MMO Asteroids - <AUTHOR> http://seb.ly/demos/MMOsteroids.html <comment><USER2> Could this be an April Fools gag?

I wish I had screencapped it, but at one point I found myself in the middle of the screen, watching four swarm-like quadrants of fellow ships (top-left, top- right, bottom-left and bottom-right) all moving in relative unison. Anytime a swarm started to get close to me, I would inch away for a few seconds before the swarm turned back. I was able to stay in this middle, peaceful area for an extremely long time before random stray fire eventually finished me off.

<comment><USER3> A quick removal of your network cable proves it a hoax.

I almost want to learn JS and Node to build a real one. Just to spite the OP.

<comment><USER4> I do want to build a real one. However, I was going to build in command lag as part of the game. Weapons would be player "aimed," but they would be beam weapons that would activate if there were a weapons "lock" and if the ship were pointed in the right direction. There would also be missiles and area effect weapons. The point is to design a game based on dodging and positional tactics.

<comment><USER3> > _The point is to design a game based on dodging and positional tactics._

Sounds familiar...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar>!

PS: If you could do the awesome phosphor glow of the oscilloscope that the PDP used for a display; It'd make your game even more awesome.

<comment><USER4> _Sounds familiar...(Spacewar)_

I'm old enough to have played the Arcade Cabinet version of this game as a kid. Not exactly what I'm talking about, but perhaps an inspiration.

 _PS: If you could do the awesome phosphor glow of the oscilloscope that the PDP used for a display; It'd make your game even more awesome._

I'll keep that in mind.

<comment><USER3> > _I'm old enough to have played the Arcade Cabinet version of this game as a > kid. Not exactly what I'm talking about, but perhaps an inspiration._

I knew it wasn't exactly what you were talking about, but the general concept is similar. I like to think of it as an improved iteration.

> _I'll keep that in mind._

If you're not sure what it looks like:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bzWnaH-0sg>

Though for the sake of modern players eyes, pretend that the flickering never happened. (;

(More footage showing a full round: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvGzAvNLcew>)

EDIT: Considering what you've said in other comments. Maybe the best way to implement this would be a skin that players can buy as an upgrade?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Too bad it's fake. I wouldn't mind an xpilot revival at all.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPilot>

<comment><USER6> Or subspace! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game)>

<comment><USER7> Subspace is exactly what I had in mind when I saw the OP. It even has a bot API, though unfortunately no one has made a fully-playable one yet.

<comment><USER8> May I plug my own game here? It's not multiplayer but still favor intense dog- fighting with AI.

<http://gamesfrommars.fr/vibrant>

A multiplayer mode is the most requested feature, but I don't know if it's worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's no way, that's all just other players. TWO times a screenful of players, started to gank me.

Maybe I'm just a sore loser ahaha. Great game, anyway.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I saw an entire screen of players turn toward me once before as well and turn away immediately later. Hopefully players end up in the same world with just a lot of computer opponents as well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Apply the CounterStrike model of short 3 minute rounds and you'd have yourself an actual game here.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm so sorry everyone, I didn't think for a minute that anyone would be even remotely convinced. It was of course an April fool - here's my full confession : <http://seb.ly/2012/04/gotcha-fake-mmo-asteroids-april-fool/>

I hope you see the funny side :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone else only realise this was fake when they eventually opened the Network tab in developer tools to find out how it worked? After that, I double- realised when I noticed that none of the other ships ever idled while everyone else attempted to figure it out simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hmm, favorite strategy: zoom ahead full speed with a spammed bullet stream in front of you. After wrapping around enough times your bullet stream (and probably you) are going to nail someone. As you get better you can adjust your course a little to hit more, or hunt down people after that who are critically damaged by the bullet stream. :)

Fun, all in all, and an awesome tech demo. For finished games, there's already <http://www.getcontinuum.com/> which is basically the game with rules and rounds and teams and whatnot. Although that is thick client.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for posting this. I am at work on an Asteroids-movement style MMO mashup with Elite. There will be "weapons lock" but there will be aiming and positioning as well, so dodging will be key.

Players will be able to design their own ships, which will have performance determined by their shape, and placement of components within. (So, the more wedge-shaped your ship is, the more armor value it has for shots from the front, but the slower it can turn because its structure is less robust. Also, the longer your laser-tube is, the better range it has, etc.) This will happen in a procedurally generated universe containing in excess of 2^128 worlds.

I'm doing this as a study in emergence in games. I want to implement an MMO where mindless "keyboard macro" grinding is totally absent. Wherever possible, we will replace a boring grinding mechanic with something akin to optimizing or micromanaging in an RTS or 4X. What's more, the optimizing/managing mechanics will actually be emergent themselves, building on the ability to write scripts for almost everything in game. (These will run on the server, so the user can license their scripts to other players for in-game money.)

<comment><USER14> Factions!

<comment><USER4> Any owner of a Warp Gate installation will constitute a faction. Players will earn micropayments for use of their jump gate. The "Winning" faction will be the one controlling the most jump gates. Jump gates will require considerable exotic resources to maintain. Falling behind in jump gate maintenance will cause ownership to revert to the Precursor maintenance bots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As others have pointed out, this game is a bit of a prank. For example, the "CONNECTIONS" value is randomly generated:

      numPlayers+=randomInteger(1,5)

Though there is indeed some WebSocket communication between your browser and the server. Here's what most of these communiqés look like:

      {"type": "leave", "id": 133334510518}

I wonder why the author even uses WebSockets at all, or what these "leave" packets are meant for.

</comment><comment><USER16> I actually did this with Joust, something like ten years ago, using java sockets for the communications and dhtml for presentation.

The multiplayer version is long gone, but you can still get try out the original dhtml head-to-head version (provided you have IE3+ or Netscape Navigator handy):

<http://www.jasonkester.com/joust/>

Might have to spend a weekend cramming it full of Node.js and replacing the 1998 DOM referencing syntax with something a bit more modern...

Edit: Holy yikes, it actually works in the latest Chrome and Firefox. No idea how... <http://www.jasonkester.com/joust/>

</comment><comment><USER17> Here's his blog page for this:

<http://seb.ly/2012/04/node-js-experiment-mmo-asteroids/>

Looks like his next iteration will be real multiplayer. That will be awesome

</comment><comment><USER18> Hah! Great fun. I've found the strategy for long-term survival is simply to stay in the spawning point, spin, and fire as many rounds as possible. I suspect this is because the damage you take for hitting another ship's shields is set high enough that the probability of taking bullet damage is roughly constant whether moving or staying in place, while the probability of taking damage while moving is much higher than that of taking damage while staying in place.

Anyone with a more careful attitude towards quantitative analysis than I care to verify?

<comment><USER19> If these were humans, a standing-still ship would attract more aggression as an easy target, but bots don't seem to care about that, so it should be good option for maximizing kills/deaths. However, it takes a long time to kill anyone without active movement – hunting down near-dead ships is the best way to get best kills/minute. (and by hunting down i mean crashing into them of course, as well as point-blank fire).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> function boom() { for (var a = 0; a < 100; a++) { for (var d = 0; d < ships.length; d++) { var e = ships[d]; if (e != player) { if (e != undefined) { e.hit(); } } } } setTimeout("boom()", 2000); } function restoreHealth() { console.log("restoring health"); player.energy = 200; setTimeout("restoreHealth()", 100); }

setTimeout("restoreHealth()", 100); setTimeout("boom()", 2000);

</comment><comment><USER21> A friend and I have been working on an MMO game called Pixza: <http://pixza.com/lite>

Unlike MMO Asteroids, we don't fake the multi-player element. (Try pulling the network cable :) ) But with that comes the problem of bootstrapping the game to get a critical mass, since the game is boring with a few players. Building an AI engine for the game seems very complicated because it's a strategy game.

</comment><comment><USER22> Some good April 1st jokes become real eventually though.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm thinking of building a simple game like this(but not with shooting stuff) using node on the server side since it's the cool thing to do now. But idk how many players a server could sustain or if the browser client might slow down when rendering many players on the screen.

