111 Gigapixel photo of Seville sets new world record - <AUTHOR> http://www.sevilla111.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who can't read Spanish, these are some tech details:

The gigapan is composed of 9750 pictures (f16, 1/800 S, ISO800) taken with a robotized Canon 5D MkII, a 400mm Canon lens and a duplicator (effectively 800mm of focal lens), and put together using Autopano Giga on a PC with two 6-core Xeons, 40GB RAM and 8TB disk space.

Full details:

Spanish: <http://www.sevilla111.com/comosehizo.htm>

Google Translated: [http://translate.google.es/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sevi...](http://translate.google.es/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sevilla111.com%2Fcomosehizo.htm&sl=es&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8)

<comment><USER2> Photo nerd - the bit of gear they use to turn a 400mm lens into an 800mm lens is called a 2x teleconverter. You get double the focal length for a reduction of two stops in the available aperture and generally a loss of optical resolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What record did this break? Largest photo? Call me picky, but I don't see how this can be deemed a record. If stitched together photos count, then what about google maps? The average resolution of landmass is 15m for all of google earth (source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#Imagery_and_coordi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#Imagery_and_coordination)). With a total land area of 148,940,000 km^2 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth>) that puts the resolution of google earth's stitched together images at around 662 gigapixels ([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(148,940,000+km2+in+m^2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(148,940,000+km2+in+m^2\)+/+\(15^2+m^2\))) (that seems lower than I expected, anyone want to check my math?). Wouldn't any stitched image have to beat that at least to be deemed a record?

<comment><USER4> They aren't stitched together, they're tiled. When you're loading Google Maps, you're loading dozens of relatively small resolution images.

<comment><USER5> And? I don't need to hook up fiddler to know that when I hit sevilla111.com I'm not pulling down a 0.1 terapixel image all in one go, I'm only ever loading a teeny tiny (tiled) sub-section of the raw image or a lower res version of the whole. Which isn't much different than google maps/Earth.

<comment><USER4> There's a difference. For this 111GP image there was taken 9750 images. Those images were then merged together to a single image using Autopano Giga and then split for the ease of presentation. Google's satelite photography on the other hand has never been merged into one huge image.

<comment><USER6> I'm with the OP. These images have not been merged together to form a single image. There is no 111 Gigapixel image out there that represents this picture. As you zoom in, you hit a different tile-layer.

<comment><USER4> Well, turns out I wasn't entirely correct for this picture. They rendered it to three bigass images: [http://translate.google.es/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sevi...](http://translate.google.es/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sevilla111.com%2Fcomosehizo.htm&sl=es&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8)

For some of the other massive Gigapixel photographs I've seen they've rendered it down to only one image file: <http://70gigapixel.cloudapp.net/index_en.html#3>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> FYI, some of the photographed sidewalk ads are clickable and take you to the merchants website.

Location of one of them: Pan left until you see a rombus shaped roof with square patches of soil and grass on it. Zoom in closer and take look on the right for a standing sidewalk ad.

<comment><USER8> It seems the adverts have been superimposed? I wonder if they're the original adverts or they sold these "fake" adverts to cover the creation costs?

<comment><USER7> I think so as well. The ads are too clear in comparison to surrounding area. One other ad I found stuck out a little bit more than the one I posted earlier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazing. On maximum zoom, nearby blades of grass can be distinguished, but the atmospheric distortion of distant objects makes them look like part of an impressionist painting.

<comment><USER10> It's actually very blurry when you zoom all the way in. You can halve the resolution and not lose any information. So it's really a 111/4 = 27.8 gigapixel panorama.

Compare it with this:

<http://www.paris-26-gigapixels.com/index-en.html>

Which is much sharper when you zoom all the way in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interestingly, all graphical advertisements in the picture have been replaced with clickable ads for superinventos.com (e.g. the bus stop on the left side of the river)

</comment><comment><USER12> If there ever was a city on Earth who's beauty is worth 111 gigapixels, then surely it is Seville.

If you ever get the opportunity, GO THERE.

<comment><USER13> Quien no ha visto Sevilla - no ha visto Maravilla! but Quien no ha visto Granada - no ha visto nada!

<comment><USER14> "but Quien"

as a British guy living in Spain I can relate to this spanglish :)

<comment><USER12> I've never lived in Spain, I visited Seville last year on holiday

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> dragging his horrible ... the google maps way to move on a map is the only way that should be used.

<comment><USER16> You can change it by pressing the hand icon at the bottom bar

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Who had the fun job of painting over every license plate?

<comment><USER18> They actually didn't get them all. On the right side of the image, there are some cars about to cross that haven't been painted over. I can convince myself I can read those, though probably not with 100% accuracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> And here is Paris - also a good looking town

<http://www.paris-26-gigapixels.com/index-fr.html>

Zoom-able panorama. Not quite so many pixels but still pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER20> Isn't this sort of pointless? If it were from a single sensor, or a single shot of a camera with multiple sensors, it might be something, but anyone can take a limitless number of zoomed-in images and stitch them together. How about someone stitches together all the Google street view images of I-95 into a big panorama? New world record?

<comment><USER8> "...anyone could have done x..." is such a silly idea. The point is they _didn't_ , this guy did. Just like Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook, or that kid who made Chat Roulette. Anyone _could have_ but they didn't.

<comment><USER21> Shouting about "111 Gigapixel new world record" makes it sound like it's a technological break-through. In reality it's the equivalent of "the world's largest candy bar" or "the world's largest taco."

<comment><USER22> It said "world record" not "technological breakthrough." The Guiness Book of _World Records_ lists things like the world's largest candy bar or world's largest taco, not anything like significant technological breakthroughs.

<comment><USER21> You also have to consider the forum/audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It turns out there's a bigger 152 Gigapixel photograph of Rio de Janeiro, published in September: <http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/58857/>

Much more crappy in my opinion, but certainly bigger, so this photo of Seville would not set a world record.

</comment><comment><USER23> As a former Sevilla resident, nice to click around for a while.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wish it were possible to down load the original image(s), it would make a great computing challenge for some of my friends trying to learn GPU processing with MPI =)

</comment><comment><USER25> Does google have this technology?

I remember when at best buy managers at bestbuy had me pushing the 7 megapixel Sony's 3 years back.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hey, you can read the wristwatch of one guy!! Awesome resolution ... But they should pixelize the faces properly.

</comment><comment><USER26> Someone should build a zombie sniper game into a gigapan like this.

</comment><comment><USER27> They have gone through and obfuscated the car plate numbers.</comment>


Amazon Has Fewer Prime Subscribers Than Estimated - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-14/amazon-said-to-have-fewer-prime-subscribers-than-estimated-shares-decline.html

<comment><USER2> At the risk of sounding like an Amazon shill, I think it's worth trying Prime (assuming you live in the US). It's such an enormous time and aggravation saver for us that it's well worth the $79 a year.

