Android SDK is now proprietary - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2013/01/03/android-sdk-is-now-proprietary-replicant-to-the-rescue/ <comment><USER2> Hold on a minute.

While the Android SDK terms have changed over the years (most notably with the recent "anti-fragmentation" clause), that's not what the post is talking about. Instead, the post is identifying the Android SDK as non-free because you have to agree to Google's Terms and Conditions in order to use it at all. That's absolutely correct, however...

As someone who downloaded the original SDK in 2007, I can tell you that this was true from the beginning. Sadly the Wayback Machine is having trouble retrieving their first crawl of the terms (February 2009), but here's a crawl from January 2010 that shows that the offending clause has been there for at least 3 years: [http://web.archive.org/web/20100111025451/http://developer.a...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100111025451/http://developer.android.com/intl/ja/sdk/terms.html)

A more accurate title would be: Google's Android SDK has always been proprietary, but I only just noticed.

Edit: Based on the date at the bottom of the wayback page, the linked version of the agreement dates back to April 2009.

<comment><USER3> The point may be that agreeing to their terms and conditions previously did not result in one losing any rights.

Not sure, though.

<comment><USER2> One of the problematic sections others in this thread have mentioned dates back to at least April 2009:

"3.3 Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK. Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not load any part of the SDK onto a mobile handset or any other hardware device except a personal computer, combine any part of the SDK with other software, or distribute any software or device incorporating a part of the SDK."

Here are some more rights you were giving up back then:

"4.3 You agree that if you use the SDK to develop applications for general public users, you will protect the privacy and legal rights of those users. If the users provide you with user names, passwords, or other login information or personal information, your must make the users aware that the information will be available to your application, and you must provide legally adequate privacy notice and protection for those users. If your application stores personal or sensitive information provided by users, it must do so securely. If the user provides your application with Google Account information, your application may only use that information to access the user's Google Account when, and for the limited purposes for which, the user has given you permission to do so.

4.4 You agree that you will not engage in any activity with the SDK, including the development or distribution of an application, that interferes with, disrupts, damages, or accesses in an unauthorized manner the servers, networks, or other properties or services of any third party including, but not limited to, Google or any mobile communications carrier."

At first glance, I don't think 4.3 or 4.4 is unreasonable (3.3 is more complicated), but those terms are clearly non-free. Free means free to use for any purpose (including trying to invade people's privacy or taking down cell networks) because different people will reasonably disagree about what purposes are and aren't legitimate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At first I thought this is hyperbole, but there's an anti-forking clause in the license agreement:

> "3.4 You agree that you will not take any actions that may cause or result > in the fragmentation of Android, including but not limited to distributing, > participating in the creation of, or promoting in any way a software > development kit derived from the SDK."

IANAL, but this seems to be designed to prevent projects like the Kindle Fire from building their own ecosystem on Google's code. Good for Google I guess, but no longer in the spirit of open source.

<comment><USER5> We have been through this many times before here. This is meant to prevent forks that break compatibility. Like that chinese company that made their "own" phone OS. That was just a fork of Android, but not perfectly compatible with the Android SDK. It causes fragmentation in the sense that it forces developers to rewrite apps for it because there are differences in the SDK.

Amazon, Cyanogen, OUYA etc are all fine.

<comment><USER6> The whole point of free software, though, is that you can fork it and customize and use it as you like. If someone wants to fork Android to run on stoves, and they have to break compatibility to do that, if it was free software it would support and allow that. Instead you aren't even allowed to use the SDK or let developers use the SDK if you do so. You can't really claim Android is open or free anymore now, just that it uses a few free pieces, which are being taken away wherever possible.

<comment><USER7> >The whole point of free software, though, is that you can fork it and customize and use it as you like.

No one is stopping you from writing your own SDK. Reverse engineer the API and off you go. Fork your own android. Make your own play store. Its not a violation of "freedom" because something is inconvenient.

Its like when people complain about Linus ignoring their patches. Sorry, but its still free software, its just done under terms you don't appreciate. Fork it if its such a huge problem for you.

<comment><USER8> Your argument doesn't make sense to me. You're replying to a post that says the SDK is not free. Writing your own SDK if you don't like it is agreeing that the SDK is not free.

The next bit about Linus makes no sense at all. We are not talking about Google ignoring your fork of Android or your fork of the SDK, we're talking about being prohibited from forking the SDK or using it to fork Android.

The SDK is not free. It is not inconvenient to fork it, it is prohibited. Android may be free by your definition, but the SDK is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Android SDK != Android. Not saying whether this move by Google is good or bad, just pointing out an important difference. You can still fork the Android source code to your heart's content, you just have to write your own toolchain for building and developing with it.

<comment><USER4> Maybe you can, but the way the license is written, you essentially agree not to ever do that:

> "3.4 You agree that you will not take any actions that may cause or result > in the fragmentation of Android, including but not limited to distributing, > participating in the creation of, or promoting in any way a software > development kit derived from the SDK."

Now, IANAL and maybe that doesn't mean what I think it means. To me it sounds like you're signing a non-compete agreement just by downloading the SDK.

<comment><USER10> What if you fork it, and do NOT call the project anything related to Android?

That way, you won't be fragmenting Android - you'll be creating something new.

Then, should Android even stagnate, someone could take the source and create a new mobile platform, similar to, but not a different version of, Android.

What is and what is not a fragmentation of Android seems to be the key here.

<comment><USER11> > What if you fork it, and do NOT call the project anything related to > Android?

It says you can't distribute any modified versions of the SDK. What you choose to call such modifications isn't addressed and isn't relevant, you just can't do it.

<comment><USER10> SDK != Source. And it's the source I'm concerned about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another interesting step in this direction is that Google stopped listing third party SDK add-ons in the Android SDK manager. They have to be added manually as a URL now, which means far, far fewer developers will ever use a third party SDK add-on.

It's sad, but I think it really hurt Google that they pushed tablets so hard and so long and pretty much failed at that market where amazon kicked ass. So business reasons seem to have forced them to kill Android as open and free. Reminds me a lot of this recent post about all the platforms closing up to try to squeeze more money out of mobile as web revenues dry up: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/29/unnatural-acts-and-the- rise...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/29/unnatural-acts-and-the-rise-of- mobile/)

Google's bread and butter has always been web ads, and it is losing that with the mobile revolution. Now amazon came along and customized Android, and took a large share of the mobile money that Google was expecting. I do really hate the new Google Play. It is constantly showing books and movies and music in my face when I want apps and app search results directly. You can tell they are being pressured to deliver revenue at the cost of user experiences and pushed out a poor man's clone of amazon business model.

<comment><USER12> Not true. I recently installed Android SDK on a new computer and the SDK manager had bunch of third-party repositories already added. Heck, the hardware acceleration of the emulator under Windows requires Intel's repository for the HAXM installation and x86 images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very amusing. Didn't Google just fight, and win, a court case with Oracle about forking Java into the Android SDK?

So it's not OK for Oracle to prevent Java fragmentation, but it is OK for Google to prevent Android fragmentation.

Apparently "don't be evil" is more nuanced then I thought.

<comment><USER14> Uh I think you got the words "SDK" and "API" mixed up.

Also preventing fragmentation is a goal, not an action. Oracle did legally abusive things, google hasn't.

<comment><USER13> Both Oracle and Google are trying to protect their IP from fragmentation. Google changing the SDK license is just as much of a action as Oracle suing Google over their copying of the API. We're just earlier in the process with Android.

<comment><USER14> They are definitely both 100% 'actions'. But google is just being less-sharey with stuff that isn't even part of android. While oracle was trying to claim code that wasn't even theirs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if that's why we're seeing stories like this? [http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2013/01/03/samsung- con...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2013/01/03/samsung-confirms- plan-to-begin-inching-away-from-android/)

Samsung has amassed quite a history, in a very short amount of time, of heavily customizing Android for their devices. That might at least partially explain why they seem willing to gamble on their own in-house OS rather than continue with Android.

<comment><USER16> Could you blame them ? The writing started to appear on the wall when Google started selling the Nexus 7 and 10 at cost making 90% remaining Android tablets (including most of Samsung's tablet line) dead in the water with the Nexus 4 being another nail in that coffin.

<comment><USER17> Umm, the Nexus 10 is made by Samsung...

<comment><USER18> For now. What if Google chooses a different OEM for the Nexus 10 II? The Nexus business model basically means one winner (chosen by Google) and N losers.

<comment><USER19> N losers, like Samsung lost with the Galaxy S3? (Or the S2, or motorola lost with the droid, or ...)

<comment><USER18> The full Nexus business model (where the Nexus is sold at cost so regular Android phones look overpriced) just went into effect. If the Galaxy S4 is $500 and the Nexus 5 is $350 but they have similar specs, Samsung could be in serious trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the terms and conditions:

3.3 You may not use the SDK for any purpose not expressly permitted by this License Agreement. Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not: (a) copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK; or (b) load any part of the SDK onto a mobile handset or any other hardware device except a personal computer, combine any part of the SDK with other software, or distribute any software or device incorporating a part of the SDK.

3.4 You agree that you will not take any actions that may cause or result in the fragmentation of Android, including but not limited to distributing, participating in the creation of, or promoting in any way a software development kit derived from the SDK.

