Why local US newspapers are sounding the alarm - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44688274 <comment><USER2> I started my career as a journalist at a small daily paper before moving into tech in the 1990s. As a young reporter - still in college - I got horrible assignments like having to attend local budget meetings, going down to the police station to copy the blotter, sitting in on school board meetings, updating the local calendar and reporting on the high school sports teams, among other tasks. This stuff was boring, tedious and rarely ever generated "news" of anything beyond an informational synopses of the goings on around town.

It didn't matter - the paper was picked up and read daily by thousands of readers. Many read it cover to cover. It's truly an important service to any community. In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all. Newspapers traditionally bring people together and provide a sense of belonging and regional awareness and even pride.

This stuff isn't sexy, nor particularly profitable, but it _has_ to be done! Someone needs to keep track of these events, summarize and disseminate this information. Even the most boring, mundane happenings _need_ to be recorded and publicized for well-functioning society. Without that effort, the things happening around us become opaque, and being informed relies literally on word of mouth.

Sadly, pretty much every effort to digitally replicate the services provided by local papers has failed to my knowledge. As a result, I know more about what's happening in London than I do about my home city.

No idea what the solution is, and a lot of people much smarter than myself have tried for years. But what I do know is the long term consequences of small newspapers closing is a lot more dire than I think most people realize.

<comment><USER3> > In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area > isn't a community at all.

As a young (21yr) person in my community, I have to say I have never read through a full local newspaper and don't know a single friend my age or younger who has. The local news channels have websites these days and I would say those, in combination with local public radio, television channels, and even social media are the main source for local news in my town (for my demographic at least).

I personally don't feel a lack of community due to the fact that this news comes from my computer monitor instead of ink on some rolled up paper, but then again I never really lived in an era when I got to experience that.

<comment><USER4> As someone from the last generation born without ubiquitous web, the biggest difference for me is the definition of community.

Now, a community is whoever you want it to be. Folks who play the same game you do. People who hate rocks. People who think purple hair is awesome. People who think purple hair is stupid and red hair is awesome.

The people may live next to you, or they may live in another country.

Previously, all these people who made up your community were in your town, by necessity. Because of that, you pretty much rolled the random dice and that's who you interacted with.

Gain (present vs past) -- being able to find a community that's similar to you. Especially if you don't identify with the norm (imagine being the only person you knew who thought computers were cool). Much more rapid dissemination of ideas and social mores.

Loss -- forced mixing of and interaction with different groups. Exposure to new ideas and different perspectives. Identification with people who aren't like you (but are still "one of us", i.e. from the same town)

<comment><USER5> There's an even bigger one on the loss. In my opinion the phenomena you're describing is related to the rise in groupthink. The problem is as people create communities based around shared ideology, it means that people can be effectively 'exiled' from that community if they say something that may be interpreted as going against that ideology. If your community is defined by shared location, then nothing you can say or do changes that. I think this community from ideology makes people afraid to say what they actually think, for fear that it could unravel their created community connections. There are some major parallels here to how cults sustain themselves, but in this case we've done it entirely to ourselves!

<comment><USER6> > as people create communities based around shared ideology, it means that > people can be effectively 'exiled' from that community if they say something > that may be interpreted as going against that ideology. If your community is > defined by shared location, then nothing you can say or do changes that.

Small towns are historically _far worse_ for ideological conformance, because once you're ostracized you're stuck.

<comment><USER5> Community doesn't translate to small town. The reason community would be constrained to your 'town' was a matter of geographic distance. Community is whoever you were surrounded by, and who you interacted with was more or less random. People would end up making friends, often good friends, with others even when they had deeply differing views. Of course had they known the views of the person they were talking to ahead of time, they may well not have even been willing to give them the time of day. Now a days people are able to get that knowledge ahead of time, and it's resulted in this trend towards social homogeneity. And I think there's a very strong argument to be made that that homogeneity is really the source of so many of the social ills of today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There have been studies showing that without local papers acting as watchdogs, local government costs go up.

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280712)

[https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/public-finance- loc...](https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/public-finance-local- news.php)

[https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local- news...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-newspaper- close-city-bond-finances-suffer/561422/)

<comment><USER8> this must only really work in small communities as most larger cities are pretty much immune to monitoring except corruption.

anecdotal, in Atlanta we tend to see the local TV news doing a lot of investigation with one partnered with the local paper (AJC). They tend to focus on corruption more than costs of city programs. However the one expense they never ever will touch is how cities are getting buried by pension costs to where even the pension systems are threatened. (Chicago's system will be out of money by 2021) too rich of benefits and more retirees than active is to much of a burden

<comment><USER9> > this must only really work in small communities as most larger cities are > pretty much immune to monitoring except corruption

You are wrong, didn't read the link, don't make any arguments about its findings, and don't offer any evidence for your claims.

"To further account for within-state cross county variation, we control for county-level differences in population, population growth, per capita income, and employment growth."

Was it really so important that you say "this study is wrong" and share your personal anecdote that you couldn't have spent a few minutes reading it first? Commenting on HackerNews isn't a race and the level of discourse usually goes up when people aren't in a rush to comment.

Is sharing a personal anecdote on HackerNews with strangers more valuable than learning something new?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "Oh, to be a state or local official in America over the next 10 to 15 > years, before somebody figures out the business model," says Simon, a former > crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. "To gambol freely across the > wastelands of an American city, as a local politician! It's got to be one of > the great dreams in the history of American corruption."

\-- David Simon (Creator of The Wire) on the necessity of local newspapers which are quickly disappearing.

Source: [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/mar/27/david-simon- wi...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/mar/27/david-simon-wire- newspapers)

</comment><comment><USER11> News is no longer what a local paper publishes. It's the latest Instagram story from your friends. It's the Facebook post from a local school informing parents of a PTA meeting. It's the Twitter status update from the President. It's a Reddit post discussing problems with the latest MacBook keyboards.

Why is the newspaper dying? Because updates about what is happening in people's world is no longer constrained by what is published in the local paper! And everyone involved in the old industry still can't wrap their minds around it.

The newspaper was a medium for communication. The World Wide Web is a medium for communication. News didn't die, but what constitutes news is no longer defined by what the local paper decides to publish.

<comment><USER12> The difference is, the newspaper paid professional reporters to write the news. They did a fantastic job (in most cases) of making sure they had their facts straight, and local news broke most of the big stories you eventually heard about on national news sources. Even today, a LOT of the national news starts at local news sources, either papers or local channels, but that is getting worse all the time due to the cuts.

Instead, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. you get a flood of "news", but you have to vet it all yourself to see what is true and what isn't. And many many people don't do that - if they trust the person sharing, they trust the "news". Or if it agrees with their world view, they trust the "news". Sometimes amazing things are covered - live Reddit threads have broken some amazing stories, with details from local residents. Same with Twitter, etc. But for every one of those stories there are 100s that are fake, or actually pushing alternative narratives that are not based in reality for their own ends. And that flood is just too much for the average person to actually separate the fact from the fiction.

Social media does not equal journalism. That isn't "old industry" thinking. That is just a sad fact.

<comment><USER13> Every time I have known what was going on and read a local newspaper covering it there has been a host of errors. Local news is ok for having a vague idea what's going on, and little else.

So sure, there is some value there. But, less than many people seem to think.

PS: OK, local movie showtimes where generally correct.

<comment><USER4> I typically find a large amount of information that simply doesn't exist online in my local paper.

And don't get me started on ranting about Facebook trying to hamfistedly assume that mantle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In my town, there's still a local paper, and they send out that _one_ person, who is reasonably neutral, to report on what happens during, say, city council meetings. Without that person, you just have what the councilors say, what Angry Neighbors report (the parking! won't someone think of the parking!), or maybe a long, long, tedious recording that no sane person can sit through to make heads or tails of what happened.

That's super important stuff and has a lot more impact on my life than many things in DC.

From the article:

> Susan's a Daily Camera subscriber, but she mentions Boulder's local paper > recently raised the subscription price by 25%.

This is, in part, a result of tariffs by the Trump administration:

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-publishers-worry- ab...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-publishers-worry-about- pricier-newsprint-new-tariffs-n865416)

<comment><USER15> For a few years, I was that person in my village.

At least, I like to think I was neutral in my writing. There were two political cliques, and one of them occasionally behaved in _incredibly_ jerkish ways (And would regularly have between 0 and 40% of the council seats).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sweden had the same problem of local newspapers shutting down in the 50's and 60's, and introduced a system of press support where the government directly subsidizes newspapers to keep competition available [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_support](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_support)

<comment><USER17> Doesn't that create a conflict of interest?

<comment><USER16> It's a bit more complicated than that.