ObNonDisclaimer: No connection, othr than longtime customer, longtime Prime subscriber (both since within months of launch) and more recent shareholder (of a financially nearly meaningless amount).</comment>


Amazon Starts Email Service for Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2015/01/28/amazon-changes-the-game-again-aws-introduces-workmail <comment><USER2> After trying for 3 weeks to make AWS WorkSpaces work for my company, I can still confidently say that Amazon doesn't get it. Their solutions are more "Go to Home Depot and get the parts to make a desk", whereas Google Apps is "go to Ikea". The two solutions are neighbors, but not everyone is ready to buy the individual boards and cut them down to size.

<comment><USER3> Your comparison is bang on, except that's the point. Amazon isn't trying to be Ikea. It is absolutely trying to provide the building blocks for small companies and large to use their cloud platform in a very foundational manner. Yes, the onboarding cost may be high, but Amazon doesn't mind if customers end up using Heroku or EngineYard instead - they are customers too.

AWS is a lot like Linux that way: Deeply challenging initial learning curve, but the only thing worth considering for serious mission critical architecture. Stability and scalability does come at the cost of user- friendliness.

<comment><USER4> Are you saying there's a security and scalability to Amazon over Google Apps? People still make that argument about in house vs hosted, but hosted vs hosted of two major providers is new to me.

<comment><USER5> I don't know about security and scalability, but from what I read, it seems that Amazon gives you fine grain control and AD integration which is nice. Also, customer support is one area where AWS is better than Google in my opinion. YMMV.

<comment><USER6> Amazon's customer service basically exists where Google's doesn't.

People often don't realize what a chasm of difference that is.

It doesn't help Google any that Amazon's customer service is _great_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everyone is talking KMS which is nice but I don't think that is the biggest selling point. Being able to say in which region your email is stored is huge for customers who don't want their data shipped all over the world.

[http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/01/amazon...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/01/amazon-goes-after-office365-with-workmail-hosted-e-mail- service/)

"Another notable feature of WorkMail is that users can specify what Amazon region their e-mail is stored in. Customers can choose a specific, relatively close data center to reduce latency in retrieving e-mail or for compliance purposes—such as European privacy regulations. The feature means that users won't get the benefit of failover to another data center in the event of an outage, but Amazon may offer mirroring services later."

That is a big differentiator for many companies right there.

<comment><USER8> > or for compliance purposes—such as European privacy regulations

That sounds nice, but Amazon is still a US company, and the US government seems pretty staunch in their view that US law trumps country-of-residence law.

<comment><USER7> I can understand why you would say that after the big fight with Microsoft. What if Amazon makes it so the only employees with keys to be able to decrypt data in that region, live in that region. I think that could be the failsafe right there to where even if the government says "hand over the data", Amazon says "we can't and the only people that can are Citizens of xyz and we can't compel them to break the law of their home country".

I'm not saying that is what they are doing but it would be a very interesting strategy.

<comment><USER9> You can bet there will be some bs charges like obstruction of justice or whatever and it might even fly depending on how much of an asshole the judge is...

<comment><USER10> What if the company was Enron 2.0 and was keeping their tax records and other incriminating emails on a server in another country that was under the control of an American company? Should the US justice system just accept it is outside of their control, or pursue the American company to turn over material in their control for the case?

<comment><USER11> That would depend on the law about "where should an American company store its emails". If they are not allowed to store stuff abroad, then you can throw the book at them regardless of whether you get those emails or not.

Like for tax evasion vs tax avoidance, law enforcement cannot complain that individuals and companies use rules to their advantage, they just have to make smarter rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, I loled.

This uses Amazon KMS. Amazon KMS is PC backed ("HSA"), which means all your mail is encrypted to a key which it now takes two Amazon employees acting under court order to get access to, rather than a court order and one employee.

Google's internal controls are at least this robust, and they have similar key management systems internally.

There might be a reason to buy Amazon WorkMail, but it's not for security advantages over Gmail.

<comment><USER13> Mmm, how is it less secure to add another "employee" to the equation?

<comment><USER12> The court order is the bar, not the second employee.

Google's keyservers also don't have single employee control. The ones used for encrypting gmail behind the scenes, and other Google services. This is just table stakes for any large system.

This is in contrast to something like Azure Key Vault, which is HSM backed. A court order should not be sufficient to compel Microsoft to turn over a key from Azure Key Vault; it _should_ be impossible for them (or for nCipher) to do so.

<comment><USER14> It isn't impossible to unwrap a key from an nCipher system. Getting out the master HSM key is harder but still possible. Really the important part if the steps required to get it out to prove authorization, aka a quorum on the security world. The quorum size is an implementation/configuration detail and only MS would know that on hand to speak to that depth.

<comment><USER12> If it can be done through policy they can be ordered to do it, but they don't have to physically subvert their hardware. (not a lawyer, but this is an opinion a lot of people have had...)

It depends on how you configure the HSMs whether you can extract and decrypt keys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious about two things:

1) Where does this use Key Management Service to encrypt? At the SMTPD? With keys unique to each end user? S/MIME? What?

2) What's the real security model of KMS? Is it using HSMs for keys, or just shipping keys to systems? Does it use any other hardware/platform security features to protect keys, or just basically a "soft HSM" running in Dom0 on each machine? Or something purely network based, and also done in software only?

</comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes it feels Amazon does a lot of "throwing at the wall and see what sticks". Not sure how this fits better at their vision ?

<comment><USER16> Scatter gun + Lean Startup principles. Not entirely wrong, though wish some more initial refinement was included, but if the brand doesn't take a hit then fair enough.

<comment><USER17> Plus, because almost all of what they do is based on customer demand, they haven't killed many products. Whereas Google…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the biggest distinguishing feature of this is being able to have it encrypt emails with customer provided keys stored on their Key Management Service. This hypothetically should prevent three letter agencies from accessing emails, but I'm not sure that is the top feature on everyone's mind when they are looking to set up email for their company. It definitely piques my interest though.

<comment><USER19> If your mail is encrypted, how do you search it?

EDIT:

That is, assuming the mail is stored on the server and it's encrypted, how do you search it efficiently?

It does not seem efficient to download every byte of mail, decrypt it, and search it on your local machine (especially a phone). Perhaps you could build an index locally, but could you keep it updated? And even that requires downloading and reading every byte at least once.

This is something I've always wondered about encrypting hosted email.

<comment><USER20> The actual content is encrypted, but one can still build an index that points to individual email IDs and score the search results properly. Only when returning the top N results that one needs to decrypt those N emails with the right keys. The index would be kept in the server. Of course, the devil is in the details and things like email threading, order by by date or group by senders will make or break the user experience.

<comment><USER21> A full text index that's actually useful will allow you to largely piece back together the original content, modulo stemming and stopwords.

I guess it would be something like encrypting the index, then decrypt it on demand, just like you would decrypt individual messages on demand.