3.5 Use, reproduction and distribution of components of the SDK licensed under an open source software license are governed solely by the terms of that open source software license and not this License Agreement.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sorry to sound like a troll. But I am always confused by this movement on free software. Make no mistake: I totally respect choices of certain individuals whom contribute to free software like Linux, they have made the software a better place, just like those philanthropists out there whom make the world a little bit less cruel. However for those who decide not to, I don't see the reason to demand for anything, even in this case Google which may have changed its decisions. All effort will need money, and I really don't see there is free lunch in this world. Am I missing anything?

</comment><comment><USER22> " 3.3 You may not use the SDK for any purpose not expressly permitted by this License Agreement. Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not: (a) copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK;"

The part about not being allowed to reverse engineer seems to be the part of the license, which is most against free software principles. So IANAL, but actually understanding what a software does is, IMHO, the core of FOSS.

</comment><comment><USER23> As far as I can tell, Android has always been proprietary except for the parts they were required to release under the GPL (like the kernel). Their GUI libraries were closed source (at least when I was tinkering with Android), and clauses like this have been in their terms for a long time. Sure, they look more open than Apple, but Android is a long way from being as open as the desktop Linux distros and BSD systems.

<comment><USER24> Not correct. AOSP source code has always included full source for android.view. _, android.widget._ , and so forth. Which are, by the way, Apache-licensed, not GPL. If you'd like to look for yourself, it's here:

<https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base>

in the "core/java" subdirectory.

In recent releases (4.x, a/k/a ICS and later), some of the low-level GPU drivers are included as binary blobs, but the GUI libraries built on top of them remain, at the very least, source-available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> At least I'm having problems accessing the site. Page from Google Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LPBhLpm...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LPBhLpmlOa8J:blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2013/01/03/android- sdk-is-now-proprietary-replicant-to-the-rescue/&hl=en&tbo=d&gl=fi&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER26> so if you build something based on Android and want to expose some functionality to that system but customize it, you can't do it on top of the Android SDK?

</comment><comment><USER27> >ActivityManager.isUserAMonkey() >>Log.WTF()

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh boy, I can't wait to see how this would be purposefully re-written and bastardized by TechCrunch (or by MG Seigler himself) saying how iOS is much better in the end, because both of some random reason.

</comment><comment><USER29> All the more reason to back Ubuntu on phones.

</comment><comment><USER30> What does this mean for Cordova/PhoneGap?

</comment><comment><USER31> Google's blogpost about vendor compatability: [http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-benefits- imp...](http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-benefits-importance- of-compatibility.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> What bullshit. Does requiring users to agree to GPL or LGPL license make a software non-free?

<comment><USER33> Users of GPL/LGPL don't have to agree to anything. Only _distributors_ of GPL/LGPL software do.

<comment><USER34> Yes, that's true.

Most people misunderstand the license, being my favourite:

[http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePos...](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic)

EDIT: just in case... "You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program.", point 9 of the GPLv3: <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

<comment><USER32> You guys are right, I was wrong. As others have pointed out, Android SDK has never been free software and Android SDK != Android</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN –  What do you do to stay fit while working?  - <AUTHOR> While working in the tech field (misting sitting)  how does everyone stay fit or active, or maybe how do people get to a state of fitness? <comment><USER2> Tldr; eating salads

In the past I did crossfit. I enjoyed the short time commitment: 30 minutes, 3 times a weak & it allowed me to become very fit. However, I hurt my hip & have never wanted to go back to that level of extreme exercise for fear of further severe injury. I'm not a paid athlete & don't really need to be that fit.

In the past I've tried 2 types of dieting that made sense to me and each worked very well: Zone & Atkins. The catch is that Atkins is hard to sustain with little variety and a lot of temptation; while the Zone is enjoyable & not hard to stick with but you must be active much more so than when on Atkins.

For the last 2 years I've been very fit, with no more exercise than random walks and general stretching every few days. I got married and my wife, and now I, eat a salad before almost every meal. It's had an astounding affect on me. I still eat the yummy, high calorie high carb goodies, but much less than before. Btw, my wife makes amazing salads, nothing too exotic but nothing too boring.

From a Texan who eats his fair share of BBQ, salads can be very enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER3> This might not work for you but it works for me:

I do intermittent fasting (16 hour fast and an 8 hour feeding window) every day. I workout in the last hour of my fasting and then eat my biggest meal of the day.

My typical schedule goes like this: -My last meal (usually a protein shake or cottage cheese) right before 9:00pm. -I wake up and have tea -At 11:45 I head to the gym and workout for an hour or more -At 1:00 I eat my biggest meal -For dinner I just try to have a regular sized portion of food

I try to keep my protein and carb intake around the same amount of grams and keep the fats somewhat low. On the weekends I fast, but I don't workout and I try to lower my carbs (this usually doesn't happen though).

What I really like about working out at lunch is that I get away from the office and it makes me feel focused and fresh for the rest of the day.

</comment><comment><USER4> Keto and stronglifts 5x5

I can eat what I want (as long as it's not carbs). So all the bacon and eggs every morning.

And then it's 20 minutes of weights 3 times a week.

Seriously so easy, and pretty much hardly any effort but great results (went down from a 34 waist to 28). Lost over 14kg and in perfect BMI.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe. It's 45 minutes of barbell training 3 times a week and lots of dairy products.

I've been at it for 2 years and squat 85kg and bench 65kg (3 sets, 5 repetitions). I obviously haven't become a competitive powerlifter but not bad for a nerd who never gets off the couch otherwise. Never got hurt either.

I've been told with more muscle you can keep your eating habits and not get fat; it seems to be true. I cut potato chips and sugary soft drinks but kept burgers, pizza and beer. Works fine.

</comment><comment><USER6> Gym three times a week, which includes half an hour of C25K jogging (two weeks from the full half hour!) and strength training (alternating upper body, core, legs). On the off days, my wife and I play disc golf or go for a walk. This is with a ~9 hour workday plus a one hour commute both ways, while my wife's schedule is a ~13 hour work day plus a one hour commute both ways. It gets tiring but we're seeing results.

Look into a YMCA membership if you have one near you, it's a bit more expensive than a plain gym membership but there's a lot of value in it. For example, you can usually use any other YMCA for free outside of a 50 mile radius of your home club, and our club has what is essentially a free outdoor waterpark available to members during the summer.

We also did a Whole 30 a few weeks ago which caused me to make some permanent changes to my diet (mostly cutting out carbs and avoiding sweetener / sugar whenever I can). I lost something like 15 lbs on it.

</comment><comment><USER7> 'State of fitness' makes me think of cardio, treadmills, etc which for most non-fat people is non-optimal. Kenyan marathoners are fit but a strong wind will blow them over.

The optimal view is 'state of strength' since strength is the most important physical attribute, and certainly gains even more importance the older we get. Strength allows the body to operate optimally. People who partake in resistance training have less instances of death across any reason; accidents, illness, disease, even violence (you have a better chance of surviving a gunshot, for example, if you are strong which makes sense), etc.

I'm 54, and I do 2-3 workouts a week on the compound lifts like squats (always do your squats), overhead presses, deadlifts. I also do prowler and farmer walks for HIT. I also play basketball and tennis once a week. I have never felt better.

</comment><comment><USER8> I hit the gym two or three times a week to lift heavy (e.g., squat, deadlift, overhead press) and go for a walk most days. The walks are hardly a breakneck pace—I'm carrying on a conversation, stopping to check out wildflowers, and observing what's going on around me. Both are fun and contribute to overall fitness, but in different ways.

I need to think a lot at my job will get up and wander around regularly.

Food wise, paleo-style eating seems to help with energy levels and staying lean. So does getting eight hours of sleep every night, which doesn't happen frequently enough.

I'm not a fan of steady-state cardio. It seems to hurt muscle mass and contribute to belly fat and joint pain.

I'm 41, 5'8", 175#, 32" waist, 40" chest, and recently squatted 315# for a single and have deadlifted 430#.

<comment><USER9> > contribute to belly fat.

Do you have any references on cardiovascular activity directly causing a layer of fat growing on your gut?

<comment><USER8> "Relationship between stress hormones and testosterone with prolonged endurance exercise." [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15618989](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15618989)

More importantly: looking in the mirror. Even though I'm older, I'm leaner now doing zero steady-state cardio than I ever was running/biking dozens of miles a week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Everyday, I do 100 pushups - 50 when I wake up & 50 before I go to bed. It takes 2 - 3 minutes from your day so you have no excuse. If I have extra free time I'll go swim at the local pool.

Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) does a really awesome podcast on which they discussed fitness/well-being one week[1]. The main takeaway is in order to become and more importantly stay healthy you have to change your mindset to always be thinking about what you eat.

1 - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A1rpGGqYew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A1rpGGqYew)

<comment><USER11> It should be noted that some people get severe tendentious from high reps of pushups/pullups. But even low reps have benefits over none at all.

<comment><USER12> Very good clarification. I am indeed someone who got serious rotator cuff tendinosis from doing 100's of pushups a couple times / week. Took about 18months to fully heal, and my shoulders still aren't quite as good as they originally were.

Some people can definitely get away with doing tons of pushups, but I am not one of them!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Gym two to four times per week after work, and squats and pushups every morning. I can't do 50 pushups, but I can do more today than I did yesterday, and not as many as I'll be able to do tomorrow.

As for pushups at home:

\- Do as many as I can.

\- Rest my arms by doing ten squats.

\- Do as many knee pushups as I can. This is my "bonus round," that gives me more improvement than I can get with just strict pushups. Most days I can do one, sometimes two more strict pushups than the day before.

