Koomey's law - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koomey%27s_law <comment><USER2> I find the idea of power limits to be fascinating. As computing becomes more distributed, more detached, more mobile, then power, not computation, will be the boundary.

It's not just the cpu... it's the screen, and the antenna. A screen needs to produce a certain number of lumens of light to be readable. That provides a theoretical limit. An antenna needs to transmit clean signal over a certain range. That takes power, too. And the size of the device limits the size of the battery. How many joules of energy can we store in that physical space?

We may be coming up on limits for mobile devices much harder and faster than we think. Of course, IoT devices can be better off by not supporting a screen, but communication is still a problem.

<comment><USER3> Modern devices are actually pretty close(within a factor of 10) to the theoretical energy requirements for producing light.

Computation, on the other hand, is still no where near the theoretical limit[1]. We literally use more than 10,000,000x the theoretical limit to erase a bit of data.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle)

<comment><USER4> Nothing against your specific comment, but in general I wish that the Landauer limit had less cultural importance and salience in discussions of computation & energy. It's a simple result, but the assumptions leading to it are quite subtle. First, it relies on the widely misinterpreted second law of thermodynamics and second, it relies on the subtle notion of 'erasure'. In loose analogy, it reminds me of quantum mechanics - "what's the definition of a measurement?" "It's anything that causes the system to act like it was measured." "What's the definition of information erasure?" "It's anything that causes the system to obey the Landauer limit." In any case, this limit is so far away it's practically theory (though experiments purport to show it), and since the limit can be exceeded in theory, it doesn't seem like a useful principle to guide us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately, due to bloating, we perform more than double the number of computations.

<comment><USER6> I look at things like "how long does it take to enter 100 values into a spreadsheet". Back in DOS days, it was as fast as you could type. With Google Sheets, there is some lag sometimes. Many orders of magnitude more computing power, but how have we improved the actual experience and productivity?

<comment><USER7> But that's network lag, not computation inefficiency. Compare either a spreadsheet program running on a mainframe back around 1990 to Google Sheets, or else compare a DOS spreadsheet to a spreadsheet running locally on Windows today.

<comment><USER8> There are many causes of lag. The parent was referring to the case of "I'm typing a bunch of data into a bunch of cells". Network connectivity should _not_ (necessarily) cause lag in that in case: it should let the client side update without interruption, and then pass data over to the server as it is able.

If network syncing is interfering with user text input, something is wrong with that design.

Edit: The historical analogy would be like if you were entering data (offline) into your Lotus cells, but your computer would keep freezing up so the modem could reconnect. Somehow they kept those decoupled back then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found this linked to topic even more interesting: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle)

<comment><USER10> Indeed, the idea of information (bits) as entropy is fascinating to me too. And not just Shannon entropy, they're all related somehow. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound)

And then there is the fact that life encodes and persists information. There was a recent HN thread that got me interested:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13496133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13496133)

I did read Gleick's "The Information" but was disappointed it didn't dig very deep into the concept. I got further following links on Wikipedia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The part at the end about the Margolus-Levitin theorem makes no sense to me -- that theorem gives a speed limit, while Koomey's trend is about energy use. Can anyone fill in the citation-needed?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is incredible. I followed this link down into the Margolus-Levitin theorem, which puts a physical limit to how much computation (entropy?) you can produce with a single joule of energy (6 x 10^33 operations/second).

It seems that at some point the unit for powering computers would then have to be matter, since there's such an incredible amount of energy stored per newton.

<comment><USER13> >It seems that at some point the unit for powering computers would then have to be matter, since there's such an incredible amount of energy stored per newton.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say but that sentence doesn't make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has this law still held over the past few years ever since Intel has been unable to transition to 10nm?

<comment><USER15> A version, perhaps, at least for GPUs - you can tell because we've gotten much faster new chips like the Pascal GPUs, but no one has needed to run new power lines to their rooms in order to use them.

<comment><USER16> That's only because it's cheaper to build a whole new facility

<comment><USER15> Uh... people aren't 'building whole new facilities' for their gaming desktops. The new GPUs also have the same rated power consumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It brings up reversible computing as a way to not require any energy.

What would a reversible computer look like? Could I run Firefox on it?

</comment><comment><USER18> It ends in 2048(maybe before) -- Why call it a "law"? Probably easy to remember by giving a name, I guess.

<comment><USER19> The article ends by saying "By the theorem, Koomey's law has the potential to be valid for about 125 years". One imagines that it could continue long after even this however with further ways of computations being discovered.

<comment><USER20> Reversible computation (which that 125 year number refers to) has to be done very slowly. There might be some applications where that would still be relevant, but it's pretty clear this trend don't last even until the 2048 mark, let alone for another 125 years and beyond.

The Feynman lectures on computation have some good sections on reversible computation that I would recommend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yet my phone still won't hold a charge for more than three hours.

</comment><comment><USER22> pi/2 years, i'm trying to make sense of this fact.

<comment><USER23> It's a coincidence.

<comment><USER22> Of course, it must be. My theories explaining this were mind-boggling, at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think it's not a fair game if we are going to find a new law every time progress stale in our industry.

</comment><comment><USER25> it looks like Koomey's law will outlive the year 2038 problem[0].

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem)

<comment><USER26> What do you mean by this comment? I don't see how the two are linked.

<comment><USER25> They aren't directly linked. I just like the idea of cataloging all of the time bounded limits in CS. Reading the wiki entry and having forgotten the exact date for when Unix time comes to end, although knowing it is close, i figured others might enjoy seeing the 2038 date too. Based upon voting, I was wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good news for robots.</comment>


How Google-Plus can kill your traffic by 90% - <AUTHOR> http://www.jitbit.com/news/183-how-google-authorship-decreased-our-traffic-by-90-/

<comment><USER2> Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5792268>

Looks like this item was actually posted before but the bulk of the upvotes and discussion are happening in the thread above.</comment>


New brand site for Sony uses rendered JPG frames for 3D parallax scrolling - <AUTHOR> http://discover.store.sony.com/be-moved/ <comment><USER2> Very nice and breathtaking. Just a superb experience, this is the most awesome site I have every visited. Seriously.

Ok, it is big, it is huge. But c'mon, they are stretching creativity, nobody else would come up with something like this, i didnt even know it was possible at all. It not all TECH API's and BITS and BYTES. Its sometimes creativity what matters.

Abusing technology to create something cool often is the first step to making the technology better support something cool like that. So somtimes there is no proper way to do it with current API's. But there is a hack todo it. This is how HTML5 video was created. Because you could hack it in with Flash. But flash was not the best way todo it.

</comment><comment><USER3> You guys are being way overly critical. I think the website is unique and cool. Reminds me of the those nice story boards on NYTimes.

Also, works ok on Chrome Macbook Air.

</comment><comment><USER4> Care of Chrome's developer tools...

        Network tab: 1410 requests | 51.4 MB transferred | 2.0 min (load: 1.2 min, DOMContentLoaded: 4.29s)
        Console: 15 errors, 12 warnings

<comment><USER5> I was wondering how big it was, that completely blows away what I expected. That's really not usable for huge swaths of people.

<comment><USER6> How many people that can't handle 50MB of content are really in Sony's target market?

<comment><USER7> People who buy their electronics that happen to have data caps? They could at least load it all that image data on demand.

<comment><USER8> I don't think Sony is marketing the products depicted on that site to the folks worried about downloading 50MB.

<comment><USER7> Well, yeah, that's probably true I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Good: Really changed my perception of Sony as a brand. They're a lot more experimental and ahead than I though. I feel like going out and buying a PS4 honestly. Great job on the marketing team. (I actually watched the videos and was... "moved", wireless lens, underwater ear buds, 3d viewer)

The Bad: Over complicated and choppy (anyone else?). It's basically a TV commercial that you have to keep scrolling to watch. I think there are better, simpler, less choppier ways that this brand message could have been conveyed.

Alternative: Slides/pages with full screen video? Take each scene and separate it into it's own full screen "slide" (not slide show but one slide after the other on the page) and each mouse scroll moves you down to the next slide.

<comment><USER10> Changed perception? That has to be insane. Just a mere funky web page and you go from not interested to wanting to buy? Good grief. I am stunned that a mere web page can do that for any one in actual reality. You seem far too easily bought. Here, have a shiney thing, there you go...... I had no idea people were so easily manipulated, and equally happy to say so in public.

I really don't get on with these scroll down animated sites.

As usual with these things, I don't see anything useful or informative on the landing part of the page, begin to scroll, see I'm expected to scroll for god knows how long incase there is anything useful, all I usually see is show off animation, I sigh, then close the page.

Why am I suddenly expected to constantly scroll these things? Is it just so some web developer can show off their latest, now tired, seen it all before now, trick?

I want to land on a page, see if its worth anything, then possibly click for more info. If I want to see an animation, video, or what ever, just show the darn thing in a normal video. But I want a choice there, not a silly site that auto starts it, often hurting my ears, or waking up the house, with full volume in the process. If the landing page gives me interest, I'll happily watch a short advert, animation, or whatever to get more info.

Why all this scrolling? There are much simpler ways to show all this, without me having to almost work to get to see it. Its not my message, its theirs. Why are they making it harder for me to see their message? I just left the page.

Just me?

Oh, BTW, I have some magic beans for sale on a pretty website. Any takers?

<comment><USER11> i think saying you "feel like" going out and buying something is not the same as "i will absolutely buy it now without looking into reviews or anything else whereas before i saw the ad i would never have bought it." The first suggests that something moved you emotionally. The other might be more irrational.