<comment><USER22> Not if the index values are encrypted (public-key) too.

hashed-word => encrypted-list-of-msg-indices

something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been a user of Rackspace E-mail. It's one of the last services I still have with Rackspace and it's been a good platform for my company. I can't tell you the last time I had an issue. Looks like this is on the road to making Rackspace irrelevant on yet another level.

<comment><USER24> Racker here responsible for our mail services. Thanks for the positive feedback and for being a customer. Curious why you say this would make our offering irrelevant?

<comment><USER23> Hi Racker: I dont think this statement is necessarily specific to the mail offering. It's more about the pace of innovation or lack thereof @ Rackspace these days. There just seems to be a better fit for everything Rackspace used to do well somewhere else. :(

I want support and someone I can call, but I can honestly say that the support that I receive at AWS is more comprehensive and detailed that the typical response I got from Rackspace, which is really disappointing. Once I discovered that, I couldnt justify the 2x+ premium that I had been paying.

I also wish some of the more interesting things you have like Airbrake, Mailgun, Exceptional got more love. Instead, the focus seems to be on the non- differentiated stuff and all the "enterprise" stuff that matters less and less everyday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm actually not too surprised. It seems like Amazon feels like they have to have every online service possible, however, some of their services could be better if they focused on fewer.

<comment><USER13> You misspelled Google. Most of AWS are products that have a consistent user base and profitable almost from day one.

<comment><USER26> My personal opinion is that there is a divergence product types between traditional AWS offerings and their new desire to break into traditional Enterprise offerings. The Workspaces and managed Directory Services are nods to the Enterprise space but they are currently getting more shakes of the head back rather than nods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To qualify any hosted mail service to handle valuable, confidential data seems difficult. For example:

What are the confidentiality provisions? Can they be changed without your consent? Does Amazon possess cleartext data and metadata? Do they monitor it to collect customer data? Who at Amazon can access it and when? What is their retention policy? Is non-retained data destroyed or just left on the storage medium until overwritten? How will they respond to subpoenas, warrants, and similar requests from counterparties in lawsuits or from government? And perhaps most importantly, how able are they to execute their policies and what deters Amazon from violating them (i.e., what is the penalty?)?

Is there any service that satisfies these requirements?

<comment><USER27> Isn't the NSA/CIA hosting with Amazon nowadays?

<comment><USER28> Maybe their website. Not for anything that matters. They're not building billion-dollar datacenters in Utah for fun.

<comment><USER29> I think I read somewhere about rumors of intelligence agencies availabilty zone, under physical control of US intelligence agencies.

After all, at a massive scale, having access to industry standard tools for provisionning makes sense: give $$$ to AMZN for their software stack and hw integration cost probably less than building your own...?

AWS GovCloud exist solely for this purpose: [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/govcloud- us/latest/UserGuide/what...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/govcloud- us/latest/UserGuide/whatis.html)

A really private AV zone is just a step away: put gov guards at the entrance of DCs, replace all AWS teams by in-house personnel (or have AWS teams sworned in at the relevant level...?)

<comment><USER30> "a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community."

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the- de...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-details- about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if Amazon has switched their internal email over to use WorkMail?

<comment><USER26> No, they are running Exchange 2013.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I get the feeling they haven't learned from Microsoft's mistakes when trying to spread themselves too thin.

</comment><comment><USER33> They seem to be scant on security details. Its great to say you are built on the tenant of security but its the details that matter.

What sort of protection do they offer for phishing , spam and AV ?

Do they offer integration with other security , DLP suits ?

</comment><comment><USER34> To run a "real" company, of let's say, 200 people or more, dealing with mildly sensitive data, you need Microsoft[1][2][3][4]. You need Microsoft because you need:

* Calendaring that Just Works, and a capable client for it. This involves an Exchange server and MS Office;

* You need mail that Just Works, and Just Works in conjunction with the above calendaring; this involves an Exchange server and MS Office;

* You need an easily controllable and relatively cheap OS that can run Word, Excel, and a web-browser for non-technical staff, and can be run on cheap-ass Dell boxes; currently this involves Windows and MS Office;

* You need a shared fileserver for people to upload company party photos to, storing improperly protected financial spreadsheets, and so on;

* You need a central identity system to tie the whole shebang together; this involves Active Directory

To summarise, you need:

* ActiveDirectory, for which there is now Amazon WorkMail

* Exchange, for which there is now Amazon WorkMail

* Windows File Sharing, for which there is now Amazon WorkDocs

* Windows desktops that can run MS Office ... for which there is sort of Amazon WorkSpaces

The question now becomes: can I get away with running a 200-person company with no relationship with MS by deploying cheap-cheap Linux machines with a VNC-client to Amazon WorkSpaces for non-technical staff? And the answer is ... perhaps, but I need my people to be able to work without an internet connection, so probably not.

But still, that's fucking huge.

The one piece missing in this lineup is capable local Office apps. You simply cannot get away with not having Excel, Word, and Outlook's Calendar functionality ... yet. Finance, Admin, Management, and non-dev IT will riot without Excel; Admin, Sales, and Management will riot without Word; Sales and Management will riot without Outlook, and blood will be spilled over the management of more than two meeting rooms. OpenOffice, LibreOffice, whatever, they don't cut it in the real world.

So while it doesn't sound like their game, if Amazon were to release a lock- down-able Linux and some high-quality Office apps, they can take SME IT away from Microsoft. That's is HUGE. Hell, if they can put together a package that can run Office under WINE reliably, and sort sensible licensing terms, it's just as huge, but I can't see MS allowing that licensing part to happen, because it would be suicide.

Interesting times!

[1] I don't care how Canonical or RedHat manage their internal IT

[2] Nor do I care about how your 11 person social media startup does it

[3] I too did all my best IT management before I became responsible for it

[4] Seriously.

<comment><USER35> OpenOffice is not good enough but you still think Amazon can release something better just like that? Oo shows how hard the problem is, even if you have decades of experience. Amazon has almost no experience with huge desktop applications, they can't possibly release something that can seriously compete with MS Office.

<comment><USER34> Probably, but the stakes are high enough, and they have enough cash, that who knows? Or they could just buy SoftMaker, and then throw money at that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Hopefully this means AWS will also be implementing DNSSEC which I need in order to implement DANE on my own secure mail solution.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm scratching my head wondering, "You mean they haven't done this already?"

</comment><comment><USER38> And Amazon uses Outlook for internal office mail and calendar. What an irony?

<comment><USER17> Why irony? You can use Outlook as a client for WorkMail. I wouldn't be surprised if they shift to WorkMail once it satisfies their large enterprise requirements (given that it's an MVP right now).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What's it USP?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a link that goes through Google: [https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDoQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Famazon- starts-selling-an-email-service-to- companies-1422468169&ei=oijJVMaJEJShyATDpoDgBw&usg=AFQjCNEBxqsxa2zHwdufPj-F6J9Hsy3YEQ&bvm=bv.84607526,d.aWw)

I tried to submit that to HN, but it didn't seem to work.

