Django 1.8 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/apr/01/release-18-final/ <comment><USER2> Some great things in this release:

\- official Jinja2 support, and a generic template interface

\- native postgres fields

\- uuid field

and it is an LTS. Time to get upgrading.

<comment><USER3> >uuid field

This one is good.

I kind of wish it were default for primary keys, since the number of times I got burned by having databases I couldn't easily merge (which UUIDs help a lot with) way exceeds the number of times I had performance/memory issues caused by actually using UUIDs.

<comment><USER4> Databases aren't my field, but I would expect this to hurt performance by decreasing locality of keys.

This, of course, assumes that temporally-adjacent additions are related, but this seems like a common case for large data sets since they often arise from a series of measurements or transactions.

I created this account to make this reply because I imagine that someone here is expert enough to set me straight if I'm mistaken.

<comment><USER5> Postgres at least will store rows roughly in insert order. So whether you're using integers or UUIDs for primary keys won't affect on-disk layout.

When scanning the index, the database will be traversing it in btree order, anyway, so as long as the values are comparable, ints or UUIDs shouldn't matter much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm especially excited about contrib.postgres[1].

HStoreField is going to be a significant improvement over the JSONFields we have been using...

[1] [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/ref/contrib/postgres/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/ref/contrib/postgres/)

<comment><USER7> It humors and saddens me that Django is a web framework with an ORM bolted on. SQLAlchemy has had a postgres driver that supports HSTORE and JSON/JSONB for ages.

<comment><USER8> Likewise, Django has had third-party hstore and jsonb fields for ages, but I take your point. SQLAlchemy is beautiful.

The Django ORM has taken great strides lately. Another big improvement in 1.8 is the expansion of database expressions – you can now combine arbitrary database functions and columns as you can in SQLAlchemy. This is a big step towards a cleaner, logically consistent API, and makes extensibility (like that offered in the new contrib.postgres) much easier.

Django's ORM also does things that SQLAlchemy's doesn't. Even at its highest level SQLAlchemy requires explicit joins AFAIK.

That said the Django team is aware of SQLAlchemy's arguable superiority and there have been numerous proposals to integrate it somehow. The most likely plan would be to use SQLAlchemy core to replace the low-level SQL generation. That way you could take a Django queryset and get its SQLAlchemy representation, then continue building from there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really like that they added a way to store time intervals as python timedelta objects. Previously i think the best approach was to store a number of seconds as an integer and then calculate the number of minutes, hours etc.. yourself.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great work, Django team!

I recently switched a project back to Django after some time playing with Rails.

One of the biggest attractions of Rails is the asset pipeline, but splitting the project and building the front-end with Ember-CLI takes away that advantage, leaving Django far ahead (IMO) with its cleaner ORM, less magical module importing, and Python's indented syntax.

<comment><USER11> I'd love to hear about your experiences with building APIs for single-page- apps between Rails and Django. Were you using rails-api or just straight-up Rails? Is there an equivalent API-focused "flavor" of Django, or if not, to what extent did you find it easy to choose not to use server-rendering functionality? I've used Django for more standard apps, and Rails for both, but I'm curious about the pros and cons of using Django for this sort of thing, because I have no experience with it.

<comment><USER12> Django REST Framework is the the most popular way to build APIs with Django. Lot of neat features out of the box such as throttling and permissions make it easy to build API endpoints.

[http://www.django-rest-framework.org/](http://www.django-rest-framework.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really wish there was something as mature as Django in Go (A little bit lightweight maybe)

<comment><USER14> Build it :)

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't a new framework be the opposite of the 'mature' framework s/he wishes existed? :)

<comment><USER16> On the other hand, Django was a new framework, once. If you want to create a web framework for Go that is equivalent to Django, you have to start _somewhere_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks to the Django team for a incredibly well-run and well-documented OS project!

</comment><comment><USER18> Damn Django is pretty hard at sunsetting old versions. If they are going to release a new one in October and only supply security upgrades to things that are two versions behind, does that means you have to upgrade your system in less than a year?

<comment><USER19> Django has long term releases if you wish to upgrade less often.

The last LTR was Django 1.4 which will be supported until October 2015. The new LTR is Django 1.8 which will be supported until at least April 2018.

<comment><USER20> And Django 1.4 was released on the 23rd of March 2012, so if you stick with the LTS releases you very rarely have to upgrade. I have to say though, I wouldn't want to upgrade a 1.4 app to 1.8 - lots of big changes have happened between those two releases.

<comment><USER21> The reason for the LTS versions is in large part for enterprises that are stuck on older versions of Python because of RedHat support contracts and the like.

Django can move ahead and drop support for (honestly very outdated) Python versions like 2.5 and 2.6 so that newer Django releases can take advantage of additional features and nicer syntax in newer Python versions.

And companies stuck on python 2.6 because that's what's bundled in whatever version of RHEL can still get security patches to Django.

It's unreasonable to expect the (volunteer) django maintainers to indefinitely support every version of python or every version of Django.

And if you have no choice of upgrading to Django 1.5 yet, I'm sure you'd rather continue to get security patches until you can upgrade to 1.8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What is Django? What does it do?

<comment><USER23> It's a MVC (Model-View-Controller) web framework made in Python that works with a number of different kinds of databases.

Check out the models overview to get a feel for how powerful and simple it can be to use: [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/topics/db/models/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/topics/db/models/)

<comment><USER24> Actually a MTV framework [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/faq/general/#django- ap...](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/faq/general/#django-appears-to- be-a-mvc-framework-but-you-call-the-controller-the-view-and-the-view-the- template-how-come-you-don-t-use-the-standard-names)

<comment><USER25> Strictly speaking it's a MTV framework (like all traditional web frameworks really).

But half the time people use it as a MVC framework where URL's act as the final link back to the model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can't wait to update [https://sublevel.net](https://sublevel.net) to this version!</comment>


FreedomBox - <AUTHOR> https://freedombox.org/ <comment><USER2> The copy and design of the landing page led me to believe that FreedomBox is an actual box that has all that great software preloaded and ready to go. Which made the unlabeled download button jarring. The text should be changed to something like:

FreedomBox is designed to [run on/create] your own inexpensive server at home. It [includes/is built with] free software and offers an increasing number of services ranging from a calendar or jabber server to a wiki or VPN.

<comment><USER3> There was indeed, as I understand it, a plan to sell all set up hardware, ready to go. The original stuff got delayed when the main developer had his house burn down in a forest fire or something. But the software is usable.

Apparently, they were selling some all-set-to-go boxes at LibrePlanet…

<comment><USER4> >Apparently, they were selling some all-set-to-go boxes at LibrePlanet…

They weren't as far as I know. They had a one-off prototype running at their booth, but that model never made it to production.

<comment><USER3> I don't mean some custom thing, it was an existing off-the-shelf product with FreedomBox preconfigured… I mean, I heard this from someone who went to LibrePlanet and came home with a FreedomBox they specifically got there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even if these things were dead simple, I cannot see any of my non-technical friends using products like these. It is simply prohibitively complicated compared to dropbox - that "just works". I even recall a comment on here when Dropbox launched saying something like "why not configure an FTP server to do this". This is that FTP server.

Also, personally, I would never host any content on-prem at my home. It is far too easy for my internet to go down, and I'd rather my personal website be under somebody else's control (say, an S3 bucket) than get physical hardware to the server hosting the bits.

<comment><USER6> I am technical and I struggle to find a use for my home server. The most common uses I always find are:

\- Media server: I primarily use streaming services or physical media

\- File sharing: I rarely ever share files between computers, and if I need to, I just scp them on my home network.

\- Web hosting: box is too small/old to reliably do this, plus I have cloud hosting already

I do use it for private SVN and have plans to set up a VPN server, but other than that, it feels like unless I cast off every existing service I have, it wouldn't be worth it.

Although, casting off every existing service is enticing in an idealistic sort of way...

<comment><USER7> I think the key would be to embed it to some existing appliance; like a router, game console, or other "always-on" and connected device.

I don't see the home server being the prime selling point. Everyone needs a router, so if you created a router that was dead simple to configure and use, had some cool extra features, integrated well with your home gadgets ("Alexa, turn off the WiFi", "Alexa, setup a guest wifi network for the next 8 hours") and on top of this acted like a home server, people would buy it.

At least from a consumer product perspective.