Maybe if you make a pretty website he would "feel like" buying some magic beans and eventually decide not to.

personally, i love the scrolling. you get to stop and look at things. in the future, these are going to have much more interaction and exploration. That's the next logical step.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _After all, it 's not about what we make; it's about what we make you feel._

What their site, their opening punchline, the responsive design problems, and the slowness make me feel is that they're overly focussed on superficial form at the expense of deeper functionality.

<comment><USER13> > they're overly focussed on superficial form at the expense of deeper > functionality

Then again, isn't that what almost all advertising is trying to do these days: draw your attention to the superficial form so you forget to criticise fundamental flaws with the design?

<comment><USER14> water resistant IP65 smartphone is a real enhancement, as in 100M deeper functionality. I wish the iphone had that instead of lighter/ taller/ thiner fonts.

Yeah I dont take calls underwater but I keep a bag of rice handy...

<comment><USER15> Agree: cellphones should be waterproof. One of the _two_ iPhones that I destroyed in 2013 drowned in a waterproof case that was not closed properly, when I took an unexpected swim in the Atlantic. The silver lining was that I discovered Android, which I prefer.

Also, I visited the site using a Thinkpad T60, which dates from around 2006 and would not be considered high-end. Using Chrome on Ubuntu, it was pretty smooth - but I let it load before trying to scroll.

<comment><USER16> "cellphones should be waterproof."

It would be nice if they were. But all manufacturing involves design and price tradeoffs.

I have a Sony Rx100ii (great camera) and it would be nice if that were waterproof. But it's not and Sony (and others) offer a different camera that is waterproof (but doesn't have the features of the Rx100ii). Any feature adds to cost (or maybe makes something else not practical or not as good). Even a slight increase in cost can change the demand curve. Or performance (take a car with 4 wheel drive vs. 2 wheel drive). Etc.

By the way my own example of "should be" involves desktop or rack mounted servers having at least a nominal surge protection or UPS. Obviously that has been thought of and ruled out for various competitive reasons. (Weight, size, cost, demand).

<comment><USER15> Agree completely. In the case of cell phones, what I mean by "should" is that, since we carry them around everywhere, it would be _extremely desirable_ for them to be at least very water resistant, and is downright inconvenient to be obligated to protect them from rain, etc. Worth paying a premium!

<comment><USER14> I dont think the "Dell marketing" feature/price tradeoff logic applies to the top of the market.

I just want the best tool, period. Since a price point for best device period is well established since the original iphone, and the build cost keeps going down, at one point it is this feature/that feature tradeoff for the next-gen iteration.

I care more for indestructibility for a wearable or quasi-wearable device than for a fingerprint reader that sort of works. And for a better camera that opens at 1.8 or even 1.4 than for 9 grams less in my pocket and 1mm less thickness.

But that's me. I guess the folks at Apple have a better algorithm. I'm really tempted by the xperia tho, just not ready to ditch iOS, although the banning of coinbase got me really close.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Something is wrong when you are selling image quality and your site features blurry artifacted images.

The animations are nice, but they are basically doing frame by frame 704 × 396 movie that look terrible when pushed to 1920 wide.

Just use a proper video format, which is much more efficient.

<comment><USER18> I'm curious why the images have artefacts (or pre-loading fuzz)? A year or so ago Andreas Gysin did something very similar [http://ertdfgcvb.ch/p2/sm/play/protog3](http://ertdfgcvb.ch/p2/sm/play/protog3) and for some reason does not have the artefact issue. (code for that here [http://ertdfgcvb.com/sequencer/](http://ertdfgcvb.com/sequencer/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> clickable: [http://discover.store.sony.com/be- moved/](http://discover.store.sony.com/be-moved/)

<comment><USER20> Just realized how lazy I've become, thank you.

<comment><USER21> It's not just about being lazy, this is really helpful for mobile users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's the point of these scrolling sites? It's really hard to control the scrolling speed and stop just in the right place. Just let me press a button and then proceed to the next "slide" if you want fancy transitions.

<comment><USER23> I agree, and on this site, over on the far right side, are some little rectangles you can click to jump between the sections (albeit still with the animations, but sped up).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So I follow the URL, and it takes 30 seconds to show me three lines of text on the screen, and I can't skip forward or anything.

How is this better than Flash landing pages, exactly?

<comment><USER25> It does not require proprietary nonfree software.

<comment><USER7> So crappy performance and bad customer experience is okay as long as the software involved was not proprietary and free?

I don't understand what you're statement means in terms of what it is replying to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Very choppy and hard to go back.

On the plus side, I didn't know about these "Smartphone Attachable Lens-Style Camera", is there someone here able to tell me if it is worth it? (I have a Galaxy Note and no other camera).

<comment><USER27> Like many other verticals there are many technological innovations happening in photography too. This "smartphone attachable lens-style camera" is one of these recent innovations. I can't comment on quality of the lens itself but they must be far better than that of a standard camera installed on mobile phones. These lenses can be used both attached/detached to the mobile phone. They use NFC (if your phone is into that sort of thing) or create their very own Wi-Fi signal to connect with the phone.

I first read about such lenses and other similar products on [http://photojojo.com/store/](http://photojojo.com/store/) . They have such products for both android and iphone.

Now, is it worth it? Depends on your requirements. If you don't want to get into professional photography but still want to improve the quality of your photographs you can use one of these. However, remember that these don't replace DSLRs.

1\. Mobile Camera : average quality/almost zero creative control/very good mobility

2\. Mobile Camera + Lens accessory : better quality/almost no creative control/good mobility

3\. Point & Shoot Camera : decent quality/little creative control/good mobility

4\. Hybrid/Zoom Camera : decent quality/very high optical zoom/decent creative control/poor mobility

5\. Mirrorlesss/Interchangeable Lens Camera : Good quality/Good Creative Control/average mobility

6\. DSLRs : Good quality/Good Creative Control/Poor Mobility

I personally prefer to keep [1] in my pocket & [5] in my bag(along with lenses). I also have an old Zoom Camera that usually sits in my home. I occasionally use it together with a teleconverter lens to take photographs of sun, moon & objects/people that are far far away.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for these details. I'm interested because I usually don't carry a bag, and care about mobility and availability. I also like the idea of taking picture without disturbing too much the (human) environment, e.g. without shooting too explicitely. However this lens seem to be too big to fit in a pocket.

<comment><USER27> There are smaller alternatives available on Photojojo :

1)[http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/cell-phone- lenses/](http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/cell-phone-lenses/)

2)[http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/macro-lens- band/](http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/macro-lens-band/)

3)[http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/iphone-telephoto- lens...](http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/iphone-telephoto-lens/)

4)[http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/olloclip-iphone- lens/](http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/olloclip-iphone-lens/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone else have an i7 4702Q with a HD4600 running Chrome (Windows 8.1)? Is smooth scrolling, actually smooth for you? It doesn't for me, and even Internet Explorer (which surprisingly runs most pages 60fps smooth) runs the page really badly.

edit: firefox runs the page smoothly, but on other pages, still can't top IE's smoothness. What a weird world it is now.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't see any parallax here. Seems like normal 3D triggered by scrolling.

<comment><USER7> Could you define parallax? Because I see it, as I know it, in several places throughout the page.

<comment><USER29> "background images move by the camera slower than foreground images" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_scrolling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_scrolling)

<comment><USER7> And you don't see that on this page?

<comment><USER29> Not really, no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Really cool website. I've noticed that really cool brand websites for large Fortune 500 tech. companies tend to be done by a high end agency rather then the companies' own teams.

</comment><comment><USER31> Interesting experiment, but even chugs along on my latest generation rMBP in Chrome. Meh

<comment><USER32> Weird. It's fast on my Thinkpad X201s from aeons ago (running chromium).

<comment><USER33> I have a 3y old 1.3GHz cpu with integrated graphics only on Gentoo, but it's so smooth, I can't believe it's not a video! How do they make it so smooth?

When I click the last page button on the right side, it runs smoothly through all animations, same when happens when I scroll around. Can't wait to see someone make a blog post on: "This is how Sony exploited HTML5 to run Smooth Parallax Effects on their Page".

I ran it in Firefox with about ~100 tabs open having over a dozen addons, an IDE opened and npm install running in the background.

<comment><USER32> Slack user here.

 _tips fedora_

<comment><USER34> Yeah, fedora runs it, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> >" A journalist once called us a guinea pig because the results of our experiments were copied by others.It was meant as an insult, but we took it as a compliment. Combining artistry and engineering IS an experiment—but when artists work with engineers, every day is a chance to be moved." Found this at bottom of page

</comment><comment><USER36> ... I really want to like Sony. They seem to have the best chance of bringing Apple-style quality to more open software-platforms.

But seriously, this is crap (at least on Firefox). It's slow and choppy and it has a (however brief) unskippable intro. Pretty, but broken.

</comment><comment><USER37> At some point, wouldn't you just rather play a movie than have me scroll all the time?

</comment><comment><USER38> All that, and they couldn't get the damn Twitter icon right.

<comment><USER39> The text and images also cut off on the left and right if your browser window is "only" 1200px wide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Any reason why they didn't just use a paused video and step through it frame by frame on scroll? Seems like it'd be a much more efficient experience for the user.

<comment><USER41> Reverse scrolling a video is really slow, unless you set the key frames close together (in which case, you don't really gain much file size wise).

<comment><USER40> Ah, I figured there was a reason I was missing. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It is interesting to note that even if I _ever_ manage to create a splash page as awesome as this, HN will still (partly) respond: Meh - choppy.

<comment><USER7> I think it has more to do with the choices in technology than art direction. It is cool, but if it sucks performance-wise for enough people then it sucks no matter how cool it looks.

