SpiderOak removes its warrant canary - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/94nspi/spideroak_cans_its_warrant_canary_suffers/ <comment><USER2> SpiderOak tweeted three days ago [1] that it's replacing the warrant canary with a transparency report that'd be updated every six months.

This is what the tweet said/says: [1]

"We just released our most recent transparency report, available at [https://spideroak.com/transparency/](https://spideroak.com/transparency/) . This will replace our #warrantcanary. The final version of the canary is available at [https://spideroak.com/canary](https://spideroak.com/canary) . The transparency report will be updated every six months."

The transparency report, updated a few days ago this month, shows zeros for every kind of request, which means there haven't been any kind of court orders for information from February to August 2018. [2]

Are there still reasons to be concerned? I don't understand how they can list NSLs in the transparency report, since those are the ones with the gag orders necessitating legally confounding workarounds like a warrant canary.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/SpiderOak/status/1025488889564327936](https://twitter.com/SpiderOak/status/1025488889564327936)

[2]: [https://spideroak.com/transparency/](https://spideroak.com/transparency/)

<comment><USER3> > I don't understand how they can list NSLs in the transparency report

Correct. You can list the ones you _don 't_ have, but not the ones you do. So to a first approximation, the transparency report will always say "0".

Now, the theory behind a warrant canary is that the government can compel your silence but (maybe!) it cannot compel you to make false statements. And if that applies to NSLs and gag orders, and thus makes warrant canaries valid, it _might_ apply to the transparency report too.

And in that case maybe we can take the "0" at face value, and we can assume that they haven't received an NSL, but if they do they'll just silently drop that section from the transparency report. (Their warrant canary had some cryptographic signatures, but as far as I know, that's totally irrelevant. If a court decides to compel you to lie and say you haven't received a NSL when you have, then they can compel you to sign the canary too. If they opt not to compel speech, then they won't compel a false transparency report. The crypto is window dressing.)

But while on paper it looks to me like the transparency report is probably just as meaningful as the canary, the ham-handed way they've announced it leaves me suspicious.

<comment><USER4> Just to add on, the compelling of speech is made more difficult by the fact that the signing keys were held by people of three different nationalities, in three different countries.

The US Government can't force someone to do something if they aren't a US citizen and not on their territory. Their best option is extradition, but that would raise more eyebrows than they'd want.

<comment><USER5> Their best option is to simply ask the foreign government to do something to their own citizens on its behalf because they have evidence of some sort of potential criminal activity. Quid pro quo ensues, no extradition needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know anything about SpiderOak, except occasionally having browsed their front page, but they do seem to have some clue about security and secure software. If that is true, they _must_ have known from the outset that once you decide to install a canary, you cannot discontinue it except to signal that it has died.

That canary has now died. It did so along with a statement [1][2] that signing a canary every 6 months with an airgapped computer is too impractical, which isn't very plausible as this is a perfectly schedulable event which will take at most an hour for every person involved, twice a year. I suppose they sign their (APT, RPM) releases in the same way (please ask them; seems answerable). Additionally, they were three days late with their statement about moving away from the canary, which is otherwise irresponsibly late for an event that can completely erode trust in them as a security company.

The irony is that their conclusion in [1] that the "canary's effectiveness as a tool has been questioned, the usage of it at other companies is not consistent, and verifying it and keeping track of it is complicated for users" is spot on; the confusion that can be created about whether the canary is dead or merely deprecated, that after it has died once it cannot be reinstated, and that the only recourse for users is to move away from the service, makes it a pretty useless signal to act upon.

[1] [https://spideroak.com/articles/transparency- report/](https://spideroak.com/articles/transparency-report/)

[2] [https://twitter.com/SpiderOak/status/1025488889564327936](https://twitter.com/SpiderOak/status/1025488889564327936)

<comment><USER7> There is no confusion. There is a simple bargain with a canary: no matter what confusion is thrown up by bad actors, once it's activated, you assume the target is compromised.

If they're not really compromised? You don't need to ask that; trust is based on evidence, not some abstract Truth. When the trigger activates, you deprecate trust. It's really that simple.

<comment><USER8> > _once it 's activated, you assume the target is compromised_

I don't think it's helpful to think in such absolutist terms. Coal mine canaries died of natural causes. A canary is meant to prompt investigation (and heightened vigilence), not conclude it.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure the comparison to the actual canary in a coal mine is particularly relevant here. Clearly that inspired the name, but beyond that...

Assuming it is a good comparison - if you are the one in the coal mine and the carnary keels over, are you going to start trying to figure out the exact cause of death or just hurry up and get the hell out of the mine?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a question that crossed my mind: what if you ignore a gag order? You receive a secret court order to hand over data, and you tell them you're not giving it to them unless you're allowed to tell the world about it.

Will they give you a fine? And what if you don't pay the fine? Will they arrest you? And if they do, how can they prevent people from finding out about it?

<comment><USER11> Given that national security letters originate from the patriot act, I presume the consequences are grave. Certainly, jail time seems probable. In general, if a court says do X, and you refuse, that is contempt of court. The court can then decide to fine you, and put you in jail until you are willing to comply.

Given gag-orders, and waving the word 'national security'. I expect the court proceeding dealing with your arrest / punishment would be sealed.

Heck, if certain things are marked as US government secrets and you publish them, that is treason which can be punished by death.

<comment><USER10> > I expect the court proceeding dealing with your arrest / punishment would be > sealed.

Sure, but at a certain point, surely they will have to come and pick you up? What if there are journalists present who ask that you are being put away for? "We can't tell" surely isn't an answer they won't accept? That's eerily close to arbitrary detention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Was it by mistake? The warrant canary is back: [https://spideroak.com/canary](https://spideroak.com/canary)

 _Edit_ : it seems they had removed it on purpose and added it back to elaborate on the decision and that it wasn't removed to signal something --- seemingly: _" So after thinking about this ... we have decided to move away from ... canaries and instead publish a ... report located at ..."_

<comment><USER7> Doesn't matter. The moment the canary died, they became a compromised agent whose further statements are to be interpreted as being manipulated by secret court order.

If your canary dies, you can buy a new one, but you still have deadly gas in your mine. You can't trust the words or actions of someone who just declared they have been compromised.

<comment><USER13> _> Doesn't matter. The moment the canary died, they became a compromised agent whose further statements are to be interpreted as being manipulated by secret court order._

I don't think you can draw that conclusion. As I understand it, the NSL can only compell them to shut up about it, but it cannot compell them to dish out arbitrary lies and false justifications for taking the canary down.

<comment><USER7> We can and should draw that conclusion. Anything less compromises the canary system. I'm not going to bet my security on someone who frivolously shouts fire in a crowded theater, even if they later say they were only kidding.

<comment><USER13> You can of course do whatever you want as a consequence of what they are saying or doing.

What I'm saying is that it doesn't logically follow from the legal situation that their "further statements are to be interpreted as being manipulated by secret court order".

The FBI cannot arbitrarily manipulate SpiderOak's further statements.

<comment><USER7> Whether or not they are actually being manipulated is not important. They should be treated as if they are.

the logical flow is:

1: "I declare that if this canary is removed for any reason, it is to be assumed that I have been served an NSL and I may no longer be trusted"

2: Canary is removed.

3: You are no longer trusted.

4: Further statements are made, but they can not be trusted.

QED

<comment><USER13> You are drawing conclusions from a false premise.

They never declared that if the warrant canary dies they can no longer be trusted in anything they say or do ever again.

We know exactly what they can and cannot legally say or do once an NSL has been served. Therefore we also know that they cannot be legally compelled to make false statements.

<comment><USER7> You're right, it's more likely they are putting out the statement because they don't want their business to be ruined by having admitted to receiving an NSL. There are many ways someone can be coerced, and I don't need to guess the one in play here to discount their further excuses out of hand. At the point at which the canary is removed, their untrustworthiness is tautological; there is no combination of truth values which result in them being considered trustworthy.

That is the feature of canaries that makes them respected, and the need for such features is why secret courts are so corrosive to our society.

<comment><USER9> While I agree the canary should be considered dead on principle, I don't find this particular argument very convincing.

I think the main point here needs to be that the entire notion of a canary only works if we can count on them being killed only for the purpose they were created. If it becomes acceptable to kill canaries because the signers are tired of signing them then we have a bit of a problem.

Now, for this specific case...

It sounds like you are arguing that a NSL has compelled them to make false statements. This seems fairly unlikely given what we know about the current legal situation. The idea that they may be lying for the sake of their business is more convincing.

However, if they are lying for whatever reason, why not just continue to sign the canary? The only plausible reason to do this is some sort of malicious compliance with a sloppily worded order compelling them to lie. It would make no sense for them to decide to lie for the sake of the business and then do all of this instead of just signing the canary.

If they have received a NSL this basically leaves two sequences of events, both of which contain some rather unlikely events. If I had to bet, I'd probably bet against them having received a NSL.

However, the canary should still be considered dead. They literally killed the canary. Their reasoning provided for it is really quite bad. Basically they ask users to trust their unsigned website because users already trust their (closed source) code. So they have either received a much more powerful NSL than thought legally possible, or are doing the worlds worst job of lying about not receiving a NSL, or they have not received a NSL and view a regular page on their website as a suitable alternative to their previous solution which involved three people in three different countries signing the canaries with keys stored on air-gapped computers. If you are counting on them for security, none of options are good.