<comment><USER40> No luck, I can't see the article with that link either

<comment><USER41> Same, but if you go type the headline into Google and follow the WSJ link, you should be able to read it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This to me just emphasizes the need for services like Nilas' email APIs. I don't want to have to worry about integrating with yet another email provider.

That being said, I trust Amazon's data centers and API stack far more then Microsoft alone.

<comment><USER43> Email can go better than APIs - it has publicly available protocols and there are many implementations of them (including many good FOSS implementations). They are called IMAP and SMTP! Any email client can integrate with any email server, and has been able to since the beginning of email

<comment><USER44> Sounds wonderful until you have actually tried to integrate IMAP "supported" email services, such as Gmail. What makes it hard is that different providers have different implementations which very often do not follow the protocol spec. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo all have their own higher-level API for email access, and every modern email tool ends up making something like Nilas, with a server taking care of pushes and managing logic for each provider. The industry needs a new standard, and that is why ideas such as Nilas seem exciting.

<comment><USER28> That's an argument for providers implementing the spec correctly, not an argument for abandoning specifications in favor of various proprietary APIs.

We've already learned this lesson with web browsers and HTML specs, maybe we'll have to learn it again for email.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Valve's Source engine to power upcoming animated film - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/steams-source-engine-to-power-upcoming-animated-film/

<comment><USER2> I'm interested to see how this pans out - the reality is, the lions share of the costs for animated features have _nothing_ to do with rendering. I'm concerned they are buying the worst of both worlds with this approach: they still have to create good looking art assets, they still need to animated them well, but they are further constrained by the confines of what they can do in a realtime engine, with a toolchain that is not optimized for this type of work.

I _do think_ that there is a ton to be gained from tightly coupled previs pipelines that don't incur rendering overhead. Ideally the artists should be able to see what they are working on in a form that is as close to the final render as possible, but without the wait. Systems that can offer this with low overhead cut down on the amount of time the artists need to get the results they want tremendously, especially in situations where your team isn't big enough to have modeling, texturing, animation, fx and lighting departments that are completely siloed.

<comment><USER3> That's not quite true - render time still is very important, even for the biggest studios like ILM/SPI/Dreamworks with the biggest renderfarms.

However, yeah, artist time is more costly, and recently GI pathtracing raytracers have made huge inroads in the VFX industry due to the fact that lookdev/lighting configuration is much quicker for the artists due to being physically-based, so you get very realistic lighting without faking it with AO or virtual lights.

It definitely speeds the iterative process up when the artists can see how the scenes looks on their workstation without kicking it off to the renderfarm and waiting 4 hours for a render to come back.

With Arnold or VRay, it's possible to get a very fast 3/4-bounce GI solution with heavy geometry and textures in a matter of minutes.

<comment><USER2> You have a point, however in regards to render times I was more speaking to films in this budget range. Big studios have custom toolchains, and do everything in-house, rendering included. If you are using non-proprietary 3D software, there are rendering services at your disposal that are often pretty reasonably priced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems relevant: <https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Filmmaker>

In short, Source Filmmaker was a never officially released tool that was used as part of the production of the TF2 and L4D promotional videos. It provided tools for recording footage, basic editing, and advanced rendering that went beyond the engine's realtime capabilities.

<comment><USER5> I remember than some people have got an old, buggy version of it from an old TF2 Beta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I built the MovieMaker tool for the original Company of Heroes. The key goals were to seamlessly blend cinematics with gameplay and to reuse assets that were already created for the game.

I haven't used Source Filmmaker but I wouldn't recommend using the MovieMaker tool for actual films. The use case is completely different.

<comment><USER7> I just want to say congratz on being part of making a great game. The opening level with the Normandy landing where the cinematics led into the level was amazing. I remember feeling terrible giving the orders for the soldiers to move out of cover to take the machine gun nests knowing that half of them would die in order to advance. It was both disturbing and awe inspiring at the same time. A pretty amazing game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Valve has a working relationship with production studio Brown Bag Films, according to Kotaku, and agreed to license the engine for Deep._

I'm curious if you actually need a license to use an engine in a film. Presuming you produce all your own assets and otherwise have an appropriate license for the engine to render it once, is there any precedent for requiring a license to perform it as well? I'm assuming you don't need a performance license for NLE software like premiere or vegas?

<comment><USER9> Note "working relationship" rather than "license": the obvious advantage of building a movie in a game engine is that you could quite possibly very quickly commercialize a game based on the movie if it turns out to be a success.

And with that thought I felt my third eye open just a crack, revealing a vision of how movie/game franchises of the future might be funded and marketed. :) Interesting stuff, or at least, in a few years it might be.

<comment><USER10> The quote includes the phrase "agreed to license" :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Source is a pain to work with for animation. Just ask this guy: <http://accursedfarms.com>

</comment><comment><USER12> A pretty good unkown movie using Eve Online and the Source Film Maker is Clear Skies, the Movie: <http://www.clearskiesthemovie.com/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Why didn't they go with Unity which is much much cheaper?

<comment><USER14> A pro studio will go for the best tool (with cost considered as a factor) not the cheapest tool. It doesn't pay to cheap out on tools, especially if it leads to extra labor costs because of bad workflow, etc.

<comment><USER15> Plus all other factors aside, you have to imagine there's some name recognition involved. Valve and Source are big brands, and could draw in a curious audience if only for the novelty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fifteen million euros for machinima? Where is the money going?

I can see how Source would be a good way to make a reasonable-looking animated movie on the cheap. But with a reasonable amount of money to spend, then either:

a) You're reusing enough existing stuff (character models, physics enginey stuff, et cetera) that you can't possibly spend that much money, or

b) You're re-doing enough stuff from scratch that there doesn't seem to be much advantage to doing it in Source rather than something more conventional like Maya [or whatever they're using nowadays]

<comment><USER17> For a typical pixar/dreamworks movie, it takes about $1.25 million/per minute of film.

It can take a week just do 3 seconds of animation and all the labour is, of course, exceptionally talented and extremely expensive.

<comment><USER18> "For a typical pixar/dreamworks movie, it takes about $1.25 million/per minute of film."

Not doubting you, but do you have a source for this?

<comment><USER17> A friend of mine works in film, so I know the ballpark costs from conversations with him. You can find production costs for films on the net fairly easily.

Puss in Boots, for example was $130 million and Kung Fu Panda 2 was around $150 million. So you're looking at 1.25m to 1.5m per minute.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jailbroken iPad Supports External Hard Drives - <AUTHOR> http://www.simonblog.com/2010/05/10/jailbroken-ipad-supports-external-hard-drives/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SimonBlog+%28Simon+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> I've been wondering, do you really need to jailbreak to get this functionality? Seems like you can hook just about anything up with the 'Camera Kit' (aka Apples steath USB adapter).

So is it possible rig a USB hub up to allow for multiple USB devices hooked up to an iPad?