I haven't been a big fan of these types of pages, especially the type that take over the scrolling functionality. I was recently tasked with building one. The creatives love it, I dislike these pages even more now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One implied claim that stuck out was that their recent full-frame digital camera produces images comparable with "medium format film". This is extremely unlikely, and casts all their claims in doubt. Also, I couldn't find anything about their creative research into incorporating rootkits and other exploits into their products: I know what _that_ makes me feel.

</comment><comment><USER43> Apparently the RX1R PREMIUM COMPACT CAMERA (third from the end) includes a slice of cheese in the middle of the sensor. Easter cheese? :-)

</comment><comment><USER44> I got a pretty good desktop computer and it's choppy. These things really have to be silky smooth for me or I leave pretty quickly.

</comment><comment><USER45> Was it done in-house at Sony USA or who produced it, does anyone know?

Quite funny how the use meta keywords like its 2002 … "download movies online, online movies, internet movies, video on demand, movies on demand, tv shows, watch movies online, watch online movies, support, technical, service, repair, fix, USA"

</comment><comment><USER46> I was distracted by blurriness and compression artifacts. Homework for Sony web designers: try the site on a rotated 1920 x 1200 screen. Then you'll also notice that it's cut off left and right. Apple has the same problem on their Mac Pro site, which uses a very similar mechanic.

</comment><comment><USER47> Curious how it was build? Here is the Be Moved site deconstruction - [http://ihatetomatoes.net/sonys-be-moved-website- deconstructe...](http://ihatetomatoes.net/sonys-be-moved-website- deconstructed/)

Nicely done Sony.

</comment><comment><USER48> there's a Venus de Milo inside the ps4 controller! can't wait to open mine!

</comment><comment><USER49> I really like it! Imagine how easy it must be to create something like that! Simply export a video into jpegs, add some JS and BAM! A nice scrolling effect. I like it!

</comment><comment><USER50> Design should not force the user to relinquish tactile control. I spent more time aware of the broken scrolling physics choppy animations than reading anything.

</comment><comment><USER51> [http://flashvhtml.com/](http://flashvhtml.com/)

Feels better in my opinion. The jpg method seems too jerky.

</comment><comment><USER52> "Scroll Down to Explore"

So, where's the scroll bar?

<comment><USER53> And I generally use the space bar to scroll. That's not working here :(

<comment><USER54> Scroll wheel on my mouse isn't working either.

Nor are arrow keys.

Someone tried a little too hard to optimize for Safari and OSX and forgot that's like 8% of the market.

Chrome on Win 8.1. Site is nearly un-usable (I can click in their custom scrollbar to make it move).

<comment><USER7> That all works for me but everyone's mileage may vary because of the way it appears to have been built. It doesn't use the browsing scrolling and likely attempts to take over all the normal scrolling duties to do what it wants. So if you browser of choice is not on the list for whatever reason, then their will be problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This trend of sites that break gesture forward/back, space bar scroll, and other standard browser features needs to stop.

</comment><comment><USER56> Ah, that explains why it works without crashing Chrome (as HTML5 WebGL monkeying does).

</comment><comment><USER57> Ow my CPU load

</comment><comment><USER58> How does this work exactly?

<comment><USER7> Series of images are loaded into a canvas element that steps through them as you scroll. The text is layered on top and parallax-ified as needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> wow...</comment>


"Amazon's EBSs are a barrel of laughs in terms of performance and reliability" - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_down_for_6_of_the_last_24_hours/c1l6ykx <comment><USER2> Having been at a startup that used hundreds of EC2 instances and EBS volumes I can assure you all that Amazon EBS performance is downright terrible and Amazon didn't inspire any confidence that they could solve it.

Even worse than the EBS performance is Amazon does not offer any shared storage solutions between EC2 instances. You have to cobble together your own shared storage using NFS and EBS volumes making it sucky to the Nth power.

EC2 is fine for Hadoop-style distributed work loads, and distributed data stores that can tolerate eventual consistency, that's all good. But for production database applications requiring constant and reliable performance, forget it.

<comment><USER3> My experience with the AWS RDS database product has been excellent.

<comment><USER4> We looked at RDS and had a call with some of their engineers, but we basically had our EC2 + raid'd EBS set up almost the same as they did, all best practices already being done.

Since RDS really is EC2 + EBS, they couldn't provide any real assurances it performed better than our own installation.

We ended up moving off of AWS as a whole. After several discussions about how we can continue to scale, the ultimate answer was without AWS.

EC2 is great for distributed stuff, but when need something that is heavy IO, for instance, it is a big problem. Scaling it ends up costing more to work around AWS's performance problems than to go elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> Yeah they have a few products (e.g. EMR, RDS) where they charge by the instance anyway so you're just paying them by the hour for the five minutes it would take you to set up the server once

<comment><USER6> Hmm. I think you underestimate the effort that is spent on those two. RDS has really good replication which is really hard to configure and set up yourself. And having configured Hadoop I know it takes more than 5 minutes :) Perhaps Whirr makes that easier. Also, EMR's Hadoop is tuned to work really well with S3, which you don't get with stock Hadoop (or even with Cloudera's).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We had consistent serious problems related to EBS for a several-month streak about a year ago, and I heard almost identical stories from other EC2 users around the same time. Instances with EBS attached would suddenly become completely unreachable via the network. Sometimes we had to terminate the instances, but usually we could revive them by detaching all (or most) of the EBS volumes, then reattaching and rebooting. Amazon seems to have fixed this problem, but I wouldn't be surprised if we suffered in the future the way reddit has.

Overall, EC2 is a very impressive offering, for which I commend Amazon. At times, I've been so frustrated that I'm ready to switch, but they fix things just quickly enough that I never quite get around to it. In the end, I'm willing to accept that what they're doing is hard, there will be mistakes, and it's worth suffering to get the flexibility and cost-effectiveness that EC2 offers.

</comment><comment><USER8> This comment further down, supposedly from an Amazon employee, paints a grim picture for EBS: [http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_down_for_6_of_the_last_24_hours/c1l7vy1)

<comment><USER9> The perspectives of disgruntled employees have been known to be worse than reality, on occasion. Not definitively saying that's the case here, just saying.

<comment><USER10> I work at Amazon - a lot of teams are like this. They're stuck managing a woefully broken product and spend all of their time propping up the beast, leaving no capacity left for meaningful fixes (in these cases, meaningful fixes are always gigantic engineering projects).

The team develops a reputation internally for being glorified firefighting, and have trouble recruiting. More senior engineers eventually flee (having, well, choice in the matter) leaving a team heavy with junior talent with no seasoned gurus leading the way.

The company is also growing at ludicrous speed, and hiring is difficult. When the product is in such a painful state, attrition from the team is high, and with slow hiring you are _barely_ countering attrition (exacerbating the junior talent problem), and not even close to growing the team to be in a position to take care of the problem for good.

I suspect this is an industry-wide problem though, and is hardly unique to this place.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if it's time for AWS to open a development office in a more startup- oriented city (i.e. SF). It might help them attract and retain more talent.

<comment><USER12> A.) Amazon isn't a startup. B.) A lot of Bay Area companies (Zynga, Facebook, Salesforce) are opening Seattle offices to take advantage of the Amazon and Microsoft talent pools. C.) They already have a Bay Area office. <http://public.a2z.com/index.html> I believe some core SimpleDB guys (Jim Larson) were based out of there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> RAIDing together multiple EBS volumes feels like a massive hack to me. I can't help but wonder if this compounds the problem at Amazon's end. If EBS performance is a problem, Amazon need to fix it. For example, if some way of tying together multiple EBS volumes is a reasonable way of working around the problem, then why aren't Amazon providing "high performance" EBS volumes which do that under the hood?

If I were faced with EBS performance issues, I would see this as a big red flag, consider EBS unsuitable for the application and avoid it, rather than carrying on with such a workaround.

<comment><USER14> One other huge downside of raiding EBS volumes is you can't use EBS's snapshotting features as you cannot guarantee a perfect sync (you could use LVM yourself however).

Honestly, since EBS vols are supposedly not tied to a single disk, the raiding should be done on Amazon's end. That it isn't is telling.

<comment><USER15> You have to snapshot at the system level anyway if you want a consistent snapshot: otherwise the filesystem (or your database) could have been reordering and delaying writes that end up not being part of the "consistent snapshot". This is simply not a RAID-specific issue, nor is it a problem with EBS (as it is generally easy to use LVM, xfs, and/or PostgreSQL to handle that part of the job).

<comment><USER16> This is something I've never quite understood. Best practice guides say you need to do a "flush all tables" in MySQL and then do a filesystem freeze (possible in XFS) before you can use a snapshot system like the ones built into EBS or LVM. If you don't, you apparently stand a good chance of getting an inconsistent snapshot, even if the snapshotting mechanism itself is (like EBS and LVM) "point in time" consistent.

Why is all this necessary? If the system (i.e. DB + FS + block device) are all working as they should, then once a commit returns, the data should be on disk. If it's not, you have no guarantee data that you thought was committed will still be there after a kernel panic or power outage.

In that case, no amount of xfs-freeze or table flushing during a snapshot is going to save you from the fact that your DB is one kernel panic away from losing what the rest of your system believed were committed transactions.

<comment><USER17> This is one reason why Oracle is still the gold standard. when entering hot backup mode, which is what you do during a snapshot, it logs the FULL BLOCKS that are changed. Failures and inconsistencies can be replayed from the archive logs.