Rather than try or pretend to be neutral, Swedish newspapers tend to outright state their political affiliations/biases. (e.g. "Skånska Dagbladet is close to the Centre Party"[0] "Aftonbladet describes itself as an independent social-democratic newspaper"[1]). This results in the newspapers having protection of the parties they support, rather than the legislature-du-jour, and an attempt by the government to influence an opposing newspaper would quickly gain political attention.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Pew found a 35% decline in reporters covering statehouses from 2003 to 2014. This is a scary lack of information for voters and watchdogs.

[http://www.journalism.org/2014/07/10/americas-shifting- state...](http://www.journalism.org/2014/07/10/americas-shifting-statehouse- press/)

==Less than a third of U.S. newspapers assign any kind of reporter—full time or part time—to the statehouse. According to the Alliance for Audited Media, only 30% of the 801 daily papers it monitor send a staffer to the statehouse for any period of time. In Massachusetts, whose capital is the largest city (Boston), just 6% of the state's newspapers have any reporting presence at the statehouse—the lowest percentage of newspaper representation of any state.==

</comment><comment><USER19> A number of comments here are along the lines of "I'm more informed today than I was before the web, no problem here."

You're probably more informed on the whole, but there are fewer and fewer eyes watching our elected officials and shining lights into dark places.

A strong and free press is critical in maintaining a healthy democracy. Support your local papers or hyperlocal bloggers if you see them doing good work - you and your community will benefit in the long term.

<comment><USER20> "Press" is just a technical method of information dissemination which certainly can become outdated. Democracy needs freedom of speech and expression.

<comment><USER19> Kind of a weird nitpick there. Democracy needs someone working to uncover things that the public needs to know to make informed voting decisions.

<comment><USER20> "Someone uncovering things" appears because in an environment where free speech is not suppressed political, economical, and ideological competitions create incentives to do it. Is it a newspaper, a TV channel, a blog, social network, telepathy, or something else which is used to disseminate information then is a purely technical issue.

<comment><USER19> Just because free speech is possible doesn't mean someone will take up the role of investigative reporter

<comment><USER20> Incentives -> someone will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In my town both the major newspapers are owned by one company. That one company also laid off a lot of reporting staff and saved money by using syndicated content in both papers.

It's sad to see how less diverse the opinions are. We are just being told what to think now.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, similar here. It really sucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Civic engagement dropped by ~5%, with p<.05, per the study linked the article. The way it was written I expected a drastic drop.

I didn't see any other years compared to see if that kind of variance is typical.

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/10584609.2012...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/10584609.2012.762817?scroll=top&needAccess=true)

</comment><comment><USER24> > But nationwide, there's been no mass replacement of local newspapers. Non- > profit online sites are largely based in major metro areas.

Is this really true? I've heard of at least a couple of non-profit newspapers opening in small towns including the one I'm from, and I don't really pay that close of attention to this stuff. For enterprising journalists there are a lot of people willing to pay/donate to these causes. Optimistically, the funding can move from ad/subscription more to donations/grants and the local reporting can continue.

<comment><USER25> It is very true. And a journalist can't do the job of being a journalist if they have to spend hours in city council meetings in addition to wooing subscribers. This business is tough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's odd that newspapers are dying because their old business model, ad support, has gone away, but Facebook and Google thrive on ads.

<comment><USER27> Facebook and Google are outliers. Your average website (if there is such a thing anymore) with 10.000 - 100.000 aren't thriving on ads, they struggle to survive as well, at least the for profit sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The biggest loss to newspapers imo is the fact that they got just 1 chance every day to publish their articles.

It was harder to spy on what the other was doing, unless you wanted to be a day behind them. This allowed people to come up with more original opinions, and less hivemind behavior that you see with the constantly updating/mutating articles online.

</comment><comment><USER29> There may be hope for automating the dissemination of local and state government information and news when agencies use services like opengov.com. The problem is still getting this information to venues people will notice and pay attention to. This will still probably come down to social media. In many ways social media is taking the place of local newspapers.

</comment><comment><USER20> If taxi drivers were in the same way connected to social studies people as journos are, we would be reading laments about oldschool taxi services as a cornerstone of society now.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wrote an extensive comment as to why I consider the capitalist funding model for news to be suboptimal and not resilient in the face of the Internet. I described an alternative in terms of collaborative efforts like wikinews, user-submitted content, and fact checking and analysis as a community effort. It tried to be as detailed and helpful as possible in a reasonable space.

It was downvoted (fine) and then flagged and killed. Also replies to it that agreed with it were flagged even more and killed.

My question is - why was it flagged? Can anyone explain? Is it because it suggested a non-capitalist approach to news? Or because it made a broader point? I really think the "flag" feature should require an explanation.

</comment><comment><USER31> Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease?

</comment><comment><USER32> It's not surprising that a business based on providing printouts of yesterday's wire stories plus classified ads isn't doing well.

<comment><USER33> My town had a local newspaper for a while which went away. Now I have basically no source of information about local planning, zoning, etc. board meetings. I suppose I could more regularly attend town meetings and so forth but that often isn't really an option.

<comment><USER34> Your town/municipality doesn't have a website with all that info? Granted, most town websites are horrid to navigate, but the information should be there.

<comment><USER15> Even when there is a website with meeting minutes/notes/bylaws/zoning info, it's really helpful to have someone who knows what the government is talking about to sift through, and highlight the important bits.

Likewise, I can go down to the river, and start taking water samples, to figure out whether or not the local factory is polluting the waters. I'd really rather not, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: The January Entrepreneur Challenge - <AUTHOR> Build a business or product that is profitable by the end of January 2020
This is a sprint not a marathon. A fun challenge to do together, not something to take super seriously
Rules:

    - has to be truly profitable, no matter how small of a profit. You can't spend $100 on ads and call your $5 return a profit
    - No just convincing your friends and family to buy. Has to be strangers as customers
    - it can be something you've thought of before, but not something you've already started building
    - Don't get upset if someone copies your idea. This is for fun, not to become the next Facebook/Uber/Netflix
    - At the end of January post what you worked on and how it turned out. Failure is always an option
 Motivation:
It can be super easy, when reading stories about big startups, to only try big ideas. The truth is that some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world started small and worked there way up. As a community, let's see what we could learn from trying a small challenge as a group <comment><USER2> Interesting. Will try your challenge

</comment><comment><USER3> nice...</comment>


Show HN: Witness – Livestreaming for Emergencies - <AUTHOR> https://getwitness.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I'm Marinos, I made this. Here's a medium post I just wrote going into more detail on the motivation & design decisions behind Witness: [https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for- em...](https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for- emergencies-698a62afe1c3). Let me know if you have any feedback/questions about Witness or live streaming or anything else. One question I get a lot is whether I am planning to open source this. I am, and I'm also extracting all the live streaming logic into a drop-in iOS library. Cheers!

<comment><USER2> This looks really nice - are you planning to support other OS, like Android, WP or Blackberry?

<comment><USER3> Blackberry? Seriously?

<comment><USER2> What? The Android apps are fairly easily ported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome. I really like it.

An initial thought...Perhaps, it's use case is possibly a little more Western World-centric due to the audio/video aspect of things. Where recording a perpetrator is a deterrence against further aggression.

We do a lot of work with NGOs and human rights defenders where security, especially in developing nations, is a different concept. What I mean is that in many emergency situations, the last thing you want a normal person (starting to panic and who's decision making process is starting to slow down and become impaired under pressure) to do is start holding a video camera up. Especially in the context of a case like a kidnapping or under fire. That will only have only the effective of a) probably antagonising the attacker, leading to the phone being snatched and/or thrown away (thus breaking the most important aspect, the real time reporting of current location)...b) in the most high risk situations, the user needs to be getting themselves to safety, as this initial 30 second reaction is the most important - focusing on the video and audio on the phone will slow this down and undo the natural inbuilt reaction to run like hell...

Anyway, just a thought, awesome project and good on you for doing it.

(Please excuse the following: Plug for our security planning tool, which aims at preventing physical and digital security incidents [http://www.secfirst.org](http://www.secfirst.org) ...Plug for a very cool Android panic button: Amnesty [https://panicbutton.io](https://panicbutton.io))...Plugs over :)

<comment><USER5> I'm wondering how I would undo the "natural inbuilt reaction to run like hell" long enough to tap tap and look at my phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually asked a bunch of psychologists about this. Most people will either freeze or run. If your inbuilt reaction is to run, you are already in the lucky group. The goal is to use it, if possible, while running, so I tried to make it as simple as possible to activate. Unfortunately, because of Apple restrictions, you still need to launch the app, but I'm experimenting with things like using notification center for faster access

<comment><USER4> Cool. I'm not sure if your part of the community already but if it's open source etc you should post it on the Stamford University Liberation Tech mailing list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some feedback from a discussion I had after seeing this:

three modes: 1 - immediate life threatening danger, call police (and notify friends/family) 2 - non-immediate, but still notify friends/family 3 - possible danger (just scared) - record everything (remote server), hold for 24 hours before sending to friends/family.