<comment><USER8> The router I got from my ISP already has quite some stuff built in. For example, I can enable DynDNS, plug in a drive via USB providing a SMB network drive, and enable a secondary guest WiFi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From [https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Features](https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Features):

With FreedomBox, you can:

        Access your FreedomBox from the public Internet (Pagekite, Tor, Dynamic DNS)

        Connect securely to your FreedomBox (OpenVPN)

        Chat with friends (?XMPP, Quassel, Matrix)

        Host a conference call (Mumble, repro)

        Publish a blog (Ikiwiki)

        Host a personal or community wiki (MediaWiki)

        Block ads while browsing the web (Privoxy)

        Check your email (Roundcube)

        Transfer large files (Deluge, Transmission)

        Read news (Tiny Tiny RSS)

        Sync your calendar and contacts (Radicale)

        Stay connected to IRC chat (Quassel)

        Host a multiplayer block sandbox (Minetest)

        Collaboratively edit a text document (infinoted)

        Keep your files synchronized to your FreedomBox (Syncthing)

        Circumvent censorship using a socks5 proxy (Shadowsocks)

System and Configuration

        Configure system name and interface language (Configure)

        Obtain a certificate for your domain (Let's Encrypt)

        Add users and set access privileges (Users and Groups)

        Use a single login for Plinth, XMPP, Ikiwiki and SSH

        Manage network connections over Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or PPPoE (Networks)

        Upgrade software packages automatically (Software Upgrades)

        Run diagnostic tests (Diagnostics)

        View which services are allowed through the firewall (Firewall)

        Configure time zone and network time service (Date and Time)

        Configure service discovery (Service Discovery)

        View disk information or expand a partition (Disks)

        Create and restore filesystem snapshots (Snapshots)

        Provide DNS service for your local network (bind)

        Do system administration from a web interface (Cockpit)

</comment><comment><USER10> For those wondering, the blue box looks at the top [1] like a SolidRun Cubox-i [2], based on the Freescale i.MX 6 SoC, which has pretty good Linux support.

[1] [https://freedombox.org/images/boxfoto.jpg](https://freedombox.org/images/boxfoto.jpg)

[2] [https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-family/cubox-i/](https://www.solid- run.com/nxp-family/cubox-i/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Yay, another distro. /s

Seriously though, software isn't the issue here, hardware is. Anybody with the skills can slap Linux on an old computer and turn it into a server. It's packaging it up into something you can sell to the non-technical that's the real win.

I wish free software advocates would take more lessons from Jobs instead of blindly idealizing Woz.

<comment><USER12> FreemdomBox is a Debian package. It isn't another distro.

They are focusing on exactly what you are saying, putting together a UI that non-technicals can use.

<comment><USER13> I don't think you understood the parent's core point. The "masses" aren't going to find or buy an old server and install Debian and FreedomBox on it, and then set it up to run headless in a corner of their house. That's not in the area of technical expertise of most people. They _might_ , however, buy a pre-built, pre-installed appliance that just needs to be plugged in and have a web browser pointed at it to get started.

<comment><USER14> Philosophically speaking, the more and more that products are sold with one purpose on a closed platform, the more and more of these products that are going to end up in the junk yards when they can't be extended or repurposed beyond what the manufacturer wanted (or ever thought) possible.

> They might, however, buy a pre-built, pre-installed appliance that just > needs to be plugged in and have a web browser pointed at it to get started.

Don't forget about setting up the freaking wi-fi network. Apple, Google make it reasonably seamless to setup their devices from an app, say. Most third- party devices aren't as easy to setup. I have to manually enter my wi-fi password in my Tivo, eg.

<comment><USER13> > _Philosophically speaking, the more and more that products are sold with one > purpose on a closed platform, the more and more of these products that are > going to end up in the junk yards when they can 't be extended or repurposed > beyond what the manufacturer wanted (or ever thought) possible._

This doesn't _have_ to be the case, though. There's nothing stopping FreedomBox from selling a pre-made hardware solution that just has the software loaded on it that anyone can load onto a vanilla server of their choosing. (And it seems they actually do this, though it's not obvious from their website.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As is well known, few people will take the trouble to deploy this at home, especially non-technical users. Why not provide one-click (or two- or three- click) deployment to hosting, either a VPS or cloud like Amazon? Data could be encrypted end-to-end so that the hosting provider can't access it, at least in some cases (server-side searches become tricky). 'Create our own private Instagram, iTunes, and more for $x/month, with just a few clicks!'

I know that sacrifices some end-user control philosophically, but in reality it would greatly increase it for those in the great majority who currently have none.

<comment> hex-m Both use-cases (VPS and homeserver) are valid. As FreedomBox is just a bunch of Debian packages it should be easy to offer it as a base image (or 'apt install freedombox' it yourself).

The similar project YUNOhost advertises both scenarios. [https://yunohost.org/#/install](https://yunohost.org/#/install)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10783305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10783305) (FreedomBox 0.7 released | Dec 23, 2015 | 36 comments)

I didn't find a changelog, but here's a list of features: [https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Features](https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Features)

<comment><USER17> Changelog: [https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/ReleaseNotes](https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/ReleaseNotes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I keep an eye on the project, though I haven't tried setting one up so far. I have to say it's a little sad to see that the Contribute link in the site footer throws a 403 (I'd report that to them, but so does the Contact link...)

<comment> Flip-per Both links work for me; They go to debian wiki pages (which could be confusing), is that what you mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was hoping the bluebox on the main page was something you could buy and plug in your wall and have it running the software. Kinda like an appliance.

<comment><USER20> It is. [https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware/Cubietruck](https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware/Cubietruck)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here are two potential features Eben Moglen mentioned[1] back in 2010:

* it should know how to go and collect your stuff out of all the social networking places where you've got it

* it should know how to send an encrypted backup of everything to your friends' servers (in the video you can hear two developers making "mmm" noises at that feature)

Eight years later, does Freedombox have either of those two features?

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOEMv0S8AcA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOEMv0S8AcA)

</comment><comment><USER22> I love this idea, but my two "deal breaker" worries are: (a) data backup, and (b) security. I hate that this is the case, but when comparing a "box-at-home" vs. a "corporate-run service", the corporate-run service is less likely to lose my data and more likely to apply security patches and updates ASAP. Even with 0days and all of the "hackers stole millions of users' data" posts, think the point remains strong; although, I admit that these losses shift the value proposition towards box-at-home.

<comment><USER23> re: (b) Security

Security through delegation vs security through obscurity imo here, follow simple things like use non-standard ports and your changes of getting hacked are likely shockingly low even if your behind on patches.

<comment><USER24> nmap, a standard pen tool, already sees through port mapping and other convenient obscurity tricks, there's just nothing like actually keeping your system up to date

<comment><USER25> I don't disagree with regards to "nothing like actually keeping your system up to date", but in terms of defense-in-depth, non-standard ports are _not_ a bad idea. IIRC, people who have monitored the volume of attempts to connect on a open standard port and a nonstandard port are different by orders of magnitude. It won't help you much in stopping a dedicated human attacker, but it'll probably drastically reduce the number of automated attempts to attack your network device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Google or Amazon should offer something like this as a paid-for service on AWS or Google Cloud. That way I wouldn't have to worry about my network connection at home going down.

What a suitable privacy agreement this could work online--and I'd be okay trusting a contractual agreement to keep my data safe.

<comment><USER27> This is contrary to their corporate goals so wouldn't make sense for them...but _you_ could offer it as a paid service hosted on S3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm kind of curious what the little blue system on the front page is. It looks very similar to a CuBox (speaking of; I'm kind of sad there are no iMX6 images), but with slightly different port placement.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am a happy Synology user. Admin time in minimal. Who has time for that?

</comment><comment><USER30> is there an alternative to freedombox? looking to buy a portable vpn server which starts as soon as you connect to the router...

</comment><comment><USER31> Dead butterfly design really ties the look together.

<comment><USER3> It's not supposed to be a mounted butterfly, it's some sort of overlaid graphic of the idea of a computer box with butterfly wings.

<comment><USER32> I think the intended reference is [http://emilydamstra.com/news/please-enough- dead-butterflies/](http://emilydamstra.com/news/please-enough-dead- butterflies/) (because of the wing positioning).

<comment><USER3> THANK YOU, that was enlightening.

But speaking of peeves: that article of plain-text with static images doesn't render without JavaScript damnit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Was this modeled after Belson's Box from SV? lol jk</comment>


Show HN: I made a Hacker News for podcasts - <AUTHOR> https://podcastrank.co/ <comment><USER2> I'm half-joking, but I could use a "not just two guys joking around" tag. There's so many podcasts out there where I check them out because the topic sounds interesting but most of the episode time is given to 'two guys joking around'.

<comment><USER3> While we're at it, some kind of "Does not interrupt the speaker" tag would be great. It absolutely drives me nuts, listening to stuff like This American Life or Radio Lab, where the person being interviewed never gets more than half a sentence out before the narrator overdubs themselves correcting or summarizing what the speaker is trying to say.

I find it incredibly obnoxious. You brought this person on to tell a story: let them tell their story, goddammit!

<comment><USER4> I feel the opposite. With those two shows the primary focus is telling a story. They aren't really conventional interview shows. It seems to me like a lot of the time, a narrator dubbing over the interviewee can help maintain the pace and focus of the show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe change "0 comments" to something like "Start a discussion" when there are no comments. Makes it seem like a graveyard when they're all empty.

<comment><USER6> I really like this. How does one go about learning more about improvements like these?

<comment><USER7> Try thinking a long the lines of "get the ball rolling", when designing interfaces where some regions must start from a blank slate, e.g. use placeholders, prompts, etc.

<comment><USER8> In my experience even seasoned designers do a poor job of this. They show you comps of with the perfect set up -- everything populated, beautiful photos uploaded by the user that are perfectly square, 100 comments on very post (or whatever the analog is for your app).

I've gotten a lot more insistent that designers show me "empty" designs where the user has just signed up and various corner cases like a photo that is really tall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is neat idea, killer feature would be RSS for all sections, so we can subscribe to it in podcast app. Wow. Meta podcast, user aggregated.

<comment><USER10> An RSS feed would be killer indeed.