Anybody want to help? Should just take about a week to build something playable i think.

</comment><comment><USER24> If an mmo version of asteroids sounds interesting then you should try out Continuum (<http://www.getcontinuum.com/>) It was released commercially in 1997 and subsequently abandoned by its developer. The community took over the client/server and it has evolved into a pretty complex game.

</comment><comment><USER25> Sorry for the noob question:

How does one prevent cheating/hacking with a client-side runtime? Is there a crucial dividing line of functionality between server- and client-side functions? Say perhaps fog of war and client's only get the position updates of visible enemies?

If there are best practices / conventional wisdom, pointers (links) would be appreciated. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me of the (real) game _Realm of the Mad God_ , a "run 'n' gun" MMORPG with 8-bit style graphics built in Flash:

<http://www.edery.org/2011/06/realm-of-the-mad-god/>

Now that I think about it, the game is basically a _Gauntlet_ MMORPG! :)

</comment><comment><USER27> For a real old school MMO you should all try Jet Set Willy Online, it involves a small client download rather than being browser based but it faithfully captures the original feel of the game. <http://jsw.ovine.net/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Check chrome://net-internals/#events and include actual bytes under "capture". The data being sent through seb.ly is not enough to for the game:

        .#{"type":"leave","id":1333318871470}

It does look like he's updating the players coming in and out though.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you hadn't guessed already, the author confirmed this was a fake this morning: <http://seb.ly/2012/04/gotcha-fake-mmo-asteroids-april-fool/>

</comment><comment><USER30> My GF couldn't get over that I was spending my Sunday evening blasting away at 1900 other "nerdy hackernews-ers", until I realized from the coordinated attacks it couldn't be real. Still a ton of fun.

</comment><comment><USER31> Lol yes this is lots of fun, however I seem to continously pickup some stalker hellbent on destroying me in particular and chasing me all across the universe. Well, atleast it makes me feel special :)

</comment><comment><USER32> April Fools! <http://seb.ly/2012/04/gotcha-fake-mmo-asteroids-april-fool/>

</comment><comment><USER33> Damn it! I commented on it earlier noticing some irregularities in the way the players moved... I just realized this was an april fools joke!

</comment><comment><USER34> This reminds me of Netrek. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netrek>

</comment><comment><USER35> Fun fact: if you're in chrome, enter ctrl+shift+j. When javascript console enters you can play with it.

Try entering player.energy = 100000 :)

<comment><USER21> This was one the of things that I worked on to avoid, when building Pixza (pixza.com) a HTML4/5+JS+Erlang MMO game. I wrote a script to obfuscate all the JS object and member names to random strings before deploying the code.

<comment><USER35> Very interesting. I guess this is always a risk when writing javascript. good mitigation though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Aghh can't believe this is fake...

Does anyone know whether this is actually feasible to make using Node.JS (or any other technology?)

</comment><comment><USER37> Very similar to <http://rawkets.com/> by Rob Hawkes from the UK.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is insane! I was surrounded by at least 8 players all shooting at me. Really funny though.

</comment><comment><USER39> I love it but I think it would be more fun with teams.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is great. An MMO pong would be fun...

<comment><USER26> SIGGRAPH 1991 and 2006 featured demos of the ~3000 member audience playing Pong. Each half of the room controlled their paddle by holding up colored wands to vote up or down. I think the 2006 show also had the audience pilot a flight simulator. It was amazing at how quickly the audience got really good at the games!

Here are some photos. I saw a video somewhere, but I can't find it now.

<http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/history/timeline/cinematrix.html>

[http://www.4colorrebellion.com/archives/2006/08/03/siggraph-...](http://www.4colorrebellion.com/archives/2006/08/03/siggraph-2006-massively- multiplayer-coop-pong/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is madness, but I love you for it :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Add a tweet / FB share button :>

</comment><comment><USER42> Node.js is the real APFJ.

</comment><comment><USER43> I really loathe April 1.

</comment><comment><USER44> Fun, but crowded.

</comment><comment><USER45> oh this isn't real?

</comment><comment><USER46> I once saw pretty much all 20 enemy ships nearest me suddenly turn towards me in near unison. Those were bots, not real people. I like the idea of the game. I feel a little disappointed that he appears to have lied about it actually being MMO.

I'll grant him one "get out of jail free card": perhaps it can be MMO, but if not enough human players are playing at any time he fills the world with bots. That's about the nicest guess I can make.

</comment><comment><USER47> As others have said, this is fake but I give it one day until someone does a 'Show HN' with a real version.

</comment><comment><USER48> xpilot.....nuff said

</comment><comment><USER49> Add me, guys. My username is 'reason'. I'm up over in the top left corner.</comment>


Steve Singh stepping down as Docker CEO - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/08/steve-singh-stepping-down-as-docker-ceo/ <comment><USER2> I worked for Docker under Steve. Steve is a nice guy, but a horrible CEO for any current tech company. When I left Docker I told HR how disappointed I was in his response as a CEO with regard to recent layoffs. He went on and on about how this was about saving money to get to profitability in 2019 and he blamed himself, as he should have for missing. But then he didn't actually take any responsibility for his actions. He didn't take a pay cut, he had just hired his buddy Neil Charney for marketing and that guy should exit stage left right behind Steve. There's lots of leadership at Docker that's bad and Docker is very misdirected internally. For an entire quarter they kept telling us Microsoft was the path forward. Except most native Windows shops aren't doing a ton of containers. And if they are they're moving to Azure because of the credits. Then Microsoft kind of sort of vanished from the push. And it was kind of sort of IoT - but Docker Enterprise doesn't run on ARM and they were so far behind. Docker has bad leadership and nobody is steering the ship towards a destination, unfortunately.

One last tidbit about Steve. Steve made his fortune off Concur being sold to Amex. So Docker, obviously, had to use Concur internally. We were told not to complain about Concur in Slack ever so as Steve would never see it. Well Steve, Concur is a flaming pile of garbage compared to modern alternatives. And that was where Steve was leading Docker. There are a lot of really good people left at Docker. Get rid of Steve, get rid of Steve's buddies, get rid of the sales leadership and circle back up with the product the team they have can build. I think Steve's departure implies he knew he'd never hit his goal of profitability this year. Bon voyage Steve! Hopefully it's not too late for Docker.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about Docker but I concur about Concur. It's 1990s technology that's only a quarter step above mainframe green screens.

I will say that Docker's 2.9 on Glassdoor is very low for a tech company.

<comment><USER4> We have to use Concur at the megacorp where I work - it truely is _awful_. It's slow, clunky, and often just gets in your way.

For example, if I attach a receipt, the "receipt is attached" toggle remains off - you still have to manually change it!

The "cost allocation" stuff is also an unnecessary waste of time, and things often seem to be off by a penny, which causes Concur to complain and prevents submission.

I could go on..

For such a large scale system, I just can't fathom the UX or performance.

<comment><USER5> For some reason many "enterprise" software products are clunky and buggy. I guess this is because the decision to use the software is made by managers who don't ever use it.

<comment><USER6> I think it is more to do with the fact that "enterprise" software vendors have done the boring legwork of ticking all of the necessary multi-jurisdiction legal tick-boxes, implement that one insane export format, provide reports required just-so by a given regulator and so-on. The value they provide to the business is outside of the software in that sense.

<comment><USER5> It's good that the managers care for the higher-level "business" goals, but shouldn't they care for their subordinates more? In the end it also contributes to a business metric - employee happiness. When I was switching a corporate job to a startup job the fact that I switched from a corporate Outlook and a proprietary issue software to GMail and Github made me happier.

<comment><USER7> > It's good that the managers care for the higher-level "business" goals, but > shouldn't they care for their subordinates more?

Ideally, yes; rationally, given the incentives of the concrete eco omic system they exist in, no. Managers work for higher level managers, or at the highest level for capital owners of the business, not for their employees except to the extent that the employees are also capital owners of the business.

Managers aren't union reps for their subordinates, they are agents of capital. That's, literally, their job.