I think #3 could be one of your best use cases: A lot of people don't like walking to their car alone at night, or through a dark alley, or meeting someone on a first date. But they also don't want to stream that to their friends/family for no real reason. This gives them time to stop/erase content where nothing happens. In the case where something does happen, evidence is still maintained even if the phone is knocked/dropped out of their hand immediately, or whatever. You could also have a quicker way to "upgrade" to #1 in this mode, in case the threat turns more immediate and the user still has time/thought process to act.

<comment><AUTHOR> You've hit the nail right on the head. A 2-stage process (1-record 2-notify) is definitely the number one feature request. For this version, I wanted to keep things super simple and get it out there as soon as possible so I can start getting feedback. I should be adding that to the next version.

Would you prefer an automatic 24-hour notification or a manual 2-stage process where you first record and then notify the emergency contacts if needed?

<comment><USER6> Gotcha. Good on you for getting out a simple version quickly, that's the way to do it.

Personally I prefer automatic notification, because the user may be impaired and can no longer perform the second step.

However, I would suggest you make this all user customizable. Length of time before automatic notification, automatic vs manual, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congratulations! A similar app won Google's Social Impact Challenge 2014 [1] in Brazil. It's named PLP 2.0 [2], and it's aimed mainly at women that suffer from violent partners.

A few friend and I built something similar for a hackathon made by the brazilian Chamber of Deputies on Genre [3]. Our main differentiator was that we didn't rely on having a smartphone at all, as our focus was on low-income women in Brazil, which (we thought) is the class that needs something like this the most. Although smartphone use is increasing very quickly in Brazil, only 20% of the brazilians had one in 2014.

Ours worked by having a phone number where people would call via a fast-dial number (so it would need just one button press), then it would start recording the audio and send an SMS to NGOs that work with women's protection so they could call the cops or whatever was deemed necessary.

Obviously, by not requiring a smartphone we wouldn't have access to the person's location. The solution was based on the fact that ~70% of the attacks occur on the victim's home. We would pre-register the person's number and addresses (home, work, etc.), so that when we received a "help request", we would know where to start looking for her. This was the best we could do with a dumb phone.

[1] [https://desafiosocial.withgoogle.com/brazil2014](https://desafiosocial.withgoogle.com/brazil2014) [2] [http://www.plp20.org.br/](http://www.plp20.org.br/) [3] [https://github.com/thacker/botao-do-panico](https://github.com/thacker/botao- do-panico)

</comment><comment><USER8> Most phones have really terrible UIs for getting to something like this. In circumstances where I want to start using an app like this, I usually don't have 5-10 seconds to take my concentration off of my surroundings to load the app. I've been in plenty of situations where I wished I could immediately start recording things but didn't have time to navigate my phone's UI.

<comment><AUTHOR> My experience was exactly the same. The record button on the camera app is small and hard to hit if you're running/your hands are shaky. Also if you touch the screen while recording it changes the focus and you could also accidentally end the recording. All these could have serious implications during an emergency.

That's why for Witness I made sure you could touch anywhere on the screen while recording and it would be almost impossible to do any damage. So you can conceal your phone while your fingers rest on the screen.

<comment><USER8> But how do you get into the app? Don't you have to navigate your phone's OS? I can appreciate what you're saying. There are probably lots of situations where you know you might need it where you can have the app already running. I just wish there was a way to get into something like this or start recording without even having to look at my phone. I think it would be much more useful if you had that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not a new concept. Many have tried and failed. Even though the social cause is clear and many people will say great idea, very few will use it if their life is on the line. And even less will pay for it unless it's bundled with some sort of home care service/monitoring.

The 1st point is actually a big liability problem. If your life is at risk will you make a 911 call (which even works without data coverage) or trust an app that you have not started in a while to work as expected? And you must have data for it to work too right. Apps need consistent updates to fix bugs and when a OS update breaks it, you are putting people at risk. Too much of a risk to take to rely on an app to save your life.

The 2nd point, is whether you will end up having a business. You have a business when someone pays for your product/service. Until then it is not a business. Who will pay for this luxury of a better 911 and why do they really need it when 911 is free and more reliable? If the emergency is not 911 serious level than what role does the app play?

Hope these questions help you flesh your thinking around this space/product. Just because you build it don't mean they will come ;-)

</comment><comment><USER10> I love this concept, and it is sorely needed. I read in your Medium post[1] that "Data is wiped from the phone as soon as it's securely moved to the Witness servers." I'm curious what the reasoning for this is. Of course, I get that the data is streamed/copied to Witness in the event that the device is destroyed or confiscated, but it's hard for me to think of a use case where having a local version on the device would would do any harm.

In fact, I think it would be valuable for evidentiary purposes to have the original on the device. I'm assuming that the streamed/copied version is probably lossy in some regard, while the local version might be higher resolution or frame rate, also.

[1] [https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for- em...](https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for- emergencies-698a62afe1c3)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out. The original thinking was twofold: 1) I didn't want people to get in trouble if their phones were searched and they were in possession of a recording and 2) Keep the data stored on the phone to a minimum, in order to increase available space for storing video when Cellular Data/WiFi is not available. The data is always available later through the shortlink.

You raise a very good point though. Offering an option to keep data locally (or save it in the camera roll) in a future version would make sense

<comment><USER11> At the border US customs ask you whether you have "accounts on remote computers", which means, practically everything. It's better to move the data offsite so police actually needs a warrant to inspect it (instead of a "I thought he had a gun" excuse), but it can still require them to provide access to the remote account to the police.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Have you been asked that before? I've done a fair amount of going in and out of the country and was never asked

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool work...I haven't downloaded the app to my phone yet, but is there a stage between activating the app and then going into emergency mode, e.g. broadcast + emailing all emergency contacts?

I could foresee situations in which someone is fearful, but not yet ready to raise the alarm...in which case, having the phone go into video/audio/geo- broadcast mode would be nice, but not "email/text everyone".

I really liked the accompanying blog post ([https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for- em...](https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for- emergencies-698a62afe1c3))...a lot of nice meditations on making something new by noticing the small inconveniences and barriers in real-world usage of existing solutions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree, having a 2-stage process to first stream and then notify emergency contacts is one of the top feature requests. I should be adding that in the next version

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is an excellent idea. I wish you the best of luck.

I have experience with social networking apps and a BIG challenge that you'll have is if the functionality depends on the person's friends onboarding for the person to get value.

I would encourage you to think very hard about providing value for the user without any of their friends necessarily being on the app. Even if you had a 90% completion rate for each step of your on boarding funnel, the longer you make your funnel, the more you'll trend toward 0% activation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The functionality does not depend on the person's friends joining the app

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great idea. What happens if there's no cell network? Does it record AV and upload later in the background?

<comment><AUTHOR> If there's no cell network it will store everything locally (status bar turns purple) until the cell network comes back up. This happens automatically and I'm already working on making it more explicit in future versions

<comment><USER14> Good stuff, thanks for the update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome! saw it on techcrunch: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/03/witnesss- livestreaming-app-...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/03/witnesss- livestreaming-app-is-a-panic-button-for-the-smartphone-age/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I like the idea of combining this with drones: [http://www.civileyes.me/](http://www.civileyes.me/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Great work! I've heard of this for Uber in India, but always thought that a standalone version would be a great idea. Genius all around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have heard about this as well. A bunch of people from India have emailed me about using Witness there and some have already been field-testing it. This version does work in India, with full calling/texting support, but I definitely want to work on it a little more to better tailor it to places outside the US

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The link to the privacy policy just links to the promotion webseite. Do you plan on selling footage to news organizations?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this goes without saying, but absolutely not. Data will never be available to anyone in any way, shape or form, except people chosen by you. I am adding this to the website now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very good idea! But what happens if something's happening in underground parking lot where there's no signal?

<comment><AUTHOR> It will store everything on the device until the Internet is back up, then it will resume the stream. If it never comes back up, it will keep storing on the device until battery/storage runs out. It is designed to never lose data unless it has to

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've witnessed this app at techCrunch, such a simple yet so powerful tool for safety.

</comment><comment><USER21> The title and event his web page led me to believe it was related to this project: [http://witness.org/](http://witness.org/)

"WITNESS is an international organization that trains and supports people using video in their fight for human rights."

<comment><AUTHOR> I am so sorry for that, I picked the name Witness at 4am during a hackathon and had no idea it would win. It was an unfortunate choice of name, especially given that there are a ton of apps in the App Store with "Witness" in them

<comment><USER21> No, I don't think it's a bad thing! I was actually thinking about how the areas of overlap could be expanded and connected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Was this inspired by the last 2 episodes of Silicon Valley?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha I've never seen Silicon Valley but I will sure check it out!</comment></comment>


What's Behind the Exodus from Rent the Runway? - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/11/17/rent-the-runway-exodus/ <comment><USER2> "Rent the Runway has been valued at $500 million. It asked Fortune not to publish this story because it could hurt the company's ability to raise money."