</comment><comment><USER14> Join some type of team or club sport, either one with people you already know or get to know. Going to the gym by yourself will get monotonous unless you're really motivated. Getting in shape is easy when it feels more like a social obligation than a physical burden.

I joined a small soccer team that was always struggling to get enough people to play each week. I suck at soccer, but I knew my presence was way better than playing 1 or 2 players down.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you live in NYC, my trick is to go to a gym that in on the way home from work, but not the same stop as my apartment. Then I just force myself to always exit the train at that stop even if I really don't want to go to the gym. Once I've stepped off and the train leaves it's either go to the gym or wait 15 minutes for a new train.

YMMV but I've never not gone through with a workout once I've stepped off that train.

<comment><USER15> great idea! I'm going to try this

<comment><USER11> It really does work. I'm actually in the best shape of my life right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Force yourself to go to the gym on a regular schedule and work out for an hour a day M-F. Before work, after work, whenever. Just schedule it and do it.

For me, the key has been to realize that I'm not "wasting" or "losing" the time I spend at the gym. I feel like shit when I haven't done any physical activity, so I'm investing a few hours a week so that I can get more done in the normal work day.

</comment><comment><USER17> My usual fitness routine: Weightlifting for strength, 3 times a week. Hatha yoga at least twice a week. Bouldering whenever I feel like it (unlike the other stuff I don't try to make bouldering a routine so if I feel like not doing it, I won't). This seems to work good for me.

Also, not eating shit food, mostly by avoiding the centre of grocery stores and shopping at local stores and farmers markets as much as possible.

<comment><USER18> >Hatha yoga at least twice a week.

Does that work for you? I would have thought one has to do yoga pretty much daily to maintain the flexibility to be able to do the asanas. Depends partly on which asanas you do, of course. Saying it because yoga exercises some muscles which are not often exercised by other types of workouts.

<comment><USER17> Despite the lack of daily practice I've found it has helped with my hip flexibility, especially when doing squats. All of my yoga sessions are at least 90 minutes each, some with intensive instructors, so that may be something to consider.

<comment><USER18> Cool, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've got a simple flat weight bench, a 300lbs barbell set and combo squat stand/safety arm (for bench presses, etc) thing at home. Everything you need for typical "big move" weight training. Total cost: about $500 which is a bit less than an average year of gym membership.

Highly recommended if you have the space for it.

Also I do a lot of hiking as part of my photography hobby.

<comment><USER4> Living in London it is the space issue. That's why we pay for gym membership. Would so much rather have just have squat and flat weight bench.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I just started one small thing that's improved both my fitness and my work life -- reading a technical book when I work out on the elliptical.

Right now I'm working through Lisp In Small Pieces. It's not easy to read and work out, but I like the challenge and it works well enough that I'll keep doing it. Plus it keeps me from getting so bored at the gym.

</comment><comment><USER21> On top of hiking, walking the dogs, bicycling and other after-hours hobbies, I keep a home made stepping box next to my desk. When I need to really think through something, instead of sitting or pacing, I do steps. Seems to help get the creativity working or serves as a good wake up if I'm getting that mid- afternoon drowsiness.

</comment><comment><USER22> I work from home and have an elliptical runner in my office.

When I worked in an office, I biked to work every day and worked out in the gym directly after work.

Walk and talk meetings are great, so are taking the stairs. I still bike to meetings:) Just get a nice laptop backpack, while they're 'cool' looking, messenger bags killed my back on the bike.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think it is better to get the exercise done before working.

Wake up earlier and go to the gym.

If you don't like the gym do some pushups and crunchs and go running or do exercise bike for 30 minutes. Maybe it is hard the first weeks but if you get a routine it will become easier and you will feel energetic during the day if you do exercise when you wake up.

</comment><comment><USER24> On Monday and Wednesday I go morning surfing. For that, I try not to schedule any meeting those mornings. If I can't hit the surf, I'll try to sub for a swim at my local gym. On Thursday I'll do weights at the gym, and the weekends a hike or some tennis.

Also I cook every day so that helps control what I eat.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yoga three mornings a week.

Lifting during my lunch break, working out complementary muscle groups on alternating days.

Running or swimming on alternate evenings, unless I can find an opportunity to play Ultimate or slackline.

I also cycle as my main means of transport, or budget the time to walk (if it's under three miles).

</comment><comment><USER26> I go to the gym every day and run for 10 minutes. It's not a long time but because it's so short it allows me to do it consistently. I've been gradually increasing the speed to the point that I'm running 8-minute miles, the fastest I ever have.

</comment><comment><USER27> I work out 2 hours, 5 days a week via mix of core, cardio, toning, muscle. While I'm working out, I use the time to listen to music, podcasts, re-listen to some movies/TV shows. The key is to change your mental habits and build it up as a routine.

</comment><comment><USER28> Diet is the most important. Highly recommended a paleo type diet. No processed foods or sugar. Forget counting calories. Just healthy whole foods. Meat, fruits, veggies, nuts, etc. No breads or sugar. Down 25 pounds. Works great for me!

</comment><comment><USER12> Commute to work 3x week on a bicycle. Long rides on weekends. Lifting 1x / week.

Working on my diet as well, even though I'm already fairly lean. Trying to cut out all processed crap and just stick to real foods - paleo-ish diet.

</comment><comment><USER29> Pushups and marine style crunches before going to work in the morning, a ~5 mile (one way) bike ride to/from the office, and don't sit around all day after work. I write software.

That and Wing Chun Kung Fu classes 3x per week

</comment><comment><USER30> I use an exercise ball as a chair. Really tighten up the core. "Bonus" point is that the exercise ball is so uncomfortable I'm forced to stand up and take a walk every hour or so.

</comment><comment><USER31> I go to the gym every day. I've found that I have to drive to the gym straight from work as, if I go home first, I somehow never make it to the gym.

</comment><comment><USER32> Walk my dog twice a day, and also either swim or go for bike ride most days and also do pushups+situps. I work from home, which helps.

</comment><comment><USER33> Powerlifting and rowing, and I make sure to use a workout tracker to measure my progress. And sleep, definitely sleep.

</comment><comment><USER34> Golf whenever it's not raining or snowing.

</comment><comment><USER35> I run 3-4 times per week, lift weights during those days also, and go walking 7 days per week. Even though I sometimes slack off during these routines, it's enough to keep me fit.</comment>


Smart electricity meters can be dangerously insecure, warns expert - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/29/smart-electricity-meters-dangerously-insecure-hackers <comment><USER2> It's also an excellent surveillance tool, from what I understand (and much of my understanding started with prior Hacker News discussions). Not only can you identify if people are home, but you can identify what they are doing if it involves electricity and make good guesses at more (how many people are present, have they gone to sleep, etc.). It's appears to be literally a window into the privacy of everyone's homes, as shocking as that sounds:

 _it is possible to identify which appliances a consumer is using and at what times of the day, because each type of appliance generates a unique electric load "signature." NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] wrote in 2010 that "research shows that analyzing 15-minute interval aggregate household energy consumption data can by itself pinpoint the use of most major home appliances."_

The best starting place I've found is the Congressional Research Service (an excellent resource on policy issues) report, "Smart Meter Data : Privacy and Cybersecurity", which cites many more resources and is the source of the above quote.

[https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42338.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42338.pdf)</comment>


Notion – Docs, Tasks, Wikis. Seamlessly in One - <AUTHOR> https://www.notion.so <comment><USER2> Looks nice, but would be much nicer if I can create an account instead of using Google to sign up.</comment>


I am starting a blog to write everyday - <AUTHOR>

Sagar <comment><USER2> _sigh_ this isn't targetted at OP directly, so I apologize if this seems unneccesarily harsh.

But are we really going to start applauding articles like, "I am going to write a blog post tomorrow". It's akin to congratulating someone on the stringent diet they are about to commence next week.

Write everyday for a week and then post your link. This doesn't merit attention (imo).

</comment><comment><USER3> Care to share the link, in the post? Not just in a comment which no one can see.

</comment><comment><USER4> Make sure to remove the placeholders. Good luck.:)

</comment><comment><USER5> All the best with that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> my blog is sagarshah.co</comment>


Outrageously Large Neural Networks: The Sparsely-Gated Mixture-Of-Experts Layer - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06538 <comment><USER2> Designing a neural network is a thousand times harder than I imagined.

After AlphaGo, I tasked myself with creating a neural network that would use Q-Learning to play Reversi (aka Othello).

At that point, I had already utilized Q-Learning (the tabular version, not using a neural network) for some very simple and mostly proof-of-concept projects, so I understood how it worked. I read up only perceptrons, relu, the benefits/disadvantages of having more/fewer layers, etc.

Then I actually started on the project, thinking "I know about Q-Learning, I know about neural networks, now I just need to use Keras and I'll have a network ready to learn in about twenty lines of python."

Boy was that naive. Regardless of how much you understand the CONCEPTS of neural networks, actually putting together an effective one that matches the problem state perfectly is so, so difficult (especially if there are no examples to build off of). How many layers? Dropout or no, and if so, how much? Do you flatten this layer, do you use relu, do you need a SECOND neural network to approximate one part of the q-function and another to approximate a different part?

I spent MONTHS messing with the hyperparameters, and got nowhere because I'm doing this on a desktop pc without CUDA, so it takes days to train a new configuration only to find out it hardly "learned" anything.

At one point after days of training, my agent actually had a 90% LOSE rate against an opponent that played totally randomly. To this day I am baffled by this.