<comment><USER5> This sounds like early 20th century capitalism... I don't think it's very applicable to the current programming industry, where companies have to fight to retain good employees. Also, the top-down structure is no longer preserved within the Agile's "self-organizing teams". So in this landscape I think it's very reasonable to take seriously what programmers think about the given internal software.

<comment><USER7> > This sounds like early 20th century capitalism... I don't think it's very > applicable to the current programming industry, where companies have to > fight to retain good employees.

It absolutely does; just because capitalist are competing for labor doesn't mean that management switches from being agents of capital to agents of labor. Valuable, contested human resources are still resources, not owners.

> Also, the top-down structure is no longer preserved within the Agile's > "self-organizing teams".

One of the most frequently reported problems with Agile in practice is that the idea of empowered, self-organizing teams is, even in organizations that give lip service to Agile development given limited, effect by management. In any case, that concept applies mainly to how teams deliver on business goals, not on _setting_ business goals, so even ideally it would not prioritize staff opinions _over_ business goals.

<comment><USER5> > just because capitalist are competing for labor doesn't mean that management > switches from being agents of capital to agents of labor. Valuable, > contested human resources are still resources, not owners.

Yes, I generally agree, but it goes as follows:

1\. The business owners care only about achieving their business goals.

2\. To achieve the business goals the owners need to have good employees.

3\. To hire and retain good employees some business decisions should take into cosiderations the needs of the employees.

So even from the purely economical point of view there should be some balance between 1. and 3.

And overall your purely economical point of view seems too rigid to me. One example that comes to my mind is the cultural shift happening at Microsoft. The company made many decisions with little business sense like open sourcing many projects and providing free developer tools. But the effect is that developers like the company more. This has measurable effects like Azure success or hiring better employees. I think this is an example of a bottom-up- built success which doesn't fit your top-down viewpoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has there ever been a bigger missed opportunity in business than Docker managed to preside over? They could have created a huge business, but the product and go to market strategy has been awful.

In my opinion, selling a PaaS was fundamentally the wrong call when they could have licensed an enterprise version of the engine and taken a commission on every server in existence. This is more a Microsoft or RHEL type business rather than a second rate Pivotal or OpenShift, which in themselves are being mullered by EKS/AKS in enterprise.

The whole pitch towards legacy apps was also short termist distraction when investment dollars are all going to cloud native solutions. Legacy apps are a big business case but getting companies to invest in their legacy estate is still a tough ask. This angle should have been secondary to competing where they are naturally strong.

<comment><USER9> > Has there ever been a bigger missed opportunity in business than Docker > managed to preside over?

Sun Microsystems

<comment><USER10> Sun made $200 billion of revenue over 28 years. Yes, Sun missed opportunities -- but (as someone who worked at Sun during the internet boom) Sun definitely took advantage of plenty of them. Or are you making the case that Sun's technological output was so substantial that the $200 billion over the nearly three decades represents a "bigger missed opportunity in business than Docker"?

<comment><USER11> In 1999 I wanted to buy a Sun SPARCstation 5 (I worked with those). Was fabulous how that machine never blocked, was super-stable, and fast. At that time I had a linux PC box (red hat) at home, with IDE and PATA (if I remember correctly) it was really difficult for the hardware to perform.

<comment><USER12> The were good machines, but they were stupidly expensive a that time. The same with SGI. I remember being quoted $18,000 for equivalent amount of memory I had just put in a linux box of my own for about $300. Sure, it wasn't really apples to apples ... but still. Intel based machines were eating their lunch for good reason.

<comment><USER13> They should have targeted a premium around what Apple charges for their hardware, not the absurd multiple they were charging.

<comment><USER14> Both sun and sgi had business models built around premium margins and couldn't adapt the the mammals underfoot. This phenomenon is one of the things that The Innovator's Dilemma got right.

Apple's in a slightly different position in that they bank a more profit sun/sgi ever did and are pretty aggressive on COGS so if/when they lose their exalted position they will have a lot more room to maneuver. This is how Microsoft managed to survive its sag (decline is too strong anword) towards irrelevance and recover.

IBM was in the same situation as Microsoft but though Gerstner managed to right the ship, his successors were not able to re-ignite growth (to mix metaphors)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> IMO docker is the Myspace of containers.

There's so many bugs I've just stopped caring. Like many devs, I have a bash alias to blow everything away when the daemon gets funky. And it behaves differently enough between platforms that, at least at my company, we've given up on running the same containers between different OS.

I really think the endgame will be a VM based container system backwards compatible with docker. At VM level it's far easier to deal with kernel level incompatibility. Not to mention the constant security bugs that come from sharing a kernel. Somewhat ironically MS is already doing this in a way by hosting a Linux kernel in a VM for their docker implementation. They're only a step away from launching a kernel for each container.

With how cheap ram is these days, sharing a kernel is pointless. You save maybe 50mb of ram per container in return for maddening implementation complexity and worse performance

<comment><USER16> You should check out LXD. It's containers, but they act like VMs (you have proper systemd inside the container) and the tooling is far more sane than anything Docker has. It's developed by the same folks that work on LXC (and despite what you might've heard, LXC is very good).

<comment><USER17> I used Lxdock to provision a dev environment as a LXC VM. It is now unmaintained and changed file permission when sharing files from host to guest. I changed to Vagrant, which has infuriating startup delays, needs restarts and breaks inotify-based tools. At least its cross platform. Is there an alternative?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "... our customers are materially reducing the costs of building, sharing and running their applications and they are increasing their innovation cycles by a factor of more than 10X."

I can't stand this kind of marketing dribble, phrases like "increasing their innovation cycles by a factor of more than 10X" are not in themselves quantifiable and without that or context can be misleading.

I don't (at all) disagree that the more wide-spread adoption of containerised application deployment and related work-flows has sped up the release and application life-cycle, but I think people should not aspire to talk about such benefits with such 'greasy' wording (especially when it comes to the word 'innovation').

<comment><USER4> I loathe this kind of language too - but in Enterprise it's all too often management types that are the decision makers. As long as they keep lapping up this BS, companies will continue to spew it forth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just want to say, Docker for OSX is a joke! It's been over 4 years, when is that (slow filesystem issue) ever going to get fixed? People are using solutions like NFS/Dinghy, something Docker for OSX should have out of the box. Cmon now.

And if I were leading Docker, I'd look into the direction of a built-in virtual hosting solution, ie; jwilder-proxy and DNSMasq. I think that is what still stopping them from mass adoption.

<comment><USER20> I think Docker's highest priority right now is monetization, which explains their lack of focus on OSX in favor for Windows; more enterprise users theoretically would have led to more money.

Having said that, they didn't appear to be doing too well with that either.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure of the right path for monetization, but I am guessing, all the same, that their neglect of the OS X edition of Docker has hindered it. A decent number of Docker users are developing locally on OS X, even if they use another platform upstream. I doubt the "bugs and misfeatures being ignored for years on end" thing is making them particularly eager to just throw money at the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As someone who wants to pitch containerization at my enterprisey company, what is the takeaway message here? Do I still assume Docker/kubernetes is the way to go? Sounds like I don't want to stake my reputation on Docker Swarm? Is there another container platform this community recommends other than Docker?

<comment><USER23> 1\. Swarm lost, don't bother.

2\. The interesting part of containers is the tooling people have built around them to make it easy to ship _and run_ software stacks easily.

3\. Building all this shit from primitives - downloading your own istio & k8s - is painful and will waste a lot of time and frustrate people.

Go get an opinionated k8s+containers solution that you can plumb into your dev tooling and will let you "commit code, spin up container fleet" easily, because that's the value: reliably increasing velocity.

OpenShift is one example I've worked with and like. There are others. Don't waste your time and money fucking around with individual bits of the stack.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the advice! Is there one opinionated offering that has solid Windows Server support? It looks like OpenShift is working towards it, but it's not ready yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone has any clues as to what the real reasons for his departure are?