Something like this maybe: anytime an entry pass a certain threshold of votes for the first time, add it to the feed. Each user can define the threshold in his account and get the feed from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> First impression (Macbook Air 11"): 2/3 of the page are header and filters, I can view only 2 posts at first glance. That's pretty different from the functional design of HN.

<comment><USER12> Yep that stood out to me too [http://postimg.org/image/kho7l7pyl/](http://postimg.org/image/kho7l7pyl/)

<comment><USER11> Oh, when did you take that screenshot? That looks more compact than here: [http://postimg.org/image/mcg0ql7ij/](http://postimg.org/image/mcg0ql7ij/)

<comment><USER12> Sorry, I should have made clear. That was my 1 minute of CSS tweaks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love that it's by episode and not the entire show.

While I don't know that I'd be a regular user or start discussions (I usually listen to episodes weeks after they come out), it's a cool tool for episode discovery.

</comment><comment><USER14> I could really use something like this. It's a recurring problem I have: finding interesting podcast material to listen to while working out.

Podcast suggestions should remain on the front page longer than articles do in HN though. Since listening to a podcast is way more time consuming than reading an article.

Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree! that's why I included the other filters as well. A good podcast is still valuable a long time after creation/recording, unlike a news article..

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You should scrape Reddit eg [https://www.reddit.com/r/podcasts/comments/4e9idv/weekly_pod...](https://www.reddit.com/r/podcasts/comments/4e9idv/weekly_podcast_post_submit_your_links_here/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Very cool idea. I often struggle to think of a podcast when I really need one.

One of the challenges here is that, apparently, podcasts don't have very descriptive names. Maybe it's because HN has the same regular topics floating through, but I feel like I get a lot more of a preview from titles on HN than I do by things like...

"The Archers"

"Hello Internet #60: The Beautiful Game"

"Harmontown"

I suppose there's an expectation that podcasts don't need explanatory names because, well, they're not always about a specific thing and because they're expecting regular listeners to tune in. Perhaps find a way to automatically include the description of the podcast itself and/or encourage users to do the same manually?

<comment><USER17> I used to have this problem. It's solved 100% with a good podcasting app. You spend the time now and then to look for podcasts (not episodes) that might interest you. When you actually want to listen, they're already downloaded to your phone and ready to be browsed and listened to.

<comment><USER18> What podcasting app do you use?

<comment><USER19> I use Overcast and it works really great for this. Right now I have a bunch of episodes queued up but I still can see the latest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Has anyone else tuned in to Chris Gethard? His podcast "Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People" is great. It's like an evolution of "This American Life". Unedited, one hour discussions with random people, and Chris is a _really_ good interviewer of random people. My favorite is his interview with " Ron Paul's baby" [1]. If you can get to the part where he starts talking about a carnival baby (15 or 30 mins in), it is hilarious from there forward.

[1] [http://www.earwolf.com/episode/ron-pauls- baby/](http://www.earwolf.com/episode/ron-pauls-baby/)

<comment><USER21> That's a new favorite of mine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Awesome job.

It seems you're missing a trick by not adding a player directly on your site.

No good reason to leave your site and listen to the podcast that is discovered.

Also, you could have a url that would auto play the currently highest rated podcast:

[https://podcastrank.co/best](https://podcastrank.co/best)

And also a radio version that cycled through the front page from top to bottom:

[https://podcastrank.co/radio](https://podcastrank.co/radio)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for your suggestions! by adding the player you mean embedding if possible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is awesome! I'm an avid listener of podcasts, because I can learn stuff, listen to great people and interviews, broaden my ideas... All during what would otherwise be downtime (walking the dog, grocery shopping, driving, etc.)

There are some podcasts which I consider vital, but for most I don't care about the podcast itself but for the content of a given episode.

This app is awesome because it detaches content from podcast and helps discover cool episodes.

Wish you lots of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Getting 500 errors on podcast comment/show pages. I get the idea though, I'm just not sure this is the best way to discover podcasts. To checkout a podcast takes quite a bit more time relative to a news article / blog post.

I think that this has the same issues as [https://www.producthunt.com/podcasts](https://www.producthunt.com/podcasts), for me at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> fixing some stuff, thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How did you implement scoring system? Is it simple: select max(score) from casts where submit_time > NOW - 7days; or something more sophisticated [https://medium.com/hacking-and-gonzo/how-hacker-news- ranking...](https://medium.com/hacking-and-gonzo/how-hacker-news-ranking- algorithm-works-1d9b0cf2c08d) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> it's indeed ordered by score, nothing fancy

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like this idea, but there's no interactivity (AFAICT) with my podcast app. I use the Pocket Casts app exclusively for all my podcast listening. I'd love if clicking one of these links could open the podcast in the app for me. I have no interest in browsing some podcaster's blog or listening through my browser.

Obviously I could look up specific episodes in my app after seeing it on your site, but that's annoying enough that I don't think I would keep it up.

An alternative idea is to build an app from this idea. I know that's a lot of work, but I might pay for that if it is a really good podcasting app. Look to Pocket Casts for inspiration.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback, I'll have a look into integration with other services

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been looking for something like this--podcast discovery is severely lacking right now(or I don't know where to look!). Excited to try this out-- thanks!

I'll be sure to get to send you some feedback once I've used it for a while. :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Awesome, though I'd love to see a line or two under the title with the show notes (if they have them embedded). For those not already knowing about the hilarious podcast, The title is precious little to go on.

</comment><comment><USER28> Immediately discovered at least a half dozen 'casts I was unaware of and will now listen to. Thank you!

Weirdly fascinating to see BBC Radio 4's long running agricultural soap 'The Archers' on the list.

</comment><comment><USER29> This looks really interesting. One thing I noticed is that you do not have a section for sports podcasts. Is that not your target demographic or just nothing was submitted in that area yet?

</comment><comment><USER30> Why is there no downvoting? Or do you feel your algorithm handles that?

There was an episode of on podcast I listen to I thought was really poor, and would have voted down. left a comment instead

<comment><AUTHOR> downvoting will be added soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Cool, I immediately registered and posted a link (The Ray Wenderlich podcast). Two suggestions though, iTunes, Google, etc. already have decently robust search around podcasts, do you have any plans to reach out to various dev communities (reddit, iOS, Rails, whatever) and getting them to come to you? And then I think the tag system is crucial, for instance tags can't be given a space and custom tags are much less likely to get lots of content then presets.

Awesome project!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm still working on the tag system but yes there could be lot's of different types of communities and podcasts. The challenge is to get the filtering and ux right!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Awesome site :) I get most of my HN info through the JSON feed. It might be something to implement in the future - I'd be delighted to add it to my script.

</comment><comment><USER33> What about adding additional tags or attributes so we can filter by length of time, date published (vs date submitted to your site), publisher (npr, radiotopia, etc), guests (i.e., i liked this guest on Marc Maron's podcast, where else can I find him?), or sub-genre (i like true crime podcasts and sometimes I get that on Criminal, sometimes I get that on This American Life)

<comment><USER34> Totally agree, length would be hugely useful so you know what you're getting into! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd buy you a beer if you could find a way to open the podcast episode directly on Podcast Addict and other apps when you click on it.

<comment><USER23> Ah, found a way! If you click on Download in the Podbay page, Podcast Addict recognises the file and allows you to open it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone have an efficient way to consume podcasts? If I want to quickly read an article I can skim certain sections and skip others etc., but there is rarely such indexing for a podcast and I would have to skip forward, listen for a lot of seconds to get context before I know if it's somewhere to skip past or not.

<comment><USER36> some podcasts have chapter marks.

They allow you to do just that. Anyway, check it out. I use the Overcast podcast client (iOS), which supports this (among others).

Some podcasts even provide full transcripts (e. g, Freakonomics).

If the podcast provides neither of these then it's not feasible to skim it efficiently, in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I like this, but I think it needs a little more emphasis on the UX of what you are going to listen to and for how long. Perhaps even embed the player under the link?

How about a play count as a measure of popularity instead of just discussions? HN works because it abstracts user behaviour to a points score.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's halfway there for me - or at least, half of my expectations of what it would be. I was hoping it would be more along the lines of (or additionally) an HN for new podcasts. Over time, the front page will soon be a rotating list of the same selection of programmes, won't it?

<comment><AUTHOR> the front page is only for episodes submitted in the last week

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> If only each one had a play button....

</comment><comment><USER40> This is a great idea.

I wonder whether you could do the same for TV/movies currently on catch- up/streaming.

<comment><USER41> I wonder if movies and certainly TV series are too much of a time involvment to get a good ranking.

What about music?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Nice. Always looking for discovering new podcast.

Having the duration of the podcast would be handy.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm not sure if it's intentional, but you can up vote your own posts...

</comment><comment><USER44> Thanks for sharing your work.

Would you consider adding a "gaming" category?

Can you change the subscription confirmation email subject to include your site's title?

From "Confirmation instructions" to "PodcastRank Confirmation Instructions"?

Looks great!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for your feedback! will add those things

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I really like this idea. But I find it somewhat annoying that the "new" tab also sort by popularity. Shouldn't it only sort by posting date?

</comment><comment><USER46> Maybe add a date in the index view when stuff was posted?

</comment><comment><USER47> Great idea! What about allowing us to login with our existing HN accounts or perhaps Google accounts, etc. in addition to creating a new account?

