High-quality schools can increase academic achievement among the poor (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/are-high-quality-schools-enough-increase-achievement-among-poor-evidence-harlem-c <comment><USER2> The kids were a self-selected group because attending the school required that the parents had to do something active to get their kids into this school.

They try to control for this by comparing those kids to kids who lost in the lottery. But this only tells us about kids who have engaged parents. You cannot generalise to kids who have non-engaged parents.

Having engaged parents is the single most important condition for getting a good education.

Secondly, not having disruptive kids in class.

And only thirdly are quality of teachers.

If "free dental, medical, and mental health services" were all it took, then no school in Scandinavia should have any problem with poor kids. But we do have problems because some parents don't care at all about their kids education.

<comment><USER3> Essentially this.

It's not really the schools or teachers - they are generally decent. Some better than others ... but teaching is not rocket science. Basic education is not some magical, mysterious thing. It's mostly straightforward, and a little mundane.

If you have decent students, prepared to learn a bit - which mostly comes from a reasonably positive and stable home - then all you need is _basic_ things to get them to a decent level of literacy.

Surely some systems are better than others but I think it's far more about homes and communities than it is dumping 'bad teachers' and certainly not about making teaching 'competitive'.

<comment><USER4> >>> but teaching is not rocket science

I actually think teaching children is a really difficult and important part of society but I think many people don't value the contribution incredible teaching can make to individual students lives.

A great school and teacher obviously can change the lives of children in poverty but it's astonishingly difficult and requires immense talent to achieve. Not commenting on the quality of this study however.

<comment><USER3> I didn't say it was easy, or that it wasn't hard work, or that I didn't value it.

Teaching is 'hard work', it requires educated, dedicated people, and it's very important work.

But it's not rocket science. Doing it is not risky - especially if you're teaching something that's been taught a million times before. Most well educated people I think could teach at least one subject, though they may not have the wherewithal or stamina to stick it out, or may not have the empathy/social skills to do it well.

<comment><USER5> > Doing it is not risky - especially if you're teaching something that's been > taught a million times before. Most well educated people I think could teach > at least one subject

I think this is something that many well educated people think, right up until they are placed alone in a class-room of 30 children who aren't desperately interested in what they have to say.

<comment><USER6> The five year teacher attrition rate is under 20% based on this study: ([https://edsource.org/2015/half-of-new-teachers-quit- professi...](https://edsource.org/2015/half-of-new-teachers-quit-profession- in-5-years-not-true-new-study-says/83054)) That's rather low and includes many who don't like teaching even if they have the skills. Which suggests most people really can do it.

Granted, that's not the first time these people have been in a classroom, but collage Education degrees don't see high attrition either. Also, "97 percent of teachers who earned more than $40,000 their first year returned the next year, compared with 87 percent who earned less than $40,000."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The hundred billion dollar question is how do you scale it? High functioning schools are magnets for the best teachers, savviest families, and external support. It's just meritocracy applied to the bottom quintile. Show me a school model that's succeeding with the most at risk subdemographic within disadvantaged communities and then I'll be impressed.

I think the simple truth is that there's no free lunch. If we actually believe every child deserves an excellent education, we have to acknowledge it's going to take radical investment at the deepest levels of poverty, working upward from there. It's not impossible. Cuba sent teachers to every remote corner of their island to eradicate illiteracy, and largely succeeded. It's one of the few successes of the revolution.

We spend astronomical amounts of money incarcerating the more people per capita than anyone else in the world. Imagine if we applied that level of thoroughness to education.

<comment><USER8> Literacy is a low threshold. This study is talking about eliminating achievement gaps between populations. Their method is intense intervention in every facet of the students' lives. So who receives these services? Is it "fair" to only provide them to certain populations, those deemed most in need? If these methods are successful, why should any student be deprived of them? And if all students receive them, what then becomes of the achievement gap? Does it re-establish itself?

<comment><USER7> > Literacy is a low threshold.

Truly! But not low enough for the USA to be _failing_.

> Is it "fair" to only provide them to certain populations, those deemed most > in need? If these methods are successful, why should any student be deprived > of them?

The fact is, in the upper half of the American class system, educational needs are fantastically well served by redundant layers of investment. I went to an extremely well resourced public high school that made my mid-tier undergrad education a breeze.

That's not saying my school was perfect. Even it did a poor job of addressing the needs of the students at the highest risk. But this is my point. We need an attitude and behavioral shift toward truly embracing the concept that no child should be left behind without a fight.

I don't mean to sidestep your question, but you're identifying a purely hypothetical problem when we're in an ongoing educational crisis. It's kind of like saying, "won't those firehouses cause water damage to the carpet?"

<comment><USER9> >The fact is, in the upper half of the American class system, educational needs are fantastically well served by redundant layers of investment.

And in the lower levels, we attempt to pick up the slack by spending more money. Unfortunately, this is not a problem money can solve. Motivated parents are the only real solution, assisted by more efficient use of resources.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/25/468157856/can- mor...](https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/25/468157856/can-more-money- fix-americas-schools)

<comment><USER7> As a teacher at a tough school in Baltimore, almost every parent or guardian I dealt with wanted nothing more than a bright future for their kid. The lengths some of these parents went through were beyond impressive. But these are families who are often suffering the compounding effects of poverty and living in impoverished communities. That means they often didn't have a high quality education themselves or social capital or political pull.

Today's "nonideal" parent is just the kid the system failed yesterday. Any solution has to acknowledge the debt we have built up.

I read the article you linked. It's a great article. But what it doesn't say is "unfortunately, this is not a problem money can solve", and I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion.

Of course there are ways of spending money that don't have good "outcomes". But the article both cites examples where monetary investment has paid off and also challenges the reader to take an expansive view of what the "outcomes" are. Which I 100% agree with, because schools in impoverished carry far more of the load of holding together communities and providing essential services than in well off areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The results of this paper and its refutation of racism do not surprise me in the slightest.

I recently opened book Economic Indeterminacy by Yanis Varoufakis and apparently, he was conducting some experiments in the past that support his theory about economic origins of discrimination and dominance hierarchy.

Basically, what he seems to claim is that while discrimination might be completely unfounded in reality, it will set in as a mechanism to determine and stabilize equilibrium in some economic games. And once the equilibrium is determined, discrimination will actually start to make sense for the game players, ex post facto.

The book is unfortunately quite technical, but I have to say I was impressed, Varoufakis certainly is a smart guy. I wish somebody would write a more approachable popular summary of this and other conclusions in the book. Perhaps Varoufakis did himself in his other books, I didn't read any, but I think I will have to at some point.

</comment><comment><USER11> Now and then we read about a public school that achieves spectacular results, often based on the work of a charismatic and driven teacher or principal. Nobody has ever been able to scale these.

"Stand and Deliver" is an example. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_and_Deliver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_and_Deliver)

<comment><USER12> When reading about alternative school systems, many publications show really improved performances by students, but many of these studies suffer of the same bias: teachers who volunteer to teach differently, and parents who volunteer their kids to try a new approaches, are usually the main cause of good metrics.

Indeed, the challenge is to get even mediocre teachers to be able to teach better. We lack even mediocre teachers, so making a better system only for good teachers is not a solution.

<comment><USER13> We lack even mediocre parents- when you talk low SES you mean kids living in cars, parents in jail, kicked outside all night because mom wants to party with her new boyfriend. Not all of them, of course, but enough in those types of situations that no amount of classroom management or enthusiasm is going to overcome it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish American politics would focus on education 5000x more than anything else.

<comment><USER8> I wish the opposite. Education should be entirely apolitical and atomized to give those with the most skin in the game the most control. Traditionally, this has been the American way and I do not find a more politicized approach has gained us anything other than divisiveness and contention. The more local the matter, the less the Rs and Ds matter and the more the actual names and people they represent do.

<comment><USER15> _give those with the most skin in the game the most control._

Who would that be?

<comment><USER16> The local people that must utilize the local schools of course.

The US varies to a great degree from the top 10 states to the bottom 10 states, economically. Massachusetts is at $75,000+ GDP per capita, on par with Norway. Mississippi at the bottom is at $37,000, half that of New York, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts. The gulf isn't nearly as wide as that of the EU ($70k Ireland vs $13k Croatia), however it's still a considerable difference.

How would one propose the Federal Government's massive bureaucracy manage such wide variances in prosperity when it comes to states & counties? Maybe a dozen large school system zones, each semi-locally managed, encompassing several states. Otherwise, the best option is for states and counties to retain large amounts of control over local education.

<comment><USER17> Isn't the disparity between states (which is even more pronounced at the municipal level) an argument for _more_ federal intervention? How can Mississippi ever afford an education system like Massachusetts has? How else would the best ideas make it to more insular communities?

Of course there needs to be some local control, some variation to help the students succeed in the environment they'll actually live in (agriculture classes in Iowa, for instance), but the federal government has an important role to play in preventing local systems from falling very far behind and spreading knowledge about what works in comparable systems.

It's not an all-or-nothing proposition, and certainly it does require a lot of money and people and procedures. Education is complicated and critical to both the present and future functioning of society.