<comment><USER25> Well, this happened right after the news about one of docker's databases being compromised, so perhaps he is being scapegoated.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763413)

<comment><USER26> That was my first thought, but they should have waited just a little longer so it looks like it was at least a thought-out decision, or put this announcement on hold for 6 weeks so no one's asking this question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What happens, hypothetically, if Docker the company shuts down?

<comment><USER28> Not a lot really. The core parts aren't actually docker (containerd and runc do all the work and are not docker owned), so it's more a problem of how fast we can get tooling to replace the wrapper around them (that's docker, so the bit that would be more of an issue). Local development would be hit the hardest, though I'm sure things would carry on as-is for quite a while since the parts of docker that are mainly used for building and pushing containers is open source.

Kubernetes already doesn't need docker to run, so migrating wouldn't be a nightmare. There are other image repositories everyone can use for the base images.

CoreOS did a good thing by pushing for the OCI as it's made sure this exact situation isn't a disaster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I had a somewhat kafka-esque experience trying to install the Docker client on Windows recently. I just wanted the standalone executable so I could connect to Docker running on a headless Linux server on the local network. They don't make that available anymore for the latest version and force you to install Docker Desktop, which required two reboots and enabling Hyper-V, none of which should actually be necessary if all you are doing is connecting to a Linux box. It was a garbage experience. While I was trying, unsuccessfully, to figure out how to get the standalone binary, I noticed that the Docker website has been completely taken over by really low-signal marketing crap, and all of the actual technical substance is now hidden away in the documentation. The way that Docker is flailing around as it desperately seeks some kind of enterprise traction is really a huge turn off to their core audience.

<comment><USER24> The website has really been a bunch of crap for a few years now! I always have to access it via Google searches, even when I'm looking on extremely trivial pieces of documentation.

<comment><USER30> Yes! My team has recently moved our services/applications into docker through azure... Trying to understand what parts of docker we needed through their site was an absolute nightmare, it's all marketing stuff and very little on what each 'service' actually does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Singh appeared tired, but a leader who was confident in his position and who saw a bright future for his company."

A company (Docker) selling a product which you don't need because you can simply package your application and its configuration as an OS package has no future since it's selling snake oil.</comment>


India's Largest Online Couponing Site SnapDeal Raises $12 Million - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/25/indias-largest-online-couponing-site-snapdeal-raises-12-million-tctv/

<comment><AUTHOR> In the video Kunal Bahl, the founder of snapdeal mentions that the laws didn't allow his company to sponsor his visa in the US (i assume he is referring to the H1B work visa). This is the state for some one with Ivy league degrees and probably a not-so profitable startup. Loss for the US and good for India! The startup visa will be a big boost for entrepreneurs like Kunal.</comment>


Mac App Store Apps Get Some Analytics Love - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tapstream.com/post/26101244960/mac-app-store-gets-some-analytics-love <comment><USER2> Does anyone know how this actually works? From their website: "Unlike other conversion tracking solutions available to app developers, Tapstream doesn't rely on mobile ad networks, cookies or UDIDs. Instead, we fingerprint your web visitors with our tasty secret sauce to match them up with conversions that you define inside your app." This sounds a little fishy.</comment>


Air Battery Would Last 2.5s on Machine with 1990's Efficiency - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/if-a-macbook-air-were-as-efficient-as-a-1991-computer-the-battery-would-last-25-seconds/245041/

<comment><USER2> Um, I doubt this, very very much.

The Air has a 50 W/h battery. That's 50W for a full hour. So if they are saying that it would last 2.5 seconds, that means the putative 1990s computer would have to consume 60 x 24 x 50 = 72,000 Watts!

Someone at the Atlantic needs to figure out basic math.

<comment><USER3> I read it to mean they were factoring in the computing power as well.

i.e. they estimated that it would take 72,000 Watts-worth of 1990s computers to match the processing power of a Macbook Air.

Though that does add further caveats to an already less-than-ideal comparison (as an MBA is not going to last seven hours at 100% CPU load).

<comment><USER4> Sounds like they ought to mention how long that is in football fields.

<comment><USER5> If you placed all the iPhones in the world end to end on a line, some of them would be in the ocean.

There, I wrote about iPhones. Now give me my ad revenue.

<comment><USER6> How many iPhones in the world? If I guessed about 100 million that would be about 8000 miles, which wouldn't necessarily be in the ocean if you started the line in Europe and cut across Russia/Eurasia.

<comment><USER7> I'd chuck mine in the ocean just to make it true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A counterpoint: the Air still does not match the battery life of a TRS-80 Model 100 from 1983: 20 hours on 4 AA batteries.

A Model 100 was pretty much the opposite of the iPad: great for creative activities (writing, taking notes, programming) but poor for consumption activities.

<comment><USER9> Writing is important – but not everything.

<comment><USER10> exactly. I've posted this before, but: "if a person can't produce something on an ipad that's a reflection of the user, not the device."

<comment><USER11> Can I produce a program for iPads on an iPad?

<comment><USER12> do web apps for iPad count? (see textastic)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> so if someone could make a 68030 as efficient as an i5, I could have a PowerBook 170 that would run for a week on a charge? Yes, please _.

(_ I'll need someone to knock up a Twitter reading client in MPW too, pls)

<comment><USER14> Heck, why not go even further back?

<http://atomsandelectrons.com/blog/2010/04/apple-t/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is just another way of stating Moore's law. Chip transistor count doubles every year and a half; chip power use doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh Macbook Air. For some reason my tired brain kept thinking about what an Air Battery would look like.

<comment><USER17> Something like this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2a3uTU0fgc>

<comment><USER16> Wow. It exists! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If only battery technology had kept up with computing technology.

We'd definitely all be driving electric cars today if that happened.

The best (commercial) batteries today are only a few times better than the ones used in electric cars 100 years ago.

<comment><USER19> I've read the rate of improvement for batteries is around 8% a year. That's still exponential, just not as good as transistor count. But nothing else improves that fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Makes sense to me. If they calculated that in 1990 it took x watts to generate y processing power by now x has gone wayyyy down if y remains the same. They don't have the best documentation but it doesn't seem unreasonable.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here is an older, portable Macintosh with more (claimed) battery life than most of the modern Macs.

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


Women-only Coding School Aims at Worker Shortage, Gender Imbalance - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2013/09/27/women-coding-school-aims-worker-shortage-gender-imbalance/

<comment><USER2> There isn't a "worker shortage". Just a "cheap worker" shortage.</comment>


Google's Duplex Uses A.I. To Mimic Humans (Sometimes) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/technology/personaltech/ai-google-duplex.html <comment><USER2> Looks like they could use Upcall.com</comment>


Show HN: Radosgw-Admin4j – A Ceph Object Storage Admin Client for Java - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/twonote/radosgw-admin4j <comment><AUTHOR> I got into trouble when working with radosgw admin APIs, especially that docs are a bit confusing and inconsistent with the code base. What I can do are these two things: 1. Correct the section that ran me into problems 2. Code a client library and hope that people can done their jobs more smoothly with it.

Any ideas?</comment>


Citigroup clerical error of $900M; a beneficiary refuses to hand back $175M - <AUTHOR> https://en.mercopress.com/2020/08/19/citigroup-with-a-record-clerical-error-of-us-900-million-a-beneficiary-refuses-to-hand-back-us-175-million <comment><USER2> What a shockingly detail-free "article".

I tend to agree that Citigroup has the better argument, but this is weirdly lopsided coverage. Revlon's bank repaid Revlon's loan using money Revlon didn't have. Oops! But that's not clearly a reason for the lender to return the repaid loan.

What happens if I pay one of my bills and realize later that it would be more convenient for me to have paid less so I'd have more money for whatever else? How do I claw back the amount I now wish I hadn't paid?

<comment><USER3> Agreed. The previous article posted to HN was better IMO.

I feel it's relevant that Revelon's loan hadn't actually come due yet.

I think it's also relevant that Citigroup didn't send Revelon's money, they sent Citigroup's money. "Somebody at Citigroup owes us, so any money coming from that general direction is ours" feels pretty flimsy to me.

It's also relevant that Revelon is not looking so healthy, and is widely expected to go into bankruptcy protection before repaying Brigade.