Would be cool to have a third-party dock that you can plug a bunch of USB devices into the iPad.</comment>


Icahn rips Marc Andreessen over Skype deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2014/carl-icahn-microsoft/ <comment><USER2> I'm not so sure that Andreessen is what's wrong with corporate America. He does amazing work with a great deal of amazing companies. I think that Carl Icahn is dead wrong in this respect.

</comment><comment><USER3> Andreessen did exactly the same thing with Oculus. I wonder who is planning to buy Imgur soon (probably Facebook again).</comment>


Prepping for an interview with a startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.readyforce.com/preparing-for-the-interview-how-to-research-a-startup/

<comment><USER2> I recently had a phone interview with the CTO of a startup. I checked out his blog beforehand and read an article describing his approach to debugging. I brought it up and it led to a great conversation, which I believe got me to the second round.</comment>


Qwiki Just May Be The Future Of Information Consumption. And It's Here Now. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/qwiki/

<comment><USER2> _Qwiki was created by Doug Imbruce and Louis Monier. [...] He's also worked at [...] the search startup Cuil as the VP of Product._

The cynic in me suggests this will probably not be "The Future Of Information Consumption". Perhaps a little less hyperbole would be in order after the spectacular failure that was cuil?

<comment><AUTHOR> shit happens. doesn't mean they can't try again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> At least this is an interesting idea. I'd like to see how they can advance as computing power increases over the next few years

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. This, Opzi, and Namesake really stand out. I didn't really see much in the others, I could be wrong though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any one have a link to a video showing an actual Qwiki-created video?

</comment><comment><USER5> From the TC article : "Say you do a search for a person, Qwiki can look at their social connections and tell you about their LinkedIn profile, for example. It is very, very impressive."

Well.. hmm.. That's interesting !</comment>


Google is testing new web-based Gmail features - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/apps/google-is-testing-new-web-based-gmail-features-1593555/

<comment><USER2> The only problem I have with inbox tabs is I can't add new ones based on custom rules.</comment>


What is a Product Roadmap? - <AUTHOR> https://www.jibranelbazi.com/blog/what-is-a-product-roadmap <comment><USER2> The opening analogy between a product roadmap and a literal map is thought provoking. But I think they're actually very different.

A product roadmap describes this direction and intent for a product that doesn't exist yet, like where you plan to go.

A map, on the other hand, is more of a summary or representation of _past_ knowledge. You create a map as you explore the territory to reflect what you've seen. And sure, you consult a map before setting out too.

I think this distinction is actually critical, because becoming too attached to a product roadmap as if it were a literal roadmap that can guide you to your destination is one of the main flaws of poor product management. The author mentions this a little in saying the product roadmap is a "living document", but I don't think it's emphasized enough. It's not just like a map that gets updated occasionally, instead it's more like this fabricated fantasy road trip plan (one that you have to undergo without an actual map).

<comment><USER3> Could you suggest some resources or further readings on building product roadmap or product management in practical world ?

<comment><USER4> I'd recommend reading "Inspired", specifically the two chapters on Product Roadmaps in Part III

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would argue about the roadmap being visual. When you present people with the gantt chart, people tend to focus more on the timelines rather than the direction. This inadvertently pushes you to follow clearly defined deadlines and makes your roadmap a release plan instead (which Jira or similar tool is much better at).

We've been experimenting with gantt-style vs a simple table/list-view [1] and found that in many cases the latter actually works better in presenting the product vision, albeit at the expense of longer reading times.

[1] [https://www.getshipit.com/blog/should-you-use-gantt- product-...](https://www.getshipit.com/blog/should-you-use-gantt-product- roadmap/)

<comment><USER6> I think the key is just for it to be visual. I've found that if key ideas aren't accompanied by a visual, they don't get read or understood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> An often overlooked part of building and maintaining your roadmap is also helping define what you are not going to build.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! It's something I should definitely add to the article. Thanks for pointing out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any article about roadmaps that has a lead in image of a Gantt chart is guaranteed to be missing the actual art of roadmapping. Any sufficiently agile/customer centric product company should never get near Gantt charts, with time estimates and dependency sequences, for roadmapping. No one can predict the future like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the feedback.

Gantt charts are not my preferred way of mapping out a vision and direction. But like some others stated, many orgs just like to work with that. It's also why I chose it as the header image, because it's familiar. Kinda bummed out that would keep people from reading the article, but not I can't cater to everyone.

Cheers!

<comment><USER9> I'm not an expert in this matter, but it seems that the aspect of the chart that folks are questioning is the timeline. Could it be as easy as removing that aspect to dissuade the perception of a pseudo-commitment when presenting the roadmap?

<comment><AUTHOR> That could be a way to go. Another option to represent time in a less fixed manner is to use a now-next-later roadmap schema. It's more to the point of what's important vs. time as a measurement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is missing what really matters (business wise) for a product roadmap: ROIC.

Most product roadmaps I see tie strongly to what additional markets/ customers can be served by the enhanced features. That justifies the continued investment in the product-line by the business.

<comment><USER11> Return on invested capital (ROIC) is a calculation used to assess a company's efficiency at allocating the capital under its control to profitable investments.</comment></comment>


Exploring Lisp Libraries - and building a webapp on the way - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/sabraonthehill/home/exploring-quicklisp-packages

<comment><USER2> For what it's worth, I consider everything exported and documented in the QL- DIST package to be fair game for direct use. No need to do print-object scraping on the results of ql:system-list, you could use e.g. (mapcar #'ql- dist:name (ql-dist:provided-systems "quicklisp")) instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know this will never change, but I really wish people would stop using lisp as a synonym for common lisp. CL is not the only lisp.

<comment><USER4> The confusion over the term "lisp" goes both ways, i have spent an infinite amount of time explaining to people that common lisp is not the small subset of a subset of scheme your CS professor tortured you with.</comment></comment>


I Am the Cheapest Bastard in Indie Games - <AUTHOR> https://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2019/08/i-am-cheapest-bastard-in-indie-games.html <comment><USER2> Previous discussion (Δt ≈ 12 hrs):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804998)

<comment><USER3> I kept refreshing 'cause I thought HN was out of date, but it kept saying '2 hours ago'...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For years I have heard that being a game developer is a miserable job, with long hours not matched by an adequate pay.

Does somebody have an explanation for such cut-throat industry? Software development generally offers good jobs, so why isn't that true for game development?

The possible explanation is the race to the bottom to offer games for cheap or free, as the article mentions. But then, why does that happen in games? There is plenty of software orders of magnitude simpler than games that gets sold for much higher prices.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER5> It's essentially the music business but for programmers. Non-essential consumer product, everyone wants to do it, discovery is terrible, and the companies that are lucky enough to get big aren't incentived to treat their employees well because there's so much competition to get into the field.

<comment><USER6> Its similar in Charity work but with more bullying and even less pay.