It's not the media's job to help you raise money, it's their job to report the facts. And frankly if your executive churn is that freaking high and so many prior employees have issues like they seem to, you probably shouldn't be raising money.

Also, this might just be me, but does anyone else miss the good old days when you'd start a business and your success was determined by how much money you actually made, not how much money you got a bunch of investors to give you, just to burn on fancy offices and expensive toys, then crash the company in a few years and retire to write a book? This whole system seems incredibly screwed.

<comment><USER3> _It 's not the media's job to help you raise money, it's their job to report the facts._

Have you notified TechCrunch and the rest of the so-called tech "media"?

<comment><USER2> Fair, but I said it's their job, I didn't say they all (or even most) did it well.

<comment><USER4> I think their job is to be entertaining and sell advertisements.

<comment><USER5> The sites that get my ad impressions tend to be the ones that do reporting and not just cheerleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Given that Netflix is a $60 billion company—and we don't have to watch TV or movies every day, but we do all have to get dressed—the potential for Rent the Runway was 10 times bigger than I ever thought,"

This sound like a terrible investment thesis?

It is ignoring all the differences between how you consume clothing vs media. The fact that there is physical distribution required vs digital.

OR am I missing something key?

<comment><USER7> No, you're spot on. It's a wildly incorrect premise.

Example: Apple is a $670 billion company. We don't all have to own smart phones. We all have to sleep at night, therefore Beds 'R Us must be worth ten times what Apple is.

You'd be hard pressed to invent a more comical economic premise than the one used to compare Rent the Runway to Netflix. It's in the same fantasy league as proclaiming: if I can only capture 1% of the oil industry, my company will be huge!

Or put another: why aren't lettuce farms worth 100 times what the NY Yankees are?!? Surely lettuce is higher on the needs table than baseball much less one MLB baseball team!

<comment><USER8> I'm also sure people actually feel inclined to rent movies more often than they need to rent clothes.

People _buy_ the clothing they need to wear every day.

<comment><USER9> People also tend to throw out a lot clothing because they're bored with it, not because it gets worn out. There does appear to be a pretty big opportunity there.

<comment><USER6> * Note: not a women, Do not fashion trends. This is purely based on my observations of the women around me (wife, sisters etc etc), and some cursory reading on Zara etc.*

1\. Things come and go into fashion, you have trends and 'mini-seasons' or something like that.

2\. This is still driven by the major fashion labels

3\. A critical thing has changed though: quite a number of companies have optimized their supply chain. I believe the term is called "Fast-fashion".

5\. Examples: Zara, H&M, Mr Price (South Africa).

6\. They are cost effective.

7\. This means they get can a new design in stores within 2-4 weeks.

7\. In other words, you could wear something that is 'in-fashion' at the same time as other high-end labels, previously with the long lead times and manufacturing in china you would get the item a season later. The followers were always behind.

8\. This has resulted in changing behavior. Buying items from these stores. Using them for a few weeks or 1-2 months. And then getting rid of the item.

In other words, i believe the value proposition for rental of 'every-day' wear is quite weak.

<comment><USER9> It's interesting that you admit that this is a topic on which you are largely ignorant and yet you speak with such confidence about your beliefs.

<comment><USER10> It's interesting that you are unable/unwilling to address the points the author made and instead chose to just attack the author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, the CEO sounds extremely out of touch with the company culture. If your company has a Facebook group for ex-employees to come together and process their terrible experience working for you, there's a problem regardless of if you're able to admit it to yourself.

[Edit] Also, what happens if I rent a dress and hate it? Suddenly I'm two days out from an event with a dress that looks terrible and that I've spent $150 on with nothing to show for it. I'd rather take $150, go to Nordstrom, and _buy_ a dress that I know looks good on me because 1- I've tried it on and 2- I have gotten it tailored. Off-the-rack dresses/formalwear rarely looks amazing on anyone without a little tailoring.

<comment><USER12> I still can't wrap my head around _renting_ dresses - some kind of specialized costume I can understand (like spiderman or predator), but dress? They seem to be doing some revenue so it does look like a workable idea.

What happens to RTR if the big name brands with multiple physical stores start renting dresses too (I don't know if they already do it or not)?

<comment><USER13> Prom dress rental is already fairly common.

Another designer dress rental. [http://frockshopchicago.com/](http://frockshopchicago.com/)

Though doing this online when you can't verify something fit's seems risky. Unless, you have a very common body shape.

<comment><USER14> My wife has rented several dresses online and usually orders 1-2 dresses and they offer free 'backup' sizes. Great for fancy events, themed parties, weddings, etc. where you'll realistically spend several hundred dollars on a nice dress that for some reason you can only wear once.

Heaven forbid your friends see you in the same designer dress twice...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Three of them likened the atmosphere at Rent the Runway to the 2004 film Mean Girls. Each one made that reference separately, without prodding."

"The former employee adds that there were "frequent screaming matches" in the office between top executives."

"You don't feel it's an environment where women support each other," an ex- employee told the the magazine under condition of anonymity. "It felt like high school, it was very clique-y."

With an executive team that's over 75% female, it's a shame to see it getting such bad press from former employees. In terms of gender representation, RTR was a rarity the tech space.

<comment><USER2> I can just see the genuine sexists using this just, forever, to justify their biases about female leadership. It's very saddening.

Doesn't help on that front that it's a fashion oriented company either...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Things you shouldn't say to reporters:

> [Rent the Runway] asked Fortune not to publish this story because it could > hurt the company's ability to raise money.

</comment><comment><USER17> "The startup has lost _seven_ top executives [...] _Five_ former senior employees, all _female_ , spoke with Fortune on condition of _anonymity_ [...]" [emphasis mine]

Oh, Fortune!

</comment><comment><USER18> We've seen a rash of these "bad news bears" articles lately. It's important to note that this stuff has always existed in some startups, and it isn't inherently bad - it's a natural consequence of taking so many risks on inexperienced founders and managers. Some will train a new management elite, some won't quite grow into their expectations and some will devolve into Lord of the Flies.

It's just that as the tech market becomes softer, people stop deciding "my stock will go up" is a good reason to put up with terrible management. The hard part for people in startups is having the courage to walk away when things are still growing without a care.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe I'm missing something but I always thought renting designer clothes has a limited market.

People who attend many special events a year where they need a new outfit for each one typically have the disposable income to outright buy their clothes or have companies borrow them clothes for the publicity.

The average person who goes to a few special events a year? You can buy a nice outfit for just a little more than what they're renting a designer dress for. And you get the keep it forever and wear it some time later.

The only time I've rented a dress was for prom and that was because it didn't make sense to buy a dress I was going to outgrow in a few years.

<comment><USER20> This isn't actually true. A new Vegas dress for a lot of my friends would cost as much as the rest of their whole trip to Vegas. Furthermore, women 18-30 have tons of weddings, bachelorette parties, work functions, holiday events, birthday parties, brunches, and weekend bars to visit, but almost all of those cost less per person than some of these new dresses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> When I saw the phrase 'Rent the Runway' I thought of airplanes and related equipment.

Maybe the investors are similarly confused by this term, which was apparently a company's name even though it sounds like an action statement.</comment>


List of available 2 letter domain names - <AUTHOR> https://catechgory.com/2-letter-domain-names/ <comment><USER2> Thank you! I just found and purchased a perfect domain for an idea I've had for a while.

For some reason, most of my projects start with a domain. I can't write code until I have a git repo. Can't make a repo until I have a directory. And I can't make the directory until I have a name. Which, of course, requires a domain name first...

<comment><USER3> I tend to use a temporary codename for my projects, and design the system with a future name change in mind. I find it helps let me focus on the actual functionality, and stops me from getting stuck on designing a brand name/logo for a product that doesn't even exist.

Another plus is that the design and parameters of my projects often change during development, so not having a predetermined name gives me the flexibility to make those changes without worrying about 'fitting' with the name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like py.gl needs to be a cool Python project/library, or at the very least, picked up by the pyopengl folks.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why just .ag .cx .gg .gl .gs .gy .ht .is .je .lc .ms .pe? Do all of the other two-letter TLDs have all two-letter domains picked?

<comment><USER6> some tlds don't allow two letter domain names. .de used to forbid two letter domains.

(After a court order because of vw.de those restrictions were lifted, and now there even exist one letter domains, though most of them are just squatted, for instance g.de which just redirects to p.de)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a simple list version: [https://gist.github.com/hanula/7959a214fcf55eca1e3e](https://gist.github.com/hanula/7959a214fcf55eca1e3e)

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's a list of available 2 letter .rs domains:

[https://gist.github.com/mike- seiler/c20be8fb641bc280fff0](https://gist.github.com/mike- seiler/c20be8fb641bc280fff0)

I kind of like ym.rs and wk.rs

<comment><USER9> Thanks for this list!

For anyone else interested, .rs is the ccTLD for Serbia and many registrars will require a Serbian Citizen Number.