<comment><USER18> FYI Missippi has a GDP per capita similar to Germany, France, and the UK.

<comment><USER15> According to the numbers on Wikipedia Mississippi seems to be about $8-12k GDP per capita below the countries you mentioned.

<comment><USER18> Shoot, you're right. I saw somebody upthread mention ~$40k for Mississippi and didn't bother to verify. Still, it's not exactly like Mississippi is a 3rd world country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The most important methodology of the school:

> Like many charter schools in New York City, the Promise Academy has an > extended school day and year, with coordinated after-school tutoring and > additional classes on Saturdays for children who need remediation in > mathematics and English Language Arts skills. Our rough estimate is that > Promise Academy students that are behind grade level are in school for twice > as many hours as a traditional public school student in New York City. > Students who are at or above grade level still attend the equivalent of > about fifty percent more school in a calendar year.

The students are working twice as hard as others and attend remediation classes.

Other inputs:

> The schools provide free medical, dental and mental-health services > (students are screened upon entry and receive regular check-ups through a > partnership with the Children's Health Fund), student incentives for > achievement, nutritious cafeteria meals, support for parents in the form of > food baskets, meals, bus fare, and so forth, and less tangible benefits such > as the support of a committed staff. The schools also make a concerted > effort to change the culture of achievement, emphasizing the importance of > hard work in achieving success.

These inputs are claimed as characteristics of a "high quality school" in the abstract:

> We conclude with evidence that suggests high-quality schools are enough to > significantly increase academic achievement among the poor.

"High quality schools" (high quality meaning high test scores) generally do not fund many of these services for their students. What the study demonstrates are characteristics of schools that can help underprivileged children with less than adequate familial support.

This is an argument in favor of segregation. These services can only scale and be cost effective if a large portion of the students will use the services. This would not be cost effective if the majority of the school was not underprivileged.

</comment><comment><USER20> This seems exceptionally obvious.

"Better nutrition can increase athletic performance among the poor"

Well no shit!

Education lawmakers are typically the scummiest, grimiest, awful people. Lots of school districts are sabotaged by privilege politics bordering on rye educational equivalent of separate but equal.

That's a strong claim, but I work with a few young men that grew up in rough neighborhoods in Chicago and Boston, and their situations have a lot of similarity when it comes to how school was.

I know the language in this comment is strong, but America is really fucked when it comes to public education. Shit like common core is the tip of the incestuous, corrupt iceberg.

Bad schools lock down neighborhoods within a generation, and are a huge burden on the socioeconomic development of the people there. It's as important in communities as affordable groceries.

</comment><comment><USER21> Are the my using black and poor interchangeably?

<comment><USER22> How did you get that impression?

If it's because of "black-white achievement gap": [https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/studies/pdf/sc...](https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/studies/pdf/school_composition_and_the_bw_achievement_gap_2015.pdf)

<comment><USER23> Is "black-white achievement gap" still there once you control for parents' education and incomes?

<comment><USER24> Yes, that's why it's not the "rich-poor achievement gap", which is also quite large, but significantly smaller than the black-white one.

<comment><USER23> Got any data? I googled a bit, but couldn't find by both socioeconomic class and color. It's either one or the other.

I wonder where's the disparity. Are well-off black kids doing worse? Is it poor whites doing better than their peers? Are white poor- communities doing better than black ghettos? How is it correlating to street crime and violence?

<comment><USER25> This guy has collected all the data on it, and answers a lot of your questions:

[https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/unde...](https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/understanding- the-academic-achievement-gaps/)

<comment><USER26> Wow, every post on that blog seems to be a wealth of data. This should be its own post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not sure how that conclusion isn't obvious or self-evident. Obviously, if you have a high quality school with motivated students, chances are their achievement will be an order of magnitude higher than students at a poor quality school.

The more important question is, how difficult is upward social mobility in 2018?

<comment><USER28> Plenty of people have argued that the problem is not the quality of the school but the quality of the students attending it - a.k.a the "culture of poverty" [https://thesocietypages.org/roundtables/culture-of- poverty/](https://thesocietypages.org/roundtables/culture-of-poverty/)

In fact, some of them are referred to in the study itself as an example of the debate they are addressing - "Advocates of the community-focused approach argue that teachers and school administrators are dealing with issues that originate outside the classroom, citing research that shows racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps are present before children enter school (Fryer and Levitt 2004; 2006) and that one-third to one-half of the gap can be explained by family-environment indicators (Meredith Phillips, James Crouse, and John Ralph 1998; Fryer and Levitt 2004). In this scenario, combating poverty and having more constructive out-of-school time may lead to better and more-focused instruction in school. Indeed, James Coleman et al. (1966), in their famous report on equality of educational opportunity, argue that schools alone cannot treat the problem of chronic underachievement in urban schools. "

<comment><USER29> Considering the free medical and dental care, one might argue that that position isn't really in conflict with the success of this school

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Education is only going to get more important with progress. It's such a shame that in the US, you have to be rich first before you even get a chance to prove yourself.

<comment><USER31> How about proving yourself by getting rich anyway? And what are you proving if you started with good chances?

This comment is not meant to insult anyone, even if it may sound like that. It is meant as giving an alternative perspective to the problem. I know that in the US it is a lot harder to get rich if your parents aren't, but I also think that giving up, because the chances aren't fair, isn't helping anyone.

<comment><USER30> > ... giving up ...

You are putting words in my mouth. I was talking about conditions surrounding education, not about consequences or conclusions any individual might draw from them. And "giving up" is only one of many possible conclusions.

> what are you proving if you started with good chances?

You are still competing with others who "started with good chances". Poorer people still suffer disadvantages that have nothing to do with their capabilities. Having rich parents is not your merit.

> How about proving yourself by getting rich anyway?

Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Is getting rich the only, or most important, goal in scope?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The kids were in school twice as long, received free dental, medical, and mental health services as well as free meals and transportation for their parents. That is quite a bit more than high-quality schooling. And does the touted "closing" of the black-white achievement gap persist if white students receive the same treatment?

<comment><USER31> Well, it might be more than just 'high-quality' schools, but maybe that is necessary. That way you release the kids from their uneducated parents in some respect.

The problem with uneducated parents is that they are still _very_ valuable for the children in terms of emotional development. The problem however is, that they tend to make critical mistakes which sometimes affect the children's development.

And to bridge those two aspects, this 'high-quality' school model might be a very good answer.

Just to be clear: Not all uneducated parents are the same and some of them might be very good parents, its just that the probability of finding problematic behavior is much higher for uneducated parents.

<comment><USER12> This is a think I wish more people understood: There is no equality of chances. Unless you give every kid the same standardized education and childhood experience, which implies a society no one wants.

The only alternative is to recognize the people who start at a disadvantage and offer them compensation for that.

<comment><USER32> > Unless you give every kid the same standardized education and childhood > experience, which implies a society no one wants.

I've always personally been open to this idea. I find families to be tribal and often problematic. I think it be nice to start seeing all children as your own, the children belong to society, and maybe we should all pay for them.

<comment><USER33> >> the children belong to society

That's the dangerous way of thinking that we should avoid. Children belong to their parents, until they come out of age when they start "belonging" only to themselves. Seeing children as belonging to society is typical for totalitarian regimes (see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth))

<comment><USER34> No, it's typical for any society. There's social services in most if not all industrialized societies, that can take children away from their parents for the sake of the child if the parent(s) are ill-equipped to raise them. That's not a bad thing.

<comment><USER35> The problems start when "ill-equipped" is defined as expansively as possible. See the various cases of CPS getting involved when parents try to teach their kids basic independence by letting them walk to the playground on the corner and play there.

I think the way CPS is currently done in the US is actually causing a great deal of harm to current kids whose parents are totally reasonable parents...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> (2010)

</comment><comment><USER37> Kudos for de-clickbaiting the title.

Good schooling is vital for building up confidence and belief in one self. Without it chances to succeed in our society are fewer.</comment>


Ask HN: How could application monitoring be better? - <AUTHOR> Hi everybody. Full disclosure: I am trying to validate a startup idea. Please help :)
I believe there is a gap in the market for affordable application noting. The current solutions (new relic, datadog) seem out of reach for most startups/individuals/small businesses.
Am I right or not really? Is there something else that bugs you about these APM tools? Do you wish they did something else?
Thanks in advance! Chris <comment><USER2> These aren't the only solutions in this space.

Take a look at some of the other alternatives and you might find that some of your concerns are alleviated.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Noting = monitoring _</comment>


James Dyson says there's a VW-style scandal in the vacuum industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/22/9591634/dyson-bosch-vacuum-cheat-energy-tests <comment><USER2> The article seems to take Dyson's claims at face value, but is there evidence that they're true? (Dyson is hardly a disinterested outsider.)

</comment><comment><USER3> "To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."</comment>


500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app? - <AUTHOR> http://interfacelab.com/is-this-really-the-future-of-magazines-or-why-didnt-they-just-use-html-5

<comment><USER3> A better article would be "Why Wired Didn't use HTML5 for their iPad App". Since that probably wouldn't have the same link-bait worthy title, I'll write one here.

Why didn't Wired use HTML5?