I went into the project thinking "I have this working with a table, the q-learning part is in place -- just need to drop in a neural net in place of the table and I'm good to go!" It's been almost a year and I still haven't figured this thing out.

<comment><USER3> Doing anything large on a machine without CUDA is a fool's errand these days. Get a GTX1080 or if you're not budget constrained, get a Pascal-based Titan. I work in this field, and I would not be able to do my job without GPUs -- as simple as that. You get 5-10x speedup right off the bat, sometimes more. A very good return on $600, if you ask me.

<comment><USER4> And why Pascal based Titan? Is it the best investment in terms of performance per $ spent?

Also, how cost effective is it to use cloud GPUs for real world machine learning?

<comment><USER5> Cloud GPUs are cost effective if you need to either fine-tune a pretrained network (eg, use pretrained ResNet/VGG/AlexNet for custom classes, ie[1]) or for inference, or if you don't want the upfront costs.

A 4GB GTX1050 is ~$180. A p2 instance on Amazon is $0.9/hour. The cost effectiveness depends on if you have a PC already.

[1] [https://blog.keras.io/building-powerful-image- classification...](https://blog.keras.io/building-powerful-image- classification-models-using-very-little-data.html)

<comment><USER6> And the cost of your electricity, don't forget.

<comment><USER7> Current mean cost to US domestic consumers of $0.12 kW/h, says Google.

TPD Specs: GTX 1050 75W GTX 1080 180W Titan 250W

Triple these numbers for the overall machine's PSU spec.

So even the Titan costs $0.03 per hour to run, or maybe $0.10 if the rest of the machine is flat-out.

edit: $0.19 kWh for San Francisco residents. Domestic rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "It is our goal to train a trillion-parameter model on a trillion-word corpus. We have not scaled our systems this far as of the writing of this paper, but it should be possible by adding more hardware."

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm excited for the applications of deep learning in radiology. I'll be starting radiology residency in a couple years (intern year first).

Can someone explain whether this solves the problem of identifying multiple pathologies within the same image? For example, if a patient has pneumonia and a pleural effusion, could this method activate two subnetworks and come up with a consensus diagnosis based on both those networks? Or does only one pathway get activated at a time?

<comment><USER10> Sure you can. The term you are looking for is "multi task learning".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Impressive! With this work they managed to increase quality for most language pairs while halving runtime computational cost and decreasing training time. Since it's a gerneric component, I can see it getting used on all sorts of problems with lots of data.

Especially interesting given that most Kaggle competitions are won with mixture of experts models.

</comment><comment><USER12> More parameters is very exciting! I wonder if anyone here has read about what the relationship between the number of parameters on the network and the size of the dataset used on the network? Wouldn't such a large number of parameters risk serious overfitting by giving the model the capacity to fit to exact samples?

<comment><USER13> I am one of the authors of "Outrageously Large Neural Networks". Yes - overfitting is a problem. We employed dropout to combat overfitting. Even with dropout, we found that adding additional capacity provides diminishing returns once the capacity of the network exceeds the number of examples in the training data (see sec. 5.2). To demonstrate significant gains from really large networks, we had to use huge datasets, up to 100 billion words.

<comment><USER14> Impressive work, mate!

Does mixture-of-experts works well the other way around, as a way to minimize power and hardware in common sized problems ?

And would it work in low resolution networks, like BinaryConnect ?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Devs, how many iPhones do you own to test iOS compatibility issues? - <AUTHOR> Hello guys, every month, our small team lost hundreds of hours testing our app on various iOS and various devices. Sometimes our app will break on iPhone 7's iOS 10 but works fine on iPhone 7+'s iOS 11. A recent Safari bug made our app unusable on Yosemite and El Capitan, but works fine on Sierra - and we have to spend a ton of energy stressfully updating, pulling, rejecting, explaining to angry users, and fixing reviews.
We start to feel that the iOS/macOS eco-system and device landscape is so fragmented right now for both native and hybrids apps we're developing. Take another example, we've seen iPhone 8+'s Safari and native table view behaves very different from iPhone 7+ of the same iOS version due to timeout and performance different in the phones. It's even more frustrating consider these devices have different VRAMs.
It's mind boggling that now these days some same swift code would work differently in ios10 and ios11, and iOS development feels a lot more similar to or worse than Android development now.
We're thinking to just buy a few Macs and iPhones to make our lives easier. But is this also what everyone else ended up doing? <comment><USER2> My previous job would buy two iPhones on each annual release cycle: 1 big screen, 1 small. One of these devices was kept current with software updates, while the other was frozen at the major iOS version it shipped with. This generally provided good coverage, though by the end there were ~8 supported devices in rotation to test on at any given time which can feel excessive.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At my prior startups we used a combination of some internal phones with AWS Device Farm - [https://aws.amazon.com/device- farm/](https://aws.amazon.com/device-farm/) to cover all the variants for both iOS and Android. Device Farm and its predecessor definitely increased the product quality.</comment>


Exhuming the Glacier Girl (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.damninteresting.com/exhuming-the-glacier-girl/ <comment><USER2> > Today, of the 10,000 or so P-38s Lightnings which were made in the 1940s, > only about six working P-38s remain.

I'm often amazed at the scale of war-time manufacturing production. According to wikipedia, there were over 15,000 P-51s and over 12,000 B-17 made.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. The U.S. Army Air Force had over 80,000 planes in its inventory at one time during WW2, and by the end of the war, had built nearly 300,000 planes. See [0] for details.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_aircraft_produ...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_aircraft_production_during_World_War_II)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The story of the landing and survival was far more interesting than the recovery. I want more details about _that_!

</comment><comment><USER5> This coverage leaves out that the expedition and recovery were financed by one of the successful sons of Middlesboro, Kentucky, who put the refurbished plane in a museum airstrip in that town as a trophy. Disclaimer: family hails from near there and Middlesboro needs all the promotion it can muster.

</comment><comment><USER6> Geez, I was wondering when the plot was going to thicken with the discovery of the dead body of a girl while searching for plane wrecks. I wish a TL;DR at the top would state that the "Girl" is what they named the plane...

<comment><USER7> Yes, excluding the title, the first reference is the _sixteenth_ paragraph.

I suppose I might've guessed from the leading photo, had I not already seen comments here, but I only clicked into the comments assuming it was some centuries/millenia old body/remnants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of the story if the Kee Bird.

[https://youtu.be/CE9j-W_8USw](https://youtu.be/CE9j-W_8USw)

It'll leave you with a knot in your stomach at the end.

<comment><USER9> Heh, Vernon(team machinist) used to do specialty welding work for my friends & I back in the day. Was inspiring & heartbreaking to hear him tell his 1st hand account. An amazing & talented man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there many other planes with this design of airframe? I recall seeing a plane similar to this in the air in the mid 70s (in the UK).

It stuck with me as it was unlike any plane I'd seen before, or since, until recently a drone passed overhead which had a similar construction.

<comment><USER11> It's not an uncommon design for modern VTOL UAVs that can transition into single motor forward flight on wings. The twin boom design supports a quadcopter lift system. This is a Chinese airframe manufacturer, people add their own motors and electronics.

[https://www.muginuav.com/](https://www.muginuav.com/)

<comment><USER12> Thanks, yes, a couple of those look about right in terms of design and scale. Pretty sure it was military rather than private though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is the purpose of this dangerous and risky salvage mission? What benefit is yielded as a result of the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent recovering and restoring this antique?

</comment><comment><USER14> I suspect with today's manufacturing technology and NC mills, one could be built from scratch at a doable price.

<comment><USER15> I'm surprised it's not more common in the warbird world. It seems like on the deep restorations that's basically what they're doing. Looking a build logs it looks like huge percentages of the aircraft are built from scratch.

<comment><USER14> I know. Even more problematic, complete designs don't exist for the aircraft. Often the tooling and jigs defined the design, and those are lost.

The restorers who do make parts from scratch would do the rest of the community a service by preparing proper drawings for them.

I know a group that decided to make an Me262 from scratch. They borrowed one from a museum in order to make the copy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The P-38 still looks amazingly like a modern aircraft.

<comment><USER17> It's well worth reading the wiki. The development issues due to the high speeds the plane could achieve and the eventual solution are interesting to read about. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-38_Lightning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-38_Lightning)</comment></comment>


Corroborating the Android Platform Dashboards - <AUTHOR> http://www.doubleencore.com/2013/09/android-user-data/

<comment><AUTHOR> I really appreciate sharing this kind of data, there is a massive amount of mis-information about the current Android device landscape. Google's #s are actually quite underselling the average active users' device API level. DoubleEncore's numbers show roughly 15% Gingerbread, my own experience is around 5-10% Gingerbread. Anything before Gingerbread is not relevant. I am working with enterprise clients, so that might be a best case scenario. I have never seen a client with company bought Gingerbread phones, so those Gingerbread users are from "Bring Your Own Device" companies.

If you are making a general purpose app, you might have to deal with a higher % of Gingerbread users today. My gut feeling is that we are 6-12 months away from being able to make ICS the minimum for most apps.

The difference between 15% and 1-2% still means that I have to support Gingerbread today, but I spend a lot more time finding ways to take advantage of Jelly Bean than figuring out how to backport to Gingerbread. Skate where the puck is going.</comment>


Chinese Hackers Break into Chrome, Safari, Edge; Reveal Browsers Vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> https://www.ibtimes.com/chinese-hackers-break-chrome-safari-edge-reveal-browsers-vulnerabilities-2869812 <comment><USER2> The rise of China in tech is commendable. From being a low cost alternative to innovation leader (arguably, premium Chinese phones bring features out these days that the Apples of the world follow a few quarters/years later) in many verticals, is indeed a testament to the hard work and policy support for tech.

