USER45> nextcloud with onlyoffice

</comment><comment><USER19> Regardless of where the servers are located, I would worry about a company such as google having access to the data (that is not end to end encrypted).

<comment><USER46> Google is FedRAMP compliant, however if you need to make sure it is encrypted then that is what rclone is for. You could setup an rclone encrypted mount and then share it on the local network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Trustees are not usually experts in data protection law, so I'd ask the trustees to be providing a lot more information. At a minimum they need to explain:

1) What law they think is being broken (and they need to actually link the specific clause)

2) Why they think G Suite is breaking it (and they need to describe that breach in terms of the law they think is being broken).

3) How much they're prepared to spend on changing from G Suite to something else, including costs of migrating data, checking it's correct after migration, re-training, and any possible software and support costs.

G Suite claims it's GDPR compliant. [https://cloud.google.com/security/gdpr](https://cloud.google.com/security/gdpr)

<comment><USER17> They are probably thinking about brexit and the UK data protection act - <USER2> this shouldn't need any action since UK GDPR has an amendment which recognises EU data protection standards as adequate for the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I recommend Zoho. Less expensive and great quality.

<comment><USER48> Less expensive? Could you please elaborate? I looked at their website and there is no pricing at all. Only 'Contact sales'. Even the 'sign up for free' does not explain what I could possibly get 'for free'. If they are cheaper than it would beneficial to them to write that in a headline ;-)

<comment><USER47> Pricing: [https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/](https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/)

Plan Details: [https://www.zoho.com/one/plan- details.html](https://www.zoho.com/one/plan-details.html)

I am not affiliated to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Heard good things about [https://www.zoho.com/](https://www.zoho.com/)

</comment><comment><USER50> Amazon WorkDocs and WorkMail

</comment><comment><USER51> I recommend considering AirTable if the group is willing to try something new or check out:

Notes + PM -> notion.so

Word -> notion.so

PowerPoint -> slidebean.com or pitch.com

Excel/Access -> still AirTable

Outlook -> amazing email UX via hey.com for $99/year

I got many of these via alternativeto.net and producthunt.com

</comment><comment><USER52> iCloud.</comment>


The Dow of Cities - <AUTHOR> http://cityobservatory.org/dow-of-cities2018/ <comment><USER2> I prefer suburban living to city living. But I'm really glad to see the revival of cities in the US, particularly the one I live just outside of. The professional, upper middle class people who are moving in are rehabbing old housing stock and neighborhoods that had been decaying for decades, and it's good for everyone, in my view -- even suburban property owners such as myself.

<comment><USER3> > it's good for everyone, in my view -- even suburban property owners such as > myself

I agree it's good in general but maybe not so good for people who are being displaced due to rent hikes caused by gentrification.

<comment><USER4> > rent hikes caused by zoning codes and regulations that push the price of > building up higher and higher

-bostonjeff

<comment><USER5> Building isn't expensive. The space above the land is (infinitely) expensive due to zoning constraints.

<comment><USER6> Requiring garden space and car storage for every bedroom built is a quick way to double a project's costs. Why have zoning codes that prohibit the best use of the land?

<comment><USER7> Zoning codes are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they stop someone from building a high-rise in the middle of a low-density residential area... on the other hand, the very same regulations prevent the market from scaling up to meet new demand. New zoning legislation moves slowly when constituents benefit from rising real-estate prices (to the detriment of the broader public).

Legislation like "new construction must not be more than N floor(s) higher than surrounding properties" might help, rather than the simple fixed height limit many areas set.

<comment><USER8> Building high-rises (well, 8+ stories) in the middle of low-density residential areas is something that happens in Japan, and I find it charming. Why are we enforcing the aesthetic wishes of some people but not others?

<comment><USER9> Because there are ugly cities and there are beautiful cities. And they are so for a reason.

This video is really informative in this regard and has changed my opinion on a few things:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4QjmKzF1c](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4QjmKzF1c)

<comment><USER10> Society would be much better off in ugly cities rather than expensive ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The notion of valuing cities is an interesting and useful one.

The notion of doing this by way of real estate valuation is somewhere between misguided and actvely dangerous.

Asset price inflation is not, should not be confused with, and proxies poorly for, real economic wealth increase.

The definition of wealth itself has been and remains something of a conundrum within economics. It wasn't until I actually started reading Adam Smith closely some years back that I realised his definition, "the annual produce and labour of the nation", is a _flow_ rather than a _stock_ measure. (Smith biographer and editor Edwin Cannan commented similarly in the late 19th century, I'm late to the party).

As such, Smith's metric bears a strong resemblence to Leslie White's law, "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White's_law)

Which might make for a more useful metric basis than City Observatory are proposing.

<comment><USER12> Reminds me of "Constructal law" (sic).

> "For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in > such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed (global) currents > that flow through it."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_law#Constructal_la...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_law#Constructal_law)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for that, TIL.

Oh, wow! _Very_ interesting set of pubs.

[https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3ABejan%2C+Adrian%2C&qt...](https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3ABejan%2C+Adrian%2C&qt=hot_author)

[https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/hniKFN5R...](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/hniKFN5RoUH)

<comment><USER12> Cheers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why not just use the Case–Shiller index? It's been around for 18 years, has data from 1890 to today, has a solid methodology that has been scrutinized by many economists, and is the industry standard for US residential home prices. Oh, and it's also widely quoted in the financial media.

<comment><USER14> Case-Shiller cuts it a different way though. The post is pointing out that city centre areas in general are increasing in value compared to outer areas. Case-Shiller is an index of price trends across different metro areas that doesnt differentiate city centres from suburban areas.

I don't think the headline statement for a 'dow of cities' is really useful to implement.

But there is a good point in there of society and industry not paying much attention to broad trends in cities. Case-Shiller is well regarded, but its a very blunt tool for analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > You can't literally buy stock in a city, but buying a house is the closest > thing imaginable.

I feel like this might be more generalized to "home" rather than "house", though I suppose it depends on what your conception of a house is. So far as I'm aware, focus on single family detached houses leads to a gradual decrease in every measurably quality of urban living by using a sprawl as a vehicle.

</comment><comment><USER16> > You can't literally buy stock in a city, but buying a house is the closest > thing imaginable.

Maybe not accessible for the retail investor, but can't this be done by buying collateralized debt obligations? If you could be issued a CDO based on urban mortgages in particular, then you could profit from the rise of urban house prices.

<comment><USER17> I could be wrong, but my understanding is that these are rarely packed on a geographic basis, and more on a risk (or owner?) profile basis, which kind of breaks the "buying stock in a city" metaphor.