Of course this means you can quickly blow out your log archival , so it's meant to be a transitory mode:

<comment><USER15> PostgreSQL has this exact same feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Generally speaking this is the sort of thing that people warn about when they say "if you want to run on a cloud, you need to design your application for a cloud". Meaning, you can't presume your infrastructure is dedicated and carries similar MTBFs of (say) an enterprise hard drive, which upwards of 1 million hours.

Amazon provides plenty of opportunities to mitigate for this, such as providing multiple availability zones. Reddit, if you read the original blog post, wasn't designed for that - it was designed for a single data centre.

OTOH, the variability of EBS performance is true, and frustrating. If you do a RAID0 stripe across 4 drives, you can expect around sustained 100 MB/sec in performance modulo hiccups that can bring it down by a factor of 5. On a compute cluster instance (cc1.4xlarge) it's more like up to 300 MB/sec if you go up to 8 drives, since they provision more network bandwidth and seem to be able to cordon it off better with a placement group.

<comment><USER18> > modulo hiccups that can bring it down by a factor of 5.

The comments on reddit indicated hiccups more on a factor of 10x and, sometimes, 100x.

Either way, the issue is that the more drives you add to your RAID0, the more often one of those drives experiences a "hiccup," and kills the performance of the entire volume.

<comment><USER17> It's not clear this was a single volume problem so much as an issue with one or more network switches in that availability zone (if you look at the AWS service health notes for that date).

Even in your own data centre, if your FC fabric goes wonky, your whole SAN is hosed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Never fails: _a_ cloud provider has issues with _a_ specific cloud product, so clearly _the_ cloud is an illusion that will crash down on you[1]. Any discussion about any cloud provider's product is obviously a chance to soapbox about the industry as a whole.

[1]: [http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_down_for_6_of_the_last_24_hours/c1l7531)

<comment><USER19> In the minds of many people, Amazon is the most well known, and respected cloud provider. Their outage is merely a reminder that the one big difference between cloud services and in-house services is, I can't control it. Of course the probability that Amazon will have better uptime than you is pretty high for most people, but you have no recourse when there is a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> We've been looking at moving some or all of our stuff to either Amazon EC2/EBS/S3 or Rackspace cloud hosting, and it has been interesting.

Amazon seems more flexible, since you buy block storage (EBS) independent of instances. If you have an application that needs a massive amount of data, but only a little RAM and CPU, you can do it.

Rackspace, on the other hand, ties storage to instances. If you only need the RAM and CPU of the smallest instance (256 MB RAM) but need more than the 10 GB of disk space that provides, you need to go for a bigger instance, and so you'll probably end up with a bigger base price than at Amazon.

On the other hand, the storage at Rackspace is actual RAID storage directly attached to the machine you instance is on, so it is going to totally kick Amazon's butt for performance. Also, at Amazon you pay for I/O (something like $0.10 per million operations).

Looking at our existing main database and its usage, at Amazon we'd be paying more just for the I/O than we now pay for colo and bandwidth for the servers we own (not just the database servers...our whole setup!).

The big lesson we've taken away from our investigation so far as that Amazon is different from Rackspace, and both are different from running your own servers. Each of these three has a different set of capabilities and constraints, and so a solution designed for one will probably not work well if you just try to map it isomorphically to one of the others. You don't migrate to the cloud--you re-architect and rewrite to the cloud.

<comment><USER21> If you're interested to see how sites perform on EC2 and Rackspace over time:

<https://www.blamestella.com/vendor/ec2>

<https://www.blamestella.com/vendor/rackspace>

<comment><USER22> You're monitoring from AWS US-East it looks like, you'll want to mention that to give people some context around the latency numbers.

<comment><USER21> That true but I think what's more interesting is the number of incidents (timeouts, exceptions, and significant slowdowns).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We were bitten by EBS' slowness at my company recently, when moving an existing project to AWS. You effectively can't get decent performance off of a single EBS volume with PostgreSQL; you need to set up 10 or so of them and make a software RAID to remove the bottleneck. It's a fairly large time commitment to build and maintain, but it's pretty fast and reliable once it's up and running (cases like the recent downtime notwithstanding).

Can anyone tell me if MySQL fares any better than Postgres on a single EBS volume? I wouldn't assume it does but I shouldn't be making assumptions.

<comment><USER24> Did you use Raid10? I would love to see a post on using postgresql with ec2/ebs -- how to setup raid, etc.

<comment><USER25> Orion Henry at Heroku wrote about this and described different software RAID configurations and the performance characteristics of each a while back:

[http://orion.heroku.com/past/2009/7/29/io_performance_on_ebs...](http://orion.heroku.com/past/2009/7/29/io_performance_on_ebs/)

<comment><USER24> Yes, but as a lowly developer, I have no idea how to set read-ahead buffers or change io schedulers.

Plus, that's a year old, would love to see some updated advice. You'd think Amazon would write more guides like this.

<comment><USER25> Well, that's really just "-setra" and other file system mounting options, and mdadm (Linux software RAID) configuration options. Yes, there's a little bit of a learning curve and pain to get things set up, but it's not completely out of reach.

Despite being relatively old, I think the advice and approach still holds. Clearly, EBS hasn't improved since then and the need to do this kind of striping over EBS volumes hasn't been obviated yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've never understood how people can use EBS in production. The durability numbers they quote are bad and they wave their hands around about increased durability with snapshots, but never quantify what that means.

Hard drives are unreliable and they certainly don't fail independently of one another - but the independence of their failure is much more independent than EBS.

With physical dives and n-parity RAID you drastically reduce the rate of data loss. This is because although failures are often correlated, it's quite unlikely to have permenant failure of 3 drives out of a pool of 7 within 24 hours. It happens, but it is very rare.

With EBS, your 7 volumes might very well be on the same underlying RAID array. So you have no greater durability by building software RAID on top of that. If anything, it potentially decreases durability.

You could utilize snapshots to S3, but is that really a good solution? It seems that deploying onto EBS at any meaningful scale is a recipe for garunteed data-loss. Raid on physical disks isn't a great solution either, and there is no substitute for backups - but at least you can build a 9 disk RaidZ3 array that will experience pool failure so rarely that you can more safely worry about things like memory and data bus corruption.

<comment><USER15> The increased durability based on snapshots is actually quite simple, and they explain it in various places: if one of the drives in Amazon's RAID fails, they need to bring up a new disk to replace it in the array. When they being up new disks they typically can do this instantaneously, because they really just dynamically page fault the drive from your latest snapshot. However, all dirty data since the last snapshot will have to be copied from the other drive(s). This is a window of time during which your array is exposed to unrecoverable read errors losing data. The less dirty data you have, the smaller this window of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> We (Cedexis) presented our findings on - How do EC2's East, West, EU & APAC zones compare: (pdf) [http://www.cloudconnectevent.com/2011/presentations/free/76-...](http://www.cloudconnectevent.com/2011/presentations/free/76-marty- kagan.pdf)

If you would like to know more please send me an email: prakash [at] cedexis.com

<comment><USER28> You should post that to HN, if you haven't already. Possibly wrap a blog post around it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anybody care to comment on using EC2 with local (what Amazon calls ephemeral) storage and backup to S3? Seems to me the advantages are: it's cheaper and you avoid the performance and reliability problems with EBS. The disadvantages?

<comment><USER30> All of your EC2 instances can disappear without warning and everything on the local storage is now gone forever.

<comment><USER29> That's the "backup to S3" part.

<comment><USER30> That's a fair point, but I don't think it holds up real well. What are the semantics? Do you block until everything is fully backed up on S3? Are you continuously taking database snapshots and forwarding them to S3? What happens if the backups start to fall further and further behind production?

What do you tell the hordes of angry redditors when the last thirty minutes of carefully (or angrily) composed comments vanish?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Lesson for startups: start in the cloud, grow your business, build your own cloud.

Never trust critical parts of your business to others.

<comment><USER32> Good advice but I'd argue there's one tweak to make that even better: start outside the cloud (say, just some Linux VM's from Linode or whatever), then only if you get enough real customer/visitor demand to warrant easy/virtual scaling, then move to a cloud provider. Needing a cloud/elastic hosting provider is a bit of a Maserati Problem. If you get to the point where you have to build/manage your own data centers (like Google, Amazon, Orbitz), you have a Fleet-of-Maseratis Problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'll probably be downvoted for this but seems to me the root cause of this problem is Reddit's architectural decision to remain in a single availability zone. If it wasn't EBS it could have been some other issue related to the single AZ that could have brought the site down. Blaming EBS, particularly if you knew it to be a potential weakness in your architecture, seems like a deflection of responsibility.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps reddit could've mitigated some downtime with some cross-zone redundancy, but the underlying frustration is that Amazon does not provide a well behaved storage solution, which is a very critical infrastructure component for most web services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Having been running a 200gb millions of transactions per day Postgres cluster on Amazon's EC2 cloud for two years now, I can attest to the fact that EBS performance and reliability SUCKS. It is our SINGLE biggest problem with EC2.

200gb really isn't all that big of a database. It shouldn't have to be this hard.

</comment><comment><USER35> This very moment our team is restoring Postgres volumes because the EBS volumes our primary and secondary were on both failed simultaneously.

<comment><USER36> Were both in the same availability zone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> How is it that Amazon.com is so reliable if there are so many problems with their "cloud" products? Do they not use the same software to run their site?

<comment><USER38> If you understand the limitations of the various products you can build a VERY reliable service. The reddit assumption of a single datacenter and single technology to store that data was an engineering failure. They essentially didn't have a disaster recovery plan in place.

<comment><USER2> I'm sure reddit's engineers are as capable as any for producing a seemless disaster recovery plan, but the most common obstacle to implementing it is cost. Most web services choose the occasional risk of downtime in one data center instead of incurring the cost of being in two data centers at all times.