I'm the first the criticise China where due, but in mere abilities to get the job done in tech, hats off</comment>


Setting Up ProFTPd + TLS On Debian Lenny - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtoforge.com/setting-up-proftpd-tls-on-debian-lenny <comment><USER2> Ironic :)

After messing with ProFTPD today to try and get it work with mysql I gave up and installed Pure-FTPD. An absolute dream to get working.</comment>


Jaiku is becoming JaikuEngine - <AUTHOR> http://jaikido.blogspot.com/2009/03/jaiku-is-becoming-jaikuengine.html <comment><USER2> I can't wait to read the source code of this. I think it will be a great way to learn development and design on App Engine.

<comment><USER3> You can examine several AppEngine code bases on github.com. There's something to be learned from all of them.

Shameless plug: not that it's at the same scale, but I put together the game of Go as an AppEngine app. You can play it at <http://go.davepeck.org/> or read the AGPLv3 sources at <http://github.com/davepeck/appengine-go/>

(I wrote "Go" to share with the audience of a talk I gave about scaling with AppEngine; I do a lot of AppEngine and AWS work for my clients but alas can't share that work.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone who is familiar with both care to compare this with laconica?

<comment><USER5> I'm not very familiar with either code base but the fundamental differences are that Jaiku is built to scale whilst Laconica is built for federation between different servers.</comment></comment>


Strange GitHub repo with incomprehensible contents - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/payingattention/dArEsAyGoThereSciPsy <comment><USER2> Reminds me of [https://github.com/urbit/arvo/blob/master/arvo/dill.hoon](https://github.com/urbit/arvo/blob/master/arvo/dill.hoon)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's also important to note this repo hasn't been modified in over 4 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> This linked website looks more cryptic, actually: [http://tiltrue.info/home/](http://tiltrue.info/home/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The singularity? :p</comment>


Reading Hard-to-Read Gravestones (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://organizeyourfamilyhistory.com/reading-hard-read-gravestones/ <comment><USER2> While straight digital manipulation may not work as well (colors/contrast based) - those with newer phones can use the 3d depth sensors to do this without any extra tools May have to turn your phone around so the face / depth sensors face the stone, but I just tried this with Scandy (free tool) and it totally works. Pretty cool!

Scandy: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scandy- pro-3d-scanner/id138802...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scandy- pro-3d-scanner/id1388028223)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want to do this optically just shoot a flashlight across the surface of the stone, hills and valleys of even less than 1mm in height or depth will create shadows revealing most of the otherwise hidden text. But hey, I bet we can get a startup to do this with a only a few million in round A seed money.

</comment><comment><USER4> Love it, very clever and neat trick that I'll hopefully remember should I encounter this problem.

</comment><comment><USER5> Something people could try with a cellphone, some image processing sw and a cloudy day is to video the gravestone while spinning a light around it to capture the relief

</comment><comment><USER6> This being HN I'm surprised someone hasn't tried to train a neural net to read hard to read gravestones and made an app.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are really clever applications for aluminium foil that I never thought about. Here it is used to prevent sticking of hot plastic to existing parts of a model:

[https://youtu.be/6hW_FbsEG4A?t=446](https://youtu.be/6hW_FbsEG4A?t=446)

</comment><comment><USER8> For those new to geneology, [https://www.findagrave.com/](https://www.findagrave.com/) is a great resource for finding grave locations and viewing photos of tombstones.

</comment><comment><USER9> A clever approach. I thought a bit of digital manipulation would solve the problem but after a few tries, it turned out not so simple, though.

<comment><USER10> You can't read these things head-on because the information is in the depth. Looking at them obliquely helps a lot. If you want a fancy (and non-intrusive) technological approach then 3D laser scanning is probably the way to go.

<comment><USER11> Could the iPhone depth sensor be used for this purpose? Could an app be made?

<comment><USER12> The current top comment on this post claims that you can in fact do that.

Poster only links to an app for depth scanning, but it would be really cool if somebody with an iPhone near a grave yard would jump out and share some scans with us :)

(Obviously I'm too lazy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Forgive my ignorance, but would an ipad pro with lidar have sufficient technology to produce a readable facsimile?

</comment><comment><USER14> I think another approach would be a piece of paper and a crayon or such. I'd be reluctant to carry around a bunch of aluminum foil for this purpose, but paper and crayons feels a bit less wasteful to me. I imagine the environmental cost would be less (though I could be wrong about that)

<comment><USER15> From the article:

>The downside is that, unlike gravestone rubbings–which I learned are harmful to the gravestone–it's not easy to keep and store foil rubbings.

<comment><USER16> Of course, you can take a picture of the foil rubbing.

<comment><USER17> If one thinks it might be nice to leave a transcription for the next people who wonder about the stone, try something like:

[https://www.nationalband.com/2702-write-on- tag/](https://www.nationalband.com/2702-write-on-tag/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Quantum Theory Experiment Said to Prove 'Spooky' Interactions - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/science/quantum-theory-experiment-said-to-prove-spooky-interactions.html <comment><USER2> Can someone convince me that there aren't hidden variables? Because my puny monkey brain hears "a variable can be one of two states, but in the beginning, it's in a super-position of them. When measured, the state is determined." and it's a relative easy thing to get. But....

"There are two particles entangled together such that when one becomes up or down, the other becomes the opposite, and measuring either will determine both, instantaneously, regardless of distance" is a much harder thing to swallow.

Occam's Razor says that there are hidden variables that are pre-selecting state, and we just don't know about them until we measure. ESPECIALLY when one of the requirements for the system is that we can only measure, not influence the outcome of the measurement.

So please, someone who knows more than I do - why can't there be hidden variables being set at entanglement that pre-determine the measurement outcome?

<comment><USER3> So the real problem isn't that "when one is up, then the other will magically be up too." That could be accomplished with local hidden variables (e.g. shared seeds on a PRNG).

The real problem is that when you measure A in the "up" direction, and then B in the "10 degrees east of up" direction, then B seems to know that you measured A in the "up" direction.

That is to say: B's probability distribution as a function of the direction its being measured is dependent on the direction that A is measured. There's no way to construct an "A-independent" probability distribution of B's results for arbitrary directions. The probabilities won't sum to 1 and still match experimental results.

It's unfortunate that "A up" therefore "B up" is a degenerate case of this reality where classicality actually works, because it leads to confusion.

Also, follow the links others have provided for a more formal explanation :)

<comment><USER4> But doesn't this then violate "no information faster than speed of light"? I.e. You measure A at angle _a_ , I measure B (entangled with A) at angle _b_ , and the resulting distribution gives me some information about your angle _a_. If I repeat this with enough particles, I can be reasonably certain about what _a_ is.

<comment><USER3> The proof eludes me at the moment, but people have thought of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted this b/c I was hoping someone would dive into these quotes:

 _The Delft researchers were able to entangle two electrons separated by a distance of 1.3 kilometers, slightly less than a mile, and then share information between them._

 _..._

 _Researchers like Dr. Hanson envision a quantum communications network formed from a chain of entangled particles girdling the entire globe. Such a network would make it possible to securely share encryption keys, and know of eavesdropping attempts with absolute certainty._

This implies that entanglement allows faster-than-light communication (transmitting arbitrary information across the entangled link). I thought that was a no-no, and that entanglement still didn't allow FTL communication despite FTL-like properties.

Can somebody help out here?

<comment><USER3> It's the nyt, so they are at best imprecise and at worst wrong. Entanglement can be thought of as a resource that allows you to do unexpected things (win the CHSH game), but sharing information isn't one of them.

A better discussion can be had at [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?cat=33](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?cat=33)

<comment><USER5> The linked article from Scott Aaronson is quite accessible and very worth reading. My favorite quote is:

       Perhaps the best way to explain local realism is that it's the thing
       you believe in, if you believe all the physicists babbling about
       "quantum entanglement" just missed something completely obvious.

What I still struggle to understand is the realism part. The NYT article seems to imply that, when all loopholes are closed, we will have the final prove to live in a non-local world. Realism isn't mentioned.

       The finding is another blow to one of the bedrock principles of
       standard physics known as "locality," which states that an object is
       directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings.

I always thought that local realism meant one of the following:

      - no realism
      - no locality
      - neither realism nor locality

The Wikipedia article _Principle of locality_ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality#Local_re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality#Local_realism)) says

       Any theory, such as quantum mechanics, that violates Bell's
       inequalities must abandon either locality or realism;

Can the result of Bell's experiment be explained when we just abandon realism but not locality?

<comment> semi-extrinsic Answer to your last question: yes. However, the results of these (and other) experiments are not consistent with abandoning realism.

There is also a third option that almost no-one mentions, and that's superdeterminism; i.e. that free will doesn't exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also the experimenters' page on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10428397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10428397).

</comment><comment><USER7> > particles do not take on formal properties until they are measured or > observed in some way

This sounds like lazy evaluation.

<comment><USER8> Procedural generation with lazy evaluation.

<comment><USER7> Ah yes, procedural generation ala Wolfram's "new kind of science".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish they used a better title. Entanglement is not a kind of interaction, and I wonder what a "quantum theory experiment" is.