<comment><USER16> My understanding is that they group the owners together, then issue CDOs such that some are paid before others. Those which are paid last have the highest risk, but the largest rate of return. If you believe house prices are safer than the rest of the market does, you'd buy the high return high risk CDOs.

It's also my understanding that they aren't issued on a geographical basis (beyond the country or state level). However, that's not to say they can't be, if investors take interest in distinguishing rural and urban mortgages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Has anyone ever considered moving to some wilderness and just developing an urban center there, a la Sim City? If there's such a shortage of cities, perhaps building one from scratch is a viable option.

<comment><USER8> Others have pointed out that this has happened, with cities like DC and Brasilia, but I have yet to see an example of a new city that wasn't built in a car-oriented way. If you want a fundamentally walkable city, you have to make some decisions that hurt car drivers, and I don't think anyone has been willing to do so with these projects.

<comment><USER19> DC was not created in the middle of the wilderness. Alexandria was the the 22nd largest city in the country at the time DC's location was chosen and Georgetown was only a bit smaller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder what the broad adoption of autonomous vehicles will do to the urban- center growth curve.

<comment><USER21> The common wisdom is that it will lead to more dispersion. (In fact, this will probably be true even before full hands-off door-to-door systems are available.) To the degree that at least some people live in cities, not so much because they want to, but because they work there and don't want the commute, they might move to the suburbs if that commute becomes easier. Of course, if a lot of people think that way, traffic probably becomes more congested.

<comment><USER22> _> To the degree that at least some people live in cities, not so much because they want to, but because they work there and don't want the commute, they might move to the suburbs if that commute becomes easier_

IDK if those people exist in high numbers within city _centers_. Those folks are all clustered along transit lines just outside of city city centers, right?

<comment><USER21> You may be right at least for cities with decent commuter rail systems. I'm most familiar with Boston and, if someone is working in town and doesn't want to live downtown, there are quite a few nice inner suburbs that aren't that far away along a rail line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm a bit hesitant to give this article any mind, simply based on the fact that they're using an antiquated index like the Dow as their point of comparison.

<comment><USER5> Moving beyond the middlebrow dismissal... The only thing wrong with the Dow is the way it's weighted. Not a particularly relevant concern for the metaphor.

<comment><USER23> I don't see why it was necessary to make it personal with the "middlebrow" remark.

> The only thing wrong with the Dow is the way it's weighted.

You are right. Price-weighting is indeed unintuitive. Other things wrong with it:

* Its name, "Dow Jones Industrial Average". It's far from an average of modern US industry.

* It size. 30 companies is a small basket, when we have many alternatives that cover the economy much more comprehensively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really like this website: [https://teleport.org/welcome](https://teleport.org/welcome)

</comment><comment><USER18> _The new Fitch analysis make it abundantly clear that cities are hot, and suburbs are not._

I'm not sure this is true. I'd say it's more like demand in cities is outpacing supply, whereas that's not the case in the suburbs. It seems more like a commentary on the scarcity of real estate (both natural and artificial) in city centers.

</comment><comment><USER25> TBH I'd have rather read about The Dao of Cities.

<comment><USER26> Or the S&P 500 of cities -- the DJIA is a silly metric.

<comment><USER27> He most stock indexs aren't great. Non of then have inflation controls and they AVG single units of a company's stock rather than their market caps.</comment></comment></comment>


On QRAM- Joe Fitzsimons - <AUTHOR> http://nisqybusiness.com/2019/08/05/on-qram/ <comment><AUTHOR> Quantum RAM is known to be the holy-grail of NISQ era quantum computers. Almost all machine learning speedups are predicated on having an existing qRAM. It seems whoever would be the first one to have a working patent is likely to be a billionaire. I am wondering if some highly lucrative companies like Google X could be building such a chip. People always fabricate FGPA's, why is it hard to do a qRAM as an FGPA.</comment>


A priceless server room - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/A__0x26_quot_0x3b_Priceless_0x26_quot_0x3b__Server_Room.aspx

<comment><USER2> As my old boss used to say when sending me on WTF consulting missions, "putting a server in a room doesn't mean you have a server room".</comment>


Ask HN: How do your company manage test cases - <AUTHOR> So we have > 10k test cases, we built an internal tool to document them. But it is not ideal. Sometimes QA waste time on testing already broken test because they don't know the current status. Sometimes dev can't reproduce because the reproducing environment doesn't match. Any test case management system can do better? <comment><USER2> Azure DevOps. [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/devops/test- plans...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/devops/test-plans/)</comment>


Give me your feedback on my news site. - <AUTHOR> http://newskicks.com Hi All,<p>I have created a social bookmarking site entierly using drupal and available modules.please give me your feedback on what you like and what you dont like and how can i improve it. <comment><USER2> \- Slow to load.

\- What's different about this than all the digg/reddit clones? I see you do adsense sharing - you might want to make that more visible so as to attract users. Is swapping out adsense id's like that allowed?

<comment><USER3> I was thinking the same thing. We're getting too much reinvention of the wheel without new things like tires, studs and chains for traction. Jaanix (<http://jaanix.com/>) is the only one I've seen recently that adds something new to the table (or fixes what's broken about another site).

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah jannix is nice they have some unique features.but my site also has some unique features like: 1)user can embed any video from all the video sites like youtube,metacafe etc. 2)they can post images. 3)they can embed all the audio files like mp3,rm,wav etc. 4)revenue sharing,no other site share its revenue which is unique point in newskicks.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It loaded just fine for me. But I dont see anything that differentiates your site. Also, UI is a bit underwhelming - too many ads everywhere.

On the other hand, I agree with davidw - the revenue sharing is potentially interesting.

Either way, keep going and good luck?</comment>


Ask HN: How to create HN clone using Wordpress? - <AUTHOR>

I am not referring to plugins that make it a Digg-styled site, but something where ppl can submit links as well as submit a qn like this (w/o links)<p>TIA <comment><USER2> I don't know about WordPress, but you can create a Hacker News clone using the Hacker News source code:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4285617/how-do-i- install-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4285617/how-do-i-install-arc- to-get-a-hacker-news-clone-website)

<comment><AUTHOR> That am aware of..but I am looking for a clone using PHP/MySql..and possibly Wordpress as the backend cms.</comment></comment>


Unheard History of Bodybuilding Forums - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-unheard-history-of-bodybuilding-forums-as-told-by-the-trolls-and-counter-trolls-who-made-them-huge <comment><USER2> Awesome thread, where body builders argue about how many days there are in a week: [https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=107926751](https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=107926751)

<comment><USER3> Omg, this is awesome. I love this quote:

> "You don't count what day it is when counting days, I just explained that. > If today is SATURDAY, it's not 2 days until SUNDAY now is it?"