<comment><USER32> Yep. And there's that whole asymptotic cost/complexity curve where as you chase more 9's of perfection, your cost and complexity rises out of proportion to the value you're getting. At the end of the day, no matter how much we might like Reddit, it's still just a website with social discussion forums and link sharing, full of non-essential chatter and pictures of kitties. (Again, I love Reddit, don't get me wrong, but it's far from a Mission Critical resource for any business or person's life.) So achieving perfect reliability & performance is probably not worth the cost/pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I was at the Cloud Connect conference last week. In a session on cloud performance Adrian Cockcroft (Netflix's Cloud Architect) spoke and said they do not use EBS for performance and reliability issues. They initially had some bad experiences with EBS and because of this decided to stick with ephemeral storage almost exclusively.

The guys from Reddit also spoke about their use of EC2. Apparently they are running entirely on m1 instances which suffer from notoriously poor EBS performance relative to m2 and cc1/cg1 instances.

</comment><comment><USER40> What's the failure rate of EBS versus having direct access to physical disks? My guess is that at scale, it's probably similar.

Although you would hope that the storage components of AWS's cloud were highly reliable, I think the main benefit is not single instance reliability but being able to recover faster because of quickly available hardware.

<comment><USER34> I don't have solid numbers, just some experience using this. Ephemeral drives outright fail more often than EBS volumes, however, EBS volumes suffer performance degradation significantly more often than ephemeral drives. EBS volume performance is _HIGHLY_ variable, at all times of day, no matter what load you throw at it. Ephemeral drives are very consistent most of the time.

Both types of drives CAN and DO fail, so RAID-10, fail over, and replication are a must have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I firmly believe "the cloud" is a fad, unless for some reason you own and operate all the hardware yourself (ie. Google).

Like other technical fads, everyone will probably come back to servers they can reach out and touch when needed, sooner or later.

<comment><USER9> The cloud significantly lowers capital expenditure to get into an Internet- enabled business, which cultivates the very startup ecology that Y Combinator exists to leverage and support. Those teenagers who started the Facebook Pokemon game would have never had the resources to build a scalable solution with hardware that they own. (That is, unless Y Combinator paid a lot more money as part of participating. They might also be a bad example, because I remember that one of them had a successful sale...it's true for a lot of other ideas, so work with the example.) The cloud lowers the barrier of entry enough that good ideas can be explored and built, with very little financial risk to those getting into it.

This was the role of shared hosting in the past. Several years ago, everybody realized that having root is better. Now, instead of colocating two servers and negotiating transit and dealing with remote hands, you can spin up two Linodes for $40 and have enough power to build anything. Critical mass? Add three more. You're not waiting for a shipment of servers to the datacenter to handle a sudden load from a positive mention on HN.

Saying that the cloud is a fad and we should all own our gear does two things: (a) increases humanity's carbon footprint, since most organizations never utilize hardware to their full potential, and (b) guarantees that only those with significant capital to buy a fleet, a cage, and power will ever compete in the Internet space, which is where we were many years ago. It is very arguable that the cloud is progress, and everybody sitting on the sidelines calling it a "fad" is scared by it.

Jeremy Edberg of Reddit had a good comment later in that thread, to someone who paralleled the cloud to electricity generation:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_down_for_6_of_the_last_24_hours/c1l7e77?context=1)

What sucks is, my remarks really depend on what you define "cloud" as, which -- partially thanks to Microsoft television commercials -- is currently up in the air.

<comment><USER42> The cloud's real advantage is the ability to build out fast, but it is not cost. It is cheaper to build it yourself and run it yourself _if you know exactly what you need, and have time to do so._ If you don't, the cloud is cheaper.

So you're right that the cloud is great for startups. It is not so great for established stuff.

<comment><USER9> Oh, it's certainly about cost. When you talk about paying for your own transit, your own power, cage space, and remote hands, cloud providers can be significantly cheaper than owning the hardware. You also lose the administrative overhead of having to perform drive swaps when your units degrade -- it's just computing capacity that _exists_ with a minimum of hassle to you. I think if you add up all of the variables, cloud can (and does) come out more cost-effective.

I think private clouds are fantastic for established stuff, and many companies use public clouds to their benefit as well.

I added this in an edit after you replied, but _cloud_ is a term that is difficult to nail to the wall: my explanation to people that I like to run with is that the cloud is a way to think about your architecture.

Rather than have a DNS box, two Web servers, a DB box, and so on, then another server for every development environment, virtualizing the hardware makes a lot of sense. You get a lot more traction out of each U, and with a large number of of-the-shelf utilities, you can automate the hell out of that. Need a clean test environment to try an installation of your software? There are ways to accomplish that in minutes, and dispose of it and reuse the space. _That_ to me is a cloud. Virtualization and automation on top of it. That's what Linode has been doing for nearly eight years now, so it's arguable that Linode pioneered the cloud space. In 2003, it was just called VPS hosting.

Integrating a public cloud and a private cloud makes a lot of sense, and a lot of established big-iron is taking this approach. Big players are realizing that the cloud makes a lot of sense, which we see with HP's announcement that they intend to enter the cloud market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For a data set in the mere tens to hundreds of GB (in MongoDB, if anyone's curious), is there any reason I shouldn't conclude from this that I should use instance storage only (with multi-AZ replication and backups to S3, both of which I would be doing in any case)? Moderately slower recovery in the rare event of an instance failure seems better than the constant possibility of incurable killing performance degradation.

(Edit: I hadn't considered the possibility of somehow killing all my instances through human error. Ouch. That probably warrants one slave on EBS per AZ.)

</comment><comment><USER43> I recently had an EBS volume lose data for no apparent reason. I'm not a heavy EC2 user at all - I was just doing some memory/cpu-heavy stuff that wouldn't fit in to RAM on my laptop and using EBS as a temporary store so I could transfer data using a cheap micro instance and only spin up the big expensive instances when everything was in place. I ended up downloading files on an m2.4xlarge because the files I had just downloaded to the EBS volume vanished.

<comment><USER15> Are you certain the data left the filesystem buffer and actually got acknowledged by EBS?

<comment><USER43> No; I'm very much a beginner when it comes to EC2. I unmounted the filesystem, detached the volume, then shut down the instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This seems too much of a coincidence.

We released a dropbox-like product to sync and the back-end is on EBS. Yesterday we saw two times when a device got filled to 7GB and as it got closer it became slower and slower and slower. We did not have any instrumentation/monitoring in place and we were immediately suspect it was something on our end.

We (wrongly?) assumed reliability and (decent) performance from AWS.

</comment><comment><USER45> Being totally new to AWS, why does everyone skip right past using ZFS?

[http://blogs.sun.com/marchamilton/entry/a_brilliant_argument...](http://blogs.sun.com/marchamilton/entry/a_brilliant_argument_for_zfs) "Cloud Storage Will Be Limited By Drive Reliability, Bandwidth ... The key feature of ZFS enabling data integrity is the 256-bit checksum that protects your data."

<comment><USER46> ZFS will ensure that what was written to disk comes back to memory consistently, or with errors spotted. It wont ensure that the right thing was written to disk, or that the database IDs which were written leave your database relationships in a consistent state, etc.

ZFS will do nothing about this " _More recently we also discovered that these disks will also frequently report that a disk transaction has been committed to hardware but are flat-out lying._ ", for instance, other than tell you the data you want isn't there to be read - like any filesystem would.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I love the idea behind EBS, a SAN makes life so much easier, but I too find that EBS glitches are the largest cause of unreliability in AWS.

I'm not immediately planning to move out of AWS, but the trouble with EBS has certainly got me thinking about other options and has made me much less inclined to make an increased commitment to AWS.

<comment><USER48> EBS is not a SAN which is largely the point being made in these comments and in the other HN article on reddit's post mortem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Isn't EBS intended for stuff like Hadoop job temporary data used during processing?

This kind of complaint reminds me of people who buy a product that does A very well, but then they trash it in reviews for not doing B. It was never advertised as doing B, but you'd never know that from the complaining.

</comment><comment><USER50> We used Amazon and got bad performance in the beginning too. It is bad when you pull files out of S3. By bad I mean the latency is high.

We tried GoGrid and they lost or crashed our server instance.

I've personally used Rackspace, so far so good, but I've only been doing development on it.

</comment><comment> jclouds-fan Why is reddit relying on only one cloud provider? AWS can/should do better but service providers of the size of reddit should be using mult-vendor set-ups for sure.

<comment><USER51> It probably has something to do with the group being very small. Sure they turn a lot of traffic, but there's only so much you can do with a group of their size on what I imagine is still a limited budget.

<comment><USER52> Sounds like a case of similar to safety systems at a nuclear plant. Not pressing until it is REALLY PRESSING! Its the usual dilemma, investing time/moey on something that most likely wont be needed versus adding that cool feature all the users will immediately see the benefit of. In a competitive environment, it isn't difficult to understand how they ended up on one vendor.

<comment><USER53> If a nuclear plant has problems, it can kill a lot of people, and wreck the lives of many others.

If reddit has problems, I suppose the worst that can happen is a cloud of toxic and poorly thought out comments is released on the internet.

So the tradeoffs they've made, in saving some money, are probably sensible.

<comment><USER54> > If reddit has problems, I suppose the worst that can happen is a cloud of > toxic and poorly thought out comments is released on the internet.

Actually, that's what happens when reddit is working :)

<comment><USER53> Well, depending on prevailing conditions, they might be more widely dispersed rather than contained within the special "echo chamber" that reddit has built for that purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> On the comment itself, I have this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2339715>

</comment><comment><USER56> EMR is a mess too. The Amazon-blessed Pig is almost a year and 2 major releases behind, and the official EMR documentation seems to describe a version of EMR that doesn't even exist.