I am not joking, I did a high end hr/ir course a while back and all the participants where surprised it wasn't the City Investment Banking type of jobs that had the worst rep for bullying etc.

<comment><USER7> I'm not surprised at all. Between friends who work in finance and friends who work in the nonprofit sector, I can tell you that one group never got forced to cancel their birthday or holiday plans at the last minute to cover for some giant screw-up on the boss's part while said boss spends the same evening at home with the kids, and the other had things like that happen almost regularly.

Which isn't to say that finance jobs aren't stressful and grueling, but they at least seem to be a bit more inclined stop short of being personally cruel to their staff.

"You should be happy to work here, we're doing God's work" is a powerful force that's easy to abuse. And, in finance, everyone knows that nobody else is there for the deep personal sense of fulfillment, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been a full-time indie developer for four years now, and it is tough. I don't know if it's that much tougher than most other small businesses, I have friends who are dairy farmers, structural engineering contractors, graphics designers, an itinerant preacher or two... they've all got tough aspects to their respective professions, in some ways they're easier than mine, and in others way, way harder (I don't have to maintain the health of three to four hundred cows, for example.)

What I appreciate about Jeff's blogging over the years is his focus on sticking to a secret sauce, his is clearly an ability to put together classical RPG's with lovely writing. The reason I've been able to be a full- time indie is that I do both all the programming and all the art (painting/animating/modelling/etc) (As an example, I'm currently working on: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zooke...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zookeeper/)). The fact that I need to sell half the copies than a team or two is, it turns out, a massive advantage. That, and the specific voice I bring to the writing/design of the games, helps keep me going, and selling copies in a competitive environment that's shifted a lot since I started in 2015.

Finding that secret sauce, that niche, I think that's pretty important.

</comment><comment><USER9> Discussion last night on the same post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804998)

</comment><comment><USER10> He already claims to hire freelancers from places where the USD is more expensive, so I don't see why he hasn't considered just allocating his art budget into hiring one person from these places? Personally I can tell you that there are many places where 40k is more than enough to live very comfortably for way over 20 months.

I'm guessing the logistics of hiring someone internationally make that unfeasible? Maybe some sort of partnership could work? I'm not familiar enough with the legal caveats there

<comment><USER7> If you hire a full-timer, you damn well better be able to keep them busy 40 hours a week for 48-50 weeks a year. Not only that, but your need needs to be relatively constant, because you've committed to getting 40 hours out of each individual week.

The likelihood of that actually matching well to his needs seems vanishingly small to me. More likely, his needs are wildly variable in time: He wants to get most the art together at a specific point in the development process, and then, after that, only needs bits and pieces as he notices the need. Working with contractors gives him that kind of flexibility.

Even if he _could_ rearrange how he does things to make it meet a full-timer's needs, that doesn't make it a good idea. Now he's turned collaborating with that person into a daily task, which might play hell with the rest of his creative process. Especially if, like most of us introverted creatives, he works best with long blocks of uninterrupted concentration.</comment></comment>


Video Shows Starving Polar Bear on Iceless Land - <AUTHOR> https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/polar-bear-starving-arctic-sea-ice-melt-climate-change-spd/ <comment><USER2> Individual animals in the wild die cruel, slow, painful deaths all the time, regardless of whether their species as a whole is thriving or not.

So while this video might evoke a strong emotional response, it is just an anecdote and not actually evidence one way or the other for human-caused climate change.

Of course, human-caused climate change is obviously real, but it's not OK to use bad arguments even if your conclusion is correct.

EDIT: To clarify further, I am not disputing that polar bears are not being harmed by climate change, or even that the particular bear in the video is not starving because of climate change. I am merely pointing out that one could produce a video of a starving polar bear both in our world and in the world where climate change is not happening, because wild animals starve all the time.

<comment><USER3> We need to use whatever arguments are effective to steer people and governments to good policy as long as we know those arguments are supporting a cause that is scientifically backed. Some people don't get and don't want to get scientific evidence. If there is a plausible causal chain from global climate change to that suffering polar bear we should be using that polar bear to convince people climate change is real and bad. Most people don't have the patience for or interest in scientific arguments and we have to convince most people that this is a problem not just hacker news.

<comment><USER4> That's called propoganda. You advocate using propoganda to justify a cause you have predetermined to be scientifically backed. Why not just use the scientific backing directly?

<comment><USER5> Those who understand Climate Change and love science should not cede the ground to those who disagree with them without a fight.

Most people don't understand science at the same level as many of the participants in HN. They are not bad people, and they are not necessarily ignorant people. But they don't base their decision-making process on scientific principles. Someone needs to reach out to these people and help them understand the world we live in.

Ten minutes on Fox News and similar sites should convince anyone that Climate Change deniers understand how to influence people and do all they can to advocate for those who profit from policies that harm our world. We have to use the available tools to counter their arguments.

<comment><USER4> You're denying the people of their right to be treated as an intellectual equal.

If they don't understand it is their loss. You can bet against them in the capitalist system. Sell them houses near coastlines. If they're truly ignorant and you are in fact backed by science and facts, then you can profit off of them.

But if you can justify doing this for people you consider not worthy of the facts because they probably can't understand it, then you can justify it with anyone.

This is the same rationale for why the FBI or law enforcement want more power. People don't understand that thy are the _GOOD_ guys and they won't abuse their power.

If the good guys—the people backed by science in this case—lose their accountability to actual science by being good at propoganda and manipulation, why even bother with science? They'll become bad guys soon enough when they finally realize the facts never mattered.

When propoganda is spewed from both sides the only way to tell is to have facts based on reality that people can independently verify. That's the whole point of backed by science. If you deny people the option to independently verify then you deny them the ability to find out who's right and who's wrong. At that point are you any different from the bad guys?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The changing climate conditions are going to wreak havoc on countless species in the coming century.

The only question is would we be ready when things start rolling faster than we could control?

<comment><AUTHOR> If the richest and most powerful countries say "there is no climate change" and "others want to destroy our economy", then the answer is a pessimistic one. The same applies to countries that say "yes, there is a climate change and we must do something", but in the end avoid doing anything to unwind the death spiral.

<comment><USER7> Most rich countries acknowledge climate change and try to come up with solutions. The big outlier is the US.

<comment><USER8> > Most rich countries acknowledge climate change and try to come up with > solutions. The big outlier is the US.

You could generalise that to:-

Most rich countries acknowledge <foo is a problem> and try to come up with solutions. The big outlier is the US.

Where <foo> is healthcare, corporate governance, lobbying, women's rights, racism, income equality, prison incarceration rates, police brutality.

Growing up in the UK in the 80's I was fascinated by America and planned on one day visiting if not living there.

Now? If I leave the UK (and I probably will) it'll likely be Germany or Holland, they aren't perfect (what is?) but they look a lot better than the US/UK these days.