</comment><comment><USER48> Nice idea, minor feedback: it would be nice if the page didn't scroll up when you select categories/filters (using mobile Chrome).

<comment><USER49> The page scrolls up because it reloads.

<comment><USER48> OK, so my request is more AJAX , less page loading :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Anyone ever consider an HN for email newsletters?

</comment><comment><USER51> I think the large header takes up valuable screen space. The thin headers on Hacker News and Reddit are the right way to go IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, the ui needs more work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> No offence, but this seems like it would be better as a Reddit sub. Not everything needs to be the HN of something.

<comment><USER53> I had the same thought. Are there any advantages to the user in having it be a separate site?

<comment><AUTHOR> so much more possibilities with a dedicated platform including the tags/filtering, favorites, recommendations etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What's the difference between business, entrepreneur, and startup? I'd love to see a productivity tag.

</comment><comment><USER55> Can you add a favicon? I bookmarked the site but the icon is blank.

</comment><comment><USER56> Um, it's not fair to liken yourself to hacker news when you refuse to give me a podcast without entering my email. And appear to be full of ads.

{Edit: Intensify discontent after trying to use)

</comment><comment><USER57> i miss This Developer's Life. :(

I wonder what happened to Rob Conery and Scott Hanselman that they decided to end it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> simple podcast discovery and upvoting

</comment><comment><USER58> Logo proposal: Pᴚ

Design suggestion: Lose the header

</comment><comment><USER59> No RSS?

</comment><comment><USER60> No science category?

</comment><comment><USER61> how do you know if its podcast or just an article?

</comment><comment><USER62> Great idea, and a good start on implementation.

</comment><comment><USER63> make an RSS feed, please!

</comment><comment><USER64> Super useful. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'd start submitting your site to different subreddits to ensure a diverse selection in your listings. Hold off on submitting to Designer News though, until you improve the site UX. As it is now, they will completely ignore it.

Still, it looks like you're off to a good start!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback, what aspects of the UX need improvement right now? Mobile?

<comment><USER65> I'd give it a more professional look. Branding can go a long way here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Very nice.

</comment><comment><USER67> Why?

<comment><USER68> Why not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> The site is a bit odd without JavaScript enabled (I have noscript) all the arrows don't work. Not a big deal for me I can just enable it back, but for others it might be. SVG's could be used instead of fonts for icons.

</comment><comment><USER70> Nice project but hacker news is far more than just upvoting and commenting on items. Its the community here that makes it different.

<comment><USER71> I agree. There are a lot of thing that are important, it's not only a simple UI.

On important part is the moderation to keep the discussion civil and measures against spam and voting rings. This is invisible and sometimes difficult to spot, most people just notice only the good quality of the discussion.

Another important point is the community. It's important to attract and keep a good and wide community. For most topics, you'll find here one or two experts that can comment to counter balance the hype of the article and answer the unclear details. Sometimes the comments are better than the article.

<comment><USER72> > Sometimes the comments are better than the article.

Yup, and the first few weeks when I first discovered HackerNews from Google search results a number of years ago, if it wasn't an "Ask HN" I'll admit I didn't know there was an article -- the comments were good enough not to miss it!</comment></comment></comment>


NET Framework Monthly Rollups Explained - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/10/11/net-framework-monthly-rollups-explained/ <comment><USER2> This is confusing as heck, and still a poor solution to just... providing individual updates and allowing administrators to decide what is safe to deploy.

Since moving to Windows 10, and therefore cumulative updates, it's been a constant hassle to fight between broken, badly released updates, non-security bugs that break our workflow (one cumulative recently broke printing multiple documents in succession...) being combined with non-trivial security fixes. It's a weekly struggle to decide what to deploy and when. And when things stop working, and the problem is a Windows update, your choice is to open up your network to major vulnerabilities for the foreseeable future by holding cumulative updates, or just... not operate your business until it's fixed.

Microsoft has made a fatal flaw in their understanding of enterprise needs, and their poor update release history over the last two months especially has highlighted how badly Microsoft needs to immediately reverse course. However, Microsoft has outright refused to comment on issues for enterprises caused by cumulatives, in an apparent "we'll stick our head in the sand until people stop complaining about it" strategy.</comment>


Show HN: RaftLib – Easy, productive parallel programming in C++ - <AUTHOR> http://raftlib.io <comment><USER2> Looks like you have a name collision with the Raft Consensus Protocol. Although, it does look like your usage is based on the Raft language which appears to predates raft consensus. You might want to mention somewhere that this is unrelated.

Overall looks like a great project. Will give it a shot.

<comment><USER3> Your comment saved me a lot of confusion. I wonder if it makes any sense to have some kind of ontology for HN or sites like it that would truly no-context give full resolution to the items in the submission title or article. e.g. "computers::programming::languages::raft" \+ "computers::programming::paradigm::parallel".

EDIT: I meant that as some sort of metadata/tagging system.</comment></comment>


Compiling JavaScript to WASM or ASM.JS with NectarJS and Running It with Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seraum.com/compiling-javascript-to-webassembly-wasm-or-asm-js-with-nectarjs <comment><USER2> >No need to obfuscation

Suddenly, the web is no longer open to inspection. I was so eager to see any language other than JS on the web, I didn't realize what wasm really meant until just now. I know where this is going.

<comment><USER3> While I know it's nice that you could open the source and explore, I don't see how people could value it above all the upsides WebAssembly is bringing us.

<comment><USER2> Can't link resources. Can't spider it. It's going to look like native app silos. Truly, Flash 2.0. As long as wasm has no GC, and JS requires GC, I'm not sure how well this will work though.</comment></comment></comment>


AutoMicroFarm: My YC Results, AutoMicroFarm Product Development, Moving Forward - <AUTHOR> https://blog.automicrofarm.com/end-of-2016-update-b12165d35c9b <comment><AUTHOR> For those reading the comments first, AutoMicroFarm was one of the startups selected by the HN community to get funding; read more here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633270)

Also, as the founder states in the blog, if you have any suggestions on improving AutoMicroFarm, or questions about it, please post a comment.

</comment><comment><USER2> Not sure why your garden beds are raised. Like if your not supplementing light and stacking your garden system it's always going to be more cost efficient for me to just dig a hole in the ground line it with plastic and garden in that(that is if the soil is terrible!) . Also if you were serious about water usage and reducing it why bother with soil at all? Aquaculture on such a small scale hardly seems worth it as protein can be taken from plants. Coming from both small and large scale farming I feel like your system has a lot of unnecessary aspects that don't really solve any problems, it's a nice idea but not very practical.</comment>


Ask HN: Getting Paid. - <AUTHOR>

Probably been asked a million times. Actually, I've only now joined the hn after ages of trolling -- just to ask this.<p>Suggestions to ensure I receive compensations due after leaving US employer.<p>(p.s. Am a foreign (South African) who completed work for US company) <comment><USER2> Step 0 is to formally demand the money, either by issuing them an invoice (if that was your normal practice) or a written demand letter. Email should suffice at this stage.

Odds are strongly in your favor that they'll simply pay, perhaps after taking a bit of time.

Escalation options abound if they refuse to pay.

</comment><comment><USER3> Non-Union Lawyer here.

Contracts are never set in stone; all you need to do is make a new offer to this employer. Do this by sending them (CEO/CFO/Manager) a Notice. Call it "Notice of Private International Remedy Demand." (this is patio11's step 0.) Tell him that they owe you $NUM for services rendered (triple damages are not uncommon), and that they have 10 days from receipt of the notice to pay you, or swear in an affidavit (under penalty of perjury) that they don't owe you that money. Tell them that if they don't respond, a default judgement will be rendered, and a commercial lien may be filed with the Secretary of State's office (in whatever state they're registered).

if they don't respond in 10 days. send a second notice, keep everything but the date and the title (NOTICE OF FAULT IN DISHONOR - OPPORTUNITY TO CURE).

if they don't respond again in 10 days, file a UCC-1 Financing Statement, listing the CFO/CEO/Manager as lien debtors, and a copy of all paperwork you sent to them, with the Secretary of State's office. This lien is now considered an Asset.

Then contact a bank in your area, and let them know that you have a lien filed against these parties, and would like to sell the lien to their bank, so they can collect on it for you.

Hope this helps.

<comment><USER4> This is excellent, but I would add legal documents must be properly served to have legal force. Two easy ways to do this are 1) send a FAX and keep the "FAX received" confirmation with time stamp 2) send an anonymous looking fedex requiring signature of CEO by name but don't include CEO in the address, just name. Be sure to get signature confirmation from fedex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> (as an aside, what you were doing on HN is lurking, not trolling -- lurking is reading without posting, trolling is making posts that purposely disrupt the conversation)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, ofc... right you are. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Several things aren't clear from your post:

* Do you have a contract?

* Have they agreed how much they owe you?

* Have you asked for the money?

* Have they refused to pay?

It sounds like you're asking now to avoid a problem in the future, but you should make that clear.