"Elastic" is AWS's claim to fame, but I am not seeing it.

Trying to resize an EMR cluster (which is half the point of having an EMR cluster instead of buying our own hardware) generates the cryptic error "Error: Cannot add instance groups to a master only job flow" that is not documented anywhere.

(Why would Amazon even implement a "master only job flow", which serves no purpose at all?)

<comment><USER6> The master only job flow is designed to let users play around with the instance and discover things without having to pay for a full cluster. A single node versus multi-node cluster is configured way differently and that is why you can expand a single node cluster. If you had started with a two node cluster you would have been able to expand it.

Also, if you want Pig you should complain about it vocally on the EMR forum. That is the best way to get them to listen to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The AWS business model is to sell shared hosting on commodity hardware. Cloud is a cool buzzword but it is still sharing hardware. Cheap, commodity hardware is the magic that lets you scale up so big and so fast for a highly accessible price.

But you're still sharing the same hardware as everyone else and its still just commodity hardware.

<comment><USER58> For what it's worth, it's not entirely accurate to say that you are always using shared hardware on AWS, at least for your servers. It depends on how you set up your environment.</comment></comment>


Why your smartphone doesn't belong in meetings - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/why-your-smartphone-doesnt-belong-in-meetings/ <comment><USER2> > There's nothing worse than whipping out your smartphone during a meeting

Yes, there is something worse. Pulling me into an agendaless meeting that has nothing to do with my job, just because the organizer thinks my presence _may_ potentially be useful at some hypothetical point.

> When you take out your phone it shows a:

> Lack of respect. You consider the information on your phone to be more > important than the conversation at hand, [...]

On par with arranging an unnecessary meeting. First show me respect by not polluting my day with useless crap that prevents me from doing useful work, _then_ you may start expecting respect in return.

> Lack of listening. You aren't practicing activelistening, so no one around > you feels heard.

Of course I'm not listening. If the meeting doesn't concern me, I won't have anything to say nor will it have any information important to me. My attention is a scarce resource. If you want it, provide me something valuable in exchange.</comment>


Airlines in "a computer-programming frenzy to reduce embarrassing service lapses" - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/business/15airlines.html?ex=1352782800&en=5a8ff4f66805a0e8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> I'm still trying to decide if this was written by someone who knows nothing about technology or nothing about business. Both, I think.

At one point:

"The kinds of programs American and others are installing are neither terribly expensive nor "a great leap" in technology, and thus could have been in place years earlier,"

Then, 6 paragraphs later:

"And as American was preparing to make big investments in computers, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred, and sent the airline industry into a deep decline."

Huh? Why the need for "big investments" if the solutions are not "terribly expensive"?

This is not a programming problem. Not even a business problem. It's a MANAGEMENT problem. Stop looking at your portfolios long enough to decide that you want something and what you want and WE WILL BUILD IT FOR YOU.

Maybe that's why so much energy is going into Web 2.0, social networks, etc. Because big business is either too dumb or too lazy to articulate their business problems well enough to get a solution.

Hell, input this problem into a Y Combinator start-up in January and get a solution in March.

See how easy?

<comment><USER3> > It's a MANAGEMENT problem. > Because big business is either too dumb or too > lazy to articulate their business problems well enough to get a solution.

Thus arises the management consulting industry.</comment></comment>


Elon Musk's Space Dream Almost Killed Tesla - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/ <comment><USER2> I applaud Elon, but I gotta say I'm uncomfortable with the extreme adulation. His company merged into Paypal -- he did not invent that payment solution. He was an investor in Tesla before taking it over -- the original idea and company were not his. The press paints him otherwise on both counts. That's undoubtedly a better story (and perhaps we're at a point where we _need_ to believe in a hero-inventor), but I don't think inaccuracy actually serves us well.

<comment><USER3> With Jobs gone, we need a new hero-inventor to worship. Such is life.

Seriously though, when I was a kid I would read about "famous scientists of old" every night. They were my rockstars. Edison, Watt, Lister, the list goes on. I had a book about them, their lives, their inventions. Everything. I must have read that book a thousand times before I was 14.

Then one day when I was 18 I visited the London technical museum. In it was a Watt exhibit. It said "Watt bought a lot of patents, he invented a few small things, but his main innovation was leasing steam engines instead of selling them."

It was then that I realized all those scientists of old I worship weren't scientists at all. They were good engineers. Excellent integrators of other people's inventions and work. Magnificent funders of scientists' work.

But most of all they were businessmen. Because it doesn't matter who invents a thing, what matters is who uses the thing to bring _actual_ change to people.

It doesn't matter who invented the lightbulb. It matters who invented the electricity grid so people could actually use lightbulbs in their homes.

<comment><USER4> When I was young, I had a large amount of respect for Edison.

When I found out the truth - that he was a businessman more than an inventor - it was quite a let down. Many of his ideas were stolen from people who worked beneath him and the publicity campaign for DC power over AC power is simply terrible.

>it doesn't matter who invents a thing, what matters is who uses the thing to bring actual change to people.

And this is the sad truth of many famous 'inventors'.

<comment><USER5> He invented the modern research lab, which is kind of a big deal. Regardless of how many or few of the creative breakthroughs were his personally, he pushed a lot of technology forward, he was sort of the ultimate maker and deserves a great deal of credit.

<comment><USER4> So he should be credited for his achievements and not falsely accredited for others' achivements.

My respect for him was one of an inventor. The problem is everything I had respected him for inventing - he hadn't even invented!

It's like being told Superman isn't actually Superman, he's Batman. Sure, he's still a superhero and might do awesome things. But I like Superman, I'm not a big fan of Batman. *

*this is a terrible analogy, but I hope you understand what I'm trying to convey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Luck?

You can become a millionaire or even a billionaire by luck.

Risking an entire 9 figure fortune in order to run both 1) a business that most at the time thought was impossible (mass produced electric cars) 2) a space company that most at the time thought was impossible to do without being a nation state

and managing to against the odds make both of them succeed and become 11 figure companies is not luck. it is immeasurable slog, vision and competence.

there are tens of thousands of people worth hundreds of millions and ~1500 billionaires on earth, can you name a single one taking anything like the risks and producing the results elon is producing?

<comment><USER7> While both side are impressive, I think the risk is really the big story. Of those people worth at least tens of millions, how many would be willing to risk their entire fortune on a venture that, in their honest assessment, would _probably fail_? (There's a quote somewhere, where Musk actually says he expected SpaceX to fail, but did it anyway because of how great it could be if it succeeded.)

I bet the number is pretty damn small. A big part of how he got to this point is simply the fact that almost no one else would have been willing to try. Beyond that, he must have been extremely skillful _and_ lucky to actually succeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > In late October 2001, Elon Musk went to Moscow to buy an intercontinental > ballistic missile.

Has there ever been a better introductory sentence?

<comment><USER9> I don't have a link to further into that story, but after being screwed by the Russians on the price (they did a bait and switch, increasing the price four fold when he arrived), he asked on the plane ride home "How hard can it be to build a rocket?".

EDIT: To add to this, the US government created sanctions against Russia, causing the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to say "Use a trampoline to get to the ISS then" [1], which prompted Elon to unveil the Dragon Mk2 crew capsule: "Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on w @NASA. No trampoline needed" [2].

I would not want to be on Elon's bad side.

[1] [http://space.io9.com/russia-to-nasa-try-jumping-to-iss- on-a-...](http://space.io9.com/russia-to-nasa-try-jumping-to-iss-on-a- trampoline-1570387515)

[2] [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/461279062837968897](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/461279062837968897)

<comment><USER10> I remember reading it here: [http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a16681/elon- musk-interv...](http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a16681/elon-musk- interview-1212/)

<comment><USER9> Ahh! That's it! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What an absolutely riveting, brilliant article. The title doesn't give it justice -- this article is about a dream, and about a man's relentless pursuit of that dream. Incredible.

I wonder what SpaceX's long term goals are. Much of the article suggests that it's Mars. But SpaceX probably wants to do something that's profitable, right? Missions to Mars won't be profitable for probably a very long time, if ever. I wonder about something like a mining operation on the Moon or other near-Earth objects?

Right now, it's hard to imagine anything more profitable than deploying satellites.

<comment><USER12> > I wonder what SpaceX's long term goals are.

Mars, vis-a-vis making buttloads of money on Earth.

Elon is positioning to launch a 4k-strong comsat fleet, with which he hopes to commandeer a large fraction of Earth's internet backhaul traffic (in addition to securing millions+ of internet customers around the planet, otherwise too expensive and sparse to reach with cables).

My bet is that it will turn out to be SpaceX's biggest financial play, and that the private + NASA orbital launch contracts are functioning as a way to get someone to pay for rocket development and build the necessary capital for the telecom move.

Although once a reusable first stage has been demonstrated, I imagine launch costs will drop by a large fraction, and possibly open up a new rush of investment and innovation in low Earth orbit-- with Musk selling pickaxes and shovels.

It's possible if more people knew the price drop that's about to happen in rocket launches, they'd be scrambling to launch their _own_ 4k-satellite constellations, and that Musk's inside knowledge and control gives him a huge head start into the business.