<comment><USER9> The problem is: if you remove yourself, it's still going on back home. It's probably better to stay where you have some power to try to change it for everyone's good, particularly when foo is something like climate that affects the whole world. (or that's what I tell myself when Canada beckons)

<comment><USER8> Maybe but then on the flip side in my country we've had a decade of things getting progressively worse up to and including the massively pointless, expensive and dangerous Brexit.

I'm pretty tired of it to be honest, I don't recognise this country any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe you'd prefer watching a polar bear eat a seal alive?

<comment><USER11> yea no kiddin seals are probably in favor of climate change

<comment><USER12> Doubt it.

[1]: [https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120106-harp...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120106-harp- seals-global-warming-sea-ice-science-environment/)

<comment><USER11> that poor lil guy :( who likes cats when you got these

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The world needs more SolarCoin and less Crypto Kitties [https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/29/solarcoin- cryptocurrenc...](https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/29/solarcoin- cryptocurrency-earned-generating-solar-electricity/)

<comment><USER14> Solarcoin issuance appears to be centralized and controlled by the SolarCoin foundation. I'd stay well away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Polar Bear populations are not declining. Also, the plural of anecdote is not data. [https://polarbearscience.com/2017/02/15/baffin-bay-and- kane-...](https://polarbearscience.com/2017/02/15/baffin-bay-and-kane-basin- polar-bears-not-declining-concludes-new-report/)

<comment><USER16> Observed polar bear populations are not declining. However, since there is far less ice the polar bear are much easier to find these days, making the counts go up, rather than down. This has been the case in Svalbard, at least.

<comment><USER17> And there I was thinking Svalbard was only a made up island for the Bear Kingdom in Philip Pullman's _His Dark Materials_ trilogy...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Heart-wrenching" doesn't convince minds in Hacker News.

<comment><USER19> Did you ever spring to action after intensely experiencing something you were already factually aware of? I think climate denialism is not a big problem on HN, but apathy and priorities are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> maybe the bear is diseased?

<comment><USER21> But that breaks the value of this finely-crafted propaganda and won't help the cause, brother. You can't question the Official Narrative(tm). Now off to the re-education camp with you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Propaganda

</comment><comment><USER23> Meanwhile, we out here obsessing about making money on BTC...

<comment><USER24> There are folks who on purpose do not participate in BTC because they know the energy consumption is wrong. Go tell people about it and they might get it.

<comment><USER25> And they make their snide observations from where? That's right, their computers. How much energy is spent consuming and deliving Facebook? Or iOS games?

<comment><USER24> There is indeed a lot of engery spent elsewhere - your comment is pure whataboutism though.

A single Bitcoin transaction currently use as much engery as energy spent in a single home for days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> While it's sad that the bear died it's a bit of a jump to link it to global warming.

<comment><USER27> The article is mostly about global warming and contains a wealth of citations / references / relevant links.

They provided their evidence as to why it's not a jump to link it to global warming -- where is your evidence that it is, in fact, a jump?

<comment><USER28> The polar bear situation really doesn't look like good evidence to me, they state the bear's lameness is assumed to be due to starvation-based atrophy but it seems as likely that this is just an injured bear that can't hunt effectively.

I'm certainly not denying climate change is wiping out polar bears, just that this shows good evidence of that.

The article states bears starve through summer until sea ice forms on which they catch seals .. but the image is from Summer, when the sea ice presumably is yet to form. I guess it could be cumulative from the previous Summer being too warm; again it's not good, clear evidence as it's presented.

Could someone answer where the seals go? I'd have expected if they weren't resting/mating on sea-ice that they'd rest on land and actually be easier to catch? Do they instead stay at sea?

<comment><USER29> In the winter seals have to use holes in the ice to breath, which makes them very vulnerable. Without ice it is much more difficult for bears to catch them. [http://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-seal- breathing.h...](http://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-seal- breathing.htm)

<comment><USER28> Yes, but it's the late Summer period I'm asking about, can the bears not feed at all until the sea is completely frozen over?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Students Fail -- and Professor Loses Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/14/aird

<comment><USER2> I always thought this was an issue at my school. Fail the students who need to fail. Supposedly we had a rule that no more than 25% of a class should fail. I was in classes where more than that deserved to fail.

I also seriously considered dropping out when I received a D+ in a class that I felt deserved a solid F. I rarely went to class, I did none of the homework, and consequently received 3% of the total available test points.

I was also in the top half of that class. I considered dropping out because I felt my degree would be worthless if the standards were so low. Instead I started working hard and found that getting A's and B's was still appropriately difficult, even if getting a D+ was not.

<comment><USER3> My mental models for grades today: B is the median. A is above average. C means you showed up and handed things in, but didn't really "get it".

So, on this scale, D and F aren't really distinguishable. Either pretty much mean you didn't make an effort.

I've been taking CS graduate classes part time with (who I consider to be) pretty smart people, so I am happy with an A and satisfied with a B. If I try and still get a C, I'll know that I didn't really belong in that class, at least without more preparatory work.

<comment><USER2> My professor's view was also that D and F were pretty much the same also, you can't get very many Ds and stay in school. D is kind of like a "high fail." I believe we were limited in the number of Ds on our transcript for graduation, although I don't remember anymore.

<comment> a-priori I've always called those "pity passes", as in you really failed, but the prof took pity on you and bumped up your 45% to 50%.

I know that at my school I need an average of 60% to graduate with an honours degree (not that that matters, because I need a 70% average for Co-op).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In grad school, one of my favorite professors accused over half of a class of cheating and ended up failing them all. In a way they deserved it. It was a computer science class in a master's degree program. If students at that level don't know not to submit an exact duplicate of a function, they deserve to fail.

I've also encountered students who I thought deserved to fail. One in particular was a criminology student. He spent more energy trying to simulate the "Ah ha!" reaction and sucking up to me than actually trying to get it for real. I kept thinking that this guy was studying criminology because he was trying to become a con man. Apparently, the system had rewarded him up til then for his faking behavior.

<comment><USER2> I had over half of the class accused of cheating in an undergrad class.

He let them off the first time without including the grade on that assignment, but warned that it would not be acceptable on future assignments. When people did it again they failed.

Two of them were caught cheating in another class, and attempted to withdraw after they were told they had Fs for failing. They were kicked out of school.

But it really should take less than 3 instances of cheating in class and 1 of cheating on the system to get kicked out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of how Romania grades its universities by the number of students they pass. The result? Easy classes.

<comment><USER6> Really? Do they _ever_ stop having stupid ideas? Not that I'm much surprised...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing nice about the Swedish systems is that students can retake the final exam. So, yes I will fail up to 30-40% of a class on the first exam, and then they usually buckle down and most can pass the second exam. Of course I make the second exam harder so most of the student who do pass, get a 'C' at that point. Kinda of sucks for me having to write and grade all these exams though. :-)

</comment><comment><USER8> Whoever wrote that article is super into the em dash.