<comment><USER7> I think there's an argument to be made that the canary continuing to live is not sufficient to establish trust, for the reason you outlined. However, given that it is in fact dead, this is sufficient to revoke trust-- as you also pointed out, none of the scenarios are good for them.

As for why they would kill the canary and then backtrack, I think a plausible story could be that the canary was killed by an engineer, and then the backtracking happened by management because they don't want to own the consequences. This could explain why there was a delay between removing the canary and putting out a cover story.

Collectively as an organization, they're either acting in bad faith for whatever reason, or else they're incompetent.

<comment><USER9> I mean, a canary is only as good as your trust in the people putting it out.

As for the engineer/management idea,their statement revoking it was signed the same as their canary. Aside from the exceptional circumstances I described earlier, if you trusted their canary then the statement should be trusted too.

Like I said, I think we're most likely looking at incompetence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone explain what a Warrant Canary is and why it needs to be removed?

From my understanding, a Warrant Canary is a provision to disclose subpoena(s) that a company is not allowed to disclose and now SpiderOak is shutting down that provision?

<comment><USER15> Canaries were used in coal mines to detect deadly gas. If your canary dies, it means you might have a problem.

A warrant canary dies when a warrant is served. If a company has a statement that says "We have not been served a warrant as of X date" and they update it monthly, then they suddenly stop updating it or remove that statement, the canary has died. They might have been served with a warrant.

It's also possible that the canary died of natural causes, of course. It could be that a lawyer told them it was a bad idea, or maybe a shift in management removed it. But there's no way to know.

<comment><USER16> To expand on this.

This is done as it is usually presumed the government can legally force your silence, but can't force you to say something (e.g we hadn't received secret warrant, last updated: Aug, 08)

<comment><USER17> And to even further expand on it, the reason why they usually have a date is because it would be possible to argue that a company could be forced to keep an existing document on their website (since they aren't being forced to say something against their will, so much as being forced to not stop saying something they've already said). So the expiry is quite important in the function of a warrant canary.

Although it should be noted that as far as I'm aware, warrant canaries haven't actually gone through the court system to determine if they are actually a legal way of circumventing gag orders. Not to mention that the legality of warrant canaries has mostly only been discussed by internet lawyers in relation to US laws -- in other jurisdictions they may not work at all (I've spoken to some Australian lawyers and they think that even the basis of the theoretical arguments don't apply in Australia).

On the other hand, I don't know of any company that has actually used warrant canaries (and has "activated them" like Reddit did) which ended up being tried for violation of the NSL's gag order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Regardless of the stated reason for the canary to be removed, there is a responsibility in deploying a warrant canary that must be upheld. In this case, the canary is dead and the responsibility is now on users to judge what they should make of that.

I, for one, would not use their service going forward.

<comment><USER19> Isn't it anyway safe to assume that Internet providers worldwide have to give access to security services etc. (or are even happy to cooperate without any legal pressure)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've had some mixed feelings about SpiderOak in the past, but at least they did this right.

Props to them for making a canary and then following through on it.

<comment><USER20> Or it doesn't mean anything. Who knows, that's the beauty of it.

<comment><USER21> Well no, it means that either they've been compromised and thus shouldn't be trusted anymore, or they forgot (?) to update their canary which means they shouldn't be trusted anymore.

Don't "who knows?" on this subject, it makes you look like a government shill trying to lull privacy conscious people into indifference.

<comment><USER20> What if their lawyer explained to them that removing the canary for a reason was likely to be criminal and they removed it preemptively?

Unless you want to cite a bunch of jurisprudence that warrant canaries _actually work_ , I'm gonna stick on "who knows", even though I'm not a government shill (I'm more "pragmatic about who really has the power in that particular relationship").

<comment><USER22> > What if their lawyer explained to them that removing the canary for a reason > was likely to be criminal and they removed it preemptively?

Then a nice solution would be to say "our lawyer explained to us that removing the canary for a reason is likely to be criminal, so we're letting you know we're going to remove it in 2 months to make you more sure we're not doing it in response to a current issue".

<comment><USER17> And people would have precisely the same primary reaction ( _as they should_ ) but then would also get angry at SpiderOak for "poisoning the well" with doubts about the legality of warrant canaries. To be clear, as far as I know there is no legal precedent that says warrant canaries are a legal way of subverting gag orders (then again, the fact there is no such legal case even though Reddit activated their warrant canary could point in the favour that the US government doesn't want to try their luck in court).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> also note earlier in their feed, a few hours before they announced the death of the canary, they had a 'full system outage due to a poorly communicated maintenance by their ISP'. To me, this screams "Narus box at our edge" or similar shady behavior.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been using spideroak and encryptr for a while and I'm assuming the data stored by them up until now is secure given that it was a zero knowledge service. Any opinions on this?

<comment><USER25> Unless you manually manage your keys, it's only zero knowledge if you never log into their website or use their Android app, either of which gets your key onto their servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If your threat model includes any sovereign state's intelligence agency then a warrant canary is worse than useless. Given their other widely abused powers it is likely trivial to force a normal company to continue business as normal and make any statement.

I submit that warrant canaries are at best legally and politically naive virtue signalling and at worst deliberate obfuscation of the actual threat model.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why do these companies not make use of international, cross border solutions?

I am bound by the law of France but my associate in the US could not care less and vice versa. If we cross check, say, code daily and I see a discrepancy then I raise an alert on my .fr page, controlled by myself. He would not be involved.

</comment><comment><USER28> IIRC their yum repository is having some GPG signing issues as well. This isn't increasing my confidence.

</comment><comment><USER29> Any ideas on how many people in the company would know about it? If it's quite a few, one would take the chance on writing anon to a tech writer /activist. But that too is easier said than done...FBI would not be happy and they have a lot of cards in their hand.

</comment><comment><USER30> don't be mad. This is exactly what a canary is for.

</comment><comment><USER31> If you look at the comment they debate that a candy can mean the service is not as secure as it was, like truecrypt did use its canary.

<comment><USER32> I think you're wrong about Truecrypt, it's still safe but just won't ever be updated.

[https://www.grc.com/misc/truecrypt/truecrypt.htm](https://www.grc.com/misc/truecrypt/truecrypt.htm)

<comment><USER33> Truecrypt may be secure, but linking to GRC is going to persuade me that it isn't.

<comment><USER32> Who can you trust? I use trucrypt to encrypt my windows machine but I've been thinking about moving away from it because it seems to cause issues with some windows updates. So if not Truecrypt, what, bitlocker?

<comment><USER34> You can upgrade to VeraCrypt [1] which is a continuation of TrueCrypt. It's backwards compatible with TrueCrypt volumes but also fixes a bunch of issues that have been found in TrueCrypt code. It also supports newer features like EFI boot and Windows 10 big updates.

\--

[1] [https://www.veracrypt.fr/](https://www.veracrypt.fr/)

<comment><USER32> Hi strom,do you have experience using this? I tried it a couple of years back on a new pc but I had some issue (I cant't remember what it was) with full disk encryption which caused me to go with Truecrypt.

<comment><USER34> Yes I used to use TrueCrypt but have been using VeraCrypt on all my computers for about a year now. Most recent issue I had was with EFI boot and major Windows 10 updates, but the latest beta of VeraCrypt addresses that issue as well.

<comment><USER32> Good to know, I'll definitely give it as go as the windows update issue with Truecrypt is a pain. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Free GDPR / PCI DSS Compliance Test - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@immuniweb/weve-launched-free-website-security-and-gdpr-pci-dss-compliance-test-ae5974fcc61 <comment><USER2> Advertisements via thinly veiled medium posts are getting to be annoying common. Anyone offering a "GDPR Compliance" test using an external scanner is riding the line where using deceptive wording to mine leads meets openly scamming.</comment>


Light Switches Should Be Smarter Than Your Light Bulbs - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/your-light-switches-should-be-smarter-than-your-light-bulbs-d9dcf6df2230 <comment> m-p-3 IMO the idea of a smart light switch makes more sense than a smart bulb.

If someone turn off the switch, you're stuck being unable to control that light until the switch is put back on, and you have to exclusively use an app to control it. The smart switch at least allow a parallel control of the light bulb without having to worry about turning off the switch by mistake or because a guest is unfamiliar with the system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. And smart switches, at least the motion-sensors have been around for 30yrs. Evidently bulb-makers are better marketers.</comment></comment>


Google and Salesforce Ink Cloud, Apps Deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-and-salesforce-ink-cloud-apps-deal-1510002301 <comment><USER2> Non paywalled link: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2017/11/06/salesforc...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2017/11/06/salesforce- google-cloud-partners/#38a89bbc73bb)

Also any Salesforce customer not using G Suite gets the service free for one year!</comment>


Panic State of the Union '11 - <AUTHOR> http://www.panic.com/blog/2011/10/panic-state-of-the-union-11/

<comment><USER2> What concerns me is the time they spent on the software before even going into the beta phase: "Coda 2 has now been in development for about a year and a half."

This is probably normal for the traditional development cycles(, which is not what I'm familiar with). However, with the web apps fastening the whole process, they will face serious challenges. A good example is CulturedCode's Things[1], a good GTD software with no support for cloud syncing. They wrote a series of blogs about how they will implement it back at the beginning of the year. After roughly 9 months, they haven't finished it and it is still in internal beta. Even for the beta, it has been 3 months. I can't imagine that for web applications. Things was great, but because of the pain of syncing, I switched to Wunderlist.