<comment><USER10> It isn't just the title, the whole article is poorly written. It gives the impression that faster-than-light communication is possible.

From the first sentence:

"[Scientists] conducted an experiment they say proves one of the most fundamental claims of quantum theory — that objects separated by great distance _can instantaneously affect_ each other's behavior."

Emphasis mine. This is totally wrong.

The second sentence:

"The finding is another blow to one of the bedrock principles of standard physics known as "locality," which states that an object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings."

Again, this is wrong. Quantum physics is entirely consistent with locality. It contradicts "local hidden variable models." Despite the similar name, this is different from locality. (Local hidden variable models are local, classical models.)

<comment><USER11> To add to that, Bell's theorem says that _either_ locality _or_ hidden variables may be true, but not both. We could construct a formulation of quantum mechanics that includes hidden variables, but must account for the state of the universe at arbitrarily distant locations.</comment></comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg to speak at Startup School 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://startupschool.org/speakers.html

<comment><USER2> I understand why they want Zuck to speak (it helps raise the profile of the event) but I'm not particularly excited. His talks are notoriously stodgy and unfocused, especially his Startup School appearances.

I'm much more excited about Max Levchin and Drew Houston. From past talks I've seen them do, I feel their message will be better focused and higher yield for the startup audience. The best talks last year were from entrepreneurs who had tasted a mix of failure and success - Dalton Caldwell and Brian Chesky.

<comment><USER3> He's not giving a talk. He's being interviewed, like last year.

The only time he gave a talk was the first time, in 2007. That was anything but stodgy.

<comment><USER2> I can only comment on my admittedly limited experiences, none of which have been stellar.

I'll keep my mind open. I think Jessica is a fantastic interviewer and has the potential to make this year's talk with Zuck the best one yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Startup School in 2010 was the reason I quit my job and went straight to Airbnb without taking a single day off in between.

This event is a life-changer.

<comment><USER5> Startup School last year convinced me to leave my job at a big tech company and follow my passion. I am now a full-time freelance iOS developer and I couldn't be happier. This event is a life changer, congrats to all accepted this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> His interview was underwhelming but a couple years he spent a lot of time (at least half an hour) in the hallway afterward talking to a handful of attendees (~8), which is pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER7> Damn, the line up is amazing as usual. So thankful they're recorded and posted online. I've watched many of the previous talks repeatedly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Excited to go, but I do have to say the amount of valley stars that come every year is a testament to the quality of the event. And link for previous year's video clips (this years stream too?): <http://www.justin.tv/startupschool>

</comment><comment><USER9> Solid list of speakers, thanks for putting this together YC team! Is there a Google Doc of everyone that is planning on attending?

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm excited to go to this.

</comment><comment><USER11> One might say his startup palmares are a little stale by now. I'm sure he talks to a lot of startuppy people though, so maybe he's just a good one-stop shop for trends and certain facets of the conventional wisdom.

<comment><USER12> Considering that it seems like a large preponderance of startups are trying to be "the next Facebook", I think the guy who started the current Facebook (I'm assuming the Winklevei were unavailable) would be super relevant.

<comment><USER11> Isn't Zuck's expertise in being "the actual Facebook," though? Is the conventional wisdom that business (in general) is fractal?

<comment><USER12> I would think that Zuck's experience is in founding a tiny startup, and growing it into the company that everyone points to as the poster-child target for your liquidity event.

I don't disagree that for people who are now in the early stages of launching what they hope to be the next big thing, there isn't a 1:1 application of advice from the creator of the current big thing. I'm just puzzled that your initial comment seemed so puzzled about what value having Zuckerberg speak could bring.

The guy started a fantastically successful startup. He's bought a bunch of other startups. That would seem to make him a good candidate for talking at a startup-themed event (even if his current company isn't really a startup anymore).

<comment><USER13> > I would think that Zuck's experience is in founding a tiny startup, and > growing it into the company that everyone points to as the poster-child > target for your liquidity event.

Not really, by the time Facebook became a proper "company", it was already huge and growing faster. This is where we must draw a distinction between a "website" and a "startup". When Facebook became a startup, it was already in a position (vis a vis growth) that 99.9% of startups never achieve.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Review our startup: AlphaList - get expert feedback on your startup idea - <AUTHOR> http://alphalist.co <comment><USER2> Oh the irony!

However I think the idea has great potential, I certainly love getting feedback from experts.

There's a problem though. What if I'm both a founder and an expert user? I think a lot of founders are like that and it certainly seems to be the case that one of the reasons HN works is that the same people who are entrepreneurial know the best what type of feedback people need and also make great alpha users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of people have signed up as founders with ideas and added their e-mail as alpha users - do both sides, we encourage it!

On a meta product design level, we wanted to keep the submission barrier a tad higher than that for alpha users. Alpha users are pretty busy and we don't really need to have them do submission revisions, so no need for passwords or logins there. We've already seen founders submit their ideas, then come in and revise (over and over again).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the blog post explaining the impetus for it: <http://alphalist.posterous.com/introducing-alphalist>

This was hacked together as part of University of Michigan's Startup Weekend this past weekend (1/21 - 1/23). I'm really proud of the high quality of alpha users we already have on the platform. If you don't have a startup idea you want to get feedback on, HNers would be ideal alpha users as well!

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty excited for this idea. Feels like the type of thing that could really explode.

<comment><USER4> Really? Why do you say that? What do you mean explode? IMO it's a really bad first shot at an idea that people have done over and over again. Not trying to be negative but it really just does not look very good to me and based on the quality of this product I would not trust any of the feedback that I received.

Fact is that if you want to build something then build it for fun or talk to your customers (aka: customer development) not to other startup founders and random "alpha users" that my and may not be a part of your target audience.

See: [http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development- manifest...](http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development-manifesto/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It was really confusing to understand what I was looking at until I read the blog post. I'd recommend screenshots and/or a "how-it-works" diagram explaining what you do. I'm hesitant to "sign up" without knowing what I'm getting into. I like the concept though.

</comment><comment><USER6> This sounds like feedback roulette only with a manual vetting process instead of feedback points. I enjoy doing good reviews for feedback roulette but I get lots of feedback points for it. What do Alpha users get? Paid?

<comment><AUTHOR> For now, the thanks of grateful founders. (/West Wing'd!)

Over time, yeah, we've considered ways to help them get paid for feedback. Note how one-on-one conversations are opt-in for alpha users, for instance. If they don't want to be bothered, but they want to give feedback, AlphaList is great for that.

Again, we're trying to optimize for the lowest barriers possible for those who are willing and able to help others out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Don't build something nobody wants."

vs.

"Build something people want"

</comment><comment><USER8> So this will get me testers who are into testing alpha websites?

Pretty cool. But it doesn't really strike me as being useful for domain specific websites.

\- Appointment Reminder is probably far more interested in Joe the Plumber/Hair Stylist/Auto Mechanic then me.

\- AirBnB could care less if I don't like it - I don't travel enough.

(Comment: If you could get me domain specific users I _would_ pay you.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've signed up with MileageBrain.com - hoping for some valuable feedback :)

</comment><comment><USER10> * What problem is too long (maximum is 500 characters) * Solution is too long (maximum is 500 characters)

Thank you for telling me after crafting the text, rather than before. Why 500 characters? Why a limit at all?

<comment><USER11> Sorry about that. The reason there's a limit is to keep the emails relatively short so people will actually read them.

<comment><USER12> Yeah this probably should be indicated

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Timing is everything"

I was just looking for such a service. I registered. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER14> I really don't understand your website. REally.. I joined and added a description but i see nothing on the home. How do i get feedback. REally you need to improve you site..

</comment><comment><USER15> The login/signup requirement to actually see the site is a problem. You should show the alpha user version of the site to users who are not logged in.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's all actually done through e-mail, a la Angelist's early days, so there isn't really an "alpha user version of the site". Based on the comments here, it looks like we need to do a better job of explaining what exactly is going on since the site and the blog post don't. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why do you need a Twitter account to be an alpha user? I almost signed up as an alpha user, but this pushed me away.

<comment><AUTHOR> It gives us a quick and dirty way to vet someone as an alpha user based on their profile, followers, following, and whatnot. LinkedIn, Facebook, Quora and other sites aren't as readily parsable (I know that's not a word, but just go with it) at a glance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems like anyone can sign up as alpha user. How is the vetting process going to be?

<comment><USER11> It's quick and dirty and manual right now. But if you've heard of us at this stage you'd probably make a pretty good alpha user.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: IRC channel for HN ? - <AUTHOR>

Is there an IRC channel for HN ? Was this debated before ? <comment><USER2> #startups on Freenode.

<comment><USER3> Maybe this should be added to the FAQ?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you overcome perfectionism? - <AUTHOR>

HN, when working on a project, how do you make yourself stop and release when you have the base product done? I've been trying really hard, but can't seem to get over the stumbling block of launching without adding more features -- thoughts? <comment><USER2> Realise that adding features does not make anything "perfect". Perfect software is robust, stable, tested, used, solid, etc. The only way of attaining this is to have it be widely used.

Therefore, in order to make perfect software, you have to crank out releases and get it into the hands of users who will find any imperfections for you (including both bugs and 'softer' imperfections like an inefficient UI).

</comment><comment><USER3> You have too much hacker and not enough capitalist in your DNA.

No one is going to use or pay for a product they can't access.

Without users/payers, you're going to remain pretty broke for the foreseeable future.