<comment><USER8> That is no longer true

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This list looks very tempting and who is not dreaming of a 2-letter-domain? But there are two gripes and I think there is no domain on that list which you should get. Why:

\- Most TLDs on this list are way to expensive—everything above €50 for a side-project or some domain parking is too much, it's only worth if it's a killer domain; so what I want to say: if you give me a nonsense two-letter domain for a normal .com price like 7€/year, yes I would take all from the list, but for €50 or even above €100 I want something really nice

\- Even if you find your initials (I found mine), with the prices it's nonsense: you will keep a domain with your initials quite some time and maybe you get locked in because you want to use it for you mail-address and then pay 50-100€ for an odd TLD nobody knows

\- The only ones which have reasonable prices are .gs, .lc and .gy with €39 and .io with around €50 which is for my taste still too much (again: for a nonsense two letter domain); however I did a search in the Unix' words file if there is even under the cheap TLDs any good and meaningful ones which would justify €39a month

Ending on .lc

      talc

Ending on .gs

      dags
      digs
      dogs
      togs

Ending on .gy

      Algy
      bogy
      dogy
      edgy
      eggy
      fogy
      logy
      orgy
      pogy
      sagy

Ending on .io

      agio
      apio
      Clio
      meio
      moio
      naio
      Ohio
      olio
      thio
      Trio
      trio
      Unio
      unio

Surprise: none of the ones above is available

Maybe there are some good words in your local language (I found one) but again the prices are ridiculous and make only sense if you know that the project you will use the domain for will get serious business in some way.

<comment><USER11> I think _anything_.com is much more memorable for 95%+ of the population.

<comment><USER10> I agree.

A short domain with an unknown or hard to type TLD is not really wanted. And the only TLD on that page which is 1) well known, 2) very well to type and 3) treated as a generic TLD from Google (important for SEO) is .io

<comment><USER12> I am curious about #3, do you have an article elaborating on this?

<comment><USER10> [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922?hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The search doesn't seem to work for me. I recieve a message reading "xx.yy couldn't be checked." on everything.

</comment><comment><USER14> A bit off-topic, but I'd like to know what HN thinks about a short domain I've chosen for an upcoming product.

I'm building a platform which lets people create and host simple apps. It's kind of a collaborative app development thing, so you build on what's already there and let others use what you've made. The project is called "Fora", and I bought the domain www.4ah.org. I like the brevity, but does it look like a silly hack?

Thanks in advance.

ADD: Thanks slayed0, ptaipale, urda, rl3 and staticfish. I think I should look for a new domain name. @mtmail thanks for thisisfora.com.

<comment><USER15> www.thisisfora.com might be more straight forward than using a cryptic .org domain.

<comment><USER16> Agree 100%. Yeah my comment was brief and pointless, but really, the above suggested .com is so obviously better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> .gg goes for $75 on Gandi, compared to $150 on iwantmyname

<comment><USER18> The price variation on this domain is absurd. I looked for another host that carried .gg, but it was actually $250 there.

Still, $75 is a lot for another vanity domain I don't need and probably won't use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Company I use to buy domains automatically rejects two letter domain requests for some reason. Like the search will say invalid domain. I guess some junior thought that such domains don't exist. The thing is, I bought a two letter domain from them some time back :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Just bought a domain thanks to this tool. Do you get a kick back for referring us to the registrar?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes. Used [https://iwantmyname.com/affiliate](https://iwantmyname.com/affiliate) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thanks for this. I picked up wy.is for €29. Real impulse buy. Was thinking it could work for a "why is...<enter question here>?" type site. Probably silly but I have no self control when it comes to buying domains I'll never use.

</comment><comment><USER22> Neat. Which ones are cheapest? I figured I'd buy one but they seem quite expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the price list:

.AF $125.00 USD .AG $119.00 USD .CX $49.00 USD .FM $99.00 USD .GD $49.00 USD .GL $89.00 USD .GS $49.00 USD .GY $50.00 USD .HT $129.00 USD .IO $99.00 USD .MS $49.00 USD .MU $99.00 USD .PE $99.00 USD .TC $49.00 USD .TL $79.00 USD .VG $49.00 USD

[https://iwantmyname.com/short-domain-search](https://iwantmyname.com/short- domain-search)

<comment><USER23> I don't know about the others, but you definitely don't need to spend $99 for a(n) .io.

<comment><USER18> Someone above pointed out that .gg is half the cost ($75 vs $150) at gandi.net. .io is $35 at gandi.net and $32.88 at namecheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For anyone else looking for vanity domains : often used [https://domainr.com/](https://domainr.com/) to check for availability. gandi still usually cheaper for the reg.

</comment><comment><USER25> .com four letter domain names

[http://www.domainnamesoup.com/4letterdomainnames.php](http://www.domainnamesoup.com/4letterdomainnames.php)

</comment><comment><USER26> I own a two letter domain (xa.bi), but just for personal use. I also owned ga.am a few years ago. (Super fast typing in an old mobile keyboards)

</comment><comment><USER27> Someone should grab th.gy. Probably the most sensible domain name on the list. Od.is, too, if you have a specific name for "Odis"

</comment><comment><USER28> Which one of you lot just bought nu.gg?

</comment><comment><USER29> The OP url links to catechgory.com which in turn has a link to Digital Ocean. Regarding Digital Ocean here is a FYI for your consideration: [https://practiscore.com/site-back-up/](https://practiscore.com/site-back-up/)

<comment><USER30> Your link contains no real information, just a generic slam on DO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Someone just spared a lot of work for professional domain squatters.

</comment><comment><USER32> Proud that I was able to snatch my initials a few years ago: jz.io

</comment><comment><USER33> [http://ju.gs](http://ju.gs)

</comment><comment><USER34> Who snatched je.gg???

<comment><USER35> Haha. I also attempted this one and failed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Do you know other tools to find short domain names?

</comment><comment><USER37> Aaaand.. they're gone.

<comment><USER38> It's pretty amazing how quick they are going. Every single one showing as available that I've checked so far has gone. It's like people didn't know you could do this before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Where do you get this kind of information? Is it publicly available?

<comment><USER27> You can query domain registrars. It is public knowledge.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What inspires you at the moment? - <AUTHOR> What's in your head that gives you that positive flash of inspiration? <comment><USER2> The subtle idea I feel that people like Brian Cox have made science "cool" again. Increasingly I find myself talking with friends at the dinner table about it. The effect that it will hopefully have on the next generation makes me hopeful

</comment><comment><USER3> The YouTube channel SV Seeker. The man is building a 74 ft steel Chinese Junk sailboat in his front yard and documenting every aspect of it. If a part is too expensive, he will melt brass and cast it himself. It's different from most DIY documentation because you feel included in his project, he's always inviting volunteer help if you want to go to Oklahoma. This is his hobby when he's not working as an Oracle DBA.

</comment><comment><USER4> C Macros. The power of macros are truly amazing.

</comment><comment><USER5> I work for a Non-Profit - one thing that inspires me at the moment is that I am confident we are heading in the 'right' direction and that I am part of that.

Another, related to my work - is that I'm inspired by thinking outside the box to create and deliver quality systems with the challenge of not being backed by bucketloads of cash.

<comment><USER5> How did I get docked points for sharing my opinion here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My children, and possibility of not having to work for the man one day...

</comment><comment><USER7> My child. He really puts things in perspective for me.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with overthinking? - <AUTHOR> I'm very good at analyzing a complex code, and understanding it quickly, debugging it, ...
But I don't know if me being analytical and suffering from overthinking has made me a better software engineer, or dealing with complex codes which requires highly analytical thinking has made me a kind of an overthinking person.
These days I'm suffering from overthinking about my personal issues and I just cannot simply ignore them.
Sometimes I think it's because of my career that I've become an overthinking/analytical person. I sometimes think that i should let go of software engineering, despite being very good at it, and becoming let's say for example an artist. at least give it a shot. I'm really really suffering from overthinking.
How do you guys deal with overthinking? Does meditation/mindfulness help on overthinking? How can I be a highly analytical person when dealing with software but be brain-less to large extent in real life? <comment><USER2> A key thing I realized at one point is that as a human being, thinking isn't free. I have finite energy resources both emotionally and physically, and when I'm thinking, I'm expending those resources. Then, with that in mind, I can turn my analytical mind to the meta-problem of using my mental energy effectively.

When you shift this way - when you think of your energy as a finite resource that has to be budgeted and recharged - you see how wasteful all of that extra thinking really is. Look at every train of thought as a cost/value proposition, and it becomes really easy to decline most of the really pointless ones.

Mindfulness also really helps. What it really is, is teasing apart ideas from the emotional expenditure that normally comes with them. This attacks the problem from a different angle: making thoughts "cheaper", so that your (still finite) energy goes further.