But I think Brigade's math is pretty easy here - gambling a 15 million on lawyers for even a small chance to (effectively) make 175,000 million might be a good bet.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's material which department in citigroup owns which account. Citigroup is responsible for all the money as a single entity.

When you work in a company and pay a supplier, you don't get to chase the supplier and ask for refund saying you cut a check from the wrong company account. This is down to your company, it's your company problem.

<comment><USER3> A company is a single entity, but a bank is representing many entities, so I do think it matters which entity the bank was representing at that point in time.

If I overpaid a contractor by mistake, I don't think that contractor should get to keep my money under the logic that somebody else who uses the same bank also owed that contractor money.

<comment><USER5> If I owe you money and John Smith knocks on your door, hands you a pile of money, and says "this is from bradleyjg to pay off his debt" I think it is entirely reasonable to rely on that representation. You lent money, it was paid back by the borrower's agent, the transaction is over.

<comment><USER6> Except they didn't say that. They sent it by accident. And there's decades of case law siding with banks against "bank error in your favor" situations.

<comment><USER2> > Except they didn't say that. They sent it by accident.

You're half right. They sent it by accident.

<comment><USER6> There's no indication in any reporting that the money was sent with a note or memo saying "this is to pay the full Revlon debt". To all known facts, they simply sent the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Received a lot of discussion 3 days ago here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222045)

<comment><USER8> Yes, previous article was better.

Bloomberg article is better.[1]

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-17/citibank-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-17/citibank- sues-brigade-capital-management-over-mistaken-transfer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bank error in your favor, collect $175M.

<comment><USER10> At the very least, I'd charge them something for the error. Banks aren't shy about charging customers for errors. A 1% return fee maybe, on top of whatever it costs me.</comment></comment>


The fibula and the safety pin - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/04/the-fibula-and.html <comment><USER2> Yeah, except it's morally questionable, and it does not benefit anyone else but YOU. But hey, this is capitalism. Who are we to stand in the way of profit.

<comment><USER3> Without the motivation for profit, what inventions that benefit many may not have been discovered?

Safety pin is a glib example; big pharma may be too far the other way; but why would I invest my time and money to build a better mouse trap just to give it away?

<comment><USER2> I am afraid I did not make myself clear enough. I was criticizing only the safety pin patent, which obviously is superfluous, given the existence of fibulas. The general case, building better (but really better, not pharma- style better) mousetraps still warrants recognition.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: GoodCode – Free Front End Coding Challenges - <AUTHOR> https://moeminm.github.io/goodcode <comment><USER2> Looks like exercises. What about doing this in some way that created code that could be pushed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of really great ideas in my head, but I am a designer still learning how to code myself, so you can see where the problem is trying to implement this haha</comment></comment>


Book Review: "The Go Programming Language" by Alan Donovan and Brian Kernighan - <AUTHOR> http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2016/book-review-the-go-programming-language-by-alan-donovan-and-brian-kernighan/ <comment><USER2> I bought the book on kindle back when I came out. I already had taught myself Go, but the book had a nice read to it, and I learned a few more idiomatic ways to do things.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you host internal tools? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> What do you do if you have a script or a server that you need to make accessible to others in your team? Do you run it from your machine, or ask devops to deploy it somewhere? Is there something better than these two options?

<comment><USER2> we use aws.</comment></comment>


Despite the Hyperbole, Flame is Kind of Lame - <AUTHOR> http://xato.net/malware/flame-is-kind-of-lame/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mbwin+%28MB%27s+Windows+Security%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> Well, back in the day, before you'd even set your fingers to a keyboard, there was this teenager in Brazil who thought he was a great hacker.

He hacked into a porno site and the operators found out who he was and called his home. He's like "Ok, Ok, I'll stop, just don't call my mom."

Well, I'm working with some guys running a voice chat site and one day he starts giving us trouble. Our CEO gets the phone number from the guys who ran the porno site. This time they call and his mom answers.

Moral: lamers come in all ages.

Generalizing about programmers attitudes, ambitions and talents based on their age is one of the most harmful things you can do.

I know a guy who's a 60-something who can't really retire because he built a new printer interface for IBM mainframes. New York State found that the standard printer interface wasn't fast enough to print out their paperwork fast enough to satisfy legal requirements. He designed the hardware and wrote device drivers in Macro Assembler.

They can't find anybody, at any age, who can maintain this.

He's only on call for occasional assignments but he can afford to spend half his time in Hawaii and half in upstate.

</comment><comment><USER3> "which employs a bunch of 40-something suburbanites"

right, because only 20something kids in cutoff jeans and tshirts who live in SF/NY are capable of writing truly _excellent_ code.

<comment><USER4> I'm pushing 40, but I started wearing jorts. Just in case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sure the querystring looks stupid, but if finding an new MD5 collision attack to build a fake Microsoft certificate is the job of a lamer, I don't know how to call myself ...

</comment><comment><USER6> NetBus[1] (1998), Back Orifice 2000[2] (1999) and Sub7[3] (1999) demonstrate that feature packed malware is not a novel concept. Kids were pranking each other with webcam-hijacking, audio-recording, port-redirecting, password- sniffing, auto-updating software in the late 90's.

Hans Dobbertin, Wang Xiaoyun, Arjen Lenstra, Alexander Sotirov, Marc Stevens, Jacob Appelbaum, David Molnar, Dag Arne Osvik, Benne de Weger, Dengguo Feng, Xuejia Lai, Tao Xie, Hongbo Yu, Ron Rivest and numerous other researchers were instrumental from as early as 1996[4] in demonstrating that MD5 was broken. The MD5 collision attack used by Flame will be an implementation of and minor extension to this prior work.

My point is that technology development is incremental and tends to occur in small steps. New advances build off the work of many others. An understanding of hacker history is essential to any meaningful malware analysis. Early e-zines such as Phrack, the communities of 2600, CCC, Black Hat/DEF CON and the activities of the cypherpunk movement are good starting points. Without this historical perspective past mistakes will be repeated and insignificant matters over-hyped to the detriment of areas that matter.

Cryptography conferences, arXiv, hacker conferences (HOPE Number 9, DEF CON 20, 29C3), open source mailing lists and security researcher blogs are the places to look for new developments.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBus>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_Orifice_2000>

[3] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub7>

[4] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5#History_and_cryptanalysis>

</comment><comment><USER7> I read on BBC that flame used state of the art encryption for its code based on a paper published in 2008. Apparently, they even came up with their own variant of the encryption scheme

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18365844>

</comment><comment><USER8> >Nonetheless, the fact that it probably wasn't written by an experienced hacker is what allowed it to go so long being undetected. Ironically it's lack of evasion techniques let it evade detection.

So what you're saying is that it sucks, and the fact that it sucks is what made it so successful?

Have you considered the possibility that the Flame authors are smarter than you?</comment>


All That Glisters (don't always use latest technology) - <AUTHOR> https://24ways.org/2017/all-that-glisters/ <comment><AUTHOR> Or in other words... just because you learnt about that amazing new JavaScript framework on Reddit a few days ago, doesn't mean you should redo your entire website in it for the hell of it. There's nothing wrong with going with an old but trusted technology you know how to use instead of remaking the thing with the newest and shiniest tech available.</comment>


From 0 to 1M to? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@adrienroose/from-0-to-1-000-000-to-ecb4e2f863c7#.66gmlwq5e <comment><AUTHOR> Wasn't sure to keep the cryptic subject, but I think that's HN policy. I thought you guys would appreciate how transparent and detailed this "we're shutting down" post by Take Eat Easy cofounder Adrien Rose is (FWIW the other cofounder also wrote another post[1]). I'm just a customer but I feel really sad about this, since I had just started using them a few weeks ago and found the service stellar in all departments (UI/UX, delivery speed, they have tons of restaurants that no other site delivers for, amazing photos for each dish), miles away in terms of user experience compared to JustEat and any other site out there, which ends up being just the same as the rest. Hopefully someone ends up either providing the funding last minute or acquires the service and keeps it running to the same quality standard.