Panic makes great things, hopefully they will keep it up.

[1] <http://culturedcode.com/things/></comment>


Nokia to pre-install Skype on handsets - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/17/nokia_skype/

<comment><USER2> The article has the right idea -- operators are just bit pipes. Did they really think that they would be able to charge more to deliver a 160 character text message than it costs to mail a postcard forever?

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect they did... and they certainly got away with it for much longer than reasonable.

I'm quite excited by this development... it's another hint that the balance of power has shifted from carriers (who have every interest in keeping the services basic and expensive to maximise their profit margins) to the handset makers (who have every interest to build a handset with more cool stuff than other providers, but have been held back by the carriers for a decade).

I think we all know who to thank for this development... Thank you Mr Jobs!

<comment><USER2> > I think we all know who to thank for this development... Thank you Mr Jobs!

Maybe, but I've been using Skype on my Windows Mobile phone for longer than the iPhone has existed. I guess we can thank Mr Ballmer instead. (Eww, gross.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> While I'm excited by this in a sense, it's not that big a win for the end customer.

To really take advantage of this you need a decent/unlimited data plan. To get that (with most mainstream carriers) you need a voice plan. The cheapest voice plans are $40/mo and offer a boatload of minutes already.

So yeah, the carriers might miss out on charging some overage fees, but they are still going to charge their $70+ a month either way. This would be more exciting if you could get a 'naked' wireless data plan (like 'naked', or dry loop, or toneless DSL).

Of course, at least with skype chat you can stop paying an arm and a leg for text messages.

<comment><USER4> My 3gb/mo data plan is $8/mo and includes unlimited access to Starbucks WiFi. No voice component required.

No handset included, but no minimum subscription period either. $300 for a unlocked Nokia E71 from eBay still leaves you $1188 up on a 24 month $70 contract.

That's 1650 minutes a month on VOIP over WiFi or 3G, or 198 minutes a month even at out of bundle carrier rates if your VOIP service breaks, with the bonus that calls you don't make you don't pay for.

<comment><USER3> Who is your carrier, if I might ask?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wonder if the client is still P2P. If your phone becomes a supernode, imagine what's going to happen to the battery!

On the flip side this opens up a market for traffic shapers in the 3G world. DPI would be the only way you can block P2P VoIP. I forsee good times for DPI companies. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great news for people who live in places w/ bad signals and great wifi. I've been waiting a while for someone to do this. Hopefully they'll force apple / at&t to follow suit.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sure, why not. Nokia sells phones, not air time.

Don't expect to see Skype on any of those subsidized phones you get for cheap from your phone carrier, though.

<comment><USER8> Actually they try to see the bigger picture in "connecting people". Phones are just their current platform of communication.

I'm seeing an approaching point of convergence to PC's with every new generation of phones and computers. Current top-of-the-line multimedia phones and the newest pc-netbooks are quite different beasts than traditional GSM/CDMA cells and PCs. Soon netbooks and phones might be one. At that point Skype/Twitter would make more sense than call on air/SMS.

See Nokia corporate history for evidence on planned abandonment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm sure the phone carriers will be thrilled by this</comment>


'Into The Wild' bus removed from Alaska wilderness - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53106441 <comment><USER3> There's an interesting piece called "Chris McCandless from an Alaska Park Ranger's Perspective"

[http://nmge.gmu.edu/textandcommunity/2006/Peter_Christian_Re...](http://nmge.gmu.edu/textandcommunity/2006/Peter_Christian_Response.pdf)

"Some like McCandless, show up in Alaska, unprepared, unskilled and unwilling to take the time to learn the skills they need to be successful. These quickly get in trouble and either die by bears, by drowning, by freezing or they are rescued by park rangers or other rescue personnel–but often, not before risking their lives and/or spending a lot of government money on helicopters and overtime. When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn't even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament using one of several routes that could have been successful."

<comment><USER4> Am I in the minority in thinking that if someone wants to go out into the wilderness with little or no preparation for months at a time, that it's no one else's business?

McCandless didn't ask for a book to be written about him. Why should anyone care one way or another that an individual they didn't know decided to do something for his own sake with little effect on anyone else.

If I, or anyone, decide tomorrow they'd like to take a very long walk in the woods and not return for six months, why does society at large need to weigh in on that? It's not a question of moral or ethics. People are consistently smug, morally prescriptive, and hindsight-ridden whenever the topic of McCandless comes up.

<comment><USER5> It is absolutely a question of moral and ethics. This point of view regularly gets good people killed. Dead serious.

You cannot wander off into the wilderness with no preparation expecting to cause no undue burden and danger to society for the exact same reason that you cannot jump off a building or shoot yourself in the middle of the street and expect it to be no one else's business.

You are willfully endangering wilderness personnel and spending enormous sums of public money when you get in trouble or die in the wilderness because you were unprepared.

There's no waiver you can sign and send to the forest service that says "Hey, I have no idea what I'm doing but I like it that way and don't bother rescuing me or recovering my body because I'm trying to be one with nature or something"

Yours is a very dangerous attitude to have in the outdoors. It is not the 1700s anymore. It is literally always someone's job to do their absolute best (e.g. the government's best) to rescue you or to recover your body if you get in trouble no matter where you are on Earth, no matter how dangerous.

It's incredibly irresponsible to think that you have no effect on the world around you in an age of GPS and helicopters.

<comment><USER4> Heading out into the wilderness for months at a time alone is an extreme event. So is flying in a wingsuit, or downhill skiing in a remote location full or rocks, or free soloing a difficult mountain. One one hand, you can say, "Think of society, think of the people who would bear the responsibility of cleaning up after your death if you were to fail."

On the other hand, there are always people who are going to pursue extreme ventures. But given how few people are willing to enter into life or death scenarios like I described, I don't find the the argument that these people have any noticeable effect on the economies of the state very convincing.

<comment><USER5> Yes indeed, embarking on extreme ventures are a fundamental part of humanity and an inevitability of the risk tolerance bell curve of personality matrices. I'm certainly in no way advocating for people to not participate in outdoor activities that could be considered risky.

Rather, the most important key difference here is in the individual's preparation for these activities.

Yes people wingsuit, but try going to any skydiving drop zone without having quite literally hundreds of jumps with dozens as formal training in a wing suit. They will first laugh at your stupidity then get extremely serious and curse you out of the building for being a dangerous fool.

People who free solo mountains are not amateurs. They have thousands of hours of training and have climbed the exact same route safely so many times they know each hold my heart.

McCandless was a reckless fool. Not only had he never been to where he went with someone who knew their way around before he went alone, but he had no training doing similar things in any other proper context and that staggering lack of knowledge cost him his life.

If someone has never skydived, and they saunter up to a 2000ft cliff wearing a wingsuit and jump off thinking they are taking the same risk as the extensively trained professionals they've watched on youtube then that makes them a reckless fool as well.

<comment><USER4> People put up the same comments about Alex Honnold when the Free Solo documentary made the front page of HN. That he was an irresponsible jerk who lived only for himself.

Ultimately, the individual pays the greatest price. There is a difference where you if you want to set the land-speed record on a public highway in rush hour versus going out alone into the wilderness or climbing a mountain without a rope. The difference is where you draw the line. I believe that if any individual desires to stake out into the wilderness, alone, live in nature, hunt, and forage without a whisper to society at large - that is precisely the place where you would go. If not in wilderness, then where?

<comment><USER6> >People put up the same comments about Alex Honnold when the Free Solo documentary made the front page of HN. That he was an irresponsible jerk who lived only for himself.

There is a big difference between these two cases. Honnold's level of preparation is hardly even comparable to McCandless lack of even basic knowledge of his surroundings.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but how do we quantify that? There's no state board that certifies you as a professional free solo climber.

Say you're a park ranger at Yosemite. Lately, somebody has been parking a suspicious-looking van near the trailhead at El Capitan, so you're keeping an eye out for trouble. You see someone exit the van one morning carrying nothing but the clothes on his back, and you follow him down the trail to the cliff face. He grabs an outcropping and starts climbing like an escaped mental patient.

You have the authority to stop him, since he's clearly behaving recklessly. What do you do? How does your decision differ from that of a ranger who sees Chris McCandless leave the trail in an unmarked area?

<comment><USER8> "Hey, stop there for a bit, lets have a chat so I can ascertain your skill level." Not every problem is a nail and requires a hammer (stopping someone).

<comment><USER7> I don't understand what you're saying here, sorry. It seems self- contradictory. In any case, once the climber has been stopped for questioning, the ranger has to make a judgment call that he/she _definitely_ isn't qualified to make. "Hmm. This guy says he's pretty sure he can make it to the top of El Capitan without any gear. Should I let him try?"

What do you think the ranger's most likely response is going to be, assuming that they have a basic sense of morality, that they like their job and want to keep it, and that they don't enjoy cleaning up after fatal mishaps?

(Difficulty: the climber is in good shape and knows what he's doing, but he isn't Honnold. He actually _is_ a suicidal person. Now, did your ranger make the right call?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of my friends lived in Healy, Alaska, the nearest town to the bus.

He said that a lot of people came to the area trying to relive McCandless' journey. Locals called them "pukers" because they would go into the woods and within a few days of attempting to forage for food, would inevitably eat or drink something contaminated or one of the various mildly poisonous plants in the area, begin vomiting, and give up and return to town (hopefully).