What I've also found, is that relentless overthinking often stems from stress/anxiety (which is of course circularly caused by it, when you're bottoming-out your energy all the time). What this ends up meaning is, if you can free up some of your energy and gain some room to breathe, you'll probably naturally do a lot less overthinking, and have an easier time getting out of your analytical mindset.

</comment><comment><USER3> Based on my own experience, Cognitive behavioral therapy can help with problems like this. You do not need to talk to therapist, CBT is well suited for self help, just try to stick to well known, evidence based books.</comment>


Robert Harper's Intro to Programming Languages (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK2T3qkg3sY&list=PLiHLLF-foEez5Dis-VqoGcg3WepdMh4XT <comment><USER2> This is excellent as I was looking for seminar lectures to go with pfpl book, the oplss full list has Category Theory intro too [https://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/summerschool/summer16/cu...](https://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/summerschool/summer16/curriculum.php)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> text he's referring to can be found at

[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/pfpl/2nded.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/pfpl/2nded.pdf)</comment>


Java, Scala and the Reactive Platform from IBM - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@wildcharting/java-scala-and-the-reactive-platform-from-ibm-9394a372f853 <comment><USER2> There's a nice interview of Jonas Boner, Lightbend CTO and creator of the Akka framework at the link below. If you're interested in reactive microservices, you should check it out.

[https://developer.ibm.com/dwblog/2017/reactive- microservices...](https://developer.ibm.com/dwblog/2017/reactive- microservices/)</comment>


Introducing Yip: A Unified Notification System for the Web - <AUTHOR> http://abcdefu.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/introducing-yip-an-unified-notification-system-for-the-web/

<comment><USER2> I'm going to go ahead and give you my feedback, since everything else here is nonsense crap.

I think it's a great idea. I've definitely wanted something of this sort for a while now. A notification system that alerts me when someone has written on my facebook wall, messaged me on meebo, replied to my HN comment/submission, posted a blog post, etc - a consolidated system. You should start integrating it with more services and give users the option the to pick and choose which ones they want to use your service for. I'm not quite sure how feasible that is from a technical standpoint, but from a consumer's point of view, that flexibility to hook my various services into a consolidated notification system would be awesome.

Good start.

<comment><USER3> _A notification system that alerts me when someone has written on my facebook wall, messaged me on meebo, replied to my HN comment/submission, posted a blog post, etc - a consolidated system._

Did you watch the Google Wave introductory video?

<comment><USER4> Wave requires that the services integrate Wave to begin with. This is a very high barrier. Building a notification service that binds to the various APIS is much more feasible in the near-term, regardless of the fact that the human effort needed makes it problematic to scale to a very large number of services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No.

It integrates with a system (GrowlHelper.app) which runs with all your permissions and hasn't received any security scrutiny and was designed to take input from a few, trusted sources. What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is impressive, but how will this not be abused for spam? Fluid's window.fluid.addDockMenuItem() is alarming, but even just growl support for arbitrary sites will get spammed to death pretty quickly... it's just a new species of popup.

<comment><AUTHOR> For the Fluid API, Yip only supports window.fluid.showGrowlNotification() so you don't have to worry about dock menu items.

This is a very preliminary release. Rate-limiting messages from a single website is the crucial first step in preventing message spam (and this will likely be implemented pretty soon). As for more advanced "spam prevention", check out the discussion I had with one of the commenters on my post.[1]

I think a beter solution can be found for notifications than for the existing problem with window.alert which can not only be spammed incessantly but also completely freeze up your browser.

[1] [http://abcdefu.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/introducing-yip- an-u...](http://abcdefu.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/introducing-yip-an-unified- notification-system-for-the-web/#comment-1529)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're using linux, then Specto does this for anything at all, including websites:

<http://specto.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe I'm just jaded but all these things just seems like tired old rehashes of the same ideas dressed up with new names to try and make them sound cool.

If you send me an email, I will get a notification popup because my email notifier does it. If you send me an instant message notification I will also get a small notification popup because I am running an IM client. If there is a way Yip works better than those then I'm struggling to think of it. I really don't need more ways to receive small notification popups. We have XMPP, we have SMTP. Stop reinventing wheels.

</comment><comment><USER9> It sounds good, but I don't see why he needs to curse in his introduction. I almost stopped reading. It's unprofessional and unnecessary.

<comment><USER10> Are you fucking kidding me? He's the person who has spent months of his life coming up with his free and open source software, then just giving it away. And who on earth says "curse"? Are you like 70 years old?

"Unprofessional"? What the hell are you talking about? It's free software you nong, that's F.L.O.S.S. and until you release your own blockbuster "professional" library, you can put a sock in it.

<comment><USER11> Well said. Let's not live in our cubicles any longer than we have to.

I love the fact that this guy feels there is a huge gaping hole out there, and that he intensely wants to do something about it. For me, that counts for more than fitting in as a company man.

<comment><USER10> Well exactly. Even if the code sucks, someone who spends 6 months of his own time implementing something he thinks will be good, and then just giving it away, deserves respect.

But man, what really gets my goat is people looking past the effort, looking past the code and the project, and just zeroing in on some absolute red herring like "cursing" or what not. Christ, it's his project, he can say whatever he wants. If it's good, use it, if not, don't, it's not rocket science. "Cursing" is about the most irrelevant thing you can possibly judge a project on. Geeze.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey, am I wrong or did merely visiting this site try to install a Browser Helper Object? Not cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you are wrong. It will install something (with your permission) if you click the "Download" link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Shouldn't that read, "A Nunified?"

<comment><USER14> Yes. According to <http://www.polishmywriting.com> (which is mine):

Try: "A Unified" A and an are indefinite articles. An indefinite article is an adjective that says you want any of some noun. For example "I want a pony" means I want any pony.

You select a or an based on the sound of the first letter of the following word.

If the first word starts with a vowel sound you use an. If the first word has a consonant sound use a.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out guys. I've changed the title.

P.S. It's sad that we're discussing this rather than Yip.

<comment><USER14> I wasn't trying to beat you up, I just saw it as an opportunity to talk about myself which apparently is something I like doing. Does this make me a bad person? Yes.

Ok, two minutes have passed and I just returned from your website. I really wanted to talk about you for a minute (since this is your spot). I think what you're doing looks neat. I also like the Zed Shaw style chutzpah in your announcement. However, I'd consider shying away from the expletives and find other words to convey your edgy personality without reflecting negatively on your professionalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Groaaaann....

Please tell me that this sort of thing is not going to become the norm on websites...

This is the reason that I migrated away from facebook.

Text.

It works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Facebook has browser/Growl notifications? Or do you mean their email notifications?

Of course, there will always be ways to turn it off or turn it on only for particular sites. See [http://abcdefu.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/introducing- yip-an-u...](http://abcdefu.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/introducing-yip-an- unified-notification-system-for-the-web/#comment-1529)

<comment><USER15> they have something that pops up at the bottom of your screen to tell you that something has happened on the page.

It only works when you actually AT facebook.

Having that sort of "functionality" follow me around sounds like some sort of hellish nightmare.

<comment><USER16> There's a simple method of avoiding that: don't install this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


ZeroRPC - <AUTHOR> http://zerorpc.dotcloud.com/

<comment><USER2> I had a bunch of questions about why it had "Zero" in the name, and why should I use this instead of just building RPC on ØMQ (zeromq). Then I went to the Github page.

You should mention ØMQ on the front page!

<comment><USER3> Currently using 0MQ to set up our cluster...handles concurrency, the guide has plenty of thorough examples (not to mention it's humorous, and it has examples in every mainstream language (C, C++, python, java, ruby, haskell, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice if the protocol was published. I understand it's just msgpack and zeromq, but exception handling and message ID's escape me until I dig into the source (or finding the wire format on the pycon notes). I could definitely see myself (or someone else) creating a compatible, low-level C implementation of both a server and a client.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll be working on that today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The documentation is pretty sparse, a few questions:

\- How does it handle concurrency? Is each procedure run in a Python thread? Process? Gevent thread?

\- How does it handle faults and recovery?

\- Do you differentiate errors on the RPC layer with that on the procedure layer? For example, what if the RPC call I do does an RPC call that times out?

On a philosophical note, I'm not sure more RPC layers are what the world needs. The transparency a library like this gives you is really a big lie unless you are willing to accept that _any_ call can now be an RPC one. Otherwise it greatly affects the correctness of your program (method M can now fail with some network failure).

That being said, good work!

<comment><USER6> ZeroRPC uses Gevent for concurrency

Faults are handled differently depending on whether they are ZeroRPC-layer errors or application errors. To maintain the integrity of the connection itself, there is a heartbeat system independent of any given request. There is also an optional timeout that can be set for a given call's response. Application-level errors are propagated as "RemoteError" exceptions in the python interface. In order to collect more info about remote errors, there is also support for ZeroRPC[0] in Raven[1], the Sentry[2] client (Disqus' error logging system). In any failure case, both sides of the connection are notified and given an opportunity to clean up after themselves.