</comment><comment><USER7> If it's a contracted work and you have piece of paper i suppose you should be fine against scam, but you cannot be always 100% sure that the company has actually the money. that's why you should ask for something at the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER8> Lawyer up. Get a lawyer who specializes in employment law and get them to handle it - they're certainly going to know more about your possible remedies than the internet will, and are much closer to being able to do something about it on your behalf than we are.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was reluctant to pursue this option only because a) USA is far from where I am. b) Costs of getting law involved has been prohibitive... when compared to outstanding amount c) Contractually I'm in deep water (my own fault).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for the advice... Certainly beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'll assume you already did step 0 that Patio11 described, and they haven't paid you and aren't returning your calls.

I've been down this road so I completely empathize with you. I can also say that I have always been paid in the end. My advice is good.

Go to the employer (where the office is) and ask for payment in full. You need to be extremely clear. Do not say please or thank you. Look them square in the eye. Channel Clint Eastwood if it helps.

Do not call in advance. Wait in the lobby if the person who hands you the cheque isn't there or in a meeting. If the secretary says he/she won't be back until Tuesday, return on Tuesday and again demand payment in full.

Be firm and respectful but not polite. If they continue to evade you, call and email them stating that if you are not paid in 24 hours (no longer) that "x" will happen. You decide what "x" is. Usually I promise to report them to the Better Business Bureau and/or take down their website if its on my server. Stuff like that. Never, promise something you won't go through with.

The last step is small claims court. Hopefully it doesn't get to that. I suggest you do this yourself and not consult a lawyer until you really need one.</comment>


Meet James Altucher, the Pied Piper of Cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/james-altucher-cryptocurrency-get-rich-quick.html <comment><AUTHOR> I used the original headline because I think it's 10x better than the one that won the A/B test =/

</comment><comment><USER2> Charlatan extraordinaire</comment>


Startup amid other stuff + Schedule - <AUTHOR>

Having recently quit my job (Software Eng. for Initech) and being rejected by YC, I will continue operate under the assumption of: A "real" startup requires your full time and devotion; nothing residual left, even if I wanted to go back to my old job and keep the startup going. This also rules out seeking jobs of this ilk. Therefore, I can't have a "real" job in addition to a startup?
Also, as a corollary, If you have anything to give to a another job on top of your startup, you are not working hard enough on your startup.
Does this assumption/corollary seem mostly correct?
If this is all correct, then the only responsible thing that follows would be to immerse myself into the startup and ignore all the people telling me "Im irresponsible to quit and everyone I know who started a company did it on the side," said Mom. I challenge this last part!
Here is my routine until I fail (fail defined in the sense that no person on this LARGE planet finds what I want to do as exciting, and inherently useful)
Mon-Fri Wake,Breakfast(15min),Startup,Gym(1hr),Startup,TV(30-60min),zzz Dream about Startup zzz (7.5hr) Fri Night have 2-3 beers Sat Startup for 50% of the day or no Beer w/ friends Sun is reserved for my sabbath: football
This will be my schedule until I have succeeded or failed (see above definition).
One kink in this great plan is that damn money thing. When the reserves dry up it's back to work, right?. Yes and no. I think I have the best compromise when the well is dry: Take a part-time job that is physical labor only. This is a good fit because it pays my bills (college loans),gets my gym time in, and doesn't tap into my mental energy allocation.
I hope others who were rejected don't quit either :) <comment><USER2> Why not take the part-time physical labor job now. That way you will get your gym time, it won't such your metal energy allocation, it will work at paying off your current debts/bills, and put off the time when you _have_ to take a job to earn money.

If you could work just 1 day a week, or 2 hours a day for dour days a week, you could put off crunch time for a _long_ time.

Just a thought.</comment>


Reddit says UK-US trade talks document leak 'linked to Russia' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-50695558 <comment><USER2> Such a leak would help the Remainers. Isn't Russia supposed to benefit more from the UK leaving the EU?

<comment><AUTHOR> A frequently-offered suggestion is that such disruptions (by whatever the party) aren't aimed at assisting one internal political faction or another, so much as they are at _political disruption_.

By weakening the party in power, or transitioning to another, that's achieved.

Whether or not that's the goal in this _specific_ case, I don't know. But it's a useful model and motive to keep in mind.

(It's also a useful cautionary message to those who find themselves, at least temporarily, advantaged by such activities. Actors whose interests are not aligned with yours will rare continue to act in _your_ interests.)</comment></comment>


Mount Everest is a 'fecal time bomb.' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/08/07/mount-everest-is-a-fecal-time-bomb-heres-one-mans-idea-for-handling-14-tons-of-poop/ <comment><USER2> Who is going to solve this problem first, Nepal or San Francisco?</comment>


Defender Antivirus Network Inspection Service Fails Since Windows 10 2004 Update - <AUTHOR> https://arador.com/defender-antivirus-network-inspection-service-failing-since-windows-10-2004-update/ <comment><AUTHOR> There's discussion about this on the Microsoft Answers forum but no official response from Microsoft.

[https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/all/window...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/all/windows-defender-antivirus-network- inspection/e3ed244b-6fd1-4a46-9828-1c0ba973dacc)</comment>


GCE vs. AWS in 2016: Why You Shouldn't Use Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://thehftguy.com/2016/06/15/gce-vs-aws-in-2016-why-you-should-never-use-amazon/ <comment><USER2> We moved back and forth between AWS and GCE (based on who gave us free credits). Once we ran out, we chose GCE and never regretted it.

GCE has many quirks, for instance the inconsistency between API and the UI, it misses the richness of the services offered by AWS but everything GCE does offer is just faster, more stable and much more consistent.

One of the biggest problems with AWS is that once you outgrow the assigned limits, it becomes a hell to get more resources from them. We're running on average around 25k servers a day, majority of them preemptible (spot). AWS requires that you request exact type and location for your instances. GCE only asks for a region and then overall resources (e.g. number of CPUs).

Also the pricing is much less complicated. 1 core costs y, 32 cores cost 32*y.

<comment><USER3> At 25k servers / day one would think pulling this into real hardware and doing capacity planning would be cost effective.

<comment><USER4> That's what I was thinking. Unless they're really bursty (so they only need the 25k servers for an hour at a time or whatever), I would think that 25k servers would be well beyond the number where it makes more economic sense to build out your own data center.

<comment><USER5> > Unless they're really bursty

Last I checked. AWS has hourly billing and Google Cloud has sub-hour billing.

If they are really bursty, they are in troubles with AWS pricing model.

> the number where it makes more economic sense to build out your own data > center.

I would think that this number doesn't exist... unless you have already built datacenters for yourselves and you have a major internal expertise in that.

<comment><USER3> I can tell you less than 1000 servers in AWS runs around 200-300k US / month

I am not sure what he is doing at 25k servers but you can see real world math puts this in a serious money range. Data centers can be built for less.

I wonder if the down voters on the hardware comments actually run services at scale.

<comment><USER2> What kind of servers run at that price range? I've listed [0] some of the reasons why are we hosting in cloud instead of our own datacenter.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13260805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13260805)

<comment><USER3> Various servers, i2 for Cassandra eats most of it. Application at various levels, multi region etc etc

We too are hockey sticking but not ready to go to metal .... yet.

Your reasons make sense. I would grow that team soon :)

<comment><USER2> We have some large servers, but not too many of them. We're running 32 core nodes that are holding our Postgres, but the majority is smaller.

<comment><USER3> We are a data company :)

<comment><USER2> I would claim we're also [https://twitter.com/synopsi/status/811755523091480576](https://twitter.com/synopsi/status/811755523091480576)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have serious trust issues with Google. Their history of discontinuing services, dismal support (even for a paid service), and neglect of bugs in SDKs/APIs - all three of which I have experienced first-hand - has left a long-term bitter taste. No doubt some individuals are fantastic, but the organisation as a whole gives me an enduring impression of being systematically arrogant and aloof.

AWS by contrast have demonstrated fanatically helpful support (even on business level, the cheapest), fixing issues within days of reporting, and a willingness to maintain obsolete/deprecated services (like SimpleDB) long after I'm sure they'd wish everyone had migrated away.

<comment><USER7> It seems to me that Google is highly siloed internally. The GCP team is very visible (they engage on HN and elsewhere), and GCP has excellent support. Very different from other parts of Google.

I have problems with Google as a whole, but I have as much faith in their cloud as I have in AWS or Digitial Ocean (we currently use all three).

The Kubernetes team is also highly engaged on Github (they also occasionally show up on the official Slack channels). The Go community suffers from a depressing abundance of hostility, intransigence and arrogance, and some of Google's projects (e.g. Protobuf, the Go project itself) reflect this, but I was delighted to find that the Kubernetes people are not like this at all. It's a very friendly, quality-focused community. I think they have to be since Kubernetes is still emerging tech that's craving adoption. Same goes for GCP -- Google doesn't hide the fact that they're aggressively courting customers to migrate.

<comment><USER8> Not to be too cynical but none of this is reassuring. It's making it sound like the moment that GCP stops being the underdog they'll stop being as helpful and courteous :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One reason why I still can't use GCE in 2016. No PostgreSQL support for CloudSQL.

I can find alternatives for other services, but I don't want to compromise on the choice of relational database.

Note: I understand there are third-party providers for PostgreSQL, but I'd rather have Google's.

<comment><USER7> Googlers on HN have commented before that they're working on it. No ETA, though.