You can toil away to perfectionism (and likely bankruptcy) or can release now and start to build value (and capture user feedback before it's too late to make changes).

</comment><comment><USER4> i just stop worrying about it after a while</comment>


Google employees confess all the things they hated most about working at Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2016-12 <comment><USER2> I'm seeing this trend a lot more.

Editorial boards are cutting staff and research funds for journalism, and writers get paid per column inch.

They go to any sort of controversial/clickbaity thread in Quora/Reddit, copy and paste a bunch of content, and then throw some pictures in the article, and call it a day.

No analysis, nothing.

Talk about mailing it in.

<comment><USER3> Well in this case you can joke about it coming full circle since Google is the ad and ranking company, that rewards such antics.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Srcco – language-aware literate documentation generator - <AUTHOR> http://sourcegraph.github.io/srcco/srcco.go.html

<comment><AUTHOR> srcco uses srclib to link references to their definitions and to remove the comments from the code view. I only added comment offsets to srclib-go, so srcco only works with Go for now, but I want to add them to the other srclib toolchains too. I'll be hacking on that this week, and if you're interested in contributing to srcco or a srclib toolchain, ping me! email@example.com</comment>


Day 1 for a $1 app on the Mac App Store - <AUTHOR> http://lacquer.fi/pauli/blog/2011/01/day-1-for-a-1-app-on-the-mac-app-store/

<comment><AUTHOR> Yesterday I promised [1] to tell HN about the sales of my app on the Mac App Store. This blog post exclusively opens the business secret kimono to reveal the riches I shall make from selling $1 image generator apps. (Spoiler: not likely.)

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2076077>

</comment><comment> matthew-wegner I posted our sales stats here (alongside stats from other Unity-made games): <http://blur.st/sales-day-1>

      Units sold for us, all of these are $2.99:

      452 Blush
      128 Off-Road Velociraptor Safari
      101 Crane Wars
      13 Time Donkey

      694 total units, $1,452 revenue after Apple's take.

<comment><USER2> Man, I don't know what any of those games do, but "Off-Road Velociraptor Safari" and "Time Donkey" sound amazing.

I don't own a Mac, however. Off to your page to read about your company!

<comment><USER3> I think you can play it free in your browser. Works surprisingly well, actually.

<http://blurst.com/raptor-safari/>

My favorite Blurst game, though (not in the app store yet) is Minotaur China Shop. Doesn't get better than this.

<http://blurst.com/minotaur-china-shop/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a nice boost to a typical $4k / month Finnish programmer salary.

<comment><AUTHOR> You think I'm making that much from my one-man video software operation? Sorry to disappoint you :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I bought it after I you mentioned it on Reddit. 8-)

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems like too small a sample size to really conclude anything.

<comment><USER7> He doesn't seem to draw any solid conclusions but instead has started a blog to keep the community updated with actual numbers. The title is "Day 1" even - unlike some articles which are trying to draw out grand conclusions on the App Store.

It is interesting to see the type of numbers the developers are seeing. They tend to be promising and I look forward to analysis as more and more users update and Lion is released.

<comment><USER6> And, are we informed now? Can we make more intelligent decisions based on these data? It doesn't have to be a peer reviewed article but ~100 sales for one dev in one day doesn't tell me anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have access to anyone else's data. Apple only publishes relative sales rankings, as in: "sixth highest-selling app in category XYZ". (Apple has also told us that there were a million downloads during the first day, but that's even less useful than my number...)

That's why I felt that there is some general interest in publishing these numbers, as it gives other developers an idea of what level of sales is actually taking place on the Mac App Store. At least I find it interesting to know that ~100 units / day is enough for a solid position on the Top Paid list in the Graphics & Design category.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Comparing Github and Bitbucket - <AUTHOR> http://thingsilearned.com/2010/01/07/github-and-bitbucket/

<comment><USER2> So, there's not really much difference, except that you get 1 free private repo on BB, and GH likes to drink more.</comment>


Your kids will love a cookie-decorating party - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plover.com/misc/cookies.html <comment><USER2> Warning: Not actually about cookies.</comment>


Linux 4.4 released - <AUTHOR> http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1601.1/01592.html <comment><USER2> The headline is misleading. It is indeed KMS support (Kernel Mode Setting), which enables the kernel (and not the graphic driver) to control the display modes. This is better:

1\. For boot (no flicker when the graphic driver takes over);

2\. For errors (for instance to display kernel errors) and to stay in graphic mode even when X hangs;

3\. It enables to run X as an underprivileged user: So it's cleaner and can add security.

<comment><USER3> It is a new driver, not just KMS support added to the existing one: [https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=c8b75bca92cbf064b9fa125fc74a85994452e935)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This appears to be about adding support for Kernel Mode Setting on bcm2835/bcm2836 chips in 4.4

This is probably the relevant commit:

[http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~airlied/linux/commit/?id=1f4371...](http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~airlied/linux/commit/?id=1f43710a8e3d0de5dcbf14d3d8a0b5f31126396f)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sorry but I don't follow this very closely. As a rpi user, what does this mean for me?

<comment><USER6> Good question, as a fellow rpi user I didn't have the feeling we were lacking a Graphics Driver... Apparently now it is in the Kernel, instead of outside of it. It may just make maintenance of rpi distro's easier as the kernel includes the Graphics Driver there is no need to get it separately.

<comment><USER7> Pretty sure you were lacking a fully open graphics driver.

The issue with a closed graphics driver is that while it generally works now, it may not work in a few years when the manufacturer decides to stop supporting it.

See for example

Five Years Later, Intel Poulsbo Is Still A Linux Mess

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMyODA](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMyODA)

<comment><USER8> > Pretty sure you were lacking a fully open graphics driver.

Keyword being open.

I suspect most Rpi users just download some IMG-file from the internet, load it up on a SD-card, and run that as is.

Very few will have any involvement with the Rpi hardware at source-code level, or will try to build or tweak their own images.

<comment><USER9> Does this mean that one of the binary blobs will be gone from the Rpi image now?

<comment><USER10> EDIT: Ah I see you're saying "is there one fewer blob" not "is there still a blob at all". I don't think that's the case here yet, but perhaps someone more familiar with the driver can comment on whether that will be the case at some point.

As far as I understand it, the Raspberry Pi still needs a binary blob due to the way it boots[0]. The blob is actually loaded into the VPU first before the main processor is even running.

> The most important thing you should know is that the RaspberryPi is a > strange beast where the ARM CPU is the not main CPU - it's only a co- > processor to the VideoCore GPU. When the RaspberryPi starts, a GPU blob is > read from the SD card to the L2 cache and executed. This code then brings up > all the important peripherals (RAM, clocks etc) and starts the ARM CPU. Then > the 2nd stage bootloader or some operating system itself can be run on ARM > CPU.

[0] [https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/7122/level-o...](https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/7122/level- of-hackability-of-raspberry-pi/7126#7126)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "This pull request introduces the vc4 driver, for kernel modesetting on the Raspberry Pi (bcm2835/bcm2836 architectures). It currently supports a display plane and cursor on the HDMI output. The driver doesn't do 3D, power management, or overlay planes yet."

[https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=1f43710a8e3d0de5dcbf14d3d8a0b5f31126396f)

</comment><comment><USER11> Full list of changes [http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.4](http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.4)

<comment><USER12> You have to click further to the drivers page [0] and there you find the commit [1].

[0] [http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.4-DriversArch](http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.4-DriversArch) [1] [https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=c8b75bca92cbf064b9fa125fc74a85994452e935)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wish there was some way of knowing that the title of the link was before someone decided to change it. Too many times on HN I come across an article and the comments are all talking about something the headline said before it was changed, and I have no idea what the context of the conversation was about.

</comment><comment><USER14> On a side note, eBPF seems to be the scripting language the kernel would never have, especially with support for compiling programs from C. I wonder why accessing pointers directly is allowed given the verification goals. Why not handles ?</comment>


Ask HN: How to get an iOS 4.3 iThing for testing? Anybody have one for sale? - <AUTHOR>

For a long time now, I've worked hard to keep my apps running on every iDevice ever made, from the original iPhones on up.  But as part of the push towards iOS7, Xcode no longer builds armv6 code and so it's iOS 4.3+ only.
BUT - I don't actually have a 4.3 device for testing, only an old 3G iPhone with 4.1.  I have devices that _would_ run iOS 4.3, but alas Apple doesn't let you install older OSes by stopping the signing of them.
In advance, no, I don't have a jailbroken iThing with saved blobs.
It is surprisingly hard to try to find an iOS 4.3 device on Craigslist, and yet 7% of my userbase is on iOS 4.3?!
Thanks for any ideas! <comment><AUTHOR> Following up on this for anyone in a similar situation - I ended up finding a guy who repairs old iPhones and thus has lots of parts, and he was able to put a logic board with 4.3.5 in it into a shell and make a working test device for me. Wasn't cheap, but now I'm 4.3 capable!