1) a) it was built by Adobe who build it on Flash to begin with, b) the tools just aren't there yet. c) because of #2.

2) Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content (images, movies, audio) are bundled into the app so you do not need an internet connection to view it. I think we can all agree that downloading a "magazine" before you leave the house, then finding you can't view most of it, would be an uber fail.

If the app had been based on HTML5 it would have been a 'mare to cache all of the content locally for offline viewing. HTML5 does offer local storage, but not in a way that would allow sites to cache 500MB of content. And even if they could, do you really want to wait 20 minutes for that Pixar feature to download over 3G?

I suppose you could have created a native app with everything bundled locally and a UIWebView for rendering the HTML5 content, but really what do you gain from that?

<comment><USER4> _Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content are bundled into the app_

The article says that rich content isn't the source of the bloat:

 _Each full page is a giant image – there are actually two images for each page: one for landscape and one for portrait mode._

If the app stored text as, you know, _text_ then presumably it would require significantly less space. Eliminating the portrait/landscape duplication would also save space.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but if their intent was to show what a load of nonsense Apple's insistence that native apps are better is, it sounds like they couldn't have done a better job.

<comment><USER6> Did you RTFA? You could have made this a native app using the webkit control and bundled all the content in a 10th of the size.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I'm saying that from what I'm reading they must have intentionally been looking to create a completely native app that is worse than the Flash- compiled one.

That or the descriptions of the app are somewhat overcritical.

<comment><USER7> To entertain your reasoning: Adobe certainly could have intentionally created a "sucky native app" to contrast their "awesome Adobe iPhone OS compiler" but they mostly left out features and released a bloated (size) app. If they truly made a native app with HTML-based text and image optimization, or use their compiler, they could have equally reduced the size of this app and increased the functionality beyond what they have done here. Thus, the current implementation does NOT do a good job of proving that their compiler could have been better than a native Objective-C app.

Even so, if Adobe did want to throw a laughing cog at Apple via their clients, they're doing Wired a disservice, and frankly, that's terribly insane. They just couldn't throw a high profile partner/client under the bridge just to amuse some tantric executive war between Adobe and Apple.

Lastly, although hard to believe a company fairly technology agnostic as Wired would use their financial line (their money making product) as a way to experiment with dissing a technology giant, let's pretend Wired and Adobe both wanted to stick it to Apple for the 3.1.3 clause. They would be simply shooting themselves in the foot, as their customer is who really loses out here, not Apple.

It just make any sense at all, although I will give you that it's a romantic idea. More likely, they rushed a replacement implementation, since they couldn't use Adobe's compiler. Conde Naste clearly upholds Wired to the same deadlines as their other high end properties, and want to see a ROI for all the R&D they've had, perhaps. Becausethis certainly looks like a rushed implementation, or at a minimum, one done by amateurs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Because whatever software they use to layout the magazine can't export to HTML5. Since they're optimizing for time-to-market, they don't have time to retrain their designers to use different software, rewrite/extend it, or wait for the creators of that software to add export-to-HTML5 functionality, and so this was the most reasonable move. Give it some time, and they'll either move everything to HTML5 or a similar format with the features they need (their style of pagination, control over scrolling/swiping details in the UI, etc).

<comment><USER9> hrm, presumably whatever layout tool they use can export to pdf, and presumably it would be possible to then use Scribd's html5 tech (or license the right to use it) to then make it html 5?

<comment><USER10> Good idea, but maybe they started this project before that was announced, or they aren't bleeding edge enough to come up with that kind of solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He should have mentioned Sports Illustrated at I/O 2010 for their magazine demo built in HTML5 to make his point: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3j7mM_JBNw>

</comment><comment><USER7> I specifically did not purchase the Wired app because:

1) It's freakin' 500MB! Even though I have a 32GB iPad, I want that space for music and videos, not a magazine that I'll probably read once or twice for each issue.

2) It was super unclear how much future issues would cost, how they would be delivered, and how much space subsequent issues would use.

I've been very unimpressed with what the media has been able to create with the iPad. I think Apple needs to host a traveling "Developer Days" focused purely on the media, helping them to create really killer shit.

After all, these failures only lend ammo to the anti-iPad Kindle worshippers, when the problem is really the ability for media to innovate.

</comment><comment><USER12> Clause 3.3.1 states:

        Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++,
        or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine

This means that any "interactive" elements must either be written directly in Objective C, or you're confined entirely to WebKit.

If you don't fancy building new Objective C apps every time you roll out an issue of your magazine, you have two options.. do it entirely in WebKit or pre-render everything and spew it out with a simpler native reader. Looks like Wired took the latter option. I'd always wondered how magazines would get around this issue - guess we've found out.

<comment><USER13> I don't really understand your point, can you elaborate? That's all that's being discussed here - native app vs. HTML5 (or some hybrid, which is perfectly valid under 3.3.1).

<comment><USER12> In an ideal world, your magazine app wouldn't be solely using Webkit, because you might want to create elaborate and performant interactive elements.

However, creating these "by hand" in Objective C for each issue would be time intensive. Instead, you'd usually use a scripting language or a framework like Flash to create interactive elements that are beyond JavaScript's reach. 3.3.1 invalidates this approach requiring you either go Webkit, totally native, or, well, nowhere. There is no middle ground for scripting within apps beyond JavaScript on Webkit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wired iPad App Sells 24,000 Copies in First 24 Hours

[http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/wired-ipad-app- sells-...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/wired-ipad-app- sells-24000-copies-in-first-24-hours/)

</comment><comment><USER14> "Why Wired Didn't use HTML5 for their iPad App?"

Because consumers are not trained to pay for web sites, whereas they're trained to pay AppStore-delivered apps, that's why.

80% of iPhone/iPad applications, both accepted and rejected ones, would work great in HTML5; the figure is of course much higher for applications that might have been written in flash.

But discussions about Apple's languages, SDK or even hardware platforms are moot; the game changer for companies is the AppStore, and access to this AppStore is the only thing they truly care about. They can, but don't want to, distribute most of their stuff over plain old HTTP. What they can't is getting paid for doing so.

<comment><USER4> As explained elsewhere in this very thread, you can create App Store apps in HTML; there are already a ton of them in the store. Therefore the HTML vs. ObjC issue is orthogonal to the paid app vs. free Web site issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Watching all of the iPad demos, it appears very likely that publishers see this "new" format as an opportunity to monetize content that the web (HTML) has been marginalizing. At the moment, most users just want to read good articles and content, which is freely available on the web. Publishers, Wired in this example and many more likely to follow, are looking for a way to differentiate their content by building an engaging experience around it. No one really knows for sure how this work out in the long run, but I do agree with the author in that it is very reminiscent of the CD-ROM era.

</comment><comment><USER16> If we purchase that, can we export it and read it in reader using an open and free format? I suppose again, we can't use it and are forced to go in p2p to fetch a converted and open version.

I'm always willing to buy e-books in open format and they always end-up in broken or/and proprietary formats that you can't read on your platform.

This always reminds me of the DRM sucks visualization for the audio book : <http://s3.amazonaws.com/the_brads/the_brads_drm.png>

</comment><comment><USER17> We can watch 1080p video via YouTube, there is zero reason you can justify keeping it a non html5 app wih large downloads. Making an HTML5 magazine/blog/ipadzine is like a candy store to me.

</comment><comment><USER18> I get Wired magazine delivered to me by mail. The user experience is great, the pages turns just like real paper. The thing is indestructible too; I can drop it down a flight of steps without even a scratch showing up on it. My dog chewed up my first copy and it only cost me a few bucks to replace it. I can roll it up stick it in my pocket and read it at the beach, I don't even worry about getting sand in it. Can HTML5 deliver that experience?

</comment><comment><USER11> The company that did the Time Magazine app for iPad: <http://www.woodwing.com/en>

inDesign extension/tool that will do iPad/AIR/HTML5 packaging:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1IZ-16FVs4>

I think they also did the Sports Illustrated HTML5 magazine with thewondefactory.com

</comment><comment><USER19> Did I miss something? Did adobe buy wired? He keeps talking about adobe here, but I don't see the connection.

<comment><USER20> Adobe built the app for Wired. First it was Flash/AIR based, but then they have to make it iPOS compliant...

<comment><USER20> Of course I'm playing with the double meaning. It's a semantic irony to insist iPad and iPod apps are built in "iPhone OS" and never "iPOS".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thanks Steve, this is definitely a better user experience than using flash.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wired jumped the shark when Louis Rossetto sold out to Conde Nast and left the business.

</comment><comment><USER23> Got a 403 Forbidden error when going to the article.

<comment><USER24> Yeah I'm in the process of moving the thing off livingdot and onto slicehost.

I had no idea it would hit like this. 100K hits since 3pm EST.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Bloatware charts new frontiers in 2010!

</comment><comment><USER26> The fundamental argument is flawed - I find it extremely hard to believe that anyone could create the same seamless experience as the iPad Wired app in HTML5. I certainly haven't seen any demo's that would imply it's possible, saying "you could do that in HTML 5" if very easy to say, a lot harder to do.

Maybe if the authors of these kinds of posts provided us with a demos I'd start taking these missives seriously.