With AWS now offering both plain-old PostgreSQL and souped-up-PostgreSQL-on- Aurora [1], whatever Google produces needs to be great in order to compete. However, I fear they'll initially come out with something that's on par with the current MySQL support in Cloud SQL, which is just a vanilla MySQL server behind a UI/API. (For example, Cloud SQL's read-replica stuff is reportedly just MySQL binlog replication.) Better than nothing, of course.

Cloud SQL also has some annoyances (such as not supporting private IPs and the need for the Cloud SQL Proxy [2]) that I hope they're working on.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-aurora-update- postgr...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-aurora-update-postgresql- compatibility/)

[2] [https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/sql- proxy](https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/sql-proxy)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I heard this too.

TBH, I don't need Aurora-level performance (although it would be a nice option in the future), I'm just happy to have a vendor-managed PostgreSQL instance with granular price points.

C'mon Google! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Two points here really hit home with me about AWS (not in comparison to GCE though since I've never tried it).

1) Reserved Instances: I think the pricing model for this has become very outdated since the beginning of AWS, and it is definitely becoming cumbersome (and therefore scary) to use.

2) ELB + Traffic Spikes: I have tried (unsuccessfully) to pre-scale an ELB to prepare it for the traffic it was about to receive. I tried to pre-scale for this project 3 different times, in coordination with support and without them. I could not do it. Very frustrating.

I think these are all signs of extreme growth, and a strange organization of engineering units inside of AWS. However, as OP descried.. we are much to heavily invested in AWS to consider an infrastructure shift at this point

<comment><USER11> We also manually sync up with AWS support to "warm up" our ELBs... I guess they don't expose an option to avoid abuse, but it really does seem like an implementation caveat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> God I hate any piece of writing that doesn't define its acronyms at least once. Google Compute Engine isn't popular enough that people should be expected to know immediately what it means.

<comment><USER13> Also, GCE is a service while AWS is a suite of services. The correct comparison should be Google Cloud Platform (GCP) vs AWS. Guess it's nitpicking.. but still.

<comment><USER5> I don't think this is nitpicking. This is probably the single biggest issue with Google right now: Don't know how to call their services.

GCE - GCP - Google Cloud - Google Compute Engine - Google Cloud Platform ???

I can see on that blog's analytics that people are looking for various terms which result in different articles and ranking.

This needs to be unified by Google. Personally, I think I'm gonna call everything "Google Cloud".

<comment><USER14> It is unified, they have some of the simplest naming. GCP is Google Cloud Platform which is the entire ecosystem. GCE is Google Compute Engine which is the VM/IaaS offering within.

You can look at the official products page for all the names and descriptions: [https://cloud.google.com/products/](https://cloud.google.com/products/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > AWS Premium Support is mandatory

Is Google Cloud support even acceptable? Google is known for poor or no support for most services.

<comment><USER16> Google's known for poor or no support on their __free __services but their paid services often have decent support. Personally, I 've found GCP, GSuite, Project Fi, Google Store and Pixel support to all be pretty great but haven't found any support at all for Gmail, YouTube etc.

<comment><USER17> Hah, Adwords must be an exception then - support is total crap. You're lucky if you get a canned response that doesn't begin to answer your question..

<comment><USER18> Hmm sounds like you might have to increase your bids.

<comment><USER17> We already pay around $5 per click - I think that's more than enough! However, it's true our business is tiny compared to that of large corporations - but I don't think that excuses the _abysmal_ 'support' I and others have received from Adwords.

<comment><USER18> It's a joke... you said that you always get a canned response, didn't you? That's the canned response I always get from them. Doesn't matter what the issue is, raising bids is always the solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> AWS premium support is the best support experience I have encountered so far and should absolutely factor into choosing a cloud provider. Reading frequent stories of Google support nightmares across all their services makes me think twice about using GCE. GCE must find a way to counter this.

Also, the AWS premium support fee is negotiable for some customers from what I have heard. They don't like to negotiate down, though!

<comment><USER5> Strange. I'd qualify them as the most useless support I've ever encountered.

In the year 2016, among maybe a hundred tickets, there was only ONCE where they could change something (an ELB issue).

And well, I'm not sure whether the fix was related to their changes or if it was just an intermittent error that happened once. Thus their implications in the only time something happened has yet to be proven.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My biggest complaint about AWS is still EBS and having to guess about for the right provisioned IOPS. Throw in confusing extras like EBS optimized instances, enhanced networking. GCE just abstracts away all these details.

</comment><comment><USER21> This was referenced in the previous thread, but here is what amounts to a stl;dr:

> "Unfortunately, our infrastructure on AWS is working " > "I learned recently > that we are a profitable company, more so than I thought. Looking at the top > 10 companies by revenue per employee, we'd be in the top 10."

<comment><USER22> I'm a bit interested in what their company's response would be to this article.

<comment><USER6> The author(s) have a high proportion of strongly pro-GCP articles; so many, and so emphatically worded, that I began to distrust the source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> previous discussion at

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12038298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12038298)

</comment><comment><USER24> Looking forward to the day Google Cloud provides on-demand GPU-backed machines. Currently AWS is the only game in town for that, as far as I know.

<comment><USER25> Coming early 2017: [https://cloud.google.com/gpu/](https://cloud.google.com/gpu/)

<comment><USER5> You should add that Google will allow to attach up to 8 GPUs to any type of instance.

That will put Google Cloud seriously ahead of the competition in terms of GPU computations.

Long term: Google has a better trajectory. IMO.

Note that AWS announced something similar at reinvent 2016 but it ain't coming any time soon. Not sure about the status, is it even real anymore?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What reason is AWS premium support mandatory? I ask because I'm currently building out SaaS offering on AWS and haven't yet hit any issues requiring support. Can I expect to start seeing issues as traffic scales up to a certain level?

<comment><USER5> Author of the article here.

It's not. It's utterly useless. After an entire year, where the support has never been of any help, my last action for the year 2016 was to call a meeting with everyone, subject line "we should cancel our support subscription with AWS".

It's clear that we (especially me) are way more qualified in all AWS offerings, from basics to special quirks, than they are. And they can't do anything that we can't do ourselves.

I think the support is useful when you first start out, they can answer a lot of general questions. You should subscribe for support the first year and see how it goes.

Note that some AWS managed services (e.g. RDS) can only be debugged by the support so you might be forced into support if you use these services. We don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've used AWS for a bit over 9 months now and it's quite terrible to be honest.

I don't need it for anything professional and it's quite terrible for just some amateur hosting plus the immense fees if you somehow manage to get decent traffic together.

Once my reserved instances run out I'll probably either check out GCE or DO, either seems to be a better option, though GCE seems to be more expensive.

Anyways, the console in AWS is a mess and I'm quite sure that I leaked my entire IAM settings to the internet because some switch somewhere isn't set right.

Since everything recommends to setup IAM users you'll have to setup the permissions, a procedure which I enjoyed about as much as getting my fingernails slowly removed by a glowing red iron.

Calculating any sort of sustained cost is a pain in the backplane if the total doesn't exceed three digits a month.

And lastly the login process is probably the biggest pain I've encountered across many many providers. There are atleast 4 login forms I've discovered, 2 of which I have to use and one of those always asks for a captcha with such low quality that a brain-damaged AI running on my calculator could figure it out, not mentioning never knowing if the 2FA setup was correct or maybe probably blew up somewhere because giving some feedback from the UI is plain impossible.

TL;DR Don't use AWS, anything else is better.

<comment><USER28> I mean, you're basically setting up a datacenter if you aren't using Beanstalk.

I see complaints all the time about how complicated the networking is, IAM, etc is. But it's far more simple dealing with VPCs then having to buy and hop onto a bunch of F5s/Brocades etc that tend to require their own network engineers on staff.

The issue always seems to be that someone tries to move a company onto AWS but they lack the experience in actually running infrastructure to that degree. If you know Change Management you can figure out Cloud Formation templates, if you don't you're likely completely lost and rolling out instances by hand. If you don't know any network engineering you're likely going to have issues with load balancers and VPCs.

You can really see the experience difference in people when you work on multiple AWS infrastructures. And that's the huge benefit to it. You can practically roll out whatever sort of infrastructure your business requires.

If you're experienced enough you can basically do every single thing in AWS/GCP without having to hire ancillary staff (network engs, etc).

I personally use Cloud Formation and create EVERYTHING by it. Load balancers, VPCs, instances, kubernetes, etc. But yeah, if you haven't touched CF before it can be like walking into a spider web of confusion - but believe me, I'd rather do that over again than take over someones hardware that has no APIs, no dashboards, no centralization. I spent years in datacenters where everything was done manually. I wouldn't ever want to go back now that I've learned to treat infrastructure as code.

But hey, if you want to run Vsphere servers, manually configure instances and databases and not do any automation via AWS you can do that as well.

That's why it's incredible.

<comment><USER27> I totally agree, AWS is great if you are basically screwing in the racks yourself anyway (metaphorically speaking).

But for running a few hobbyist/amateur servers on it, it's absolutely horrifyingly complicated, especially when I'm not really a networking engineer, I like tinkering in the backend but not to that degree.

<comment><USER28> You could look into Beanstalk, it depends on what the code your app is written in, though. But yeah, I really wouldn't suggest AWS for something simple that DO or Linode could easily handle.

GCP is also far more simplified than AWS if you haven't tried it. The way they do server auth via Google accounts (using gcloud) is pretty awesome and simple. You can make project-level SSH keys that are automatically placed onto every server and you can block specific servers from receiving them all through the UI.