I always thought of McCandless' story as a cautionary tale. I _don 't_ think it means we should compromise on our ideals, but I _do_ think it means we need to build skills and awareness. There are causes worth dying for, but most of the time dying can and should be avoided.

<comment><USER10> As a South African growing up in a rural area, I always saw _Into the Wild_ as an example of how Alaskans—or other people who don't die in the woods—with common sense are thrown under the bus in favour of general Americans with more gripping stories that unfortunately revolves around a couple of stupid decisions.

It's a great story to make a movie about, but isn't the daily life of an Alaskan a great story too? It appears that it isn't seen as a cautionary tale at all, but an instruction on how to "go back to nature".

<comment><USER11> Most Alaskans live in towns with lives similar to that of other Americans. They go to work, buy groceries, do laundry, watch TV. Not a "great" story except in the sense of celebrating the ordinary.

<comment><USER12> I guess, but as a kid, I practically lived in the thick woods around our house.

As a boy, it was awesome to live in a place where carrying a khukuri (or small sword) wasn't so out of the ordinary, and I have fond memories of bushwhacking trails, coming home smelling of earth and picking the inevitable spiders out of my clothes.

<comment><USER11> I lived like that growing up in Virginia. Mid-Atlantic has many areas like this. Minus the Nepali souvenirs though.

<comment><USER13> And I had the same experience growing up in rural southeastern Ohio. Bushwhacking, spending a lot of time in and near rivers and streams, walking the fields, hunting small game. The specific place where I grew up has largely lost most of this, minus the water. I wonder if other places have lost pieces of it, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In the summer of 2009, at the beginning of my first massive expedition from Alaska to Argentina, I hiked into the bus and spent a night in what turned out to be the most intense and peaceful place I've ever spent time. Reading the exhilarating stories in the guest book was like nothing I've ever experienced, and I was awe-struck that one person can inspire so many with his big smile and simple approach to life.

Over the years I've spent hundreds of hours thinking about Chris, his conscious choice to live the life he wanted and the freedom that brought him. He is one of my biggest inspirations, and I like to think we would have been friends.

Every time the sound track from the movie comes on I get tingles down my spine, and I can't help but sing along. It's easily the most-listened to music of my life, and in a strange way it's the sound track to my life.

I have mixed emotions about the removal of the bus - on one hand I understand the need to stop people visiting who require rescue, while on the other I'm sad I never made a return trip. I had always planned a solo winter trip, and somehow while living only ten hours away for four years I never made the effort.

Yet another reason to always go for it, right now.

Although the bus is no longer there, I'm sure I'll make a trek to the spot anyway, and I'm sure Chris will continue to inspire me throughout my life.

"Happiness is only real when shared" \- Chris McCandless

Here's my account of my hike into the bus in 2009 [http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus](http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic- bus)

<comment><USER15> > Every time the sound track from the movie comes on I get tingles down my > spine ...

I don't think I've heard any of those songs since I saw the movie when it was in theaters, but you've reminded me how much they've stuck with me. Eddie Vedder's vocals are so raw and vulnerable and there couldn't have been a better choice.

I'm going to listen to the soundtrack this afternoon -- thanks for the reminder. I'm also looking forward to reading your travelogue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The US Army Survival field manual is one of my favorite book about surviving techniques. It's a long and good read and useful for pretty much everyone

[https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-70.pdf](https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-70.pdf)

Also the US Army Basic Cold Weather Manual

[http://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/army-fm31-70-basic- co...](http://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/army-fm31-70-basic-cold-weather- manual.pdf)

<comment><USER17> > 10-3. Some common misconceptions about poisonous plants are

> \- "Watch the animals and eat what they eat." Most of the time this > statement is true, but some animals can eat plants that are poisonous to > humans.

> \- "Boil the plant in water and any poisons will be removed." Boiling > removes many poisons, but not all.

> \- "Plants with a red color are poisonous." Some plants that are red are > poisonous, but not all.

> 10-4. The point is there is no one rule to aid in identifying poisonous > plants. You must make an effort to learn as much about them as possible.

I absolutely love the use of language here. So minimal, so careful, so factual.

Thank you for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was surprised that a bus needed to be removed because it was dangerous. Apparently you have to cross a river to get to it -- that was killing people.

The stories of McCandless's journey suggest that we should consider the psychology of self-harm and suicide when we ask about his motivations. He ignored even the most basic precautions, which considering his education and age should reveal something other than mere stupidity. He seemed to _want_ to put himself at risk of harm -- leaving food behind, refusing assistance from locals, and not even learning to preserve meat, so the animals he killed could not feed him. It seems like his being at constant risk of death by starvation and exposure was not an accident.

<comment><USER19> I think you're drastically underestimating how stupid and over-confident people can be. He had a college education, but that doesn't teach you the survival skills needed to live in the wilderness. McCandless spent a few years bumming around the United states before traveling to Alaska which likely gave him a false sense of security in his survival abilities.

Most people living in western nations have no idea of how unforgiving the wilderness can be, nor do they understand the amount of effort that it can take to survive. The amount of tourists who think that national parks are just the outdoor equivalent of Disney Land is shocking.

<comment><USER20> > He had a college education, but that doesn't teach you the survival skills > needed to live in the wilderness.

I can vouch for that. I don't even know how to set a snare or how to prepare a rabbit if I caught one.

<comment><USER21> The "SAS Survival Handbook" of the late 80s-early 90s by Lofty Wiseman is calling your name...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems like they could easily put it into a museum. Or just some plot of land in a nearby town with a plaque. Hopefully that's where it ends up.

<comment><USER23> Yeah a musuem more accessible that explains in detail every rescue attempt resulting from it would be a nice set up, especially when combined with a ranger station or similar public wilderness awareness teaching effort. Let the full scope be told about his life and motivations but also that his fate was totally preventable.

It would dramatically change the concept but a home town located musuem would have a full circle effect to it and his life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Won't those same people just get into the same trouble elsewhere?

I see no net positive here, and a few net negatives.

1 - History. For better or for worse, it never the less is.

2 - If people do come from all over to see it, then, that means, by definition, it's a thing people want. You're generally supposed to provide what people want, not remove it wherever you find it.

3 - If my zero-sum theory is right, or if the numbers even merely lean that way even if still a little imbalanced, then isn't knowing the where the emergencies will happen ahead of time better than having them happen in unpredictable random places throughout the whole of a place as huge as Alaska?

Seems like a dumb response to the, observation. I wouldn't even say "problem", merely observation, unless you could show that the bus actually adds some harm that wouldn't still be there just somewhere else.

<comment><USER25> > You're generally supposed to provide what people want, not remove it > wherever you find it.

This is an extremely simplistic view. People very often want things that aren't in their best interest and it end up costing all of us, see alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, not using condoms, not using a helmet while riding a motorcycle, &c.

I don't think any government in the world is here to provide whatever people want. And even if you think about it that way you would have to consider all the people actually living there who are fed up of having to rescue lost tourist, which is expensive and potentially dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm somehow sad reading about it. It was one of my destinations ony my list. This guy inspired my to travel the world.

Thanks Alexander Supertramp :)

<comment><USER27> Some unprepared wannabe who got himself killed because of how unprepared he was is your hero? Weird choice.

Also, as the great Dr Henry Jones jr. said, "it belongs in a museum!" That thing was responsible for many deaths over the years, and would be better suited as a safe attraction to visit by all the white suburbanites sick of how fake their existence is. Maybe with a plaque stating how many rescue missions had to be sent out because of novices not knowing what they're doing.

<comment><USER28> He survived for 113 days in the wilderness, not too bad. He was unprepared, yes, but it also seems he knew that what he was doing was risky, and he seems to have been ok taking that risk. I'm not quite sure - why judge him negatively?

<comment><USER29> surviving 113 days in the wilderness isn't that great of a feat. if you were prepared, and had done a bare minimum of research and planning beforehand, you could manage not to die.

it wasn't that what he did was risky, it's that what he did was _unnecessarily_ risky. if he wasn't so stupid about it, it would have been a lot less risky. taking on a challenge is admirable, but taking it on without any respect for the difficulty of the thing you're attempting is dumb.

<comment><USER30> This is just internet forum backseat driving. I'm sure the average hard-boiled HNer could've outlasted him with their innate wilderness intuitions -- probably have even watched a few survival videos on Youtube --, but Chris' story is also about a guy who wanted to march away from the trappings of society. I wouldn't be surprised if he died at day 113 even if he was 2x or 4x as prepared. He would have just went deeper quicker.

But pearl clutching about the risks someone else decided to take is incredibly petty. And odds are, as a fellow HN jockey who posts every day like myself, you aren't taking nearly enough.

<comment><USER31> I hunt and tramp (hike) and there's inherent risk, and risk that can be removed or minimised, and the risks he took that killed him were unnecessary ones.

<comment><USER28> Yes, he took "unnecessary" risks. I understand his goal was not to "minimize unnecessary risks". If that's your goal, fine. It's mine, too. It wasn't his goal.

<comment><USER31> Yes, but he didn't exist in a vacuum - someone had to find his decomposing body, someone had to remove it, someone had to clean the public shelter he died in.

His chosen risks inflicted downsides on others.

<comment><USER28> > someone had to find his decomposing body

Well, yes - is this an argument against dying in general? Fully agreed - <USER2> sucks!