<comment><USER24> I'm the author of the article.

Have you used it?

It really is pretty much a slideshow. Even if you write it using webkit, you can ape whatever wonderful interactions you seem to be having (that I must have completely missed) using multiple UIWebView's and some good ol CoreAnimation.

You can also extend UIWebView with straight up Objective-C, further adding in the ability to do pretty much whatever you want.

There are a shit ton of HTML 5 demo's on the web. Try google.

<comment><USER26> I've seen a "shit ton" of demos and nothing I've seen is applicable to this problem. Wired is one of the most visually rich magazines around, it's layouts are complex, the visuals are rich, it's won many design awards - hundreds of people are involved in creating a beautiful design artefact. Writing an article that goes "wired sux, they didn't do it in HTML5" implies that the level of finish of the Wired app is possible, but I haven't seen any demos that are anywhere near the size and complexity of a magazine like Wired - <USER2> they exist I'd love to see them

<comment><USER27> See the comment above: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1385172> (Sports Illustrated showing an all-HTML5 demo that looks a lot more compelling that this Wired app).

<comment><USER26> Again, this is a video - I'll judge the final version when it's in my hands, I hope they manage to pull it off in a release version.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Whats the Status of the Hacker News Write API? - <AUTHOR> Is there a Write API in works ?. <comment><USER2> I doubt it. Easily 10X the amount of spam and low quality posts HN would have to deal with.

<comment><USER3> What makes you think that getting a write api will significantly increase spam? I don't think the current system of submitting a HTML form (essentially a POST) is a high barrier to begin with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try firstname.lastname@example.com if nobody publicly answers.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API)

firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER6> I've emailed Scott a few times about HN bugs and he's very responsive. I'm curious to hear what he says.</comment></comment>


Pixel-fitting screencast - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSLW4K2ON4s Because I thought Dustin Curtis' great article (dcurt.is/pixel-fitting) needed an extension. Subs in both English and Spanish provided. <comment><AUTHOR> Because I thought Dustin Curtis' great article (dcurt.is/pixel-fitting) needed an extension. Both English and Spanish subtitles provided.</comment>


Why Many Young Russians See a Hero in Putin - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/12/putin-generation-russia-soviet-union/ <comment><USER2> He did wonders for the GDP and unemployment, has stopped the wholesale sale of Russia to foreign interests (like under Yeltsin), he has brought relative stability and he is not a lackey or yes-man like the West wants. And he plays to the moral values and spirit of the majority.

That's enough for people there to like him. Of course you can't get everybody to like you, especially in a still poor country with tons of problems and such a legacy. The western media of course portray him as a kind of evil incarnate for doing 1/10th of the things the US itself has been doing in the last 30 years (wars, invasions, drones, mass surveillance, etc -- and not in their borders/immediate area, like Russia does, but all over the globe).

As for the "journalists thrown in jail" etc, most countries pointing the finger were not much better when they felt threatened by the "reds" (McCarthy anyone?). Only the idea they had back then that USSR will use some Hollywood actors and NY lefties to overthrow the US was laughable, but the idea that foreign powers today can use whatever opposition they find to overthrow a government in today's (much smaller potato) Russia is not that laughable. They've been doing the same shit, an sponsoring since the colonial years...

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa)</comment>


Official support for Windows 10 on ARM development - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/11/15/official-support-for-windows-10-on-arm-development/ <comment><USER2> Is Visual Studio going to be available in an ARM native format? I understand you can emulate x86 applications on Windows On ARM, but it would be nice if they provided a native performance experience.

I also feel like Microsoft and Apple are both doing cool stuff with the ARM space... but it would be cooler together. The iPad Pro is incredible, but iOS is so limiting. Windows 10 on ARM seems nice, but none of the hardware seems compelling, and no one makes a mobile ARM chip that's even remotely competitive with the A12X.

Since Apple is never going to let Windows 10 run on their iPad Pro, the least they could do is bring Xcode, Terminal, and external storage support to iPad Pro... but who knows if that's going to ever happen.

<comment><USER3> It looks like Xcode on iPad is probably happening based on some hires they've been doing. iOS 13 is also going to be a big update for iPad. Seems they're on an every other year release cycle for big iOS iPad updates - 9 introduced multitasking, 11 introduced big UI changes, and now lots of 13 rumors. I'd look at this year's new iPad hardware as a sign that they're serious about iPad as the next computing paradigm and are putting a lot of effort behind making the platform suitable for a variety of professionals.

<comment><USER4> Can they really build an Xcode for iOS while sandboxing apps and refusing to expose the underlying file system?

(Would your app icons, for example, be forced to live in your iOS photo stream, as it's the only way to share images between apps? What about non- image data files?)

Even if those issues can be addressed, iOS native UI is completely and utterly touch-centric, designed for fat fingers on small screens - and so far, nobody has really succeeded in building feature-rich professional software with high- complexity UIs within that paradigm.

Also, most developers demand multiple monitors as well as the precision of a keyboard and mouse... who would be the audience for XCode-on-iOS?

<comment><USER2> > Can they really build an Xcode for iOS while sandboxing apps and refusing to > expose the underlying file system?

I think that's kind of the point. Apple is going to eventually have to give certain classes of users more freedom if they want to see the iPad Pro adopted as a _Pro_ platform.

 _Consistently,_ every single major review I read or watched for the iPad Pro berated Apple about this. The Verge, Engadget, MKBHD, and many others. Reviewers _are not_ just letting Apple get away with this. Apple is going to have to open this up, even though some people like to believe they're never going to do that for some reason.

> most developers demand multiple monitors as well as the precision of a > keyboard and mouse

iOS already has great keyboard support, and with the USB-C port on the iPad Pro, you can literally plug it into a USB-C dock and instantly have an external monitor, keyboard, and more connected, and yes, the monitor can show different content, it doesn't have to mirror the internal iPad display.

The iPad Pro's keyboard folio case is really great. I think it's actually a slightly _more pleasant_ typing experience than what Apple's current generation Butterfly keyboards offer on their laptops.

Mouse support is another thing that reviewers have harped on Apple for. Whether they will support that at an OS-level or not is honestly more questionable than whether they're going to open up the underlying file system to advanced users, in my opinion.

> who would be the audience for XCode-on-iOS?

\- Developers who like portability.

\- Developers who like powerful hardware. (considering the iPad Pro is easily more powerful than the new MacBook Air and many of the MacBook Pros)

\- Developers who like a great display... that 120Hz Liquid Retina display is really fantastic.

\- Developers who enjoy long battery life.

\- iOS Developers who want to save money. (an iPad Pro _is_ cheaper than a MacBook, although not by as much as it should be)

Which developers _wouldn 't_ be interested in a _professional-grade_ iPad Pro, given the list above? Unfortunately, Apple hasn't released such an iPad Pro yet, due to software limitations.

<comment><USER5> I have heard argument that MacOS is great for development because it is Unix- like so you have proper shell but it is much more polished than Linux.

Wouldn't iOS without shell be much less suitable for development especially for anything that not apple specific for example web development?

<comment><USER2> Quoting myself from the top of this comment chain:

> the least they could do is bring Xcode, Terminal, and external storage > support to iPad Pro

I think a virtual terminal is a necessary piece here, which implies a Unix shell.

<comment><USER5> Do you think they give ability to install necessary tools? If not what the point of terminal? Or provided minimum of basic tools will be good enough for most developers?

<comment><USER2> If you're going to have a full IDE where you can write and compile code that Apple has never seen, it makes sense that developers would be able to download and run unsigned binaries inside the terminal for development purposes.

Attempting to arbitrarily differentiate between unreviewed code that you're writing and running versus unreviewed code someone else wrote that you're running would be a strange line to draw in the sand.

If they somehow decide to provide Xcode but don't provide a terminal at all, that would obviously be very limiting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now please get an ARM Windows Andromeda device release ready. I need a new option in the mobile space and I would happily use one that is a full computer in the form factor of a phone.

<comment><USER7> I've been waiting for such a device for years and it looks like we're finally getting closer to it happening. Between Samsung's Linux on Dex, the Librem 5 hopefully next year, and the ever-present rumors of Microsoft's Andromeda device it might actually happen.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. If Microsoft doesn't come through with Andromeda, the Librem 5 is my backup plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the most interesting things about this is the reintroduction of a concern for non store apps. The new app model for Windows is a failure, there isn't a app developed using the new model that can match anything developed using the "old".

<comment><USER9> I noticed the same exact thing. It's nice Microsoft finally see that its UWP/Store thing is a failure and start supporting the good old way instead of persisting to force developers using something they don't want.

<comment><USER10> Quite the opposite, I guess you haven't been paying attention to the developer sessions.

They are building the infrastructure to place Win32 apps inside the same sandbox model as UWP, to the point they can share the same container model.

Project Centipede and Desktop Brige were the first steps, the most recent one is the new MSIX package format.