The sheer concept that Sunday to Sunday = 1 week versus Sunday to Saturday = 1 week is kind of bending my brain.

<comment><USER4> "Sorry to hijack, but Josh dude how are you arguing with a calender?"

"He is in Josh world. The g'damn dumbest world in the universe!"

Classic. Reminds me of arguing Xbox vs Playstation as a teen on neogaf.com.

<comment><USER5> This whole article takes me back to the late 90s/early 2000s gaming message boards when NeoGAF was simply "Gaming Age Forums".

A lot of shit talking, and some on-topic discussion about gaming every now and then.

What a wonderful time to have been a teen.

<comment><USER6> Shit talking/posting on gaming forums do still exists. I joined a 20-year old forum 2 years ago and some thread are funny and some threads are on-topic

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Body building forums were really _weird_ places, back around 2002, up until maybe 2004 when MySpace started to explode, and then, eventually Facebook.

I remember encountering at least one, and the passages I read tended to brush up against a sort of dimwitted infantile fan fiction, mixing bizarre fantasies with near-zero understanding of human anatomy and physiology.

One particular discussion that sticks out in my mind was something akin to a 12 year-old's musings (and it might, very well, _have_ been some little kid), about how protein travels from a dinner plate all the way into the muscles, and it was tempting to believe one person was sock puppeting the whole thread, pretending to carry multiple sides of the conversation, as a sort of blend of creative writing and performance art, but just based on the voice and tone of the various replies, it really did seem like some sort of group fantasy role playing session.

This was before I knew the true depth and breadth of furry subculture, and eventually, once I became more familiarized with such facts of life, and developed an understanding of the intersection of interests between fan fiction and fur suit fetishists, I surmized that on some level, what had been going on with all those body building forums was that a subset of the fur suit/fan fiction subculture had begun to fantasize collectively about bulging human muscles and oiled up skin, as if it were a form of fur suit, and then took to authoring concept pieces, to role play within that context.

In the same way that ASMR is something akin to an alt-kink version of phone sex, this sort of thing seemed to be likened to alt-cybering in an obscure sub-genre of fur kink.

Anyway, that was the weird shit I remember bumping into back then. Now I suspect it's all rolled into the general morasse of Facebook flotsam, diluted and washed out. Maybe it's better that way... _Maybe._

<comment><USER8> Why was this marked dead? It doesn't seem off-topic or anything.

<comment><USER9> Green users often get their comments deaded. Possibly because they used the word "sockpuppet" which would definitely be a heuristic for low quality flamebait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bodybuildingforum is one of the most entertaining and influential places on the internet. I honestly believe it to be on par with 4chan in scope of "internet cultural influence"

<comment><USER11> Yeah, one thing that helps to get the idea is the number of KYM articles that point to that site as the source of memes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's always weird to see articles like this talking about traditional forum sites as if no one uses them anymore.

<comment><USER13> Maybe it will die out just like livejournal

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The articles used to have automatic comments sections after each, but the > members were such know-it-alls that the site, despite paying staff very > well, had difficulty retaining authors. Eventually, that particular place > nuked its comments because these members were just the worst type of > internet experts, and authors didn't want their serious work to be followed > by a thousand forum comments that begin with 'well actually.'"

Well actually, author-marketers didn't like paying money for an "article" only to get trashed for it.

And site operators didn't want "authors" to realize their "serious" product placements caused a negative impression.

</comment><comment><USER15> Elliot Rodger posted on the Misc subforum. In retrospect, reading his posts is like a morbid dark comedy - the lack of social awareness, the insecurity, all shone through to the point of feeling insincere. It could very well have been a troll, there was no way to know. It's no wonder he barely aroused alarm despite posting his ideologies on many a public forum including Youtube. He indirectly mentions posting on Misc in his manifesto, and how he ultimately failed to reach his fitness goals and the subsequent insecurities. I can't help but wonder if people like him would be or have been better off without ever coming across communities like BB forums. There's little to glorify, it's not a part of internet "culture" to look fondly back on.

<comment><USER16> I actually posted in one of his threads. The sad part is I and I'm sure 99% of miscers were convinced it was a troll post.

The stuff he wrote was so unbelievable that it seems to be designed to trigger some members. I specifically remember a post where he bragged about having a bmw and still had no luck with girls and he saw <some other race> in a Honda with a pretty girl and he couldn't believe it.

It was so outlandish it was impossible to take seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Any miscers checking in?

<comment><USER18> Admitting to being a miscer might put you on privately run HN blacklists.

<comment><USER19> Thats next level echochamber. Do people actually do this?

<comment><USER18> Yup, even custom css to help point out who you should downvote.

<comment><USER20> That's really interesting. Can you point to a github repo or chrome extension or something?

<comment><USER18> These groups tend to be invite only and don't publicly post this code as it reveals usernames of people on blacklists, but if you search around discord channels or some subreddits you might find them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The 90s also had the Weights mailing list. It was moderated so always a pretty respectful place but the advent of web based forums ended it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Time is relative?

</comment><comment><USER23> Jeez. No comments about tuna shakes?

:-)

</comment><comment><USER24> A really intriguing story related to bodybuilding is the story of DatBTrue.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/sports/doping-thomas- mann...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/sports/doping-thomas-mann- peptides.html)

He convinced a lot of people that he was an expert at all things science despite using an incredibly immature writing style. It turns out he was a lawyer!

<comment><USER25> Tangentially related but, Zyzz was also a hugely popular member of the BB forum. He was known as having one of the most desirable physiques and had a big personality (he frequently posted videos of himself at the club).

It was then discovered he was using steroids, which caused some of the community to hate him. He got booked for a reality show, but then died due to an undiagnosed heart defect.

[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/zyzz](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/zyzz)

<comment><USER26> You're confusing bb.com with DatBTrue. Zyzz was not a member of the latter

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I could have worded that better. I know Zyzz was on bb.com only (well, and 4chan).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should software-makers be held liable for the Sony hack? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/12/sony_pictures_entertainment_hack_should_software_makers_be_held_liable.single.html

<comment><USER2> This could be tricky. As far as I understand most open source software comes without any kind of warranty.

"THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES"</comment>


US majority says 'Do Not Mail' - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/us-majority-says-%E2%80%98do-not-mail%E2%80%99/

<comment><USER2> In the Netherlands we can get a free mailbox sticker. There are some options:

      No-No: No advertising and magazines.
      No-Yes: No advertising, magazines excluded.

[http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=...](http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rijksoverheid.nl%2Fonderwerpen%2Fbescherming- van-consumenten%2Fvraag-en-antwoord%2Fwat-kan-ik-doen-tegen-ongewenste- reclame-en-folders-in-mijn-brievenbus.html&act=url)

<comment><USER3> In Canada we take a marker and write "no junk mail" on our mailboxes. I'm not sure if it has any law backing it up, but it seems to work.

<comment><USER4> Canada Post has a policy of respecting people's wish not to receive junk mail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the UK we have the Mail Preference Service which allows people to opt out of most (but not all) junk mail. We also have another system which allows people to opt out of the rest. It'd be nice if it was a single page that did both, but it's better than nothing.

Personally, I'd prefer the Royal Mail to have an expensive stamp for letters that was almost guaranteed next day delivery, and a regular stamp for letters that meant "next 3 to 5 business days". I'd like them to deliver business letters before 9am, but domestic letters could be before 4pm. These steps would save the UK mail delivery a lot of money, but have been deeply unpopular when proposed before.

<comment><USER6> I remember characters in Victorian novels sending dinner invitations out with the morning mail. Not only would the guests arrive, but there'd actually be a reply accepting the invitation.

Granted, that was within London, where at that time mail was delivered 12 (!) times per day.

<comment><USER7> Also known as the good old days!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I spend two minutes a day collecting junk mail from my mail box and throwing it into the recycle bin. That's 624 minutes a year. One government employee puts trash into my mail box and another government employee takes it away. Any useful mail I receive can be either delivered by electronic methods or UPS/FedEx.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sweeping most of the contents of my mailbox into the trash bin isn't that hard. My inner ecologist and economist is much more put off by it than my inner "consumer". When I think about all those trees, and all the net energy expended on the production and delivery of junk mail, it just makes me want to cry.

<comment><USER10> I'm personally insulted that there's a billion dollar industry telling me, "Hey Phil, YOU throw this away!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> To kill junk mail would be to kill the US Postal Service, I think. I'm not sure if it's worth the price.

<comment><USER12> Shouldn't the US Postal Service have died a long time ago?

It always amazes me how the US as self-proclaimed champions of the free market and technological progress still holds on to outdated, bureaucratic nationalized monopolies like the postal service.

In many countries this market has already been privatized a long time ago, and/or scaled down to the point where relics like post offices no longer exist.

<comment><USER13> The main reason for the USPS is coverage. The US has a whole lot of sparsely populated, but not unpopulated, land. Covering these people is part of what makes the USPS unprofitable.

The same problem exists for telephones but the main approach has been to set high minimum prices that non-rural carriers have to pay rural carriers for traffic flowing from the former to the latter. This enables the rural providers to make a profit but leads to unintended consequences like free conference call companies set up in rural areas which get a kick back from the local provider for the incoming traffic they engender.

<comment><USER14> I thought the reason the USPS was unprofitable was that they had to fund employee pensions 75 years in advance

<comment><USER15> In fact, I thought the USPS was profitable before that mandate. In fact, one of the very few profitable government agencies. But I might be wrong on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> FYI Here's the FTC advice page listing opt-out information: [http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0262-stopping- unsolicit...](http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0262-stopping-unsolicited- mail-phone-calls-and-email)

As part of the Christmas present for my folks I helped them add their names to the various opt-out lists. The gift of less spam keeps giving.

<comment><USER17> That helps get banks from sending you junk, and it's worth the time to do, but you will still get junk mail from others.

<comment><USER16> I've gotten very little junk mail of any kind since opting out via the DMA choice link, but maybe they just haven't found me yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's the same damn crap here in Australia and it's making me furious.

It's stupid that there's more sensitivity on the online spam issue than the physical spam.

The mail box is a part of my property, why aren't I entitled to choosing who can use it and who can't?

It's not legal to just dump a bunch of ads on someone's lawn every day, why is it legal to dump it in their mailbox?

Just imagine the waste. I get ads that are not even remotely relevant to me. Really weird specific stuff that you'd think that maybe 1 out of every 500 person would be interested in.

Here's an idea,

Build a customer base of people with their interests, then print a custom catalog with deals and ads and everything specifically for their interests and send it to them. So my neighbour gets sweet fishing deals and I get the nerdy deals and my wife gets the clothing ads. Conversions will be a lot higher.

<comment><USER19> does australia not have "return to sender"? That seems to work well for the little amount of junk mail that I get.

<comment><USER18> How does that work?

As in, you return it to the sender, as a request for unsubscribing?

If that's the case I don't think it would work because the postman doesn't care which box he's dumping the ads in.

<comment><USER19> you write "Return to Sender" on the outside of the envelope and stick it back in the mailbox (really). or, if you live in a complex with a separate outgoing mailbox, then put it there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I had a friend who enjoyed taking all of the junk mail he received and putting into mailboxes. I don't think it made a difference.

<comment><USER5> Some people collect junk mail, and then stuff it all back into the reply-paid envelopes it sometimes comes with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Today, the USPS is supported by Direct Mail. Kill it, and you either kill the USPS, or pay directly in taxes to support it.</comment>


OSv, a new operating system for the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cloudius-systems/osv <comment><USER2> This is definitely a developing trend... seems to be catching on that most server applications are more or less single programs that just use the OS as an emulation layer so that applications don't need to come with their own low level drivers. Quite overkill if you're just trying to run java, node, ruby, whatever

We're probably not too far off from java-as-the-os, node-as-the-os, etc. Substituting a hypervisor for Linux or whatever other OS you're using as the emulation layer seems to the be the architecture of choice for this type of work right now... I guess because you'd just have to implement a handful of drivers... in addition to other OS bits like scheduling and memory of course, but I suspect those things are fairly straightforward for many applications especially if you can assume that there are no other "processes" running... essentially those just become implementation details of the application that can be swapped in and out like any other library/framework

The term I've seen for this sort of architecture is a "unikernel"

This OSv project looks nice, definitely something to keep on the radar

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't really call OSv a unikernel. The main distinction is that in unikernel operating systems, the application IS the kernel. The OS is not an emulation layer, but the application itself. Application code is linked directly with the kernel to produce an operating system whose purpose is to execute a single application. One example is Mirage[0].