I do greatly miss AWS's breadth of service offerings, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Evaluated GCP, and 2 main issues made it hard to consider moving:

1) quickly bumped into project limits just doing some tests, and the fact that you have to wait until billing cycle to reset the counter was quite jarring (I presume there's a way to increase)

2) Better tooling for S3 than Google Cloud Storage - non-technical members of our team need to work with files, and there's many nice third-party tools for s3.

<comment><USER16> 1) AWS has similar limits: [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#How_many_instances_can_I_ru...](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#How_many_instances_can_I_run_in_Amazon_EC2) and it's pretty simple to fill in the form and request more.

2) GCS has an S3 compatible API so you can use your S3 tooling: [https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/interoperability](https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/interoperability)

<comment><USER29> AWS's limits are in real-time however. I don't mind the limits, I just don't like the fact that I can't run a quick test without it impacting me for the billing cycle.

I'll check out the GCS XML compatibility with the current tooling we use; it looks promising.

<comment><USER30> One more comment on storage.

Google Cloud storage has the same API for all its tiers. So to go from Multi- Region to Nearline, you just change the bucket designation. One API, one service, one interface and set of tools.

(work on Google Cloud)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I really like OVH's SoYouStart in terms of its pricing for CPU/memory intensive computations, their prices just destroy AWS/GCE: [https://www.soyoustart.com/ca/en/essential- servers/](https://www.soyoustart.com/ca/en/essential-servers/)

<comment><USER16> In terms of raw machine cost it generally goes owning a DC < owning machines + leasing racks < leasing dedicated < VPS < cloud.

But each level down you go is another level of expertise you have to employ someone for and a loss of flexibility.

The strength of the cloud has never been cost, it's always been flexibility, the ability to scale up 1000 servers in 5 minutes without any preparation or management.

<comment><USER32> Yea but those 1000 server are going to do the job of 100 dedicated servers. You still have to provision them, and there aren't too many use cases (there are some) where you have to all the sudden jump 10x of demand. The reason cloud soars is because in developed economies the cost of human resources is astronomically high. The savings are from having fewer people deal with stuff. Even 100k/year bill is okay if that means that 1 person has to deal with it rather than 2 or 3. So if you have money then cloud makes all the sense in the world, if you don't have money and have a bit of free time dedicated servers make a lot of sense until you have money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Because of speed of light/latency issues, I won't move to GCP until they have an RDS-postgres equivalent

<comment><USER7> According to comments from googlers elsewhere on HN, they're working on it. It's pretty much the number one thing people are asking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Having used AWS in production for about 2 years, I can say that scaling in the cloud is hard to get right. Spikes of traffic and load are hard to scale with, especially if you're scaling down to just the right amount of instances to manage the current load. We try to keep 50% capacity free for such spikes. Speaking with AWS support, we can fix issues with limits and scaling elbs, in hours not weeks, so I haven't had the same experience as you in that respect. One thing I would suggest, is that you have 2 AWS accounts. One for dev and one for prod. This way you should be able to see the limits that you're hitting before you get to production, and can raise tickets to get them ammended.

</comment><comment><USER35> GCE has its own issues. The raw price is different than the real/total cost. In a better world you shouldn't have to choose between just a few cloud peoviders.

<comment><USER19> How have you observed the total cost being different from the raw price? In what ways were you surprised?

<comment><USER35> If you are after the raw price you should sign up for bare metal and install/manage your own tools. When you sign up for a service such AWS you pay mostly for the tools/ecosystem and management. I think AWS is still the undisputed leader in that regard, closely followed by Azure. GCP is something I would not recommend due some personal experiences namely the appengine platform and early cloud sdk releases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> You should use AWS if you _really_ need something like an infinitely scalable database such as DynamoDB or some other uber-scaling AWS service that you can't replace with some open-source software on a VPS provider. 95-100% of startups don't actually need an infinitely scalable database or whatever. So they shouldn't subject themselves to Amazon's horrible pricing and throttling.

</comment><comment><USER37> GCE - piece of shit in case of support and solving customers issues. They didn't manage to FIX billing issue for 8!!! months. Support is useless. Missed access rules boundaries - everything you have to share with everyone. It's nightmare for companies.

</comment><comment><USER38> The cost comparison link is broken.

<comment><USER5> fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'd be interested to know why the OP never considered Heroku

<comment><USER7> Heroku is hosted on AWS, and so you inherit the performance, but lose the ability to control it (no way to select local SSDs or enable IOPS, as far as I know, for example), while at the same time paying a large premium for the convenience of using their platform.

<comment><USER39> Thanks lobster_johnson, yeah I know Heroku is ephemeral so data is stored in a DB or somewhere else, often S3.

Just wondering what kind of work he's doing that took him from AWS straight to GCE without stopping to think about Heroku.

Maybe you've hit the nail in the head, he's writing to disk a lot for some reason?

<comment><USER7> A lot of the article's focus was on network performance, local SSD availability and I/O performance. I think it's safe to say his use case involves a lot of I/O. If "thehftguy" means HFT == high frequency trading, then that's not surprising.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple HomePod - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/homepod <comment><USER2> There's no open API for this, right? And Siri is ~1-2 years behind Echo/Google Home. Only "innovation" is on aesthetic design.

Apple usually comes in when they know they can do something a lot better than the existing competition, but not recently. Not with Apple Watch & HomePod.

It's now about:

1) Apple has massive distribution 2) They can get a non-step-function revenue increment with that massive distribution, launching new products.

Which makes sense why it's music focused (lock-in with Apple Music)

<comment><USER3> I think they are positioning as a Sonos killer (price is inline w/ that as well) rather than echo killer.

Thats probably a mistake but it does appear thats their strategy. The "smart" part of the speaker is a total afterthought it seems.

Historically, their strength is UI and maybe they don't know how to find their feet in voice. It would explain siris lack luster performance in comparison to Google and Amazon.

Very much disappointed w/ this offering.

<comment><USER4> They have an A8 in the thing though. It sounds like it will have enough processing snort inside that I imagine they can roll out new functionality pretty regularly.

It also sounds like there is a companion app of some kind (or maybe just for setup?), which could provide an alternative interface on a "pane of glass" that you already have -- your phone.

<comment><USER5> Also the device ships in 6 months. Probably they don't want to give out all details in advance.

Quite sure this will eventually open up for developers, but I'm not sure how to provide a smooth user experience. Like how to handle the case when multiple apps would like to react to same voice command.

<comment><USER6> My guess is that they'll eventually open up SiriKit to the AppleTV and this speaker.

I wonder how Apple will handle the multi-user aspect though. Even with music multiple people in the same household will want to access their own playlists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a former Apple fanboy that is also a Sonos lover, I'm starting to get annoyed by the fragmentation caused by the multiple product offerings in this category.

I have an Echo, 4 Echo Dots, one of every Apple Device, and a mix of other tech sprinkled throughout the house. I have already committed both my home and business to Sonos, and have zero desire to decommission those so that I can more easily play music from my Apple music library.

Do I wish that Sonos had a better/tighter integration with Amazon Prime or iTunes? Absolutely. However, I like the fact that it's platform agnostic. Apple could've solved a much bigger problem here, but instead chose to create a new one and solve that instead.

<comment><USER8> If Apples actions have taught us anything it is that their products are standards hostile.

To list two relevant to this cycle: USB-C and WiFi Alliance TimeSync

<comment><USER6> How's Apple USB-C hostile? They got plenty of flake for dropping all other ports on the MacBook Pro (except the headphone port)

<comment><USER8> You will never find one on an iPhone or iPad. And for which reasons?

None apart from owning the ecosystems/further profits.

<comment><USER9> There are other factors. For one, Lightning is significantly thinner, so more suitable for thinner devices. For another, switching to USB-C would force iPhone users (who mostly already have Lightning cables) to buy new cables. I don't know how large a role those factors play, compared to what you said - the other phone makers don't seem to have a problem with the thickness, and Apple certainly isn't known for being hesitant to make its users buy new cables - but they do exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think people are unfairly calling this a Google Home for $350 when it's a Sonos that has Siri instead. But I also think the real trouble will come when 3rd parties start making speakers just as good with Google Assistant for much less. For instance when Anker starts shipping a Google Assistant speaker, or a huge JBL extreme, etc.

<comment><USER11> We will see what it looks like when it is released. But it seems like Apple has a lot of music-oriented software tech inside this thing that companies like Anker won't be able to replicate.

The EarPods are an apt corollary. They're very expensive wireless earbuds; there are far better options for less if all you care about is sound quality. But they're sold out everywhere. The reason is because of the W1 chip and its tight integration with the Apple ecosystem.

I doubt Apple is worried about Anker.

<comment><USER10> Apple doesn't really have to worry about anyone but I don't think the EarPods compare to this. There is nothing like them in the market. Sure there are wireless ear buds but the battery life of them is crazy.

Speakers on the other hand are mostly "cheap" and anyone can make a decent speaker. JBL has some of the best sounding bluetooth speakers that just need an Assistant to compete. They even have the same full room modes where you can pair them all together. Hell a $30 chromecast audio can sync a bunch together and you can plug them into a $1000 bose speaker.