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sgern/2018/06/18/a-closer-l...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sgern/2018/06/18/a-closer- look-at-msix/)

[https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/MSIX-Blog/MSIX- Packag...](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/MSIX-Blog/MSIX-Packaging- Tool-Preview-is-now-available-from-the-Microsoft/ba-p/216204)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> maybe we can get windows phone back.. I miss mine :-(

<comment><USER10> My secondary phone is a Lumia 630, just got an update yesterday.

As for my Android devices, well at least they still get app updates.

<comment><USER12> I have a 640 as a backup, it's a really great phone. Amazing that they're still getting updates after all these years.

<comment><USER13> I still use a 950 as daily driver, because if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Certainly the app situation is starting to hurt lately, but I haven't convinced myself I have enough need to pay for a new device yet. (My "new shiny" gadget budget has been needed for other things.)

As long as it keeps getting security updates, I don't feel a rush to buy a new phone. But yeah, I realize I'm an ugly duckling at this point every time some business starts a conversation with "Have you tried our app yet? Why don't you download our app?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it possible to develop x86 apps from a windows arm laptop?

<comment><USER15> windows Arm64 laptops and tablets support some x86 emulation but still are primarily Arm Machines

<comment><USER14> So is that a no/maybe/yes

<comment><USER16> "Depends on what you mean exactly". You can cross compile x86 apps from any architecture you can run the compiler. If you expect to also run them on the local device then it still depends on more detail of what it is you mean by x86 development. 64 bit x86 emulation still isn't supported so you wouldn't be able to run apps compiled in such a fashion. Drivers/kernel level stuff is not part of the application emulation layer so would not work. Other than that, it would most likely work (albeit slowly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> what is interesting about this is that maybe this is an opportunity for flutter and dart to take off a bit more, it compiles to ARM.

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't bet my future on flutter nor dart. flutter in my eyes is pathetic attempt to give dart some meaning, after it failed to compete with other compile-to-js languages like typescript (and now wasm). Came too late. Solved some problems that cordova and react-native have, but brought new ones. You need to learn new language, ui is not aligned with the system or other apps, you rely on flutter components only, which are more difficult to write than react-native's (mostly just simple wrappers)...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The end of Intel is near?

<comment><USER4> Not while ARM is synonymous with 'locked down, dumbed down, and touch-centric'

<comment><USER10> The PC clone market was a side effect of a strategy mistake from IBM.

Apple, Atari, Amiga, Acorn were quite different.

<comment><USER4> A beautiful mistake that led to an open and competitive PC market. While Windows dominated, the availability of PC hardware allowed the growth of Linux, too.

And I'm saying that as somebody who was a huge Amiga fan back in the day, and moved quite reluctantly to PCs after that.

Any new platform these days is likely to be user-hostile: locked down, tied to a monopolistic App Store, disallowing development without special permission, and abusing secure boot tech to lock out alternative operating systems.

So we should be fighting to keep the traditional Intel-based PC alive, as we're unlikely to see anything like it again!

<comment><USER12> I totally agree with what you're saying, but sadly I don't think the average user actually cares about these issues.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A new Curl logo - <AUTHOR> https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/05/27/a-new-curl-logo/ <comment><USER2> I just realized after all these years, I think I've been saying the name wrong.

In my head, I say "curl" as in curly hair. It's really "see-url"!? I think it's too late for my brain to correct that.

<comment><USER3> I've made this mistake with LaTeX. I was so embarrassed when someone told me "Its pronounced lah-tekh".

<comment><USER4> Another one is Tuple (like in a data base)

Too pool -or- Tup ulll -or- Tup lee

So many choice from just five letters....

<comment><USER5> Tuple is a mathematical term predating computers, and the "-tuple" suffix is older again, so pronunciation shouldn't be as ambiguous as the other, newly invented terms.

(It's historically rhymed with couple)

On the other hand, a lot of Latin-originating words have had their pronunciations changed in US English, the canonical example being data (from UK English "da-ta" to US English "day-ta", which has now begun to become standard everywhere due to the tech industry) so I guess other words could go the same way.

<comment><USER6> Surely day-ta and da-ta are the wrong way round there?

<comment><USER5> Unless I've worded it confusingly, I don't think so...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The new logo is nice, certainly cleaner and more better-looking than the old one.

However, the association for me is very much to PCB design since the lines with hollow circles look like tracks with vias or just pads for through-hole components. See, for instance, the background on KiCad's (an actual PCB design program) site: [http://kicad-pcb.org/](http://kicad-pcb.org/).

This "inspiration" was visible in the first suggestion too, the one with the c-as-symbol also makes the c look like circuit board tracks. Strange.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I'm not sure what that's about either. It seems far too thorough to be accidental, but the association is a strange one for a command line utility. I suppose it might make sense if the logo is designed for consumption by people who don't know much about computers, but that's really not something which can accurately be said of the thing the logo is for, so...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For something that claims to "grok" URLs, using "://" as part of the logo seems to be misunderstanding how URLs (are supposed to) work.

According to RFC3986, URIs (the proper name; URLs are a kind of URI) are correctly of the form:

        <scheme>:<scheme-specific-part>

For _some_ schemes, the <scheme-specific-part> may contain a <hierarchical- part>, the format for which is:

        //<authority>[/<path>] | <path>

So it's only hierarchical URIs with a defined authority that have the (admittedly iconic) "://" in them.

I know most people identity URIs as having that sequence in them, but these are all valid URIs:

        mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com
        sip:firstname.lastname@example.com
        tel:+18005550123
        file:/path/to/file

I'm not saying I expect everyone to understand these subtleties, but people who claim to grok URLs ought to.

<comment><USER10> It's a logo dude...

<comment><USER11> But I liked his comment, and explanation! I also learned some. What are we supposed to say, "nice!"? :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Cached version of link: [http://archive.is/TRDMX](http://archive.is/TRDMX)

<comment><USER12> Thanks. Darn, I like the second version _much_ more than the third. Oh well.

<comment><USER13> Agreed, this one kind of looks like a disapproving emoji.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I didn't know it even had a logo. I only ever see it as a command in a terminal.

<comment><USER15> And the new logo is right there in every url that you curl. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great! NetBSD fixed this "logo" [http://www.netbsd.org/images/NetBSD- old.jpg](http://www.netbsd.org/images/NetBSD-old.jpg) Now all we need is for R to get rid of this monstrosity [http://www.jeveuxetredatascientist.fr/wp- content/uploads/201...](http://www.jeveuxetredatascientist.fr/wp- content/uploads/2014/12/arton1563-e4415.png) and we'll be on a roll.

<comment><USER17> I know that mentioning PHP on here is grounds for crucifixion, but the fact that Composer ([https://getcomposer.org/](https://getcomposer.org/)) has a conductor as its identity has always bothered me.

<comment><USER18> They even serve different images with different colours on each refresh!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> T-zex Originally proposed logo looks so much better than the accepted one. Perfect example of client interfering with suggestions that result in something safe but boring.

<comment><USER19> I agree with his objection to the first. It's easy to see the logo with the logotext and read it as "URL" instead of "curl."

The logo for the accepted version is the best of the 3, in my opinion. However, when looking at it combined with the logotext it looks kind of odd in that the slashes are leaning away from the word curl so prominently. (#2 doesn't have this problem). No matter, though, it _is_ a big improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For some reason the slightly different colour of the final slash bugs me.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can't help but see the 'l' floating up higher than the rest of the letters (it isn't). Even so, it's a lot better than the original.

<comment><USER22> nah, you're going mad: [http://i.imgur.com/1TPBQVU.png](http://i.imgur.com/1TPBQVU.png)

<comment><USER23> He does have a point though.

In type design, curves and points will usually extend out further then straight square edges to stop them looking like they have stopped just short.

If you blow up some text large and draw a line on the baseline between an 'x' and rounded character like an 'o', the o will go slightly beyond the line. If it didn't, it would look too small to the eye. This is what you would call 'optically correct'. (Its the same for typefaces with pointy 'w's and stuff)

The stem of the bottom of the 'r' in the logo is rounded, so that could make the straight edge of the 'l' look out of place to the human eye, even though that when you draw a line, they line up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have always been a fan of wget, but upon searching around for some of the differences I came across this:

[https://daniel.haxx.se/docs/curl-vs- wget.html](https://daniel.haxx.se/docs/curl-vs-wget.html)

Which is a pretty good summary of the similarities and differences, and it makes me want to try curl a bit more than I have in the past, especially the support for scp and cifs.

<comment><USER25> I switched due to the SOCKS support in curl. For either one, if you use Firefox the cliget addon is quite handy :).

[https://github.com/zaidka/cliget](https://github.com/zaidka/cliget)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Website is quite slow, here's a cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/05/27/a-new- curl-logo/&num=1&strip=0&vwsrc=0)

<comment><USER27> Thanks, wont even load for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Reminds me of the Steam logo at first glance. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but there's definitely a strong connection in my mind between that logo and Steam now.

</comment><comment><USER29> I didn't even know it had an old logo! Looks good.

</comment><comment><USER30> Congrats to Soft Dreams, that's the best way to become recognized.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am registering the site as down, and isitdown also can't resolve[0] host. Anyone else having trouble reaching the site?

[0][http://imgur.com/CpJVWrR](http://imgur.com/CpJVWrR)

</comment><comment><USER32> Does cURL really need a logo?