The big difference is that while OSv may be targeting the same use case, it's still more similar to a general purpose OS. Some of the kernel APIs it provides seem to be blurring the line though.

[0] [http://openmirage.org/](http://openmirage.org/)

<comment><USER4> OSv is _not_ a general purpose OS although it does support a subset of the Linux ABI for compatibility. Both application and OSv share the same address space and application code is linked directly to the kernel at start-up (there's an embedded ELF linker). The design is wildly different from MirageOS but I don't really see why you would not call it an unikernel.

<comment><USER3> It seems like I didn't call it a unikernel because I misunderstood the design. The design you described sounds like a unikernel to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Folks interested in this should also check out MirageOS ([http://openmirage.org](http://openmirage.org) \-- I'm a contributor).

There's also a good series of unikernel articles that give more background. [http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/cloud- computing/821243-...](http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/cloud- computing/821243-unikernel-use-cases-containers/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is interesting. They are also claiming that unmodified Redis and memcached instances run x2 faster on OSv [1]. Furthermore, a modified version of memcached, using their OSv network APIs [2] runs x4 faster.

Note also that they are launching a drop-in memcached replacement software appliance [3]

[1] [http://osv.io/benchmarks/](http://osv.io/benchmarks/)

[2] [http://osv.io/nfv/](http://osv.io/nfv/)

[3] [http://osv.io/flashcache/](http://osv.io/flashcache/)

</comment><comment><USER7> A related project: [http://erlangonxen.org/](http://erlangonxen.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> See also: [http://www.seastar-project.org/](http://www.seastar-project.org/) \- a high performance C++ framework from the makers of OSv that runs on Linux and OSv (incredibly faster on the latter)

</comment><comment><USER9> Folks, you're welcome to try Capstan - [http://osv.io/capstan/](http://osv.io/capstan/) Capstan to OSv is what docker is to containers

</comment><comment><USER10> The lock-free claims are really interesting.

I guess it was only a matter of time before people started trying to get their VM's closer to the meta. I look forward to watching their progress. Really very cool.

<comment><USER11> For many use cases, it would seem like container-based approaches are even better still.

<comment><USER12> You're missing the point. OSv and other unikernels are there to run on existing clouds, such as Amazon which (new things like ECS aside) is all Xen VMs. That's the environment that exists, and these sorts of tools are about squeezing an few extra drops of performance out of some Java app that's already running there.

<comment><USER11> I see -- you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Written in C++, instead of yet another C based OS.

<comment><USER14> Windows has a lot of C++ in it, I think. Anyway, C++ has all the bad bits of C, so it's not really that much of a deal. An OS written in Rust, though, that could be an actual, real step up from our current 1970s software tech.

<comment><USER13> I agree, but we are very far away from a OS vendor adopting anything else.

There are some embedded solutions running Ada or Java directly on hardware, effectively using the runtime as an OS, but that is very specialized market.

Looking for the timeframe it took OS to adopt C++, we are looking at similar timeframe for any C++ alternative.

<comment><USER14> Does Ada have a runtime?

<comment><USER13> All programming languages have runtimes.

<comment><USER15> What's your definition for "runtimes" because in my experience your statement isn't true. I have done embedded system programming and would have noticed if the languages I used added some runtime.

<comment><USER13> The CS definition of runtime. The set of primitives required to support the semantics of the programming language.

In C this would be the code required to call main (), initialization of global variables, hooks for library functions like atexit () to register their actions and a few other things.

Sure one can disable this runtime, however whatever happens to be used instead is nothing else than a customized runtime.

I am streching a bit the meaning here, but in some processors even the microcode logic could be seen as a kind of silicone runtime.

<comment><USER15> Ok, but that not the definition used for a lot of languages (particularly when talking about microcode). Ada will happily compile to bare metal without what is traditionally considered a runtime. Forth on forth chips is as bare as you can get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There was an excellent presentation on this at Fosdem 2014: [http://video.fosdem.org/2014/UD2120_Chavanne/Saturday/OSv_a_...](http://video.fosdem.org/2014/UD2120_Chavanne/Saturday/OSv_a_New_Operating_System_Designed_for_the_Cloud.webm)

</comment><comment><USER17> See also [https://github.com/galoisinc/halvm](https://github.com/galoisinc/halvm) and [http://openmirage.org](http://openmirage.org)

</comment><comment><USER18> We have Datacenter OS's, Application Layers, Docker, Containers, but still two building blocks aren't done yet, first storage outside the cloud, or a storage layer on top of multiple clouds which scales good and also works on your own datacenter, similar to swift and ceph or hdfs but way easier to use (as easy as docker).

Also we couldn't scale out SQL Databases that easy. They are still a pain in the ass.

Also some building blocks are yet missing from Containers. 1\. Layers that you could easily attach to a container, like a external Logger. 2\. Configuration / Environment management on top of containers, something like archaius from netflix just for docker.

</comment><comment><USER19> See also [https://boxfuse.com](https://boxfuse.com) for a minimal image generator for JVM-based applications with zero downtime deployments on AWS.

Disclaimer: Boxfuse founder speaking

</comment><comment><USER9> Folks, you're welcomed to try Capstsan - [http://osv.io/capstan/](http://osv.io/capstan/)

Capstan to OSv is what Docker is to containers

</comment><comment><USER20> Well I for one am going to try this out.</comment>


Wikipedia: The 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_H1N1_flu_outbreak <comment><USER2> I hope that article becomes protected or semi-protected soon. Someone could create a lot of panic from that.

<comment><USER3> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection#2009_H1N1_flu_outbreak_.28edit.7Ctalk.7Chistory.7Clinks.7Cwatch.7Clogs.29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Watch and make sure no edits come from anyone connected to Roche pharmaceuticals.

They hold the marketing rights to Tamiflu and stand to profit tremendously from this.

<comment><USER5> Roche makes one of the _two_ drugs that can treat this outbreak, and you're talking smack about them? That's tasteless.

Oseltamivir is not available OTC. People that want it need permission from their doctors to get it, at least in the US. In Mexico, emergency procedures are being taken, and its distribution is being handled appropriately.

<comment><USER6> Note: the other is Relenza, made by GSK.

Also, apparently, KPCB had a $200 million pandemic disease fund, which strikes me as hysterical: [http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKN244...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKN2445216420090424)

<comment><USER7> > _strikes me as hysterical_

Why? KPCB is a tech VC fund, so it invests in high-risk companies that use technology to solve problems. Why is that hysterical?