> someone had to remove it

Yes, that's what people do with dead bodies!

> someone had to clean the public shelter he died in

The abandoned bus? Well no one _had to_ clean it, but I suppose someone cleaned it? Yes, cleaning up after dead people is a nuisance.

So preferably he shouldn't have died, ever? To spare the people finding his body, removing it, and cleaning up?

<comment><USER31> The abandoned bus that had been converted into _shelter_ for other back- country users. Shelter is vital, so not sure why you're minimising it.

> Yes, that's what people do with dead bodies!

Entire point is, his death was easily avoidable. He chose not to avoid it, thus impacting other people needlessly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Into the Wild certainly inspired me to increase my exposure to the wilderness, on top of many years watching Survivorman. I only grew up car camping, so it's a slowish process of acquiring the necessary skills through longer and more challenging summit day hikes in coastal BC, and soon multi-day backpacking as I aquire necessary gear. I was never particularly taken by the transactional feedback loop of life, and I think the McCandless story sort of re-affirmed that in some way. The only things I've done that approximate his path were a few long and short term trips that I've taken with no real plan, nowhere to be, and no place or time to be back. It's not for everyone, but you build a lot more confidence if yiu can make it through.

<comment><USER33> Not sure if the sport has much of a presence near you, but look out for "rogaining". It's basically orienteering without the fixed course: you're given a contour map with targets worth varying values, and given a timeframe to gain the highest tally and return home. Events are typically 3-24 hours.

Something that was a milestone for me was my first 24 hour rogaine in rugged Australian bush. You are out walking all night by light of headlamps and moon. It only takes one event and then you understand more about your potential and fears. The first time, you're wary of the dark, but not again after that point. It will be 3am and while most people are asleep, you're pushing through spider webs up a gully trying to find a target in the dark. Changed the way I think when I'm out in the wild, what I pack by default, etc.

<comment><USER32> I'll be getting hair loss ads for a while now, but it looks like a fun activity. I was aware of orienteering as a skill, but not as a sport, and wasn't aware of rogaining at all. Since I'm often up all night anyway and love being in nature during those hours, it sounds like my kind of thing. In the example you mentioned, were you on your own or with a group, and was it an organized event or more of a "do it whenever you can while the markers are set up" kind of thing?

<comment><USER33> I have competed in 3, 6, 12 and 24 hour events. Did a local three hour with my parents and kids, a six hour with three rookie friends, and then 12-24 hour events with my main teammate in these events. I've also done a "roving" 15 hour with my 7 year old son which is where you can choose which hours you spend on course (and eat/camp the rest of the time); for that, we spent some night and morning dark out for extra excitement.

The events are fixed, usually over a full moon weekend. In Australia, a local community group puts on hot food. It's great fun.

Funny story: After our first couple of events, my teammate and I realised the world championships were soon to be held in Australia and we needed one more event to qualify for the lottery. So we drove 14 hours each way interstate to compete in the Australasian Championships, then qualified and competed in the World Championships. We are not especially fit but competent navigators and we didn't embarrass ourselves at least.

It's a sport at which young, old, female, male all can be competitive. There was a six hour event near me where a trio of 15 year old female trail runners barely lost to two male professional marathon runners. And 50-60 year olds are very competitive as experience and resilience can play a significant part. There are classes and competitors in 70+ yo age groups.

If you're on Instagram, here's a story of my son and I competing in one: [https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/178894600302153...](https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17889460030215380/)

Of course, you don't need a formal sport to hike all night, but I find competing for points to be very motivating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> That part of Alaska is not serious wilderness by Alaskan standards. It is near vacation homes and hunting lodges a major roads.

<comment><USER35> Well the grand canyon has a small town right next to the south rim, and its own airport. But they still have to rescue several hundred people every summer, even with clean water stations every couple of miles on the most popular trails.

On my personal list of "things you should never underestimate", nature and human ignorance are both near the top, just underneath human cruelty. Such is life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36>
        In 1992 the bus was inhabited by 24-year-old adventurer Chris McCandless, who eventually died of starvation.
        ...
        The 1940s bus was brought to the remote trail about 60 years ago by a road crew, Mr Walker said.

Interesting so the fella didn't bring it, just serendipitously found and inhabited it for the shelter it provided? Did he die in the bus itself?

<comment><USER37> Yes, his corpse was found in the bus, probably a few weeks after he died.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If we were to do a New Deal-type shift away from the military industrial complex, could the National Guard be pointed at cleaning up "litter" like this? Corps of Engineer-type work being pointed at infrastructure cleanup, which includes cultivating and caring for natural resources, seems like a fantastic use of tax dollars.

<comment><USER39> It was the Alaskan National Guard who removed the bus. [1]

[1] [https://www.dvidshub.net/news/372418/alaska-national- guard-a...](https://www.dvidshub.net/news/372418/alaska-national-guard- airlifts-into-wild-bus-stampede-trail)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have never understood why 'Into The Wild' became such a compelling adventure story. I have always seen it as a story of a troubled young man who pretty much decided to go on a suicide trip. People have made him a hero but I just don't see it.

Do people identify with him similar to Holden Caulfield in "The Catcher In The Rye?"

Can someone enlighten me?

</comment><comment><USER41> I support the removal of the bus.

McCandless's tale is a cautionary one.

Monuments to the unprepared shouldn't be beacons for more of the same to follow.

I'm all for freedom, including freedom to fail.

But living in an area with regular fatalities due to lack of experience, preparedness, and planning, removing unnecessary beacons is a worthwhile effort.

</comment><comment><USER42> That makes sense to move the bus actually. Christopher McCandless died there, so why would the tourist fare any better? Sort of sad to see them move the bus, but it's probably the right thing to do. Would be nice to see them move it to a safer location that people can still visit.

<comment><USER43> >so why would the tourist fare any better?

The sad part is even a little preparation and caution would save most of them. That area isn't particularly dangerous or impossible to escape. McCandless just didn't prepare much at all, he could have potentially gotten out / help, had he bothered to know about his surroundings / or prepared.

The scale of dangers and etc can be hard for folks to understand who aren't ready... but that area / situation was hardly notably dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> He was a heretic in a true sense of the word, and people hate heretics the most.

</comment><comment><USER45> I read, that guy died like 20km away from the next village.

People from that region where baffled how he got himself killed by not even being remotely in "the wild".

<comment><USER4> What are you on? 20km on foot is a great distance, especially when you're unsure of where you are. And 20km in area is a massive amount of space. When you don't know which direction to go, even a mile is daunting.

<comment><USER46> The bus is on a trail that leads directly back to the nearest town. And it's an east-west trail, so he would have known to go East.

<comment><USER4> That's not the reality of it. You can easily get lost even day hiking maintained trails. When you're cutting through brush, have no familiar landmarks things are different. Being lost is a combination of not knowing your location relative to camp and also being disoriented as to which direction you're supposed to go, where you've come from.

You're constantly making decisions to travel to avoid trees, difficult elevation, brush which entails changes of direction. The inaccuracies in those decisions can compound. The idea that you can just look at the sun or have nothing but a compass and travel safely and confidently in unknown territory is a myth. It's rarely ever as simple as moving in a straight line.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Model Viral Growth: The Hybrid Model - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121002124206-18876785-how-to-model-viral-growth-the-hybrid-model?trk=NUS_DIG_UNIU_PEOPLE_FOLLOW-megaphone&utm_source=buffer&buffer_share=b2214

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw another name for viral growth factor K-factor

K-factor = i * c

i = number of invites sent by each customer (e.g. if each new customer invites five friends, i = 5)

c = percent conversion of each inbvite (e.g. if one in five invitees convert to new users, c = .2)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-factor_(marketing)>

Viral growth appears when K-factor > 1</comment>


Dolphin Emulator – The New Era of HLE Audio - <AUTHOR> https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/08/19/new-era-hle-audio/ <comment><USER2> I love seeing the progress people are making in preserving our modern cultural heritage in Dolphin, BSNES, etc. More posts like this, please :-) and great work.

The broken loop sample sounds almost like it could be something from Autechre.

</comment><comment><USER3> An observation ... Soundcloud's "samples-over-time thumbnail" actually serves a useful purpose in these side-by-side comparisons: You can _see_ before listening that there is a difference or something "missing" in one versus the other.

</comment><comment><USER4> This was a fun read, I had no idea that the "Zelda" games used a different audio code than all the other offerings.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm wondering why Nintendo haven't killed this project already. They usually don't tolerate any fan-use of their IP or anything enabling piracy... I wonder if they're actually using this project internally for something.

<comment><USER6> I don't think you can kill it in the same way you can't force Intel to stop selling CPUs because they enable piracy. There is loads of emulators out there that would get shutdown if it were true.</comment></comment>


More than one million requests per second in Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/uWebSockets/uWebSockets/wiki/(More-than)-one-million-requests-per-second-in-Node.js <comment><USER2> Happy µWS "customer" here. I've been using the C++ library standalone in production since October (i.e. without Node.js).

Crazy fast, ultra-low memory usage, and was easy to integrate into our codebase. Author is hilarious and deeply cares about performance.

Easily the best C++ WebSocket library. I'm not at all surprised Alex has managed to get some additional performance out of HTTP on Node.js as well.

<comment><USER3> We are also using the uWS C++ library in production and have been extremely pleased with the performance. Integrating it was trivial and we haven't had any issues.