<comment><USER33> Is it hurting anybody having one? It had one before, so at some point the answer was yes, and I guess it remains yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is the font courier ?

</comment><comment><USER35> Why not just a magnet for the C?

I don't like the new or old logo.

</comment><comment><USER36> looks great!

</comment><comment><USER37> it reminds me of /.

</comment><comment><USER38> I presume the downvoting is for the word shit, have to fucking love hipster news.

<comment><USER39> Please don't post comments like this. The HN guidelines ask you not to go on about getting downvoted; unfair downvotes are usually corrected by the community; and it's in bad taste to diss a community that you're as much a part of as anyone.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11785541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11785541) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> link is down, but I am wondering how can this story become a #1 top story on this site?

<comment><USER41> Urr because everyone on this site uses curl every day at every available opportunity?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> +1 for the logo. Now please update the project web site with matching colors :P

</comment><comment><USER43> I was surprised that there are no curls on the curl logo.

<comment><USER44> Well, there's one "curl".</comment></comment>


GitHub.com Demographics: A story of researching and uncovering blind spots - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tenaciouscb/github-com-demographics-a-story-of-researching-uncovering-blind-spots-21d7f1f90204#.scovcfeeq <comment><USER2> The report is one thing, mildly interesting. However, the postscript at the end...

\</comment><comment>

PostScript: My employment with the company ended alongside this study. As a female manager in her late 30s, I became a GitHub Inc. statistic. I hope people will continue to research hard-to-reach places, and I hope women of all diverse backgrounds will find a way to succeed in leadership at GitHub.

The link from the postscript: [http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/08/report-anti- white-a...](http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/08/report-anti-white-agenda- revealed-at-githubs-diversity-team/)

\</comment><comment>

What I can't tell from the postscript is if she contends that she was let go because she is white, which is how I read it initially. I'm very confused by the wording and what she intends that to mean.</comment>


Towards a Unified Theory of Operational Transformation and CRDT - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@raphlinus/towards-a-unified-theory-of-operational-transformation-and-crdt-70485876f72f#.rkqr4vcgy <comment><AUTHOR> Note that the author is also the author of Xi Editor[1]. There's some discussion happening over at /r/xi_editor[2].

[1]: [https://github.com/google/xi-editor](https://github.com/google/xi- editor)

[2]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/xi_editor](https://www.reddit.com/r/xi_editor)</comment>


Security Engineering - A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html <comment><USER2> chapters for the first book is pdf. I HATE pdf. why can't they be html... sigh bookmarking.

<comment><USER2> what? am I not allowed to hate pdf? I would say something useful on it, if the medium were more accessible. but instead I have to download it piece by piece. then merge it together to make a full book. Then I have the problem that pdfs just don't work the same as web pages, they are more like images.</comment></comment>


If Sony Hack Wanted to Stop 'The Interview' Release, It Worked - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30526406

<comment><USER2> They are able to stop not because they are worried about another 9/11, but if something happens, the class-action suits will fly all over, that scares the theaters. So, in essence its not the North Korean dictator or his minions, but the good old lawyers of US&A.

<comment><USER3> What you are doing is "victim blaming". It's not Sony's fault. It's not the theaters' faults. It's not the lawyers's faults.

It is the fault of the people threatening violence against moviegoers.

edit: I'm not commenting on the overly litigious culture of the US or easily panicked mentality over any threat. Those are fair critiques of the US. However, both of those would be moot if it were not for a credible threat of violence from some person/group. This philosophy of culpability pre-dates the US legal system.

<comment><USER4> No, the fault really does lie with the overly-litigious culture of the US.

Did you know that if you graduate from med school in Canada, they advise you not to step forward if you're on a US flight and someone asks if there's a doctor on the plane?

Because you'll get sued.

<comment><USER3> Citation, please.

<comment><USER5> I'd be interested to see such a citation as well. Quick searching shows that the US (and other countries such as Canada and the UK) have Good Samaritan laws that protect doctors assisting people in such situations. Specifically:

"The Aviation Medical Assistance Act of 1998 ensures that if you're flying in the United States, even if the airline is not owned by a U.S. company, you have Good Samaritan protection."[1]

I also found one article interviewing a doctor who answered the call who mentioned that no physician has been successfully sued for assisting in an inflight medical emergency.[2] A claim that he actually backs up with a citation.[3]

[1] [http://www.aafp.org/fpm/2008/0400/p37.html](http://www.aafp.org/fpm/2008/0400/p37.html)

[2] [http://www.cockeyed.com/personal/doctor_airplane/doctor_airp...](http://www.cockeyed.com/personal/doctor_airplane/doctor_airplane.html)

[3] [http://methodistanesthesia.com/Articles/Article_25.pdf](http://methodistanesthesia.com/Articles/Article_25.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't believe for a second that the Sony hack was North Korea.

It was a made up story to cover up their shitty security.

<comment><USER7> The North Korean story has all kinds of issues:

\- North Korea is not that technologically sophisticated (at least compared to China or Russia, for example).

\- North Korea has very limited internet access in general.

\- It is highly likely the few internet pipes NK has are being heavily monitored.

\- NK has bigger fish to fry, frankly. They can easily control this movie within their borders and they've ignored previous movies that made fun of them (World Police?).

If it is a NK supporter or supporters I doubt they're located physically within NK. But I suspect this was just a random hacker who decided to blame it on NK/the movie for the lolz.

<comment><USER8> A hand-picked group of say 5 kids from within NK, given special training for years and access to lots of resources could easily pull off what happened at Sony. None of your points are things that would stop a small special ops team from pulling off the Sony hack. Nor would it have required a significant reason or investment.

Simply because the alternative is that a small group of semi-sophisticated non-state backed hackers could also pull if off. To say that NK can't acquire or won't utilize similar capabilities is a bit naive.

What we need is evidence that it wasn't NK than even more endless conjecture here.

See also "In North Korea, Hackers Are a Handpicked, Pampered Elite"

[http://recode.net/2014/12/07/in-north-korea-hackers-are-a- ha...](http://recode.net/2014/12/07/in-north-korea-hackers-are-a-handpicked- pampered-elite/)

<comment><USER9> Nah, I just don't see a country that isolated and impoverished having the resources and talent necessary to do any major damage through hacking. They may very well claim to have l33t hax0rz but just like everything else their claimed superiority and reality don't quite line up.

Now, I would not be surprised if they had help from China, but I really doubt NK did this themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have any of you read the book: Trust Me I'm Lying ([http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions- Manipulator...](http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions- Manipulator/dp/1591846285))? I have not, but have had many discussions with friends who have read it. It's my understanding that the premise of the book is that mainstream media isn't as relevant as they use to be due to the rise of blogs; mainstream media picks up stories from a lot of blogs. Many of these stories are planted there by media manipulators to drum up controversy and thus increase sales.

Admittedly, I don't have evidence to suggest this, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was just a publicity stunt.

 __Edit: __I 'm not claiming the hack was a publicity stunt, I'm claiming that I wouldn't be surprised if the cancelation of the movie was a publicity stunt.

<comment><USER11> You think Sony leaked their employees' SSNs and salaries as part of a publicity stunt?

<comment><USER10> No, of course not! I wasn't referring to the hack as a publicity stunt, I was referring to the cancelation of the movie.

<comment><USER8> Totally agree, this is going to do wonders for movie sales.

This is almost legendary PR to have for a film, despite the big cost of the hack (for which it will still no doubt be net negative).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Pretty amazing that they've been able to stop this. It's amazing in all the wrong ways.

P.S. Actual article title: "Sony cancels The Interview release amid threats"

<comment><USER12> I am truly saddened for free speech. Doesn't anyone realize that capitulating to threats is the worst thing one can do, it only emboldens the idiots further.

<comment><USER13> This isn't really a matter of free speech.

Unless of course, you are suggesting that North Korea (accused) is infringing on your freedom of speech. In that case, maybe we can organize a sit-in or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Overall, this is just great publicity for the movie. I predict that in the long run, it will be successful financially. Before, I just wanted to wait for it to get to Netflix or Amazon. Now I want to see it when possible.

<comment><USER7> I doubt Sony care at this stage. The damage this has done is far more significant than one single movie. Even if the movie is a runaway success, they won't look back on this episode fondly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's the magnet URI for it?

</comment><comment><USER16> they should make it available for downloading. that would protect their partners and defy the hackers all in one shot.

<comment><USER17> Some critics have seen it, so there might be some screeners out there floating around waiting to be uploaded: [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interview_2014/](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interview_2014/)

<comment><USER18> I believe that the reviews are coming from press screenings in cinemas. I don't think screeners for (intended) wide releases are generally sent to critics before the theatrical release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is really sad what kind of precedent this is setting. Hollywood is already too risk-averse as it is, and now it is going to get even worse.

<comment><USER20> Agreed... This is a terrible precedent that only show everyone in the world how easily we fall back on our principles and values.

I think that Judd Apatow and Jimmy Kimmel said it best on twitter..