</comment><comment><USER2> I'll have one I don't need anymore when the new iPhone comes out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice. I'll send you an email after the event to see what you've got. Thanks</comment></comment>


Magic Mushroom Drug Lifts Depression in Human Trial - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/magic-mushroom-drug-lifts-depression-in-human-trial/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11713000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11713000), which arguably adds a bit more information (though the articles are comparable) and was posted earlier.</comment>


GameON Earphones - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gameon-sure-fit-earphones-w-studio-thumping-bass-audio--2/#/ <comment><USER2> Reference quality audio in $170 earphones. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER3> These are killer. Nice work.</comment>


Speedy Deployments and the Meaning of Devops - <AUTHOR> http://hundredminutehack.blogspot.com/2016/06/speedy-deployments-and-meaning-of-devops.html <comment><USER2> I am not dreaming. I live it.</comment>


Show HN: Source Code Comment Remover for Java - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ertugrulcetin/CommentRemover <comment><USER2> I don't have a lot of software experience -- what's the motivation for creating a tool that removes comments? Aren't (well-written) comments normally good to have in the source code?</comment>


Ask HN: How does one start tech company without CS/programminig background? - <AUTHOR> As a non-tech guy i never understood how people with seemingly no background in CS/programming start tech companies? Where do they go? Who do they talk to? How?<p>If I out of blue have an idea, I would not know where to go to make it happen. <comment><USER2> Find people that do know what they're doing and partner with/ pay them a lot.</comment>


Efficiency is the enemy of effectiveness - <AUTHOR> http://gojko.net/2009/11/04/efficiency-is-the-enemy-of-effectiveness/

<comment><USER2> I appreciate OP's point, but this piece is just a little too "fluffy" to justify its title. I think we can minimize fluffiness by defining terms. My mentor (a brilliant industrial engineer) used these definitions:

efficiency = output / input

effectiveness = goal / input

I don't see them as enemies, but as different metrics.

OP is right about one thing, though: if we focus on efficiency, we can easily lose sight of the goal (which is nowhere in its definition).

[EDIT: Thanks, eru, for pointing out my errors. Fixed. "Ok! Ok! I must have, I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit. I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail."]

<comment><USER3> Your definition is backwards. (Or I misunderstand what you mean by input and output.)

By the way, I'd use different definitions. On the one hand, you can fix your goal and try to get by with the least amount of resources. On the other hand, you can fix your resources and try to maximize what you can achieve. (The problems are the dual of each other. (In the strict mathematical sense of optimization problems.))</comment></comment>


How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/07/17/google-wants-rewire-internet/ <comment><USER2> I really wanted to understand this article. I tried wikipediaing and googling some of the things I didn't really get (Jupiter is a thing... ok and Andromeda.. riiiight). Then I got to the chart "Conceptually, here is how Espresso plugs into the Google networking stack:", which was totally unparseable by me. All the green things look the same, but one of them is the thing this article is about (Espresso, right?), and Google somehow is represented by a vague dark-grey blob... I just don't get it.

Can anybody help? Am I simply not technically competent enough to consume this article yet?

<comment><USER3> I really hate the naming trend over the past 10-15 years of using common words for projects.

I can't really search for Espresso, or Jupiter, or Andromeda without additional qualifiers that I may not know yet.

<comment><USER2> Heh, that for me culminated when windows released a ubuntu subsystem.

The names in order of popularity when it was originally announced (now they push for WSL)

1\. Bash for Ubuntu on Windows

2\. Windows Bash Shell

3\. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Trying googling WSL - it's world surf league. Windows Bash Shell is impossible, so is Bash for Ubuntu on Windows. It's getting better as more and more articles are being written, but god almighty. I wouldn't be surprised if google is lending a helping hand with searches for WSL stuff.

<comment><USER4> And the 3rd name is backwards. It ought to be called 'Linux Subsystem for Windows'.

<comment><USER5> THAT IS IT! I was wondering why the name always felt funky. Although the name they have now is technically correct if you ignore standard noun to adjective conventions.

<comment><USER6> ...or it's missing an apostrophe.

      a. Windows' Subsystem for Linux

      b. Window's Subsystem for Linux

Each option has its own sort of context.

<comment><USER7> If you're making it a possessive using an apostrophe, then it should be "Windows's Subsystem for Linux" because Windows is singular in that context.

<comment><USER8> That's not the entire story, unfortunately. There are other rules. For example, Windows might be considered a family name, as there are several Windows Operating Systems. Also, this is a technical name, and technical writing often follows different rules, specifically in cases such as this.

For the possessive form of Windows I would look at the Microsoft Manual of Style, which for me is the fourth edition.

Page 184: Possessive Nouns

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

Do not use the possessive form of Microsoft. Do not use the possessive form of other company names unless you have no other choice. And do not use the possessive form of a product, service, or feature name. You can use these names as adjectives, or you can use an of construction instead.

Microsoft style:

      the Windows interface

      Microsoft products, services, and technologies

      Word templates

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

</comment><comment><USER9> > But running a fast, efficient, hyperscale network for internal datacenters > is not sufficient for a good user experience

It will never be sufficient. A good backbone infrastructure doesn't compensate for the fact that the majority of users don't have ISP choices especially for fast speed fixed/mobile networks.

<comment><USER10> Hence, Google Fiber and Project Loon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "one out of four bytes that are delivered to end users across the Internet originate from Google"

Such a mind blowing statement. Wonder when (if) they'll hit one-in-three bytes.

<comment><USER12> Facebook or Amazon may have a say in that, a lot of those 1 in 4 bytes are video from Youtube.

That said, those bytes still need to be delivered, Google really don't have peers in this stuff, apart from maybe Facebook.

<comment><USER13> netflix last year was reported at 37% in NA, so I suspect it will continue to be a contender as it gets more traction globally.

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/20/netflix- boasts-37-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/20/netflix- boasts-37-share-of-internet-traffic-in-north-america-compared-with-3-for- apples-itunes)

'peak download internet traffic' whatever that means.

<comment><USER14> Traffic during peak hours. Peak demand is what really matters for infrastructure.

<comment><USER15> Need to be able to store datafiles as youtube videos... e.g. ISO images in youtube vids... allowing for a view of a youtube vid to stream a download where, should everything be prioritized for vides/and youtube-google enuring play... that file transfers can be massive and fast even if neutrality BS occurs.

<comment><USER16> At least for Google Photos, they don't usually give you the exact same bytes back. (At a very basic level, that protects against some attacks and also against your scheme.)

Of course, you could add enough coding theory to make it work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Somewhat related: Google's efforts to speed up TCP.

"BBR: Congestion-Based Congestion Control" [http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3022184](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3022184)

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess this planetary naming convention is part of a tie in with the notable Pluto Switch:

[https://www.wired.com/2013/03/big-switch-indigo- switch_light...](https://www.wired.com/2013/03/big-switch-indigo- switch_light/)

[https://www.wired.com/2012/09/pluto- switch/](https://www.wired.com/2012/09/pluto-switch/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Can someone ELI5 the difference between this and [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/services/expressroute/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/services/expressroute/)? Is the technology principle the same?

<comment><USER18> Azure ExpressRoute = AWS Direct Connect = Google Cloud Interconnect

All 3 are ways to connect your private datacenter or on-premise location (maybe your corporate office) directly to the cloud provider's network over a fast private link, like an industrial-sized VPN. This way you can access your cloud servers/services over this private connection rather than the public internet. Lots of companies do this if they have sensitive data or have their own "cloud" system running VMWare or something and want to augment with public providers.

This article is discussing lower-level infrastructure describing Google's global network components, from load-balancing, routing, internal datacenter connections to servers, etc.

<comment><USER17> Very cool, thank you for explaining. Is VPN the primary purpose or could it in theory be extended to work as software routers (as opposed to physical switches your traffic goes through) for all internet traffic once connect?

Let me know if I'm way off base in my understanding.

<comment><USER18> Well VPN = virtual private network, and that's exactly what it's creating. What you use it for is up to you.

You can access all Google Cloud services over this link and but you can also change your routes to point all internet traffic over this link too (you'll need some cloud VMs with public IPs to be the exit nodes). Not sure what you'd gain from doing that though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >Amin Vahdat: Yup, pretty much traffic directors. Absolutely.

This quote stands out for me and makes me uneasy.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't know, feels like a massive waste of resources and if Google is doing it simply because it can. It's probably much cheaper for everyone else to handle latency/throughput problems on the client side and application level, sticking to all the traditional networking, but not relying on it for quality. Even in the web browser we already can send all kinds of asynchronous requests to multiple servers in multiple datacenters, choosing the fastest response and making all kinds of decisions to where to send requests dynamically in real time.

And while I agree about overcomplicated routers and box-centric thinking in computer networks, it's pretty much impossible to change things because of the monopolistic nature of the ISP industry. They are very far from competing on the levels of quality where SDN could matter.

<comment><USER21> From the description, it sounds like the routers have been reduced to more simple muxers, where a small tag added to the packet determines which port it goes over instead of trying to make a complicated decision all in one focal point.

This has pushed the decision back from the routers to the servers, where it scales with the number of hosts handling connections and can additionally be determined per /session/ instead of per packet. That state is held where sessions already need to be stored anyway instead of being duplicated in a router where it's entirely a burden.

<comment><USER22> The speedup from traditional MPLS already comes from the simple next-hop only lookup required by the router. There's no complicated decision making going on. Something central still manages the labels, that's the complexity but that's not new either.

Google still buy and use a ton of traditional mega (tera) high bandwidth networking gear. All of which will support regular label switching. But that doesn't sound cool and exciting so they always play that down. They can spin it that way if they like, network hardware vendors don't care because they are still selling them their boxes.

<comment><USER23> You really do no understand what Google is doing or how it works. The article does a poor job explaining. It is more like a virtual circuit switch network. It enables far less cost in equipment as no need to over provision. But a key feature is it makes latency far more determinate. This was necessary to make Spanner work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>