<comment><USER6> I dare you to find me an example of someone so shamelessly, transparently looking to profit off of the hypothetical suffering of others.

EDIT: OK, I guess it wasn't clear why I find this hysterical. I'll explain how I see it. (As background, my job previous to starting Dawdle was as the junior member of the investment team at Ascension Health Ventures, a health care VC fund. I know a little something about how this all works in this space. Also, it's Saturday night and I'm sick at home but nonetheless tipsy.)

To me, a fund dedicated to pandemics is an example of thematic investing gone to its extremes. Pandemics are a such a minor subset of the incredibly large and complex health care system that it strikes me as implausible that there are $200 million worth of worthy VC investments. I could be wrong, but that's my gut.

But what really strikes me as hysterical is that pandemics are _hypothetical situations_. Medical devices and new pharmaceuticals are generally about finding solutions to known - and existing - problems. The economic returns from investments in those things are well known and replicable.

Pandemics are totally different - the next pandemic could be any from a range of diseases with any sort of transmission protocol with who-knows-what root cause. To me, trying to find infrastructure investments for something that doesn't exist (cause Lord help you decide what the next pandemic is going to be) that takes rapid adoption by the moribund and dysfunctional health care industry is crazy.

KPCB strikes me as being perhaps the world's only venture firm that could get $200 million in commitments from LPs for such a crazy-ass thesis. To me, it's just a crazy-ass boondoggle to think this could possibly work. But, hey, I could be wrong.

Thanks for the downvotes, though. Those who did showed a total lack of appreciation for the English language. Y'all saw "hysterical" and read "terrible". Perhaps you'll do better next time.

[EDIT 2: If I were to invest in "pandemics", I'd try to take advantage of the certain hysteria among the public that would result. _That_ , at least, is predictable. EDIT 3: [http://www.fluidinfo.com/terry/2009/04/26/a-few- comments-on-...](http://www.fluidinfo.com/terry/2009/04/26/a-few-comments-on- pandemic-influenza/) is worth the read.]

<comment><USER8> What the flying feeple is your problem? Should we all just roll over and die because no one invested in advanced medical tech that could save us?

Let me put this very clearly: Money is the basic unit which measures how much society cares about something. Money implements the power of professional specialization. Money is how real grownups get things done. <http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/>.

If no one is allowed to make money, that means society is not allowed to care. If scientists are not allowed to make money off suffering, it means that you are not allowed to hire scientists and pay them to work on the problem.

Grow up.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. I take ibuprofen when I've got a head ache or a pulled muscle, but Wyeth makes a major profit off of me when I buy advil. However I'd much rather pay my money, like anyone else on the planet, to not feel like crap.

I worked construction, I know how painful a ripped muscle is. With ibuprofen I can continue working, because it prevents the inflammation from being more painful than my actual injury. What would anyone rather pay, 3-4 days wages while your muscle gets back to strength naturally or 3-4 hours of wages while your muscle gets back to strength with an anti-inflammatory.

I believe it's my right to pay as little as possible for the same quality of medicines and such, however if I want to pay $100 (or whatever) for a vaccination for the H1N1 virus, which has a very low death rate, then that's my prerogative. I'd be buying a service, which is called 'Peace of Mind', and the person selling it expects payments.

People have recovered from cancers without the necessary medical treatments. However, everyone here would pay every penny they have to be cured of a cancer, why? Because rational humans don't count on miracles happening, we count on disasters happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Everyone's got a bit bored of the recession. Quick, let's find a new mass panic.

<comment><USER9> I thought we were supposed to be afraid of Bird Flu, not Pig Flu. Can someone _please_ make up their mind on what I'm supposed to panic about, I'm getting quite bored with all the changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> More, with good comments:

[http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/04/swine_flu_whil...](http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/04/swine_flu_while_we_wait.php)

</comment><comment><USER12> If this actually becomes a big deal, it will be a massive economic problem - remember, it's not just the people who get sick who are the problem, but also the people who change their behavior/consumption based on risk mitigation. On the other hand, it would probably provide a boost to e-commerce spending, which would help people in our community.

</comment><comment><USER13> "How about this mad cow disease? It was here a while then it went away."

My thoughts: This will also go away.

<http://tinyurl.com/b8xyvh>

<comment><USER14> It went away after 4.4 million cows were destroyed in the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just my personal opinion: I don't want to see this on HN. I get enough of this from the regular media outlets.

<comment><USER16> I'm perfectly fine with this appearing on HN because I don't pay that much attention to regular media outlets anymore and I might actually pick up something relevant, useful or just interesting in the comments here.

<comment><USER17> I'm glad this appeared on HN. I'm far more interested in this community's thoughts than those of the main stream media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> can *.flu spread to plants?

go vegetarian!

<comment><USER19> It spreads human to human, not pig to human. And you can't get it eating pork (so says the CDC).

<http://www.cdc.gov/media/transcripts/2009/t090423.htm>

<comment><USER20> Possibly true. However there must have originally been some transfer from pigs to humans. Eating pigs and keeping them as livestock almost certainly contributed to the disease occurring. It is too late to stop this one but what about the next one. Anyone care to dispute the notion that the risk of these diseases 'crossing over' would be much reduced if humanity was vegetarian?

<comment><USER21> If all of humanity was _vegan_ , the risk would probably be greatly reduced, since no one would have any livestock. Vegetarian diets still include eggs and dairy.

But it's just a completely unhelpful comment. Humanity as a whole is _not_ going to go vegetarian, let alone vegan. Proposing it as a solution is just pushing an agenda.

<comment><USER18> sadly, drinking soda, eating potato chips and candy = vegetarian too ... anyway that's not what i'm doing; neither do i eat eggs, milk, even fish. i should say go vegan!

i'm too selfish to care about what the rest of the world eat ... if you regard my post as a solution, fine, that's my solution to avoid *.flu -- for my selfish self

well, enough of myself

can you come up with better solution? something creative is even better, much better than critical things you said about how unhelpful/unfeasible one's solution is.

sorry if my comment hurts your ego

<comment><USER22> The calorie density of vegetarian food being what it is, it's probable that if all of humanity went vegetarian, it would solve the over-population problem pretty quickly too because we'd run out of food.

<comment><USER20> You have this completely wrong. It takes about 10 times the plant calories to produce meat calories. If the world stopped eating meat we would would be able to feed many more people.

<comment><USER23> The bigger issue with veganism (and to a lesser extent vegetarianism) is that it requires cleverness to avoid malnutrition. Like it or not, the human colon is too short for a generic vegan diet; we evolved to eat meat.