"I think it is disgraceful that these theaters are not showing The Interview. Will they pull any movie that gets an anonymous threat now?" \- Judd Apatow

" @JuddApatow I agree wholeheartedly. An un-American act of cowardice that validates terrorist actions and sets a terrifying precedent." \- Jimmy Kimmel

[https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/status/545311021443715072](https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/status/545311021443715072)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This makes me so ____ing angry it 's unreal.

Sony needs to grow some balls, this is growing into a complete and utter joke. This is the entire problem with the world right now complete and utter risk aversion, red tape and politics.

If i was the CEO of sony, I would not dumb down the death scene, I would make it more extreme, I would edit the film and add recent events into it along with some dialogue that says "Screw North Korea, screw The guardians of peace", as the credits roll up there would be a scene with some computer geeks, a "guardians of peace banner" and something amusingly horrible happening to them all, like being annally rapped to death by a pack of gorillas while trying to hack into the sony website from there underground hacking bunker.

After the credits, maybe a crying Seth Rogen after he discovers the true damage that the guardians of peace have done... they have deleted is midget porn collection!!!

I would do my upmost to get it in every theatre in the world that could and any chain that refused to show it, I would withdraw rights for them to show future big Sony releases, because basically screw them. If they're not willing to have the balls to be awesome, then they aren't important enough to have anything else.

This is a joke, oh no... someone read some emails and leaked them on the internet... on no there is a movie script or two and some unrealised movies. Oh noes they hacked our network, BIG ____ing deal.. nobody cares, it makes no difference to anyone. Sony just got frapped and went crying to mommy. Sony come out of this looking pathetic, I will avoid this brand in the future unless they do something more awesome soon.

<comment><USER22> Sony is not a political entity, they're a global multimedia conglomerate. It's not their job to make "awesome" statements defending free speech, or to turn against their distributors, or to rage against the machine. Their job is to make money selling, in this case, a comedy which has turned out to be more trouble for them than it's worth (which given the unlikely franchise potential of comedies, probably isn't much.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I could imagine them taking a patriotic tack and inviting everybody to show up well armed to the showings. Or heck, put it up for streaming at $15 on all the major providers, let the terrorists hit every data center between here and Pyongyang.

<comment><USER7> > I could imagine them taking a patriotic tack and inviting everybody to show > up well armed to the showings.

Because more guns is always a key to reducing violence...

<comment><USER24> I've never seen an instance where armed law abiding citizens made a terrorist attack or mass shooting worse. If you know of any, I'd love to hear about them.

<comment><USER7> I cannot. I can name numerous situations where one "armed law abiding citizen" has shot another "armed law abiding citizen." If people came armed to a movie, I wouldn't go, not because I fear a "terrorist" attack, but because I fear armed individuals in general.

And statistics back me up, the number of people in the US killed in terrorist attacks is insignificant relative to the deaths from gun violence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not even sure that was the goal of the hackers, but either way the fear of lawsuits certainly carries a scary level of influence. Not sure that I like that.

</comment><comment><USER25> Where are these sources for "no credible intelligence" says US Government. Says who? Why is this implicit & anonymous?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, even when they have 'credible intelligence', they don't tell us, and if they did, it would not be the whole truth, if true at all.

That statement is meaningless. It's just the gov saying "if something does happen, we swear we didn't know, but we're not saying it's going to happen"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Profiles in courage.

</comment><comment><USER12> They aught to release it in Texas, Molon Labe!

</comment><comment><USER27>
        We are deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the
        distribution of a movie, and in the process do damage to our
        company, our employees, and the American public.

I hope the spirit of "the American public" is not too badly damaged and that they will rise above this very trying episode.

<comment><USER27> it should be obvious at this point that sony's gamification of this event is part of the problem and deserves some ridicule.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What would be so cool is if theatres all got together and screened the _other_ THE INTERVIEW, the one starring Hugo Weaving. It's a 1998 Australian thriller that got very good reviews when it came out. I doubt anyone's seen it in the U.S.

But it has Mr. Smith / Elrond starring in it!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview_%281998_film%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview_%281998_film%29)

So join with me and petition your local theatre to show THE INTERVIEW, you know, the Hugo Weaving flick!

<comment><USER29> I doubt enough prints remain of that film to show it in more than a few theaters, and it probably doesn't exist in a digital-projection format.</comment></comment>


The End of the War on Drugs and the Emergence of the Cannabis Industry - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/the-end-of-the-war-on-drugs-and-the-emergence-of-the-venture-backed-cannabis-industry/ <comment><USER2> The war on drugs is not ending. Marijuana is the only thing people want to legalize. 80-90% want to keep everything else illegal. That is a problem. Legalized marijuana will surely cause cops to ease up on suburban white kids, but that'll remove the exigency from the injustice that continues to play out in other parts of the system.

<comment><USER3> I can see this going one of two ways.

Optimistic - people in mainstream society realise cannabis is not destroying society and slowly come to appreciate that alcohol is not the only drug, and that drugs (and drug users) aren't the devil. The edifice comes tumbling down and we start looking at drug policy (and our massive drug-related budget) in terms of harm reduction.

Pessimistic - the largest group of drug users is brought into the fold of the mainstream. The idea of 'hard' and 'soft' drugs is reinforced and users of anything other than cannabis and alcohol are pushed even further into the category of 'other'. Drug-war resources used against cannabis are diverted into continuing to make everything worse for everyone when it comes to all other drugs. Central and South America and West Africa continue to get torn apart by cartels feeding off Europe and North America's insatiable appetite for cocaine. Other parts of the world that have the raw materials for other drugs (sassafras, poppies) go the same way (if they haven't already). NPS with unknown health profiles continue to be churned out and consumed by the kiloton.

Unfortunately I think the pessimists probably have the right of this one for the next several years at least.

<comment><USER4> I'm an optimist. The success of cannabis gives a playbook for successful liberalization: find good medical uses, push hard to allow more research, show that society can handle prescription access, educate, legalize. This is already starting with MDMA and psychedelics.

In some ways, it's funny that in our hyper-medicated age, that a stimulant and a heavy painkiller are still unspeakably taboo. I mean, every graduate school and Ivy League college in our country is awash with powerful stimulants (Adderall). It wouldn't surprise me if a properly controlled/dosed drug with coca extract in it could be more effective than amphetamines for attention issues. I never want to touch heroin, but with the abuse of prescription painkillers, criminalizing usage of one drug (and thus funding criminal networks) seems like a worse and worse strategy.

<comment><USER5> It's a meaningless anecdote, but a recent newsworthy drug bust around here was a prescription pill ring (Buprenorphine/Suboxone). So there is also criminal distribution of prescription painkillers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To test whether the war on drugs has ended, try starting a cottage industry around cocaine production. Doh!

All that is happening, essentially, is that marijuana is being reclassified as a new form of alcohol. That makes it okay with conservatives, who are okay with alcohol, by and large.

So, nothing is really changing.

The WOD will end when you can legally get any substance you want. Including any legitimate pharmaceutical, without a damned prescription.

<comment><USER7> Don't forget the taxes part! Conservatives are pretty OK taxing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From my European perspective, the equation looks simple:

In the U.S., money talks. And it's loud. If the figures showing up from the states of Washington and Colorado (there are others) are good and they mean people are making boatloads of cash with that crop, legalization will spread like wildfire. It is one of the good aspects of a more deregulated market after all.

<comment><USER9> > From my European perspective, the equation looks simple: In the U.S., money > talks.

This is true literally everywhere in the world. Some places may be more up front about it and others may try to hide it more, but in the end, everyone is subject to the same constraints of economics.

<comment><USER8> It is indeed true of pretty much everywhere in the world. But the people in the United States have, in my opinion and understanding of the world, a more natural tendency towards cold mercantilism where the personal feelings don't take precedence over good business models and potential financial gain. It is a trait that I believe is true of many protestant-based, trading-infused societies (like the UK, the Netherlands and others).

That should have read: "Money talks everywhere, but even more so in the U.S".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny, it's practically an old hippy canard that there wouldn't be much money to be made if it were legal. I'm sure that there's money to be made somewhere, but this is a pretty easy plant to grow/cultivate if it's ever legal to have a few plants in your backyard - far easier than brewing your own beer.

My guess is that the money will go into building a few solid brands. I wouldn't be surprised if edibles were the focus here, too - they're much easier to make at scale than by individuals, a lot of people probably prefer eating to smoking, and they provide a lot of opportunity for brand differentiation.

<comment><USER10> I've never used cannabis, and I certainly couldn't be bothered to grow it even if it was legal. Nor would I be interested in smoking. But I might try it in edible form if only just to have experienced it.

(And this is not down to lack of access - despite never having tried cannabis, I'd have no problem getting hold of some today if I suddenly decided I had to try it, which shows just how much of a total failure criminalisation of it has been)

I definitively agree with you. There'll be plenty of people who'll want to grow their own, but also plenty of people like me or somewhat more interested, that'd be interesting in trying or indulging in it now and again, but who's not interested in tending for a plant (just like I'm not growing my own vegetables...), not interested in smoking, and not interested enough to pay attention to how to find a good quality product, who'd prefer to be able to just recognise a large brand that'd be a sign of _sufficient_ quality and trust.