<comment><USER13> My first thought on the satellite network he is launching was to help power self-driving Teslas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I get two things out of this article:

1) Elon's tremendous luck. He took _huge_ gambles, repeatedly, and they all turned up heads. They were all very worthy ambitions, but nine times out of ten, they would not have worked out. I don't condemn him for taking those risks at all (in fact I applaud it), but:

There are probably plenty of entrepreneurs out there with comparable intelligence or ambition, but when they fall on their faces, we just shake our heads at them and say "well, that's what you get". But each of them simply wasn't lucky enough to have an Elon story. We should keep this in mind either while heaping adoration on Musk or while rationalizing someone else's failure.

2) Elon almost didn't succeed on more than one occasion because somebody else was actively trying to screw him over. And that (human shittiness) is one of the stochastic forces that made his success so unlikely. The world would have been a worse place and civilization would have been set back, all by the selfish behavior of some VC company. It is reprehensible that lollipop-yanking and sandcastle-stomping is not only actively impeding our society's progress, but _despite this_ , it is actually tolerated or even _revered_.

<comment><USER14> True. If NASA had awarded the contract to someone else and SpaceX had folded, we wouldn't be saying "look at that brilliant guy who got dealt a bad hand", we'd be saying "look at that asshole who earned a fortune and then blew it all on an idea that everyone warned him was nuts"... or more likely "who? never heard of him".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If anyone is interested to hear Justin Musk's viewpoint

[http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-be-as-great-as-Bill-Gates- Ste...](http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-be-as-great-as-Bill-Gates-Steve-Jobs- Elon-Musk-and-Richard-Branson)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the link, but I thouught the third answer from James Altucher about Richard Branson was the real gold on that page.

<comment><USER17> Altucher writes well, but I find it hard to overlook the relatively large inaccuracies in the bits I do know about, and keep wondering what else is equally inaccurate. E.g. he seems to think "Virgin Air" (the actual airlines are Virgin Atlantic Airways and Virgin America) is Bransons main business, but Virgin Group consists of a huge number of companies, and Virgin Atlantic revenue only accounts for about 10% of the groups aggregate revenue (Virgin Atlantic revenue is about 20% of Virgin Group revenue, but Virgin Group only owns about half of Virgin Atlantic)

EDIT: The story about how Branson supposedly got the idea also sounds apocryphal. In 1984 Branson was rich already - in fact Virgin Atlantic became profitable in large part because Virgin Records was doing well enough that Branson could use Virgin Records to finance lease of a secondhand plane for the company to start out with.. What was to become Virgin Atlantic was started by Randolph Fields and Alan Hellary before Branson got involved. It's not impossible Branson was thinking of setting up an airline before that, but he didn't start Virgin Atlantic until after he'd been approached by Fields.

<comment><USER18> Branson tells that story in his autobiography, Losing My Virginity. It's probably not fanciful to think that it happened given the crazy things he has done in his life.

The stories about how he got off his earlier enterprises - Student and Virgin Records - are possibly more inspirational because as you say he had already success to back up the air venture, but that success had really been built out of nothing.

<comment><USER17> It's quite possible he did something like that, but I think the connection to Virgin Atlantic at most would be that it may have been what made him willing to fund it. It's a matter of court records that he did not start Virgin Atlantic alone - it took a court case before he paid Fields, who had already started and operated an airline, the dividend payments he was due.

I agree you with you regarding his earlier ventures. There's the famous quote of his (not sure whether it's real or not) as an answer to a question of how to become a millionaire: Become a billionaire and start an airline.

With respect to his earlier ventures, I particularly like the story of how he at one point needed additional finance for Virgin Records and contrary to what most would do _dressed down_ more than usual for his visit with one of the most stiff-upper-lip banks in London - his reasoning apparently that if he'd shown up in a suit, they'd know he was in trouble, so he went out of his way to appear like couldn't care less if they gave him the loan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are lots of point of views around the thoughts:

\- He did not invent anything

\- He had privileged background, education and luck

\- He takes extreme risk but has background to fall upon etc etc ... So he is not great or a hero.

The fact of matter is that he has a personality and attitude for getting things done. He dreams of something, faces extreme challenges but still pursues it and gets it done. What matters is this attitude of never giving up. The extreme odds against which the person fights, makes him stand apart. But people with similar attitude, fighting against extreme odds can be found in all walks of life. Whether we find that narrative interesting or not depends on "our" background/interest etc.

Example could be someone with no means for basic education and learns on his own to become a great mathematician(or a architect who turns desert into greenfield) or someone who becomes a great artist/sportsman/writer(basically excellence in anything) against extreme odds.

I bet people with this kind of attitude don't care whether you find them heroic or not. The may even not care to read things like this. Fighting on this (whether its heroic or not) is just silly. Some people will find the story of single mother, working multiple jobs to provide for her family more heroic. But then that's good for them and does not steal the fact that Elon musk is hero for lot of us.

</comment><comment><USER20> Here's the video of the first Falcon 1 launch that reaches orbit. The series of cheers at each milestone, as the article mentions, is pretty awesome. [https://youtu.be/8FQhtMrUQlE?t=18m34s](https://youtu.be/8FQhtMrUQlE?t=18m34s)

</comment><comment><USER21> the man is pure inspiration. 10 years ago, i was asked who i admired, and couldn't think of a single answer. Maybe that's sad on my part, but when asked now, he's at the top of my list.

<comment><USER22> Definitely one of the most inspiring man when it comes to success.

For research I would say Stephen Hawking

For education I would say Neil deGrasse Tyson

( I would put Neil in the inspiring "anti-racism" category as well [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQLtPWPqsjA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQLtPWPqsjA) )

<comment><USER23> Don't forget Bill Gates. While many may (rightly) fault his business ethics and tactics, he is doing more for the bottom 20% of humanity than most others.

<comment><USER24> But, he set back all of computing 10 to 20 years (1995-2010 "dark ages" approximately) just for the sake of greed, dominance, and profit. Was it worth it?

<comment><USER25> I used to think this myself, but reading up on computing history I've somewhat changed my mind. If Bill Gates hadn't been born and Microsoft hadn't existed, what might have happened instead?

IBM would have still made the PC, only using another CP/M clone as OS, and would have owned that market because the other vendor wouldn't have written as clever a deal as Gates did. Two possible outcomes of that: either IBM would have replaced microsoft as center stone of the PC market and been no better and probably worse than microsoft (they were considered pretty evil in their day), or more likely IBM would have failed to create the PC platform (because that was really Microsoft's doing), and the personal computing market would have remained deeply fragmented on both hardware and software levels, tools for gamers and tinkerers but not business computing. In either case, OS/2 wouldn't have happened in the way that it did (especially since microsoft was a key developer behind that). Linux would have had a significantly tougher time happening, either because of IBM's control of the PC market (including the hardware), or in the fragmentation scenario because the lack of a hardware standard would have made it more difficult to build a community of OS enthusiasts. Apple would have probably gone bankrupt during Jobs' wilderness years. Without ms office propping it up as the only desktop alternative to DOS/windows it wouldn't have stood a chance given how incompetent apple's management was at the time.

So, maybe microsoft slowed down the personal computing market, or maybe they sped it up, or maybe they didn't change the timeline at all. I reckon there's no way to tell unless you have a time machine.

I wonder if Gates feels guilty though. His current efforts are laudable, but it always seems like he's compensating for something.

<comment><USER26> It's impossible to know as a whole, but you can still look at individual actions and say they were bad for the industry.

Probably one of the worst and most egregious is Microsoft's use of a "per processor" fee in the 90's which they only stopped when the government forced them to. If you were an OEM like Dell or HP, and sold Windows on _any_ computers, you had to pay Microsoft for a copy of Windows on _all_ computers you sold, even ones without Windows.

This anti-competitive move meant alternative operating systems, like BeOS, or OS2/Warp, or even Linux weren't really an option. BeOS died, not on any technical merits, but because Microsoft forced it out via other means. Linux only survived because its openness made it hard to kill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow, reading through this story and you can't help but notice some comparative traits to the late Steve Jobs. The incredibly high work ethic, not taking no for an answer and being highly optimistic in the face of bankruptcy. Those familiar with Steve Jobs and the story of Apple will know that Apple found themselves in this exact situation, a man with a vision burning through cash and not really making any ground - only for them to become a highly profitable company.

After all is said and done, SpaceX is not only profitable, but Musk somehow remains its largest stakeholder, even though he went through a desperate period of trying to raise more capital. Seems taking on debt helped Musk retain SpaceX's majority stakeholder (a brilliant move if you know you're going to succeed).

This is probably one of the most inspiring things I have read in a very long time. A very well-written article that doesn't skip on the details. Absolutely riveting, I was supposed to be working and I could not stop reading this. We need more opportunistic thinkers like Musk, everyone thought he was mental or was having a breakdown, but he proved his detractors wrong by not giving up (even when it looked like bankruptcy was the likely option).

</comment><comment><USER28> This is a really great article. As a casual observer of SpaceX, it seemed to me that they just came out of nowhere a few years ago. It's really great to see a story about their origins.

</comment><comment><USER29> From the article:

> Downey appreciated that Musk was not a foul-smelling, fidgety, coder whack > job.

Always good to know how the rest of us "coders" are looked upon by Bloomberg, and presumably the average person while they are busy singing Elon Musk's praises.

<comment><USER30> > by Bloomberg

I got the impression that was Downey's expectation, not Bloomberg's. People don't smell or fidget in Hollywood..

<comment><USER31> Not after being doused in makeup and qualudes, at least.

<comment><USER32> Qualudes? What year is it?

<comment><USER33> Quaaludes! The most fun word in the world to spell.

<comment><USER34> It is a fun word, isn't it? 'Whenever I become anxious I don't have qualia, I take some Quaaludes.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Great article. Even without mention Elon's drunk-tweeting about Catherine the Great.