<comment><USER9> Not to threadjack, but are there any guidelines for that? He seems to use dashes where most writers would use commas to separate out a sentence subphrase. His "Aird — who is white — has failed..." would normally be "Aird, who is white, has failed..." I'm curious if it's just a matter of choice to use the dash there.

But yes, he overdoes the dash. I'll bet he has Microsoft Excel set to export as DSV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of Hockey</comment>


Hardware In 2014 And Beyond - <AUTHOR> http://octopart.com/blog/archives/2014/1/hardware-in-2014-and-beyond?a=1

<comment><USER2> Any hardware/wearables/externals peoples out there: We at Hackendo are putting together a wearables + externals expo and hackathon. We would love some feedback on what/who you would want to see, and how you would want the event to work.

Details to unfold at [http://hackendo.techendo.co/](http://hackendo.techendo.co/)

<comment><USER3> Cool. Would be great to see a bit more info on the page to start feedbacking (e.g. location, contact info, organizers etc.)

Also, this recent wearables hackathon seems to have been pretty successful: [https://www.firebase.com/blog/2013-12-19-electric-imp- hackat...](https://www.firebase.com/blog/2013-12-19-electric-imp- hackathon.html) . Firebase / Electric Imp might have some tips.

<comment><USER2> I know James, he's a good guy. I'll ping him.</comment></comment></comment>


PBS Launching Streaming Service on Amazon Prime - <AUTHOR> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/pbs-launching-living-streaming-service-amazons-prime-video-channels-1194054 <comment><USER2> I really hope PBS is working with other service providers (Apple? Google Play?) to bring the same programming. I don't want to pay Amazon tax (additional $10 per month prime fees) to be able to use this service.

<comment><USER3> I hope so, too. I wonder if PBS is going strategic with this to build wealth.

I know that they're also putting useful free content on YouTube. They have a channel called "PBS Space Time", which I've seen HN folks here sharing to engage in physics discussions (i.e., especially quantum).

<comment><USER4> There are a few good PBS channels on YouTube. I'm a big fan of "Eons".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PBS content should be free _everywhere_

<comment><USER6> Seriously, especially since it's funded with tax money. I watched a good amount of PBS when I was younger since we couldn't afford cable. This should be available free online through a government maintained portal.

<comment><USER7> Only ~20% comes from tax money. The rest is provided by CPB and private sources. If you don't want it to turn into another corporate-captured YouTube, viewer-subscriber model is the only way to go.

<comment><USER8> Or you could increase the portion that comes from tax money, a model proven successfully in dozens of countries.

<comment><USER9> That's hard. They have a lot of educational programs, and, at least in the US, that implies a liberal bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this content differ from what is already available on the PBS app with the paid "Passport subscription"?

<comment><USER9> I do wonder if this will be revenue positive or negative for them. I'm paying $5/month for passport (though I think it's tax deductible...)

<comment><USER4> I am not an accountant, but my accountant yells at me enough to impart a few pieces of wisdom.

This is a common misconception of "donations." Only the excess of the "donation" minus the fair market value of the "gift" is tax deductible.

So a $120 donation that gets me a nice $20 tote, will have a tax-deductible receipt of $100.

So for a video streaming service I'd expect none of it to be deductible, because if you look at other TV streaming services, you pay $10/mo for the service, so the fair market value of PBS passport might actually be higher than the donation amount.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As long as this doesn't effect the free streams of News Hour to youtube or accessing FrontLine off their website for free.

</comment><comment><USER12> Bob Ross? Mr. Rogers? Charlie Rose?

</comment><comment><USER13> Sadly, today, PBS is an infomercial for ancillary products, so it makes perfect sense that they have been partnering with Amazon.

(You don't get rich by producing a show for PBS, but plenty of people have gotten rich(er) through the promotional power of parading their own products on national tv inside a pseudo 'non commercial' bubble.)

<comment><USER14> As a kid watching _Arthur_ and _Dragon Tales_ , they would have ads for 7-eleven afterwards, due to them being a sponsor.

I didn't really realize it as a kid, but it's kind of weird that an ostensibly public project was promoting a place that sells the least healthy food on the market.

<comment><USER15> Unless your channel was different than mine, yes they had ads but they were quite benign compared to other channels. In addition to being very short and infrequent, the ads never attempted to sell a product—they just stated the company name and how proud they were to support PBS.

I'm sure these types of ads can have _some_ psychological effect, but it's hard to see them inspiring a child to start begging their parents for a certain product.

<comment><USER14> You're not wrong; the ads for 7-eleven (if I remember correctly) were some dude walking around, and then the logo, followed by the line "Oh Thank Heaven!".

I doubt my habit of eating unhealthy fast food all the time stemmed from those commercials. I just found it a bit bizarre.

<comment><USER15> > I just found it a bit bizarre.

Put another way: lots of government projects are a cooperation of public and private interests. Highways contain billboards, for instance.

I don't have a problem with these types of projects, provided they don't turn into pure corporate giveaways of public money. I really think PBS has struck a good balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wait, is Amazon the US government now? Should I send my tax money to Amazon instead? This is not cool, we should not have to pay Amazon money to watch our publicly funded television.

I don't buy that PBS doesn't "have the money" to make programs freely available. Running radio antennas back in the day costed money. At the very least, PBS could seed torrents, or upload to YouTube. I understand that neither of these methods are exactly free from any cost, but at least give us the choice.

<comment><USER17> PBS already limited free access to its streaming content. You only had access to a handful of most recent shows without a paid Passport account. Much of what PBS has in its catalog is licensed from the BBC. Streaming those programs for free in perpetuity isn't a realistic option.</comment></comment>


Beginner programmer, what should I know to get a dev job? - <AUTHOR>

I've just started programming (Learn Code the Hard Way), and the satisfaction I get from doing simple programs and getting them to run is something I haven't experienced with other interests/hobbies/jobs.
I really want to make a career out of this.
What should I learn in order to get a junior dev/entry level position? Where should I look? <comment><USER2> Here's the short version of how I did it in just 5 years. I dabbled with programming in college (perl), and then did some freelance on the side after college (php) while working a full-time job. I quit my job in 2006 and did freelance full-time for all of 2007. During this time I built up quite a portfolio, demonstrating my skills at ajax, PHP, MySQL, etc. In 2008 I used that portfolio to land a job at a startup willing to take a chance on me. I used my experience at the startup to land a job at Internet Brands in 2009. There I was able to work on sites that had millions of uniques per month, and millions in revenue. I learned a lot about scaling, caching, and optimization there while working on Ultimate Coupons and Steve's Digicams. I used that experience to land a job at ClearChannel in 2010, where they take scaling to the extreme. Here I built Rush Limbaugh's new website basically by myself.

I think the best place to start is doing freelance. Build up a portfolio that shows off what you can do, while showing people you can see a job through to completion, work with clients and their deadlines and demands, and supervise yourself. Then use that as a stepping stone to get a great full-time job if that's what you want.</comment>