For that kind of market segment price matters less than recognition - I'd happily pay a "not having to spend time researching what to look for on the internet" premium of 100% or more if I at some point decide to try, the same way I drink alcohol so rarely that when/if I do I stick to a handful of well known brands that I'm comfortable with.

<comment><USER4> "just like I'm not growing my own vegetables..."

This keeps getting brought up, and I'm not really saying there's not a good business here, but the economics are vastly different. A tomato plant might save you $3 and provide you with a meal or two. If states aim to keep prices near current street prices, a good harvest from a few plants could provide north of $500 worth of value for a minimal outlay of money (quite possibly nothing) and little work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've heard rumors, that Monsanto is behind the legalization of marijuana, planing to sell seeds, fertilizers and herbicides.

Is there any truth behind this rumor?

<comment><USER3> It would not surprise me if many large agri-tech companies had plans for if/when it becomes fully legal from production to consumption in more places.

However I have definitely heard lots of conspiracy-theory type stuff coming from the more crunchy end of the pro-pot spectrum. Some of them even actively resist legalisation because they don't want 'corporations' involved in the trade.

Personally, I think the greater virtue is getting rid of our terrible laws and war on drugs, we can sort out marketplace ethics later.

<comment><USER12> It amazes me that some people prefer the DEA and for-profit prisons to corporations. At least Monsanto doesn't show up in your home unannounced in the middle of the night and shoot your dog.

<comment><USER13> Not unless you're growing corn without a license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> so this means that the previous generation of distributors, african-americans who all went to jail, were simply ahead of their times.

now that the whites have changed the rules, all big entrepreneurs in this area are white. note also which states have started this.

</comment><comment><USER15> 2015 - also known as After Ford 107 [http://www.huxley.net/soma/somaquote.html](http://www.huxley.net/soma/somaquote.html)

<comment><USER16> I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the US has been going the way of BNW for a long time. This whole time we've been scared of 1984 being imposed on us that we've let BNW naturally creep in.</comment></comment>


Welcome to the Future Nauseous (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/05/09/welcome-to-the-future-nauseous/ <comment><AUTHOR> A quite insightful essay.

Call me a sociopath, but while reading it I was - and still am - <USER2> myself, how do I get to exit the Manufactured Normalcy Field? Because I don't want to stay in it. And after that, I started asking myself, how can we collapse the Field and shut it down altogether?

Also a potentially interesting insight to how my perspective, as a tech native, differs from general population: "We understand Facebook in terms of school year-books." Now do we? Do people _really_ use this metaphor in their thinking, instead of understanding Facebook as it is, as a new kind of thing? Do people really shoehorn new technology into old categories instead of defining things by the collection of features and experiences they have?</comment>


Around the world without flying. - <AUTHOR> http://www.ndoherty.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some hilights:

\- Cargo ship [http://www.ndoherty.com/books/cargo/](http://www.ndoherty.com/books/cargo/)

\- Iran [http://www.ndoherty.com/iran/](http://www.ndoherty.com/iran/)

\- AmA [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/22k9f3/](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/22k9f3/)</comment>


There should be a iphone cover that blocks the power button - <AUTHOR>

My girlfriend's iPhone was stolen in a subway station. She immediately rushed home to track it in Find My Iphone. However, the phone had been switched off immediately of course.<p>If there were an iphone cover that cannot be taken off easily and blocks the power button, you could trace your phone for much longer. And who needs the power button anyway? You could of course take it off with a special screwdriver or a small code lock or something. <comment><USER2> I use the power button to lock the phone (turn off the backlight), to mute incoming calls when the phone is in my pocket, and to take screenshots. It would suck for me (and a vast majority, I think, of people who do the same) to have to take off the case with a "special" screwdriver.

A better option would be to prompt the user to enter their passcode before turning the phone off, if at all the user has set a passcode.</comment>


Blosc – A high performance compressor optimized for binary data - <AUTHOR> https://blosc.org/pages/blosc-in-depth/ <comment><USER2> It's basically byte or bit shuffling filter (very fast SIMD optimized) in front of several modern compressors (lz4, zstd, their own) with self describing header. So if you have an array of 100 8-byte values, the result of shuffling is 100 1st bytes, followed by 100 of 2nd bytes and so on.

It shines when values are of fixed size with lots of similar bits, e.g. positive integers of the same magnitude. It's not so good for doubles, where bits change a lot. Also, if stroring diffs it helps to take a diff from initial value in a chunk, not previous value, so that deltas change sign less often (and most bits flipped).

From own usage case, for the same data, C# decimal (16 bytes struct) is compressed much better than doubles (final absolute blob size), while decimal is taking 2x more memory uncompressed.

If data items have little similar bits/bytes then it's underlying compressor that matters.

</comment><comment><USER3> Back when I did HPC work, I used Blosc to compress information about atoms for molecular dynamics simulations before transferring this data between the Infiniband interconnects. Despite the high speed of the interconnects, it was actually faster to compress, transmit, and decompress using Blosc than to transmit only the raw data.

<comment><USER4> btw, I'm currently tasked with Kolmogorov complexity estimation, so could someone recommend me best (from ratio point of view) compressors?

<comment><USER5> [http://mattmahoney.net/dc/text.html](http://mattmahoney.net/dc/text.html), is pretty much the scoreboard of [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutter_Prize](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutter_Prize)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Blosc is an outstanding project. I have used it with great success in finance and general data science in production with very large total datasets (one custom binary format and one leveraging protobufs).

It really shines first and foremost as a meta compressor, giving the developer a clean block based API. Once integrated (which really is quite easy) you can experiment easy with different compressors and preconditioners to see what works best with your dataset. These things can be changed at runtime and give you great flexibility.

Francesc has been advancing blosc consistently with a steady vision for years and years. It is one of the most underrated tools around IMO.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apparently they have several benchmarks where they claim that decompression is faster than memcpy (!).

However, this is only the case because on several Intel x86_64 benchmarks they report memcpy performance between 5-10 GB/s, while even a basic DDR3 dual channel arch has 20 GB/s memory bandwidth, while a modern quad channel DDR4 can have 76.8 GB/s bandwidth, and of course there is no reason for memcpy to be substantially slower than memory bandwidth assuming it's properly implemented (AVX can separately read two and write one 256-bit per cycle = 128 GB/s memcpy at 4GHz).

Am I missing something or is this another case of "implausible claims = they screwed the benchmark = they are incompetent/malicious"?

<comment><USER8> The absolute numbers don't seem far fetched. An AVX optimized memcpy on my high end machine (DDR4) has a throughput of 30GB/s.

As long as they are using the same memcpy routine in both the decompression case and the 'only memcpy' case, that seems reasonable. Obviously, the quicker memcpy becomes, the faster the decompression has to become to maintain the same performance ratios, but things like faster clock speeds or multi- threading can make that issue moot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's very good! I have used Blosc in developing JDF.jl a serialization format for dataframes.

[https://github.com/xiaodaigh/JDF.jl](https://github.com/xiaodaigh/JDF.jl)

<comment><USER10> Could you tell us more? Is this meant to be an alternative to parquet?

In fact, now that I think about it, parquet supports compression. Shouldn't this be just an option when saving to parquet format?

<comment><USER11> Parquet's snappy and brotli compressors are quite ok. Not sure if blosc is even faster though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would be cool to see this in ZFS to make compressing binaries even more efficient

</comment><comment><USER13> The used shuffle techniques before compresson might be useful for squashfs? We play around with a mesh network (freifunk.net) and there are ton's of cheap 4mb flash devices that need every kb of storage :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Blosc is an excellent choice if speed is what you are after. Give or take 5 years ago I had to use a compression to transport a lot of data over zmq and blosc ran in circles over all other compressions.

<comment><USER15> Yes it's apparently so fast that in some scenarios it's even usable for compressing RAM. A framework I'm using does that to be able to process much bigger data sets than what would fit in RAM otherwise.

<comment><USER16> Can you be more specific around the framework and data type and access patterns ?

<comment><USER15> It's a framework called OpenVDB [1], which we use to represent and manipulate volumetric data (level sets). It stores the data as a sparse hierarchical grid with (from a practical perspective) infinite dimensions, and allows very efficient iteration and local manipulations of the grid.

I'm not an expert on how it is implemted exactly, but I believe the way it uses Blosc is by saving leaves of the VDB grids in blosc-compressed chunks, which are loaded into memory directly and only decompressed on-demand when the data is accessed, then re-compressed when the leaves are processed.

[1] [https://www.openvdb.org](https://www.openvdb.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can someone with Blosc 2 experience tell me what are the proper conditions to use superchunks or frames? When does it become advantageous to use one over the other?

This is a really interesting library.

</comment><comment><USER18> This would be an excellent candidate to put on an FPGA directly next to the CPU. (Assuming such thing would exist and be open enough to be usable by general public.)

</comment><comment><USER19> This look amazing. The application looks so diverse ! Can someone know if it can be applied on msgpack ?

<comment><USER20> Not generally, no. blosc is geared towards "rectangular" data — that is, a C-style array of int, double, or some struct type.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can blosc be used to compress/decompress regular zlib streams?</comment>