Alex has always been very responsive and helpful and his focus on performance is always extremely refreshing in the wake of the webdev world's "eh, good enough" mentality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> often times webserver benchmarks are misleading because of how the tests were done.

nginx is a fully fledged webserver with logging enabled out of the box, and other bells and whistles. By just having logs enabled for example you're adding significant load on the server because of log formatting, writes to disk, etc.

At the very least include the configs of each server tested.

<comment><USER5> And details on the wrk (load gen) setup too, please.

<comment><AUTHOR> The pipelining benchmark is identical to that of Japronto (another, very similar thing posted here on HN a few days ago). Japronto's repo on GitHub holds the wrk pipelining script used.

I haven't had the time to add configurations for every server tested (esp. Apache & NGINX) but the main point here is to showcase the Node.js vs. Node.js with µWS perf. difference.

<comment><USER6> How did you not have the time? Apologies, I might be missing something, but was this an emergency work assignment?

If not, then you should have taken the time to provide the information for a fair comparison with the other stacks.

As it is, you're just asking the community to take your word for it.

<comment><USER7> We don't need to take his word for it. It's open source, so we can run the tests ourselves.

I think it's completely understandable that he threw in the others, probably default config, without caring much about it since they weren't the point of the writeup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Although it mirrors what the other parent comments are making, I wish there was more information readily available (or maybe it is, and I'm just not aware of where to look for it?) information about what real-world performance is like in different cases.

For example, in my job, since none of the frontend APIs need to handle that many requests at once, we're considering setting up a few node "frontend APIs" to lift application complexities from our JS single page app up one level. Stuff like having to hit multiple inconsistent APIs, dealing with formatting issues, etc. If you have a single API it seems much easier to deal with that, as well as expand it as time goes on. But due to lack of knowledge and experience, I don't have as much confidence with pushing this decision as I'd like. We'll obviously end up investing time and effort in performing benchmarks to make sure it meets our requirements first, but as since we're a startup that's not so large, we can't realistically afford to dump THAT much time into something that doesn't end up getting us some clear benefits.

A bit related to the topic... I know it's not exciting and sexy, but I wish more people wrote about larger non-trivial applications and how they end up tackling the challenges they encountered and details of the kinds of scales they handled. Both with respect to architecture and scaling. Maybe it's my lack of experience, but I find it really difficult to guess at how much money certain things will end up costing before doing a "close-to-real-world implementation".

<comment><USER9> Look into postgrest instead of graphQL as well and use the database as a flexible middle layer to construct your API on demand.

[http://postgrest.com/en/v0.4/](http://postgrest.com/en/v0.4/)

<comment><USER10> We did that, due to a lack or experience with graphQL. We use Postgres as a transactional key-value store (with proper schema though). We implemented the filtering as simple params to the API, not as flexible as graphQL but it is straightforward to implement on the backend side. I am not sure what is the meaning of inconsistent API though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks interesting. I'm surprised there aren't many existing native HTTP modules for NodeJS. Found websockets/was as an alternative [https://github.com/websockets/ws](https://github.com/websockets/ws)

It would be a fun experiment to implement a native HTTP module in Rust using Neon. [https://github.com/neon-bindings/neon](https://github.com/neon- bindings/neon)

</comment><comment><USER12> >HTTP pipelining (made famous by Japronto)

>Japronto's own (ridiculous) pipeline script

are you trolling? :)

<comment><USER13> He is (a little bit).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Really? 5x faster than plain nginx? That's .. remarkable, if true. I can't seem to find the sources for that benchmark however.

<comment><USER15> Wholly irrelevant, just like the Python "benchmark" that was on the front page yesterday.

<comment><USER14> Irrelevant for what? It's opening and closing an unfathomable number of sockets in a short time span, so it would be limited to how many the kernel can handle. Maybe subject to limitations in the glibc epoll() wrapper as well. So it's not irrelevant if you want to benchmark some change in the kernel for example. (There is a http parser in there as well, but I don't think even replacing it with a dummy one would quadruple total throughput even. Which is why I'm skeptical. The Python thing didn't claim performance above nginx.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This kind of benchmark is completely useless.

You tune the heck out of node.js and then take another tool without tuning it (JVM, apache, nginx etc), give it a ridiculous task that you'll never find in real world and present your results as if they are meaningful.

Why do people still waste time doing it?

<comment><USER17> Actually it's kind of funny how Node community are obsessed about benchmark and speed because Node is very slow on CPU and cannot even do parallelism properly.

<comment><USER18> That's completely incorrect. Well known cluster modules allows very easy parallelism at any level in your application. Plus Node is among the fastest interpreted languages around today -- coming close to the jvm in performance.

<comment><USER19> I am awfully wary of these statements which paint languages like Python (via PyPy), Javascript (via Node) as very close competitors of the JVM. Once the JIT engine kicks in, on "real" workloads, JVM beats the lights out of these carefully tuned interpreted languages on a CPU intensive workload.

<comment><USER20> > _Once the JIT engine kicks in, on "real" workloads, JVM beats the lights out > of these carefully tuned interpreted languages on a CPU intensive workload._

For one, JS is also JITed. Second we have video players and other tasks done on native JS, which would be impossibly slow on say Python.

Second, JS can also be compiled -- there's asm.js and WebAssembly coming down the road.

So, yes, it might be slower than the JVM, but not that slower for most practical purposes.

<comment><USER19> > For one, JS is also JITed

But not all JITs are equal; that's like putting Brainfuck in the mix because it has a JIT. It is worth noting that JVM JIT has years of research behind it and being statically typed only adds to he benefits.

> So, yes, it might be slower than the JVM, but not that slower for most > practical purposes.

Sure, my point is that the "not that slower" varies on lot depending on the kind of computation would run and having a notion that these dynamic languages are fast enough just perpetuates the misunderstanding that there exists free lunch...

<comment><USER20> > _It is worth noting that JVM JIT has years of research_

I hear that a lot and it's a moot point. It's not like the same research is not available to those doing the JS JITs. Unless we're talking about patents, techniques for faster JITing are widely known, and get propagated to newer languages and runtimes all the time.

And in fact, even the people are usually the same (e.g. people that started the initial fast JITs in the days of Smalltalk, then went to JVM, and now work on V8).

> _Sure, my point is that the "not that slower" varies on lot depending on the > kind of computation would run and having a notion that these dynamic > languages are fast enough just perpetuates the misunderstanding that there > exists free lunch..._

Well, certainly fast enough for web apps, where we have been using 10x slower languages with no JITs and huge overheads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > As http sockets in µWS build on the same networking stack as its websockets, > you can easily scale to millions of long polling connections, just like you > can with the websockets. This is simply not possible with the built-in > Node.js http networking stack as its connections are very heavyweight in > comparison.

I'm a bit confused by what's going on here. Are you saying the network stack required to do websockets is vastly superior to the network stack of http, and hence using a websockets network stack in http calls can produce superior results? (I didn't know the underlying networking would be different and any clarity would be helpful).

I'm not really understanding the differences but it is definitely interesting nonetheless.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I mean with this is that any connection (socket) in Node.js builds on net.Socket which builds on uv_tcp_t which together requires a significant amount of memory (bloat).

A socket in the networking stack of µWS is far more lightweight (which already has been shown when it comes to µWS's websockets). The "HttpSocket" of µWS is about as lightweight in memory usage as "WebSocket", which is far more lightweight than net.Socket in Node.js.

One million WebSockets require about 300 mb of user space memory in µWS while this number is somewhere between 8 and 16 GB of user space memory using the built-in Node.js http server.

µWS is a play on its "micro" (small) sockets.

<comment><USER22> I feel like "bloat" is thrown about so much these days, with little credence to actually defining it in a per situation context. It would be far more credible to me to not use such a handwavey term and instead talk about what the memory differences are, and why one might use much less memory than the other. Often times one person's "bloat" is another's necessary feature to accomplish their goals.

It's like saying Django has a lot of bloat in comparison to some super basic http lib, except it has all the features I'll need to build a non-trivial app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Fantastic work Alex. I sent you email earlier when I saw this.

It really is stunning, and yes microbenchmarks are very important to me and my product. I personally really do want to know how much every piece costs so I can budget memory cycles and machines. So thanks for providing the data. Even if it is slightly "ballpark".

We use it in our server as well (and have done for ages), and uWS just plain rocks.

Highly recommended

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd love to see a design document explaining the differences from, say, nginx, that enable this kind of performance results.

</comment><comment><USER25> Thanks for this amazing work ! Can't wait to use it.

As a community we have to work on addons and make node the true versatile and performant language it should be :)

[https://nodejs.org/api/addons.html](https://nodejs.org/api/addons.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely agree the Node.js universe needs to take a better look at using addons. My opinion is that one should only use JS for the application logic, which requires high productivity, and only (or mostly) implement core modules as addons. It makes sense to use JS where productivity matters and to skip it where performance matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is pretty great stuff. Please keep it up and don't pay attention to the naysayers. This type of optimization is great and will pay dividends down the road for a lot of projects if this can take off.

</comment><comment><USER27> What if standard http module to be replace with this in express? Is it going to work?