[1] [https://medium.com/@chloeroose/the-right-words-to-say- goodby...](https://medium.com/@chloeroose/the-right-words-to-say- goodbye-8a2218b32f92#.asmlwuj9o)</comment>


Fox News Touchscreens are Microsoft Perceptive Pixel Displays Running Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/07/those-giant-fox-news-touchscreens-are-microsoft-perceptive-pixel-displays-running-windows-8/ <comment><USER2> 'Aside from it being simply neat of Fox News to use the displays,'

Nah.

'it's a nice moment for Microsoft:'

Nah.

'the company has found an early commercial use for the technology.'

Nahhhhhh.

To me it's more likely Microsoft is driving hard these visible partnerships, for example like Delta Air using Surface tables, at a loss for exposure. But I wouldn't know, I'm not a TechCrunch journalist.

<comment><USER3> Why don't you think it's a good example of a commercial use? Why don't you think this is a good moment for Microsoft?

<comment><USER2> I don't believe it's a good commercial use because I don't believe Newsrooms need that kind of technological change - they are clearly intended to be showy, not useful, as a 17" screen would certainly do for research.

I don't think Close-up, a 55" 1080p resolution can hardly lead to productive work. I sometimes use a 55" 1080p screen from five feet away and even there the text is not clear enough and too large to fit entirely in my field of vision.

It's not a good moment because it's a completely irrelevant moment. I am sure Microsoft has other exciting products in thr works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to find tech specs on the Perspective Pixel displays, but at least one source† says they are 1920x1080. The idea of doing lots of text-oriented work sitting inches away from a 55" 1080p monitor sounds _horrible_ , but I guess it makes for good TV.

† [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2819660](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2819660)

<comment><USER5>
      1920 / 55 means 34.9 dpi ?

If thats correct then this is just awful. I feel sorry for those who have to use this daily.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand how anybody would use that to do anything serious on.

<comment><USER7> Fox News is not serious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's great that Fox employs tiny journalists. They're just as intelligent and capable as other newspeople.

<comment><USER9> as with other people, there is a tendency to confuse their journalists and their talk show hosts. Separating the two in your head allows you to watch the appropriate shows on each channel without screaming at the set, or dismissing what is being said from misconception.

<comment><USER10> They have a bunch of people in the background using them apparently, not just the hosts. Do those people actually do work, or are they just 'extras'? Are they actually even there, or is looped footage of them bluescreened in?

Seems like an awful job if they are actually real, having to sit at a desk with a tv camera pointed at your back the entire time...

<comment><USER11> At the tv station where I was last employed, they decided to change the format of their newscasts by filming in the newsroom... so if you happened to be cutting packages together for the next newscast or whatever you ended up in the background.

It did kind of suck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Glad to see our corporate overlords are equipping their propoganda departments with the latest high-tech gear.

<comment><USER13> You mean, the _illusion_ of the latest high-tech gear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Those bezels look larger on one side... which must make their work lean heavily to the right. /snark

In all seriousness, though, I can't imagine how they are going to be any more productive at those resolutions than they would be with traditional input methods, not to mention the sore arms that these will cause.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone remember the CNN hologram?

I don't quite understand the newsroom gimmicks...

<comment><USER11> Have you ever been to a midway at a carnival?

Think of each booth as a different station trying anything to catch your attention and you'll understand. It's just a hook. Doesn't matter if it's clever, or stupid, or if they think it's clever and it looks stupid - if it gets you to watch the commercials than it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> We would have bought some at $dayjob but their Linux support required coding against a proprietary API. We'd like a nice big interactive display (e.g. take a wacom, make it big) that works on Linux. No custom APIs, please; if your hardware needs special bits please improve the Linux ecosystem and contribute them there.

Apologies if this has changed since we demoed them, but those were my notes at the time.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's great that they're trying to leverage the technology like this. Ideally, we'll get a little news room arms race, which will hopefully lead to a few innovations. The next newsroom needs 8k screens. :-)

</comment><comment><USER18> Giant displays or newsalumpas?

</comment><comment><USER19> Previous post (5 hours ago): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6509781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6509781)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry the new information is that they are Microsoft Perceptive Pixel displays running Windows 8.

<comment><USER19> That was already figured out in the story comments of the first link.

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/7/4812630/fox-news- shepard-s...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/7/4812630/fox-news-shepard- smith-news-deck#189277143)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Those poor bastards. Their arms are going to be unbelievably sore by by 10a every day.

</comment><comment><USER21> It looks like the keyboard and mouse shown are made by Apple.

</comment><comment><USER7> "The Attack of the Giant iPads"

Or Surfaces...

</comment><comment><USER22> can anyone say, gorilla arm?

</comment><comment><USER23> Either the Fox staff does not know how to use these or they were captured using it not exactly the way it was intended. From what I know these are not supposed to be used as tablets like the guys in the article are doing. These are huddle around whiteboards. Something you can use in a meeting room. Their use in media is interesting and the use of these in a broadcast is just a minor use case for these amazing devices.

</comment><comment><USER24> So a shit fascist news service is using a shit fascist operating system.

Bring on the haters.

<comment><USER11> It's less fascist than OSX.

<comment><USER24> At least OSX is Unix-based and actually makes some sense and can do useful things

<comment><USER25> You'll fit in well here at HN.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lisp success story in Hungarian government - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/9c2f0dfc46befcf4/25257d226e0ac055#25257d226e0ac055 <comment><USER2> That's quite a lot of hardware for that kind of 7000 to 10000 logins per day. I'm guessing it's there because they're expecting growth not because it's needed to handle the current load. Other than that this is great news.

</comment><comment><USER3> deploying a working system is a "success story" worthy of being written up ? I have a hundred or so "success stories" to tell. :-P

<comment><USER4> In Hungary using Lisp?</comment></comment>


Why are so many new and expectant mothers dying in the US? - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1108193/whats-killing-americas-new-mothers/ <comment><USER2> To add a focal point to the context this article provides - the keyword in this article is "cesarean." We presume in the US health system it is normative. It is surgery. The other countries listed all have strong midwifery communities with significant hospital privileged. One of the ways midwives help reduce mortality rates is enable even births with complications to be delivered without surgery. If you have a baby on the way, consider a visit to a midwife. If nothing else, you'll gain access to knowledge, experience and training doctors do not typically receive in the US.

<comment><USER3> depends on the complication, but sometimes for the health of the baby and mom csection is absolutely necessary

<comment><USER4> You don't see more than 10%-15% of live births in a large population requiring cesarean for medical reasons. In the US the rate is over 34% of live births via cesarean.

<comment><USER5> The statistic is useless without reference to mothers' health and weight. Heavier moms are at higher risk for C sections, and the U.S. rate of obesity is much higher than in Europe.

<comment><USER6> In the US, breech babies (4%) are automatic C-sections almost everywhere regardless of maternal condition. This is not true elsewhere. There are also a fair number of purely elective (mother-chosen) C-sections in the US. Obesity is a factor but it does not account for US C-section rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More quantitatively rigorous analysis: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856058](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856058).

> Considering the comparable sample reported in Panel A of Table 2, one-year > infant mortality in the North East is 3.16 deaths per 1000 live births, > whereas in the East South Central region (Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and > Texas) this figure is 6.30 per 1000. Both the North East and the Pacific > divisions have overall infant mortality rates within the distribution of the > European countries considered. If the North East were a country, it would be > similar to Austria.

> Consistent with this assertion, Almond et al. (2010) analyze the mortality > consequences of incremental increases in medical expenditures for at-risk > infants (including NICU admission as well as other expenditures), and find > that the mortality benefits of additional medical care are concentrated in > the first 28 days of life. Our results suggest that if anything _the US has > a mortality advantage during the neonatal period_.

> Instead, the facts documented here suggest that, in general, policy > attention should focus on either preventing preterm births or on reducing > postneonatal mortality.

> Notably, in light of our income results, these policies do not focus on > alleviating resource constraints per se but rather on providing information > and support targeted to mothers and infants.