As to the philosophical concerns, I do agree on some level: RPC in general (and ZeroRPC in particular) are powerful weapons that need to be treated with care. That being said, there are a number of cases that are greatly simplified by the higher-level abstractions and more-robust error handling ZeroRPC provides.

\</comment></comment><comment>

[0]: <http://raven.readthedocs.org/en/latest/config/zerorpc.html> [1]: <https://github.com/dcramer/raven> [2]: <https://github.com/dcramer/sentry>

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the response!

> That being said, there are a number of cases that are greatly simplified by > the higher-level abstractions and more-robust error handling ZeroRPC > provides.

IMO, c.call(hello, "foo", "bar') would be better than c.hello("foo", "bar"). I think the latter gives too much of an illusion of local call.

<comment><USER7> You can use the alternative syntax: c('hello', 'foo', 'bar')

Usually, "c" will be called "logger_service" or "metrics_service", thus reminding you that you are talking to a remote service, but its obviously just a convention...

Yes I know, people dont like convention, ee had cases when this illusion of a local call leaded us to do bad shit, this is true.

I think its the trade-off of any abstraction. More power under your fingers- tip mean easier use for good... or bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One cool feature the doc doesn't mention: you can expose a python module or class from the command-line:

      $ zerorpc --server --bind tcp://:4242 os

      $ zerorpc tcp://:4242 chdir /tmp
      $ zerorpc tcp://:4242 getcwd
      /tmp

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've submitted the individual implementations on HN in the past few months. Here are the discussions.

Python: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3761954>

Node.js: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4137576>

</comment><comment><USER9> It's such a grief that there is no ruby support yet. It would help a lot with our current project where we have site written in ruby/rails and backend services in python. We currently use Redis a broker between the two. At the same we've been looking at zeromq as a possible and simpler alternative.

Can developers share some info about their current roadmap? What languages will be supported next?

<comment><USER8> Note that a Redis transport is something we're considering. Also check out stack.io: <http://github.com/dotcloud/stack.io>

<comment><USER10> Would a redis transport replace zeromq and what would be the advantages?

<comment><USER8> No, it would be an additional option. ZeroMQ will always be supported - we use it enormously at dotCloud. Another transport we plan on supporting is websocket.

Each transport has its advantages. Zmq is incredibly efficient, very flexible and leaves you in full control of your network topology, but it requires a firewalled trusted network, and doesn't provide ready-to-use broker or naming facilities.

Redis can be used as a very efficient broker and discovery component, and can be more easily included in your web stack, but it limits your flexibility and becomes a potential spof.

The good news is, once zerorpc supports multiple transports you can stary with one and swap it out for another without changing your code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see the project you rely on for serialization (msgpack) has its own take on RPC:

<http://msgpack.wordpress.com/category/messagepack-rpc/> <http://wiki.msgpack.org/display/MSGPACK/Design+of+RPC>

How zeroRPC differs from that in performance, perspective and status? Did you know of msgpack-rpc when started zeroRPC?

<comment><USER8> We started writing zerorpc in 2010. We did test msgpack-rpc at the time, but it was barely a proof-of-concept.

A few key differences: zerorpc supports zeromq (including pub-sub and push- pull topologies), streaming responses, and has a bunch a of great instrumentation built on top of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of my clients has been looking at implementing back-end communications between processes, including transaction handoffs... using RPC calls. We had been looking at using dnode, but I've noticed zeroRPC before as well. Is there anyone out there with experience using both or programming for both at least that has any input?

<comment><USER7> I did not play with dnode long enough to judge it. On the other hand, I can give some details about zerorpc that might help you to determine if it will be a better fit or not.

zerorpc support:

heartbeat: on remote loss, any pending action is canceled (either on server or client side), and your application is notified properly. You can disable the heartbeat. You can also require that a client wait for a server to come to life before checking for a heartbeat.

timeout: you can specify a timeout for how long a request should take (independently of any heartbeat).

streaming: one call, and a stream as a result. Its serves two purposes: \- transferring data sets that that would not fit in memory as well as reducing the transfer latency for big data. \- push/pull stream to get events whenever they come. The client effectively "subscribe".

Note that it's up to you to decide what to do when a client can't consume the stream fast enough, so you can do push/pull style (server blocks for client), pub/sub style (server discards messages), punish style (server shits on the client ;)).

\-- fx

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can't wait to see a spec on the protocol, I'm excited to work on a Ruby implementation.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting that the python/nodejs comparisons are not equal: the python ones are all synchronous, and the node.js are all asynchronous.

It would be nice to show how to do asynchronous calls in python, and synchronous in node.js

<comment><USER8> Both implementations use asynchronous io. The difference is simply the API they expose - each implementation simply uses the best api available. With Node the dominant programming model is callback-based so that's what is used. Python has the advantage of a strong and well-supported coroutine library (gevent) so python developers aren't used to putting up with callback spaggheti.

tl;dr zerorpc is agnostic and each implementation uses the best tool for the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks very convenient. Are their any plans for other language support (in particular on the client side). Ruby and PHP client libraries would be useful.

<comment><USER8> We definitely have plans for it, and multiple transports as well beyond zmq. We're looking for contributors to help :)

<comment><USER15> Cool. When the spec is published, I may have time to contribute a PHP client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any plans for a jvm version ?</comment>


Show HN: Goss – A serverspec-like tool written in go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aelsabbahy/goss#goss-in-45-seconds <comment><AUTHOR> This is my first go program, wanted to learn the language. Any feedback on code and/or tool would be greatly appreciated.

The tool is intended to be a simple take on server validation. The idea is to be able to quickly define a system manifest and validate a system against it.

Differences from serverspec:

* 10-30x faster depending on test suite (tests are run in parallel)

* Can derive server state and generate a manifest from a running server

* goss is meant to be simple, albeit less flexible

* Uses JSON instead of DSL

* Manifests are static - no variables, conditionals, etc. If you need this, you should dynamically generate the JSON manifest.

* Being in Go, it's a self contained binary, no need for ruby

* Supports a much smaller set of OSes/test types

For more complicated workflows, the tool can be chained with other commands, ex:

curl [http://url/to/static/or/dynamic/goss.json](http://url/to/static/or/dynamic/goss.json) | goss validate

<comment><USER2> It's a very nice tool. I was actually thinking to create an Ansible-like in Go, as a side-project, and I thinkg goss's approach can be useful for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The concept of resource/system_resource was borrowed from projects like puppet, chef. ansible, specinfra, etc.

There's probably an opportunity to make this more generic by adding setter methods to the system_resources and extracting them out to their own repo. At that point it can be a shared library leveraged by goss and CM tools.. similar to how specinfra is used by serverspec and itamae.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This blog post explains the difference between goss and serverspec better than I did:

[http://www.unixdaemon.net/tools/testing-with- goss.html](http://www.unixdaemon.net/tools/testing-with-goss.html)</comment>


Three 20-Year-Olds Make Their Own WORKING Obamacare Site – In Just Three Days - <AUTHOR> http://benswann.com/three-20-year-olds-make-their-own-working-obamacare-site-in-just-three-days/ <comment><USER2> how many million people are using their site concurrently?</comment>


AMD Rome – is it for real? Architecture and initial HPC performance - <AUTHOR> https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln319015/amd-rome-is-it-for-real-architecture-and-initial-hpc-performance?lang=en <comment><USER2> Dell has historically been a completely Intel shop, so the fact they are even tepidly considering AMD here is likely because of a large number of customer request for pricing and performance quotes.

<comment><USER3> > Dell has historically been a completely Intel shop

Because Intel paid Dell and others to not use AMD[0][1]. Dell officially ended their Intel exclusivity 13 years ago when they agreed to sell servers with Opterons[2].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices%2C_Inc....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices%2C_Inc._v._Intel_Corp).

[1] [https://business-ethics.com/2010/07/23/0901-dell-inc- agrees-...](https://business-ethics.com/2010/07/23/0901-dell-inc-agrees-to- pay-100-million-to-settle-sec-charges/)

[2] [https://www.cnet.com/news/dell-opts-for-amds- opteron/](https://www.cnet.com/news/dell-opts-for-amds-opteron/)

<comment><USER4> But make no mistake about it, Intel has a fat wallet and will use it against AMD ( as confirmed in some leaked presentation )

Big discounts, kickbacks, "deals" and "programs" are being deployed and more on the way.

<comment><USER3> To put some perspective on this, Intel's Marketing, general and administrative costs in 2018 were 6.7 billion[0] whereas AMD's net revenue was 6.4 billion[1].

[0] [https://s21.q4cdn.com/600692695/files/doc_financials/2018/An...](https://s21.q4cdn.com/600692695/files/doc_financials/2018/Annual/Intel-2018-Annual- Report_INTC.pdf)

[1] [http://ir.amd.com/static- files/438f4934-2883-4c85-9193-d5218...](http://ir.amd.com/static- files/438f4934-2883-4c85-9193-d5218465c096)

<comment><USER5> And as a potential customer it's important to remember that you're the one paying that $6.7 billion.