</comment><comment><USER28> uWS certainly reduces the overhead to a minimum, saving lots of memory that can be used to scale up and saving CPU left to your app's code. I wrote this article a few months ago when I switched to uws in the WebTorrent tracker. [https://hackernoon.com/%C2%B5ws-as-your-next-websocket- libra...](https://hackernoon.com/%C2%B5ws-as-your-next-websocket- library-d34209686357?source=linkShare-a1d0f3f9aca2-1486218881)

<comment><USER29> Did you ever try to disable permessage-deflate with ws? It will never be as lightweight as uws because ws is built on top of `net.Socket` but I think you hit this ws issue [https://github.com/websockets/ws/issues/804](https://github.com/websockets/ws/issues/804) in the WebTorrent tracker.

I think ws will use 3/4 times more memory than uws with permessage-deflate disabled which is a lot, but far different from 47 times as advertised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm more interested in the techempower style benchmarks, at least those show some sort of semblance of real life usage. Do some queries, return encoded json etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think the key benefit is actually significantly reduced memory footprint.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, this is one single factor that is constant in all apps: your long kept sockets will require far less memory which directly impacts the number of long polling clients you can have. Having fast throughput is just a bonus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's important to note that with all these "X requests per second" benchmarks, they're almost never testing actual performance, but rather just less features. The architecture (event loop, forking, threading or any combination of those) also matters a lot, but they serve _completely_ different purposes.

For example, they're using Apache as a reference point, but Apache does _so_ much more than their code example. For one thing, you'll want to try disabling .htaccess support and static file serving so Apache doesn't actually hit the disk, like their code example doesn't.

I've found it trivial to make Python perform on the order of dozens of millions of requests per second, and I can keep scaling that basically indefinitely. But all I'm really testing, as is the given code example in the article, is a bit of looping and string manipulation.

<comment><USER33> > I've found it trivial to make Python perform on the order of dozens of > millions of requests per second

Really curious. How did you achieve that? When you say "dozens of millions", it implies a minimum of 24+ million requests per second, which is quite unbelievable.

<comment><USER32> Through forking + gevent and then sleeping in each request handler. Of course it measures nothing other than a whole bunch of while loops running in one fork per CPU waiting for just about nothing. In other words, I'm benchmarking "how much memory do I have", which is pointless. But it sure does scale!

<comment><USER33> TCP handshakes->HTTP parsing->Sleep->Response writing. Can the overhead added by these (and more) possibly produce 24+ million requests / sec on a commodity machine?

Could you share some examples or snippets?

<comment><USER34> the way most python web apps work is they don't do the TCP handshake & http parsing, and leave that up to the front-end web server (nginx/apache/etc). Python only comes in via a fastcgi or wsgi proxy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some startups working on big problems in the developing world? - <AUTHOR> E.g. http://www.mobiusmotors.com <comment><USER2> Endaga: [http://www.endaga.com/](http://www.endaga.com/)

"We built the first community cellular network in a rural village in Papua, Indonesia, in early 2013, with support from USAID and the Blum Center for Developing Economies. That first network is still running today, and today we continue to add new networks, constantly bringing connectivity to new users and communities worldwide."

Haven't met the rest of the team, but the CTO, Shaddi, is an awesome guy.

<comment><USER3> Is this at all related to the Thiel Fellowship? So familiar!

<comment><USER2> I don't know that there is a connection. What are you thinking of?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Electricity is generally seen as going the way of telecommunications where it will skip a wired grid and go straight to wireless (in this case, distributed solar). Here's three startups I know are trying to make distributed energy happen in developing world:

1\. [http://angazadesign.com](http://angazadesign.com)

2\. [http://powerhive.com](http://powerhive.com)

3\. [http://sunfunder.com](http://sunfunder.com)

<comment><USER5> And another which is encouraging pellet stoves as safer and cleaner than paraffin or energy-hungry charcoal: [http://www.africancleanenergy.com/](http://www.africancleanenergy.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> TulaLens -- [http://www.tulalens.org](http://www.tulalens.org)

Yelp for low-income people in the developing world. They just did a pilot in Hyderabad (India), and helped pregnant women living in slum areas discover hospitals around them offering better, cheaper care then they were receiving elsewhere (some were having to pay bribes to get care at government hospitals).

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://Hotels.ng](http://Hotels.ng). 10,000 hotels in Nigeria and none of them online till we added them. Done 6000, another 20k or so left to go across the continent.

<comment><USER8> I immediately thought of your startup when I read this post. Glad to hear it is still going strong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> OkHI is funded, has a great team and is rolling in Kenya:

[http://www.okhi.com/](http://www.okhi.com/)

Their mission is to give everybody in the world an address. Something that people in the West take for granted, but isn't available for most of the globe's citizens. This is also a major opportunity business-wise of course and if I could invest, I would.

<comment><USER10> This: [http://what3words.com/about](http://what3words.com/about)

is another very clever effort aimed at solving the same problem

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What3words.com

We have addressed every 3x3m on the planet with 3 common words. More memorable, faster and less errors than alphanumeric systems. Currently in 8 languages with more including Swahili & Arabic coming. This could mean an address for the 4 billion unaddressed, as well as water points, schools, managing disease outbreaks.

More here: Vimeo.com/what3words/about.

I work for what3words.

<comment><USER12> This sounds amazing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Education: [http://www.rumie.org/](http://www.rumie.org/)

Rumie is a Canadian non-profit who makes $50 tablets containing built-in educational contents to make education more accessible for kids from the developing countries. These tablets have a long battery life and they only need to be connected to the Internet once every couple of months to update the content.

I believe they're also working on creating a community to produce more open sourced educational content for kids. They also don't go out and "sell" their product; they only work with organizations who come to them believing that the tablet is suitable for the intended community.

I'm not affiliated with them but learned about them at a conference last year and thought what they were doing is pretty awesome. I could've remembered some details wrong though so check out their site yourself.

</comment><comment><USER14> Check out Eyenetra. [http://eyenetra.com](http://eyenetra.com)

I'm not directly associated, but one of my friends was an early employee who worked on some of the early prototypes and helped set up a location in India. They make a cheap (a few thousand dollars vs tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars) and compact (Read: portable) eye-exam device that interfaces with a smartphone for its camera and processor. Think of a traveling doctor bringing eye exams to patients in remote villages. Pair that with some of those cheap adjustable glasses ([http://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liquid...](http://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liquid_filled_eyeglasses)) and you've got a means for providing first-world eye care to the rest of the world.

I think the company is still based in Cambridge, MA.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd say YC darling [http://watsi.org](http://watsi.org) is a prime example of this! They're certainly one of my favorites in this space.

</comment><comment><USER16> I actually moved to Kenya to help a friend setup a business there this year and had the good fortune of becoming involved with a number of NGOs of various sizes. One of the smaller startup style ones I was working with was [http://www.earthenable.org](http://www.earthenable.org) where they are directly trying to bring down the child mortality rate dramatically by finding a really cheap and affordable way to ensure that families in Rwanda no longer have to live on a dirt floor (super prone to a lot of horrible diseases). They have some of the most impressive people I've ever met working on that project I seriously couldn't recommend them enough.

</comment><comment><USER17> Outernet [https://www.outernet.is](https://www.outernet.is) We're building a global broadcast data service to provide a basic level of news, information, and education for all of humanity.

</comment><comment><USER5> An open-source data collection system (census, health, economic, anything...) using apps on the ubiquitous non-smart phones: [https://opendatakit.org/](https://opendatakit.org/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Bitpesa: [http://bitpesa.co](http://bitpesa.co)

Based in London and Nairobi, they've built a Bitcoin-based service that enables migrants & expats to send money quickly and safely back to their relatives (called remittances in FinTech parlance). I'm not directly associated with them, but we've met many times at Nairobi's monthly Bitcoin meetup.

<comment><USER19> Bitcoin remittances are going to be huge... I wonder if stripe will undercut them with their flat 50 cent fee for Bitcoin to fiat

<comment><USER20> Doubt it. Since when is their fee a flat 50c btw? Afaik they're free now (beta) and going live next month at 0.5%.

And let's not forget, they have a presence in North-America, Western-Europe and Australia. Not even e.g. Japan. And hell, they're in beta in all of those countries except five.

But more importantly, they're not a remittance company. So I really doubt we'll see a remittance product from them anytime soon.

But who knows. It's a legitimate business venture. If you can process a payment in bitcoin and pay out in a local currency and do remittance that way, you can process a remittance 'payment', too. The problem isn't really the technical or business part though, it's that it brings up a lot of KYC/AML responsibilities that facilitating retail shopping doesn't. So unless you want to really build out a remittance product, you can't just do something like this 'on the side'. And Stripe is way too focused on payments to jump into remittance properly anytime soon.

Especially when there aren't any deep liquidity pools for bitcoin in Africa (i.e. a lack of exchanges). Phillipines, India, all of that could feasibly happen soon (not by Stripe, but other companies), as liquidity does exist (and they're big remittance corridors), but undercutting Bitpesa anytime soon is unlikely. Bitpesa itself is already hustling to make this work with a local presence and its a bit of a mystery to me who their liquidity provider is atm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Check out Jana Care. [http://janacare.com](http://janacare.com)

The company is building a mobile based care platform for patients with diabetes or at risk of diabetes along with a Square equivalent device for diagnostics. While cost is one of the issue for patients, it is not the only one. Quality of care varies significantly across a city and the moment you step outside a major city, there is little to no specialized care for chronic conditions that need some form of training for managing the condition. A mobile phone with some form of internet connectivity is ubiquitous these days. So leveraging that to reach as many people as possible makes sense. There are over 80 million people with diabetes in India and another 80 million are expected to develop it over the next decade or so. Add to this the costs and quality of life of patients who have to suffer the complications (kidney failure, amputation, etc), and any improvements that can be made to these numbers with technology is worth the effort and makes business sense too.