<comment><USER6> The US is soooo good at the medical save for babies! Thank you for the cite, rayiner, as it illuminates something done relatively well here.

The Finnish baby box system has received a lot of press in the US. Americans think, oh, safe sleep, it'll reduce SIDS/SUID. While that may be true, the whole scam in Finland (since 1949) was that you only got a box if you went to your new free prenatal appointments! Can you imagine the US saying, hey, we'll give all moms & babies cute free stuff if you take advantage of prenatal care! The current situation is rather different.

<comment><USER6> I have to say I'm a little surprised at the downvotes. I said much snarkier things elsewhere. US good at medical intervention for neonatal mortality, Finland good at providing consistent prenatal care -- what's the offensive or untrue part?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The US' health care statistics generally now put it at "second world status". For example, it's infant mortality put on par with Russia, Eastern Europe, parts of the Mid East and pacific islands [1],

At the same, we spend the largest percentage of our GDP on health care of any nation.

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

<comment><USER8> From the wiki itself:

Note that due to differences in reporting, these numbers may not be comparable across countries; while the WHO recommendation is that all children who show signs of life should be recorded as live births, in many countries this standard is not followed, artificially lowering their infant mortality rates relative to countries which follow those standards.

-So, how does the US record live births? Does the US count a 22 week old premature birth as a live birth? Does the EU? If it is different, I wonder if it would account for a lot of the difference.

<comment><USER7> While any given statistic is rather uncertain, a read of the _long_ parent article gives a taste of how the US has essentially abandoned a larger public health approach to the various health problem it faces and those other countries which have instead kept this approach, of dealing with new health threats as they appear, have managed to lower maternal deaths (again for example) while the US has seen an increase in maternal deaths (and so forth).

<comment><USER9> > a read of the _long_ parent article

Sloppy reporting and mixing/matching disparate statistics in an incoherent way isn't improved by length. In fact I'd argue it gets worse and the conclusion can be trusted even less.

<comment><USER10> I agree TFA seemed to do this throughout, and it made me question the narrative significantly more than I might have otherwise.

For example, why are Black women experiencing pregnancy-related mortality 4x higher than Hispanic?

 _Lu believes that pregnant black women face the stress of a lifetime of exposure to racism, exacerbated by the experience of nine months of pregnancy._

 _Research backs him up. Institutional racism has been linked to high-blood pressure; black women's bodies pay the consequences of "unique stressors around racism, sexism, violence of any kind, or economic burden," says Fleda Mask Jackson, a professor of public health who led a 2001 study on why African-American women, regardless of their socio-economic background, are more likely to have premature babies. She found that the mother's internalized stress is likely to lead to poor birth outcomes for the baby, and believes it's not unreasonable to infer that those stressors have consequences for the mothers too._

This is entirely uncompelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone have a summary?

<comment><USER12> Some bullet points:

\- US health care is shit overall (people are less healthy as a baseline)

\- Sexism in various ways: "Whether they are pregnant or not, women are second-class citizens when it comes to health care" \- vs. men, and vs. their fetuses or babies when pregnant; maternal care not being prioritized in health care

\- Excessively invasive/interventionist healthcare practices

\- "With its uniquely fragmented health system, straddling states and federal government in a complex web of public and private, for-profit and nonprofit, it is nearly impossible to effectively tackle complex issues."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lack of universal healthcare. Next question.</comment>


AWS Lambda: Run Java Code in Response to Events - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-lambda-update-run-java-code-in-response-to-events/?sc_campaign=launch&sc_category=lambda2&sc_channel=SM&sc_content=java&sc_detail=std&sc_medium=aws&sc_publisher=tw_go&adbsc=social_launches_20150615_47567446&adbid=610521356594089984&adbpl=tw&adbpr=66780587 <comment><USER2> Has anyone used IronWorker in production? It seems to be more flexible than AWS Lambda. [http://blog.iron.io/2015/01/aws-lambda-vs- ironworker.html](http://blog.iron.io/2015/01/aws-lambda-vs-ironworker.html)

<comment><USER3> Here are a few updated differences. disclosure I work for Iron.io

Lambda: node, java

IronWorker: node, ruby, python, php, java, binaries, .NET, go (binaries), and more (specific language runtime versions available)

Lambda: allows 500mb of local disk space to persist your task

IronWorker: 10 gb of local disk space available

Lambda: only current version of code

IronWorker: versions all uploads and allows you to revert

Lambda: no built in scheduler

IronWorker: a flexible scheduler out of the box to run tasks

Lambda: maximum execution time 60 seconds

IronWorker:maximum execution time 1 hour (customizable up to 24 hours for dedicated users)

Lambda: 100 maximum concurrent request. (The maximum can be higher, can someone point me to the absolute maximum if it exist?)

IronWorker: concurrency maximum can go much higher as needed (250 for a production plan). You can also limit concurrency per IronWorker, aka set a worker to only run up to 50 concurrent tasks. (useful if you have bottlenecks)

Lambda: 90 inactive code retention period

IronWorker: no limit to inactive code retention period

Lambda: available on aws

IronWorker: choose your cloud provider: AWS, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure, private clouds, and more.

We've also enabled users to pause the execution of their task queue incase they need to patch or revise their worker code.

supporting your own docker images

[http://blog.iron.io/2015/06/no-lock-in-thanks-to- docker.html](http://blog.iron.io/2015/06/no-lock-in-thanks-to-docker.html)

[http://blog.iron.io/2015/05/full-docker-support-for- ironwork...](http://blog.iron.io/2015/05/full-docker-support-for- ironworker.html)

We've been doing some very neat stuff with our local docker development workflow

[https://medium.com/@treeder/why-and-how-to-use-docker-for- de...](https://medium.com/@treeder/why-and-how-to-use-docker-for- development-a156c1de3b24)

edits* formatting

Overall we are are glad Lambda is validating workflows around eventable compute services. It's an experience we've been innovating for some time now.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the comparison. Regarding Lambda maximum concurrency, I am currently configured for a limit of 20,000 concurrent invokes so perhaps your figure of 100 is not the maximum but simply the default maximum?

<comment><USER5> Yes, default is 100: [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/limits.html](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/limits.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I couldn't see anything on timings here compared to the node version. Does it keep the code 'hot' or is there the cold start overhead? I assume it has to be the former for this to be at all viable.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a great blog for all things AWS Lambda: [https://alestic.com/](https://alestic.com/)

The author is popular in the AWS developer community, and he's a really good guy to work with.

</comment><comment><USER8> I tried out lambda to handle backend requests with a go executable. For a trivial request/response it took 100-300 ms for the first request and 3-100 ms for subsequent requests. Using better hardware tended to help with the subsequent requests but there was still a lot of variance.

This is too slow and has too much variance for my purposes, which is to respond to user events. Even if I added an optimization of having a go process which lives through multiple lambda calls, the first request latency sucks. (And I haven't verified that the optimization would work - unfortunately you can't use sockets which would make it simpler).

TL;DR: pls support go (with consistent performance)

<comment><USER9> What would be "fast" in your opinion ?

<comment><USER8> Consistency is more of an issue with me than speed. That said, I would be happy if a trivial request (prints a short line of output) to a go handler would consistently be <10ms.

<comment><USER9> I am sorry but 10ms is really too short...

You need to consider physical latency into the equation...

If you live next to a Amazon data center you can hope to achieve such result, otherwise...

<comment><USER8> I'm talking about handler duration, doesn't include network latency. If you use lambda you can look at the durations in the logs... a trivial go handler often gets ~5ms if you're using good hardware (but sometimes jumps up to ~100ms)

<comment><USER9> Okok, now it makes senses :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm pretty high on AWS Lambda right now. Setting and forgetting is so nice.

<comment><USER11> I find the idea very appealing, but it seems like it would lead to micro service hell. How are you managing the Lambdas for test and deployment?