I just think Apple priced this really high because they wanted to compete with Sonos, and that's fair, but most people will be comparing it to Google Home and the likes who will pass. Will it be another iPod HiFi?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wonder if Apple is making a conscious choice to market this as a speaker vs. a Home Assistant. A speaker seems far less creepy to the commoner (no ads, supposedly not listening to every command you request, etc.) and is something everyone can already understand the functionality of. With the nice processor, they clearly are thinking about this as something more than just a speaker that they can upgrade in the future.

<comment><USER13> I found it interesting that their nod to privacy wasn't "we'll do all the processing locally", but rather "we won't link this to your account when we send it up to the cloud".

Which is sort of weird, right? Are they doing voice recognition and language understanding in the cloud, then sending actions back to the speaker for local execution of things that require actions to be taken, eg setting reminders & liking songs?

I guess this is how they try and get themselves out of the corner they've painted themselves into with privacy.

<comment><USER14> they do this with siri on iphone. there is no reason to believe that they would do local processing on home pod

<comment><USER13> Fine, but do you find this to be a compelling privacy story?

To me it seems like Apple's "commitment to privacy" is running up against some technical realities and isn't much more than marketing fluff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Without Spotify support the HomePod is a non-starter (for me at least). Here's hoping for BT speaker mode.

<comment><USER16> The two options are Apple integrate Spotify Connect, or Spotify integrate AirPlay 2.0. I don't have much faith in either option happening.

Bluetooth wouldn't be good enough.

<comment><USER17> Spotify does support Airplay. The thing is that still uses your phone as the source, and a whole lot more battery, while Spotify Connect hands over the playback to the target device itself. Most important in this case would be Siri integration, to this date it doesn't even let you open a song in spotify :\

<comment><USER16> Exactly, it's effectively a WiFi version of Bluetooth. Although I'm guessing notification sounds wouldn't be broadcast over AirPlay?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think they made the wrong product. This is positioned as a Sonos killer.

What I hoped to see was a integrated home assistant, this is a really nice speaker no one is going to integrate with. Unfortunately whatever ecosystem people buy into for home assistant is probably going to tie them to that ecosystem for a long time, google and amazon are getting off to a early start that may be hard for apple to catch up to.

I really wanted to see any one of the following today:

The HomePod we saw, but showing off some slick home integrations (and audio out! - those integrations seemed like an after thought)

A Complimentary apple tv experience. Either new hardware that also had a speaker or some helper hardware (think more expensive echo dot)

A possible answer to the amazon show (an input in to the apple tv making it a video gateway - ie last thing before your tv) which allows on screen overlay (ie: siri show me traffic right now and have it pop up, siri is my wife at work still (shows location)?, siri web search for better HomePod)

None of those happened and anyone of those ideas would be a great start breaking me away from amazon/echo.

</comment><comment><USER18> No kidding, but my first thought when I saw the photo was "how am I going to stop my cats treating it as a scratching post"

</comment><comment><USER19> I really hope they'll enable other music providers as well. Or at least a bluetooth speaker mode.

<comment> X-Istence It supports Airplay 2, so you can stream music from other devices that you own to it... so even if there is no native support for Spotify, you can still use as an Airplay 2 speaker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> $349 for a home speaker? For comparison, Google Home is $129 and Amazon Echo is $179.

<comment><USER21> And the Echo Dot is $49, frequently on sale for $39. Plus you get to choose your own speakers that will definitely sound better than the HomePod.

Interesting they are trying to sell this for music enthusiasts. It'll only appeal to Apple enthusiasts.

<comment><AUTHOR> "will definitely sound better than the HomePod" \-- hard to make that statement without actually hearing it. The technology behind it looks promising.

<comment><USER22> Audio enthusiasts tend to already own speakers presumably changing speakers unless its truly phenomenal may not be a feature valuable to audio enthusiasts.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's just marketing bait trying to get to amateurs' ego for them to become self declared audio enthusiasts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So what happens to the "world's first HomePod"?

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keecker/keecker-the- wor...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keecker/keecker-the-worlds-first- homepod)

Looks like it just started production in December, too...

</comment><comment><USER24> The specs don't include the most important one for speakers: frequency response. Strange omission.

<comment><USER25> I'm thinking it's because there's so much active equalization happening that it becomes meaningless.

<comment><USER24> I'm sure it will end up being reasonably flat from 120Hz to 15kHz or so, but outside that range, the physical characteristics of the drivers take on primary importance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Really curious how the sound quality optimizations based on room acoustics work.

I'd imagine it's a lot of signal processing and such, but I'm curious how they quantified optimizations and tested to see that it actually enhanced the audio based on room acoustics.

<comment><USER27> Companies look like Dirac and Audyssey do this, but require you to move a microphone around a room while a test signal plays (from speakers that are usually spaced throughout a room). The big mystery to me would be how effective such room processing can be, when you're limited to measuring from the point where the sound is generated. (My personal experience would say not very. It'd make more sense to me if the user maybe held up their iPhone as a microphone and the system calibrated itself as they moved throughout the listening space.

<comment><USER28> Sonos also does auto tuning now. The speaker plays a test tone as you walk around the room with an iOS or Android device with the Sonos app listening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The HomePod is $349. Amazon frequently has the Echo and Echo Dot on sale. For the same price as the HomePod you can buy two full sized Echos and a Dot. For me, Alexa has been exponentially more reliable than Siri. I do not understand this pricing at all.

<comment><USER30> Have you looked into the price of a Sonos speaker? Good speakers cost money, frequently a lot more than $500.

This for people who care about sound quality.

<comment><USER29> I am looking at this from more of the Home Assistant route than the Sonos route. I can see a higher price if that is the case. As a counter to that, though, why not just buy a good speaker and plug in an Echo Dot?

To be fair, I don't really listen to music and tend to listen to Podcasts or Audiobooks 99% of the time. I also have below average hearing / am tone deaf, so speaker quality is a very binary thing for me (can I understand the words and is it loud enough?). For my use case, I think the Echo speaker is _wonderful._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So Schiller taunting Amazon and Google about their then-lack of screens was just a pump fake?

</comment><comment><USER32> I have a Jambox and I hate the thing. I only ever want to stream audio to it from one device, and you wouldn't believe how difficult that can be at times.

But, I dunno if I can stomach $350 for its replacement, even if it is smarter.

</comment><comment><USER33> As far as I remember, that's the first time I saw Apple introducing a brand new product by saying it's cheaper than equivalent competitors. I guess they had so little else to say...

</comment><comment><USER34> How does it deal with stereo mixes? In the keynote they casually mentioned that you might want to get two, but I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not.

<comment><USER35> Any commercially recorded stereo music will work well in mono: many mix engineers do most of their work in mono and even those that don't will regularly check that it still sounds good in mono.

A surprising amount of listening is mono so it's taken really seriously: kitchen radios, canned music in restaurants, bluetooth speaker pill things (like the homepod).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What I want to know is: can the HomePod stream music directly from the internet like the Sonos or even the Chromecast audio? I mean, it would be quite stupid to have this thing requiring a iDevice/Mac to stream audio.

</comment><comment><USER37> Another music playback device and still no Continuity support for Apple Music.

</comment><comment><USER38> But December?

5 months is long enough for Amazon to "reverse engineer" the tweeter design and launch version 2. And that's assuming they haven't been working on it already.

</comment><comment><USER39> Surprised they mentioned Sonos, but no talk of multi-room audio??

<comment><AUTHOR> it is on the page:

"Combine two in one room.

Put another HomePod in the same room, and the two automatically detect and balance each other — for sound that's even more lifelike.

AirPlay 2.

Add HomePod to more rooms. When you add HomePod to multiple rooms, the speakers communicate with each other through AirPlay 2 — so you can play your music all around the house. You can also control any other AirPlay 2‑compatible speakers."

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Typical, next year for Canada.... Sill waiting for the TV app.

<comment><USER41> And News. Surely they could do the News app for Canada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'd buy it if you could also use it as a (really good sounding) speakerphone for conference calls when working from home.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google Home is your best bet at this point

<comment><USER35> Thanks, I had seen that. I have to rule it out though because I'm really not comfortable with the apparent privacy tradeoff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is a beautiful device. I think it will pair much more nicely with our iDevices than the Echo Dots do while sounding way better. Siri actually works quite well when it can hear you really clearly, so I'm assuming that these will work well two.

Assuming the reviews are good, I'll probably get two of these.

</comment><comment><USER43> Apple is slowly becoming pre Steve Jobs delving into miscellaneous hardware devices and losing focus.

<comment><USER28> This isn't Apple's first speaker, and the last one was announced by Jobs:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Hi- Fi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Hi-Fi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Looks like they re-purposed the old mac pro case.

[http://imgur.com/D01e6MN](http://imgur.com/D01e6MN)

[https://www.apple.com/homepod/](https://www.apple.com/homepod/)

<comment><USER45> Besides both being a rounded cylinder, they look nothing alike.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Getting opinions on our Ann Arbor Startup - <AUTHOR>

www.hangtrend.com <comment><USER2> Looks cool! As a designer, i must say you have kind of a lot going on and it's a bit unclear to me what to look at first. Maybe simplifying your front page a bit would help?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We need some outsider opinions on what you think when you first come to hangtrend.com. Thanks!</comment>