There are people who _already_ have issues getting enough iron and protein. This problem would only be exacerbated by a pure vegetarian diet.

Furthermore, we do not have an issue producing food for people. We have an issue convincing people to produce food for people. That is, most of the people who starve do so because they cannot afford food, rather than because food is too expensive. This is not a problem of too little food production, because farmers can barely support themselves in places.

This is not to say that reducing meat consumption is not a bad thing, just that it would probably not solve all the worlds problems (or even the food- related ones).

<comment><USER20> > The bigger issue with veganism (and to a lesser extent vegetarianism) is > that it requires cleverness to avoid malnutrition.

On balance I think it takes less cleverness to be a healthy vegetarian than it does than a healthy meat eater. I'm not a vegan so I can't comment in detail but if the misconceptions about vegetarianism are anything to go by I'd say the difficulties are pretty much all BS. And of course if society was vegan it would be trivial to find all the foods you needed regularly cause they'd be everywhere.

> Like it or not, the human colon is too short for a generic vegan diet; we > evolved to eat meat.

The opposite argument actually works better. Could humans live on a 'generic' carnivore diet? It is just as easy to argue that we evolved to eat plants.

But if course that isn't how evolution works. We didn't 'evolve' to do anything but to further our genes. We didn't evolve to drive cars or use computers but here we are. Maybe we evolved to die early so there would be more food for our grandchildren. Evolution can be a rough guide but now we have science which favours a plant diet.

> There are people who already have issues getting enough iron and protein. > This problem would only be exacerbated by a pure vegetarian diet.

People who are on the edge of starvation will benefit from any extra source of calories or nutrition. In the long term though the most efficient way to provide this would be via plants or perhaps even artificial means in some cases.

> Furthermore, we do not have an issue producing food for people.

Fair point. However the cheaper it is to produce food the more likely it will find it's way to the poorest of people.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Pirate Bay Making $9 Million Per Year - <AUTHOR> http://rixstep.com/1/20060708,00.shtml

<comment><USER2> _sold ads for The Pirate Bay for an average of EUR60,000 per month_

Let's see: We could advertise on google and target people specifically searching for a product, and pay as little as 10 cents per click, or...

We could advertise on a criminal website marketed towards people who hate spending money for products and pay 60K Euros a month.

Hmm, think, think...

<comment><USER3> > people who hate spending money for products

Correction: people who hate spending money for _shitty_ products. Or they hate paying an inflated price. Piracy is competition and should be treated as such.

<comment><USER2> _people who hate spending money for shitty products_

Uh, no. Unless you consider 95 percent (or whatever) of all the movies and music and software ever made as consistently "shitty".

 _Or they hate paying an inflated price._

Look up "beethoven symphonies" on piratebay, and you'll see plenty of people seeding and leeching. Then look up the same on amazon, and you'll see that all 9 are available together as low as 20 dollars. If 20 dollars is an "inflated price" for that product, well, then there's no point in trying...

 _Piracy is competition and should be treated as such_

Compete with zero? Sigh. Blah-dee, blah-dee, blah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Al Capone is shouting from his grave at these guys.

</comment><comment><USER5> If that's true it would be awesome, unfortunately it's not.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen 9 million per year...with a possibility of going to Swedish jail. I bet those are mighty fine jails, but I'm still not sure that's a gamble I would make.

<comment><USER6> Do the Swedish have.. I'm not sure what it's called.. "You can't make something into a law and then convict everyone who used to be doing that" provisions?

<comment> patrickg-zill I believe it is called "ex post facto".

<comment><USER6> Yes! Do they have ex post facto laws?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good for them.

<comment><USER6> Why?

<comment><USER7> There is always an economic incentive for violating the law. It takes a certain amount of bravery or lack of risk aversion to skirt the edge of legality. Someone has to push the political agenda of the Pirate Party and the more money they have, the more they can change the world.

This artificial scarcity of media doesn't make any sense. Why should something that I can get for free cost money?

<comment><USER6> Listen, I agree with you in spirit, but it's not practical. Here's what I have no problem with:

Let's say foo is 15 and he wants to download Super Expensive Program 9000. He spends all day looking for a torrent. Then, once he's downloaded it, the next day it takes him another full day to figure out how to install it and get the various cracks working and everything configured.

Right, that's fine. Here's the problem:

Time passes, foo's grown up. He's 25, and a software engineer, making $75k a year. He goes to thepiratebay.org and finds Super Expensive Program 9000 immediately. He downloads it in about an hour. It installs immediately with no requirement to apply a crack or any other technical detail. It just installs and works.

Okay, I have a problem with the second one, because once piracy becomes a one- click solution it starts to hurt those that make the program. The first isn't a problem because 15 year olds don't buy programs anyway, but they might buy it when they grow up (Like I did with Visual Assist).

If there's a way to make it artificially hard to get something for free, I say let them get it, because only the committed will be able to. If it's easy (Napster, ThePirateBay, etc) it needs to be made harder.

Also, making money by giving away people's work for free in a one-click solution is just evil. If you're going to give it away for free, make it hard, and don't make any money from it.

<comment><USER7> Piracy HAS become one-click easy because information is not scarce anymore. The fifteen your old of today that you think should be able to pirate software has no choice but to download it in a ridiculously easy manner.

There's no turning back now, unless there's an international movement to start policing the internet which involves cutting off countries that have been declared piracy havens from the rest of the internet. This, of course, contradicts the principles of the internet.

I'm too much of a moral relativist to think the Pirate Bay is evil. Stalin was evil. George W. Bush is evil. Making something people want (one click access to free information) is not evil. Laws are not inherently good and violating laws is not inherently evil.

I'll admit that it's not practical for all information to suddenly be free, but in the long run, information will be free. In the meanwhile, people like you and me get to argue about how free our information should be. This debate is part of the process of freeing our information.

<comment><USER6> Okay. So for someone like me, in a position where I have very little money and I want to get out of that situation, to hear "Whatever people make should be free" is just silly. Yes, open source is wonderful, and I really want to contribute to it. But needing to feed myself everyday and to pay for my car and a place to live takes precedence.

Would you tell PG that Viaweb should've been free? Why? Because it's a service? There's no fundamental difference between a service and a piece of desktop software, except you can't steal it.

<comment><USER8> It's not that "whatever people make should be free". It's that buying something should not automatically restrict your rights to what you already own. If you can figure out how to make a non-easily-copied copy, then you won't need to forcefully (with law) restrict people from using their own computers after purchasing your copy. But the ease of copying (and thus competition) doesn't justify using force.