The problem isn't India specific. China, US, Europe and the Middle East have similar or higher prevalence rates. It is just that India makes sense as a place to start doing things.

It's been a few years that we have been working on this. We mostly operate out of Bangalore but we have an office in Boston too. Feel free to drop by!

[http://world.time.com/2013/05/12/no-answers-in-sight-for- ind...](http://world.time.com/2013/05/12/no-answers-in-sight-for-indias- diabetes-crisis/)

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-07/india-s-deadly- diab...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-07/india-s-deadly-diabetes- scourge-cuts-down-millions-rising-to-middle-class.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> We are working on T160K [https://t160k.org/](https://t160k.org/) which is crowdfunding sustainable and meaningful development in Africa by focussing on arts and culture. Another goal of the project is to promote a positive and vibrant image of African culture through our campaigns and messaging. One of our projects that initially got me excited about the idea is the Timbuktu Libraries in Exile [https://t160k.org/campaign/libraries-in- exile/](https://t160k.org/campaign/libraries-in-exile/)

</comment><comment><USER23> A friend of mine just joined Wave, building A tool for migrants to more reliably sending money back to their families : [http://www.sendwave.com/](http://www.sendwave.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Engage Spark - [http://www.engagespark.com/](http://www.engagespark.com/)

Started by a serial entrepreneur from Boston, right now they're building tools to help NGOs reach people in abject poverty, and they have some really big ideas for the future.

They're based in the Philippines and actually are currently looking for developers to come over on 6-12 month fellowships to experience life there and contribute to the core product. If anyone is interested, I can link you to the relevant posting.

(not affiliated, just think what they're doing is awesome)

<comment><USER2> Link to the relevant posting please?

<comment><USER25> The Fellowship posting is here: [http://www.engagespark.com/#jobs](http://www.engagespark.com/#jobs) or the pdf directly: [http://www.engagespark.com/files/jd-fellows- tech1.pdf](http://www.engagespark.com/files/jd-fellows-tech1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Matternet - drone delivery network for small packages like medicine in the developing world where travel infrastructure may not exist.

[http://matternet.us](http://matternet.us)

<comment><USER27> I have wondered about these guys - drone deliver only really works for distances of a few miles.

Surely in most cases the distances are too long?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Milaap Social Venture [https://milaap.org](https://milaap.org)

It is like Kiva , but we crowdfund loans mainly for basic needs of people eg. sanitation(build toilets), water connection, education, enterprise development, energy (solar connection in remote areas) in India

Recently we launched a platform for crowdfunding donations for causes and social initiatives. [https://milaap.org/open](https://milaap.org/open)

Disclosure : I work at Milaap as a senior developer

</comment><comment><USER29> Pangea ([http://gopangea.com](http://gopangea.com)) is looking to help the underserved communities send money. Generally, remittances are from high GDP to low GDP countries.

Pangea was part of the first class of Impact Engine ([http://theimpactengine.com/](http://theimpactengine.com/)), a for-profit social venture accelerator originally run by Chuck Templeton (found of Open Table).

</comment><comment><USER30> Vayu - [http://vayu2.brace.io/](http://vayu2.brace.io/)

My friend is the founder, working in Ann Arbor with an amazing group of aeronautical and electrical engineers, medical researchers, and others. They're building hardened VTOL drones to take medical supplies, samples, tests, back and forth from hospitals to rural India. They have a great team and deep relationships with the NGO and health sectors in India.

</comment><comment><USER31> [http://getmobilewise.com/](http://getmobilewise.com/) Mobile Wise is establishing a corps of Tech college graduates and young professionals who commit 6-12 months to empower citizens in developing countries on Digital Capability and we then provide employment opportunities to our fellows. We're currently running a pilot in Ivory Coast with the backing of Microsoft, promising so far!

</comment><comment><USER32> Segovia is trying to make it easier for governments and NGO's to administer cash transfer programs. It's spun out of GiveDirectly (which is on Givewell's top rated charities list).

I met the team, pretty strong, might have worked for them but they didn't want engineers working remotely (they're based in NYC).

[http://thesegovia.com/](http://thesegovia.com/)

</comment><comment> kiril-me Lookify.co [http://www.lookify.co](http://www.lookify.co)

Is search platform (as a service) for e-commerce websites to boost on-line sales through a complete and manageable integration. We are providing Amazon search experience for small/medium e-commerce web site. With advanced UI components and analytics.

The company is base in Riga, Latvia

</comment><comment><USER33> Akvo - [http://akvo.org](http://akvo.org)

Akvo helps people bring international development to life, online.

<comment> bjelkeman-again I work at Akvo. We build open source software which we run as a service. Our services are used primarily to combat poverty. We team up with hundreds of NGOs as well as UN organisations and country governments. We have a great team of 55+ people in fourteen countries, with hubs in Amsterdam, London, Stockholm, DC, Nairobi, Ouagadougou, Delhi, Bangalore and Denpasar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> [http://devresults.com](http://devresults.com)

We're working to help aid and development organizations gain better insight into how effective and where donor money is going, monitoring and evaluating organizational goals, and aggregating raw data into useful reports for both the organization and donors.

</comment><comment><USER35> Jola Venture with ties between Boston and Cameroon is working on bringing modern innovations to rural and impoverished communities. They haven't scaled like a "Startup," but they operate like one. [http://jolaventure.com](http://jolaventure.com)

</comment><comment><USER36> Gecko Landmarks - makes location based services work where addresses are not available and people cannot read maps. Basically a reverse geo-coding service that work everywhere and for everyone.

[http://www.geckolandmarks.com/](http://www.geckolandmarks.com/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Check out Zolair Energy -- it aims to get cheap energy into Africa and the rest of the developing world, based on zinc air batteries. Founded by some of my MBA classmates [http://zolair-energy.com/](http://zolair-energy.com/)

</comment><comment><USER38> [http://welldone.org](http://welldone.org) \- building a remote monitoring platform to improve the reliability and accountability of rural water infrastructure (for starters). Disclaimer: I'm the Executive Director of WellDone.

</comment><comment><USER39> Watsi! - [https://watsi.org/](https://watsi.org/)

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't think it would be considered a startup, but Ushahidi is a global nonprofit worth looking into: [http://www.ushahidi.com/mission/](http://www.ushahidi.com/mission/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Ona [http://company.ona.io](http://company.ona.io) solves data collection problems for development organizations. Current clients are the WHO, UNDP, HNEC - Libya, World Bank, and UNICEF.

</comment><comment><USER42> Finfo Technologies - is a web-based platform which provides company intelligence and fundamental data on publicly listed entities in Africa.

[http://www.finfo.io](http://www.finfo.io)

</comment><comment><USER43> TechChange ([http://techchange.org](http://techchange.org)) is building an online learning platform for training aid and non-profit workers in the developing world.

<comment><USER43> I should also mention that we're offering a paid internship/fellowship for college students this summer in Washington, DC. More information here:

[http://techchange.org/fellowship/](http://techchange.org/fellowship/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Some interesting work coming out of the contractor space with IST research ([http://istresearch.com/our-work/](http://istresearch.com/our-work/))

</comment><comment><USER45> My friends' startup, Globein.com, connects artisans from the developing countries into a global economy. Kind of like Etsy, but for craftsmen from poor countries.

</comment><comment><USER46> [http://www.gramvaani.org/](http://www.gramvaani.org/)

GramVaani provides crowdsourced news and other ICT4D services to the underserved.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm wondering if there's anything along the lines of 'Startups* Without Borders'?

*Or 'Innovators' or 'Technologists', if you prefer.

<comment><USER8> There is "Engineers Without Borders" although I think they are more focused on traditional engineering disciplines. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineers_Without_Borders](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineers_Without_Borders)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Driptech - [http://www.driptech.com/](http://www.driptech.com/)

ultra low-cost irrigation systems

</comment><comment><USER49> Saving this awesome thread for future reference.

</comment><comment><USER50> Dimagi

<comment><USER51> I work here and it's great. [http://www.dimagi.com](http://www.dimagi.com).

Dimagi's mission is to use technology to improve the lives of people living in underserved communities everywhere, especially through the use of mobile technology to strengthen programs in many sectors. Dimagi works in over 30 countries, mostly in the Indian subcontinent, Africa. The main product CommCare ([http://www.commcarehq.org](http://www.commcarehq.org)), allows for NGOs to write and maintain their own mobile applications without programming knowledge, and Dimagi also offers extensive consulting services with our partners as they start to introduce mobile software into their program. CommCare applications are geared toward usage by illiterate and low-literate users in sectors such as community health, clinical settings, agriculture, small business, infectious disease, maternal and child health, counselling for people in stigmatized and vulnerable professions, and can be used for many others; and the underlying software is repeatedly field-tested for usability in these settings. And it is awesome.

Dimagi has strong field teams around the world, with offices in Boston, Delhi, Cape Town, abd Senegal. All of Dimagi's core software developers also routinely spend weeks at a time at at project sites and shadowing a field manager, usually about twice a year per person. In my opinion, Dimagi is the most mature, on-the-ground, and innovative company of its type, but, hey I just work here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Vuvuv</comment>