<comment><USER6> I'm reminded of that any time I see cheap products with slick marketing (mostly fast food) - you have to assume they're cutting corners in their actual product to pay for all that graphic design and video editing.

<comment><USER7> Or their revenue and income are so massive that taking a bit from it for advertising is a drop in the bucket. Intel has revenue of nearly 71 billion/year vs AMD at 6.5 billion.

<comment><USER8> That may be true, but despite that they still cut corners. See Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities and the impact to the performance of Intel CPUs once mitigated. In fact, Intel recommended disabling HyperThreading if you want to be completely protected from the vulnerabilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone attribute the recent surge in AMD performance to recent hiring blitz or some other shift? I know they were struggling and trying out new things with bulldozer modules and trying to compartmentalize as much as possible. It reminds me of when Intel hired all those Israeli engineers who went back to the PIII design and miniaturized it, gaining performance by throwing away years of work on the P4.

Was there any of this at play recently at AMD?

<comment><USER10> Jim Keller [1] is widely credited for a large amount of Zen's success. Interestingly he is now at Intel.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_\(engineer\))

<comment><USER11> There's a good talk by him about how Moore's law isn't dead: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc).

Obviously, people have different ideas about what they mean when they say "Moore's law is/is not dead", but I appreciate Jim's point that even if the current innovation curves we've been riding are slowing down, there are other innovation curves that we can take advantage of, and that the combination these curves mean that there's still plenty of innovation and improvement to be made in processor design.

Of course, the question of whether the x86 architecture will be the foundation for that future improvement remains to be seen. ARM and RISC-V are both eating x86 from below, and the fact that both of the processor architectures allow for greater competition among processor implementations suggests to me that one (or both) may catch up with x86 at some point in the future.

<comment><USER12> Especially the part at [https://youtu.be/oIG9ztQw2Gc?t=1917](https://youtu.be/oIG9ztQw2Gc?t=1917)

That Sunny Cove architecture slide shows a massive increase in the number of execution units.

It may be that Intel's next architecture, combined with memory speed improvements, is competitive with AMD.

But AMD also isn't sitting still. AMD's contributions (from what I can tell) include:

* Core counts have blown past 6 cores / 12 threads

* CPU prices have just been cut by half

* PCIe lanes have blown way past 8

* ECC ram is being offered in consumer PCs

<comment><USER11> I've also heard rumors of things like 4-way SMT. Of course, that's still a ways off (if it ever materializes).

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't put much stock in that particular rumor unless AMD is going all in on servers to the detriment of consumer chips. Or maybe they're developing two cores but they've been working hard to re-use engineering effort until now. They don't have the number of silicon engineers that Intel has and not even Intel is developing separate server and consumer cores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks to amd's recent developments, i basically cancelled buying a new mac pro. Max ram speed 2666 ghz, max per core perf 3.5 ghz? What's this 2015?

<comment><USER15> Given that Apple is tightly coupled with Intel for now, I would assume that they did not expect AMD to deliver great new CPUs and did not create the Mac Pro to compete with them in mind IMO.

<comment><USER14> Indeed, but why would anyone buy a Mac Pro given the massive gap? The OS aside, which for me personal is a massive incentive, I don't see a good reason to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 64c EPYC with 3.4TFlops - wow! That's GPU territory!

<comment><USER17> Actually I'm pretty sure the Rome numbers are for double precision whereas most numbers quoted for GPUs are for single precision or less, making Rome's 3.4tf even more impressive.

<comment><USER16> Half of Titan V/V100 FP64 sounds unbelievable! Can't wait to get my hands on 64c Threadripper with TRX80!

<comment><USER18> How much does threadripper usually cost relative to epyc for same # of cores?

<comment><USER16> 20-30% usually. You get faster cores but no LRDIMM (i.e. you are constrained effectively to 128GB ECC UDIMM, at best 256GB ECC UDIMM if you are lucky to get 32GB ECC UDIMM modules). EPYC has 4TB ECC LRDIMM ceiling, new TR on TRX80 might have the same ceiling as well. I am glad that AMD provides TR as they make way less $ on them than on EPYC, but it's a great marketing tool for them. I am running some TRs for Deep Learning rigs (PCIe slots are most important) on Linux, and they are great, Titan RTXs and Teslas run without any issue, but Zen 2 should give me much better performance on classical ML with Intel MKL/BLAS in PySpark/SciKit-Learn, so I can't wait to get some.

<comment><USER19> Naive question: Are you able to use MKL on an AMD chip without jumping through too many hoops?

<comment><USER16> Yes, just pip install ..., but it's 2x slower than on Intel for Zen/Zen+. Only Zen 2 is close to Intel.

<comment><USER20> Intel makes rather pessimistic assumptions about AMD and uses the model name to pick which code path to use and ignores the CPU flags for floating point, etc.

So if you want to compare performance fairly I'd use gcc (or at least a non- intel compiler) and one of the MKL like libraries (ACML, gotoblas, openblas, etc). AMD has been directly contributing to various projects to optimize for AMD CPUs. They used to have their own compiler (that went from SGI -> cray -> pathscale or similar), but since then I believe have been contributing to GCC, LLVM, and various libraries.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, still, Zen 2 is much faster in OpenBLAS and is faster in MKL than Zen/\+ as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Side note on these CPUs.

We are one step/generation away from running BGP IPv4 routing in PC CPU L3 cache."256MB L3 cache." I believe one needs 512MB L3 cache to fit the current routing tables in cache enabling very fast route lookups on generic PC hardware.

<comment><USER22> Current global BGP IPV4 routes fits in 150 MB of RAM with all BGP attributes (in BIRD).

For forwarding, you do not need most attributes, but you may need better data structures for best-match lookups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting that they are using Redhat 7.6 with a 3.3 kernel. I'm guessing RedHat must backport a bunch of stuff in order to make an older Linux release work well on such newer hardware.

<comment><USER24> > RedHat must backport a bunch of stuff

Yes. Though you have also the option of running a newer kernel (through EPEL but maybe not necessarily)

<comment><USER25> It's actually ELRepo, which is community run, not EPEL, which is semi officially run by Red Hat. But yes, very impressive you can get latest stable and long term kernels on CentOS!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Lol let me guess what's in the link. Some information about rome, some information comparing it to other Amd processors in some use cases and no sign of dell comparing it to intel.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprised that 4NPS gives even a mild benefit to bandwidth (maybe 13% or so), given that the central IO die handles all communication anyway. You'd think that with the architecture here, there'd be no real benefit to splitting the RAM channels.

<comment><USER28> Perhaps, as article sort of suggests, inside the IO chiplet there are four quadrants that each have two memory controllers associated with them, and the cross-quadrant bandwidth isn't sufficient for 75% non-local memory bandwidth.

<comment><USER29> I made a video yesterday with some details on this topic: [https://youtu.be/ghFx_jyP1U8?t=390](https://youtu.be/ghFx_jyP1U8?t=390)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I knew AMD was on the right track back when i built a 4 CPU Opteron (64cores total) server for physics sim and one for number crunching (Comsol and genetic sequencing) and started doing the math on the core/thread count relationship to perf. It took them a few years but man did they deliver. I just wish I had invested in them.

Can't wait to build a beast as my Valve Index VR rig.

<comment><USER29> Those Opterons were terrible which is why AMD was practically giving them away at low prices. They only got on the right track five years later when they ditched that architecture.

<comment><USER30> Very true, they had a fair share of issues, but it showed the different direction they wanted to head which I agreed with. One of the biggest issues was I could only get the quad cpu boards from two manufacturers and they were very hit or miss mb's. (at it was mb's that exacerbated the issues of the opterons)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't understand articles that do benchmarks like infiniband or Ethernet, but set up a system where the nic is limiting the test. It would be useful to do the same thing with enough cards to saturate the memory bandwidth.

<comment><USER29> Basically no one runs that way. And in this article they're not benchmarking two systems against each other but different tuning parameters for one system. And if the tuning helps then the NIC wasn't the limit.

<comment><USER31> No one runs what way? Running with multiple NICs is very common. You can see in the graph that it peaks at line rate very early. Running a multiple NIC test would have resolved that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why do these multimillion dollar companies have such shitty diagrams?

*edit: shitty as in pixelated; not the content

<comment><USER29> You want the shitty diagrams because those come from actual engineers. The beautiful ones come from marketing.

<comment><USER33> Being an engineer doesn't mean you have zero design mindset. Engineers make beautiful diagrams too.

<comment><USER34> beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A diagram that conveys the information that took the minimum amount of time to generate and has the aesthetic that appeals to the engineer is beautiful. Maybe you have different taste?

<comment><USER32> My comment was concerning the quality of the image not the content. The pictures in the article are pixelated.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>