Web applications are one way to solve the problem of "how do I sell use of software without making the copy they're using easily copied". Other ways include, for example, DRM, but web applications are a far more robust solution than DRM, for the class of applications they can provide solutions for.

<comment><USER6> How would you write a web application to deliver some music without being able to steal it? You can't. It's not a panacea. People have to be moral. If you're 15, fine, steal it, because you can't buy it anyway, and it's not hurting anyone. If you're 25 and you have money, don't be selfish. It _is_ stealing. And if it's stealing, then laws apply. They protect ownership rights.

<comment><USER8> "How would you write a web application to deliver some music without being able to steal it? You can't."

No, web applications are not a panacea. But _some_ business model will work, and finding that business model is far more profitable than attempting to legislate a hold on digital copying. If there's some particular type of thing for which there is no profitable method of distribution, then that thing won't be produced for profit. Law can distort this to a degree, but such distortions always produce more problems than they solve. The market always wins. :)

<comment><USER6> Well, okay, I totally agree with that. I just feel bad about it because there _is_ intrinsic value in a piece of music, as there is in a book. It's creative, and as such it's a thousand times more valuable than being able to do backflips or other specialized skills.

..But because it's so easily copied, it's not really worth anything unless the laws enforce it, which can be heavy-handed. So I don't know the right balance.

<comment><USER8> I think the first copy of a book or other creative product (that will sell well) is incredibly valuable, and I have some ideas for ways to get a large chunk of that value for the author/artist, but they require micropayments to be widespread, and that's what I'm working on right now. :)

<comment><USER6> Cool. Good luck! :) I'd like to hear more about it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: owner/group getting set to `82` - <AUTHOR> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/411158/owner-group-getting-set-to-82 <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a fun one for all you *nix experts out there. Need help debugging the strangest bug I've ever personally come across. Thanks!</comment>


How to build an iPhone app (including App Store review process tips) - <AUTHOR> http://venturevillage.eu/how-to-build-an-iphone-app/

<comment><AUTHOR> High-level guide for product managers, including tips for tools etc.</comment>


Voterfied: A blockchain-based public survey startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/technology/sd-fi-voterfied-campaign-app-20190215-story.html <comment><USER2> The identity checking sounds like it would have the same long-unsolved problems the USA has regarding registration. Capturing votes in an immutable store is hardly the difficult part of the puzzle. At least it's "unhackable," "completely anonymous," and "completely secure."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The company's front page:

[https://voterfied.com/](https://voterfied.com/)</comment>


Watcher: Only rerun the Jasmine tests you need - <AUTHOR> http://pcimino.blog.com/2015/03/12/watcher-only-rerun-the-jasmine-tests-you-need/ <comment><USER2> Nice

</comment><comment><USER2> Useful</comment>


Butterflow: motion interpolated videos from the command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dthpham/butterflow <comment><USER2> Found this cool project (not mine) that uses butterflow for applying motion interpolation to Himawari-8 satellite images: [https://github.com/dandelany/animate- earth](https://github.com/dandelany/animate-earth)

The final results look really nice [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Mlo4zfmEITcNoCpBKfEfg/pla...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Mlo4zfmEITcNoCpBKfEfg/playlists)

<comment><USER3> I definitely noticed in these videos some color artifacts where red and blue colors bleed for short bursts. Are these inherent to butterflow or specific to this channel?

<comment><USER4> They are artifacts in the data - the different color channels that make up the image are captured at different times, so if there is any movement of the satellite between exposures, or software glitches that only affect one channel, they show up as bleeding colors in the final merged image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks really cool to this casual observer. It actually uses optical flow to interpolate frames. The slow-motion demos are very impressive.

Is this the first open source software that uses this approach? I found a masters' thesis project, but it doesn't appear to be maintained.

Does anyone know if this is how slow-motion works on iphone cameras?

<comment><USER6> iPhone cameras actually record at 120/240fps rather than recording at a lower rate and interpolating.

Thank god. I don't want the soap opera effect on my videos. Interpolation is the first thing I disable on a TV.

<comment><USER7> On TVs where it's interpolating to convert from 24fps to 60 it usually looks terrible, but slowing down a real 60fps video using motion interpolation usually looks much better, as there's less that needs guessing

<comment><USER8> Until everybody starts filming at 60/120hz, I am forced to use motion interpolation on my tv, even if it's full or artifacts. I hope it will take less than 50 years for movie technology to advance..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did anyone try this on hand-drawn animation? How does it look? I'm not optimistic, since usually processes made for live-motion don't work that well, but going from e.g. 8 or 12 FPS to 24 FPS with no manual work would be just amazing.

<comment><USER10> I haven't, but I have used Butterflow quite a bit and it tends to really break down for frame rates below 24 as well as fast motion, though sometimes it pulls through with the right circumstance. Some clips from really old cartoons might work, but probably not the entire cartoon itself without a lot of trial, error, and editing. Even then, one might be SOL for some parts of it.

One success I had with Butterflow was upping the frame rate on the Apollo moon landing videos. It looked like a home video! lol Unfortunately I left the results on my work computer before I left the company, but with the Docker image of Butterflow and youtube-dl to get the footage, you can experiment yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Stumbled across it in 2017 and created this experiment, [https://twitter.com/dsvensson/status/1097072994478944256](https://twitter.com/dsvensson/status/1097072994478944256)

</comment><comment><USER12> Butterflow quit working for me on 2 different machines after upgrading ffmpeg to 4.1. I've seen similar reports elsewhere. Did anybody get it working with a fresh install using all updated libraries?

</comment><comment><USER13> Would be cool if this can be integrated with mpv, I tried SVP but integration is a bit awkward when you just want to chill.

That said SVP is nice for 30 fps youtube videos on slower connections or just videos without a high-quality 60hz source... even without svp videos look significantly nicer in mpv than in chrome on youtube.

</comment><comment><USER14> How does the output compare to running a video with mpv and vapoursynth to increase the frame rate? e.g., this recipe: [https://gist.github.com/phiresky/4bfcfbbd05b3c2ed8645](https://gist.github.com/phiresky/4bfcfbbd05b3c2ed8645)

</comment><comment><USER15> One good application of this tech is old movies with poor frame rates. The WW1 documentary _They Shall Not Grow Old_ uses a technique like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I came across Butterflow while trying to smooth out the ragged motion in anime. It didn't work out-of-the-box unfortunately, but there are other similar attempts happening: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvgcCyfVVog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvgcCyfVVog)</comment></comment>