[http://www.parabolicarc.com/2011/12/30/elon-musk-tweets- on-c...](http://www.parabolicarc.com/2011/12/30/elon-musk-tweets-on-chinese- space-ambitions-catherine-the-greats-horse/)

</comment><comment><USER36> If we're doing a round-up of great Musk pieces, the interview Ross Andersen did for Aeon should not be missed.

[http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk- interview-o...](http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on- mars/)

</comment><comment><USER37> bloomberg video documentary on Musk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh45igK4Esw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh45igK4Esw)

</comment><comment><USER38> This was an incredible article. Just awesome.

</comment><comment><USER39> "they were in the process of finalizing the paperwork for the funding round when Musk noticed a problem. VantagePoint Capital Partners had signed all of the paperwork except for one crucial page...Musk believed that Salzman's tactics were part of a mission to bankrupt Tesla. Musk feared that VantagePoint would oust him as CEO, recapitalize Tesla, and emerge as the major owner of the carmaker."

From other sources it seems that VantagePoint may have owned less than 10% of the company. I am surprised that a minority shareholder could legally have the power to block an additional funding round; couldn't the other shareholders have brought it to a vote and overrule VantagePoint? Was the reason this wasn't done just the lack of time, or could VantagePoint really have had some procedural right to block this?

</comment><comment><USER40> Has anyone else experienced slow scrolling and no visible scrollbar? I'm on Chrome on a Nexus 6.

I fear it's a ploy to keep my eyeballs on the site for as long as possible. Not a fan of this at all.

<comment><USER41> Same thing on my iPhone. I gave up trying to read the article because of it.

Even safaris built-in reader mode didn't work, it wouldn't look past the first section of the article.

I'm guessing they're playing games with the DOM using JavaScript or something like that. Doesn't really matter, it completely broke to usability of reading the article.

I sent them a comment about it, I hope they listen. I really dislike this new trend of websites implementing their own custom scrolling behavior. I've yet to see one that improved on the default behavior in iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> When I was going through the article, these two quotes came to my mind.

 _"There are some people who just get what they want in the world. If you want to start a startup you have to be one of those people. You can't be passive and wishy-washy,"_ – Paul Graham

 _" A formidable person is one who seems like they'll get what they want, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way."_\- pg

</comment><comment><USER43> Why is this somewhat pointless comment voted so highly, everyone jealous?

You could certainly argue that Musk was quite fortunate at certain key points, but really, who else has accomplished anything remotely similar?

</comment><comment><USER44> One thing for sure is that after going through all this, he must be pretty zen now. He has talent(s), funding, market, trust, ...

</comment><comment><USER45> Can't wait for the book version next week.

</comment><comment><USER46> What was the moldy Russian book on rockets that Elon Musk was reading???</comment>


Show HN: HipStat – Track Inches, Not Pounds - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.idh54sd31jrgppn131wo02

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I've been a lurker of HN for a while and thought I'd post up a Show HN thread for my new Android/Web app geared towards tracking body measurements rather than body weight.

This is a super early release so there are bound to be issues (see: [http://genius.com/4126912/Genius-the-genius-isms/Take-the- ro...](http://genius.com/4126912/Genius-the-genius-isms/Take-the-roast-out-of- the-oven)).

Really interested in getting some early feedback, so your comments are very much appreciated.

The plan is to focus on next implementing goal tracking and then to add some simple social elements (a la Instagram).

Cheers!

PS: If you don't have an Android device, you can access it via the web at [http://app.hipstat.com](http://app.hipstat.com)

<comment><USER2> I think the large picture of the woman in the bikini might be a little too revealing. You might go with something tamer. I imagine it would make the target audience more comfortable.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the picture is super off-putting; I liked the app concept but any interest I had disappeared when I saw that login screen. It looks like something more suited for Tinder than a health tracking app, and frankly, I'm sick of seeing skimpily clad women as the metric for idealness. It's demeaning and demotivating as hell if you can't fit into that mold. Not to mention that some titillating picture of a woman's ass isn't in any way appropriate for a general interest app in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I may be missing it, but the cool thing about self-quantification usually is that you're not responsible for data acquisition. Things like Fitbit/Aria and Mint give you some automation and make it easier and more fun to track data (and ostensibly turn it into action).

Of course, there's no smart tape that I know of, but I think it would be CV- trivial to rescale & superimpose silhouettes of progressive pictures on top of each other to track progress. I know a lot of people would shy away from doing something like that, but it would be pretty cool. As it is, measurement with a tape is a pain and worse, subject to a good deal of human error.

<comment><USER5> Isn't it possible to do the measurements visually using Kinect?

<comment><USER4> Possibly? I don't know how accurate they'd be, but that's the general idea I'm getting at. Most people have a hard time committing to long-term work for self-quantification.

Measurement of progress autonomously means less work, more data and perhaps more chance at success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How about track cm, not inches?

<comment><AUTHOR> This will be an option soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Before you sign up to try it - there's no way to remove your account or indicate you don't want email from HipStat during the sign up process or after you've joined.

<comment><USER8> The SPAM button in your e-mail client can take good care of that, should you find yourself in that position.

<comment><USER7> It's fine for me to throw eggs at your house because you own a mop.

<comment><USER9> Or its like me sending you a letter in the mail and you throwing it out...?

Pretty sure cleaning up after thrown eggs is significantly more work, and more public than hitting the spam button

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please add SI units. I would like to use this app but I'm accustomed to m/cm and inches are meaningless to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rest assured I'll be adding this soon. Thank you for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's the very obvious UX problem though, that for weight, all you need to do is step on a block of solid material, whereas this has a lot more friction in the process.

Not sure that's solvable, but that's been my main reason for not tracking these measurements for now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. I agree that it's more involved and effort to track measurements, but without developing a companion piece of hardware (smart tape?) I see no solution for this.

You get a much more precise indication of the way your body is changing for your help extra effort however. This app for example will be of far more use to a body builder than a weight tracker would be.

</comment></comment><comment> jay-saint Just a quick suggestion as the husband of a woman who does not like tracking her fitness by pounds. She is always more concerned with which size dress she can fit into. Maybe it would be good to have a conversion mechanism from inches to dress size.

<comment><USER12> That would be really difficult to do as no two dresses are the same size. Same for male clothing to be honest!

<comment><USER13> Yes, it's a disaster area. I'll just plug a small web app written by a friend of mine that addresses this problem: [http://sizes.darkgreener.com/](http://sizes.darkgreener.com/)

It uses least squares regression to work out, given your actual measurements, what "size" label from which shops is likely to fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great. Would your friend be interested in discussing a collaboration? I'm looking to build similar functionality into HipStat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "So you have to wonder, what's really the point in measuring weight? Why not measure what really matters, the size of your body!"

I do have to wonder, why is it that the size of your body matters?

<comment><USER15> Well, it matters if you care about measuring your fat loss. Measuring fat loss by tracking weight is less accurate, because muscle is heavier than fat, if you are exercising to lose fat you may get heavier due to increased muscle mass, even though you are thinner, i.e. carrying less fat. There are other factors that affect your weight, such as water retention. As for why to measure at the hip, well, there isn't much muscle around that area compared to say your thigh, so the size of the muscle is not affecting the measurement output so much, meaning you are measuring fat loss, rather than fat+muscle loss/gain. (Muscle loss is generally not a good thing, it's very important to our health).

Personally I think we need a way to measure our _health_ rather than tracking metrics that can encourage unhealthy relationships with our bodies. Ideally we would be able to quickly assess how close we are to a healthy level of body fat, lean muscle mass, be it is too high or too low. Measuring how heavy / big you are feeds into "weight status" and "thigh gap" fixation. In a less- imperfect world we'd be competitive about how healthy we are, rather than silly and often unhealthy things like thinness, and weight.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE 21/07/2015:

Hi all. I wanted to post a quick update based on some of your fantastic feedback.

As of today, I have released a new update (you should get it automatically without needing to update the app). This update includes the following:

\- Ability to delete your account from the settings screen

\- Improvements to the way measurements are saved (server side)

\- Ability to save measurements in cm or inches (more to come on this, including an account settings preference for metrics)

I am aiming to change the login screen background this week along with a couple of other minor tweaks before I go away for a long weekend.

Thanks again Tom

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't there a big difference in health/success between a fat arm and an arm with muscles on it?

<comment><USER17> There is. There isn't a lot of point measuring arms as an indicator of body fat. But if you measure the right parts of the body, and you measure more than one, you can get a surprisingly accurate measurement of body fat - the US Navy Body Composition Assessment method gets to within 3% based on two or three circumferences and your height:

[http://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/1660/how- accurate...](http://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/1660/how-accurate-is- the-navy-body-fat-calculator)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In theory, I like the idea of tracking measurements.

In reality, I can't take reliable measurements of myself. Even back-to-back measurements vary quite a lot because the tape isn't in the exact same position and orientation.

</comment><comment><USER19> What about a smart belt that automatically tracks your waist size? Other measurements may be harder to get automatically.

<comment><USER20> Or just use an ordinary belt and look at how the belt-hole-number changes.

<comment><USER19> That's so 2014!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find the demo screenshot intriguing as I try to visualize someone with either a 14" or 20" waistline.

<comment><USER2> That demo measurement is for the upper arm. A waist that size would be disturbing, or an infant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I may not be the target market, but the "social networking coming soon!" bit is a huge turn off for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. What specifically turns you off about this idea?

The goal would be to provide support and motivation. It would be an opt out feature. You will be able to make your account private.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any plans for iOS?

<comment> yoz-y A way to add new categories to Health app would replace many of these kinds of applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> did you use semantic-ui?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did yeah :)</comment></comment>