<comment><USER12> A few options - Codeship ([https://blog.codeship.com/integrating-aws-lambda- with-codesh...](https://blog.codeship.com/integrating-aws-lambda-with- codeship/)), popular community extensions such as Kappa ([https://github.com/garnaat/kappa](https://github.com/garnaat/kappa)) Jenkins plugins ([https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/AWS+Lambda+Plugi...](https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/AWS+Lambda+Plugin)) and Grunt plugins ([https://github.com/Tim-B/grunt-aws- lambda/commits/master/pac...](https://github.com/Tim-B/grunt-aws- lambda/commits/master/package.json)) that you can use as part of your CI/CD pipelines. There was even recent blogpost about using Lambda to deploy Lambda functions :) ([https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/new-deployment- options-...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/new-deployment-options-for- aws-lambda/)). Would be great to hear what else you would like to see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great to see it move on from just JS (although I know you can run binaries, it's a little awkward).

There was a 60s execution limit in preview, anyone know if thats still around / likely to change? I've got a task to solve a the moment which is basically

"When a user puts a file on S3, hit an API for each line, store all responses in S3"

Lambda would be awesome for the low end of that, small files would generally be alright, but as the filesize grows I'd need to try and setup workflows to split the file & rejoin the results (and guess how many requests I can make in 60s) which is starting to get into a more complicated setup than I'd really want so I'd be likely to just rent a machine and setup my own queue processing (again more complicated, but more in my control). Maybe I'm actually just looking for simple grid software and I should just rent some servers.

Essentially, what I'd like to use lambda for is "Run this code. It's not big or heavy, or requires much power, but run it and stop charging me when it finishes". I don't want to request machines, setup disks, compare multiple reserved costs, orchestrate them starting & stopping or handle updating them, and I don't want to worry about starting 100 5s jobs and that costing me 100 hours. I'm aware that's rather "moon on a stick", but I do feel like a lot of this is _almost there_.

I'm missing a big hole in my toolbox since PiCloud shut down. Millisecond pricing, tasks, queues, workflows, custom environments. Anyone here an old picloud user? What have you moved to?

GCE is interesting, with fast boot times and a 10 minute min, 1 minute increment pricing model. Ironworker is interesting, but the potential delay for a standard job (15 min) along with the cost vs computing time it's hard to justify for my tasks over just renting a machine from OVH ($50/mo would pay for a decent 32G machine, so I could run a lot more than the 25/500 limit for the smallest tier) and the 1 hour limits on the smaller plans cause the same issues as with the 60s limits on lambda.

I'm not knocking these services, they're all really impressive, just unfortunately have various restrictions / limitations that limit their application to the problems I currently have. If I had slightly different problems, I'd already be using one of these options. If people are using other services, I'd love to hear what you're using!

Edit - offtopic, but every post I've made recently has gone through twice. Chrome 43.0.2357.124 on a mac here. Anyone else having the same problem?

<comment><USER14> Seems like it would be good to take the file, then dump each line onto a queue, then have lambda run for each thing on that queue. It should parallelize really nicely.

<comment><USER13> That does sound like quite a good approach, there are a few issues though:

1\. Some vague throttling is useful, but I can only do this on an account level with Lambda rather than per function. Trying to call the API in bursts of 10000 requests may be problematic, which would limit our use of lambda for other tasks (for which we may be happy running that many in parallel). The default limit of 100 would probably serve well enough though.

2\. I've now got to add splitting and recombining code on each end, with concerns around failed jobs being silently missed from the final output file. Although that extra work may leave me with a better approach to handling some failed jobs out of a large file. Hmm.

Part of the issue is that without the execution limit, this is an amazingly simple script. I've got a 10-20 line python script which does the actual processing of a file (read, hit api, store with a pool of N concurrent requests). Lambda is impressive because it adds only a small level of complexity to a problem and gives you a lot in return, just because my use- case is _so simple_ that small amount of complexity adds up to relatively quite a lot.

Currently the setup doesn't hit the API, it just creates a dedicated instance to process a batch of data locally, but I'm hoping to simplify things to send everything through the API and just scale & load balance separately. Having code to automatically turn on & be responsible for turning off machines makes me a bit nervous :) I've already missed that I'd deleted the shutdown command in a script and left a box running for a day while developing.

Thanks for the suggestion though, I'll try and work through it in more detail today, see if I can see a clean way of dealing with the recombination. I think that's the side that I'm less clear on at the moment.

<comment><USER9> The main problem that I see in implementing what you are asking is related to the bandwith cost.

I still haven't figure out how to measure how much bandwith a trivial application is using, so my price is only based on time.

If I let you using the service for as long as you like you either need to pay A LOT or I don't allow you to use the network connection...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Scala support for Lambda:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724933)

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/writing-aws-lambda- func...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/writing-aws-lambda-functions-in- scala/)

</comment><comment><USER16> One of the larger painpoints with running Hadoop/Spark jobs on Elastic MapReduce is around classpath conflicts, so it would be great to get a page similar to [1], showing what's available on the Java classpath for AWS Lambda functions.

[1] [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticMapReduce/latest/Developer...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticMapReduce/latest/DeveloperGuide/ami- versions-supported.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Stripe devs -- if you are listening-- an example of using web hooks with AWS Lambda would be very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER18> It'd be pretty neat if Lamba just let you run a Docker container.

</comment><comment><USER9> What HN dislike about AWS Lambda ?

<comment><USER19> Lack of support for proper sockets is a real bummer.

If binaries can't be used or talk to the app the applications are quite limited.

<comment><USER9> Can you elaborate ?

You want socket just to bring down latency ?

You want different client to connect to the same environment so that you can keep a local state of your application ? I am thinking about a videogame or a collaborative office tool.

You simply want to send binary data to a function ?

<comment><USER19> Lambda is great for doing lots of tasks in bulk. Say I have a binary that is able to process data quickly.

On a lambda request nodejs instructs a binary on what to do using a socket. Meaning it binds to a local port and interacts with the binary getting and receiving instructions until the task is complete. In all sub 1 second.

Lambda doesn't allow sockets so its uses are very limited. Binaries also cut down the time it takes to do a task and allow a greater variety of things to be done.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't be simple to ask Lambda to allow binary execution ?

Then you could just pass the input as base64, or whatever other encoding system you please...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> But wait... didn't the "What Is Code?" thing say that Java is just for white- collar IT workers? If you've got Node.js, why would you ever need Java?

Yes, I'm being sarcastic.</comment>


Ask HN: Best CLI time-tracking software? - <AUTHOR> I'm about to start some freelance work, and I'm looking for a CLI time-tracking program.  It doesn't need to be hugely sophisticated, but ideally would have the following features:

    - Relatively easy to install on Mac OS X;
    - Well-documented;
    - Store its data in plain-text;
    - Produce output that lists date, with start and finish times and
      (even better if it can total up the time and then multiply total
       by my hourly rate);
    - Still be under active development/maintenance.
 <comment><USER2> I embarked on this same search a few months ago. Unfortunately, I never found something that met all of my requirements. I ended up going with Harvest ([http://www.getharvest.com/](http://www.getharvest.com/)). Harvest works well, until you want to do something that they don't specifically account for, or if you want complete control over your data. It does integrate invoice creation nicely, which saves me some time.

If you find anything that matches your requirements, please let me know. I've been thinking of writing my own.

<comment><USER3> There's a Rubygem for Harvest that provides a nice CLI interface for harvest.

gem install hcl

I haven't used it in a few years, so I don't know how well it works in Ruby 1.9.x / Ruby 2.0, but it _was_ pretty nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I made my own using a simple SQLite database with lua and Alfred. It works very well I just type start what ever to start a task and finish to stop.

I've spent pretty much a full day trying to find a suitable solution and besides the two listed there isn't much.

There is a stackoverflow thread with more suggestions [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/398344/best- commandline-t...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/398344/best-commandline- time-tracking-application)

</comment><comment><USER5> I didn't end up trying it, but I thought this looked good (and appears to be recently maintained):

[https://github.com/samg/timetrap/](https://github.com/samg/timetrap/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Have a look at arbtt. [http://darcs.nomeata.de/arbtt/doc/users_guide/](http://darcs.nomeata.de/arbtt/doc/users_guide/)</comment>