Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan - <AUTHOR> http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=9292217

<comment><USER2> Oh look. Its the system actually _working_ for a change. A guy did a stupid thing that might have endangered someone else with his property. He was arrested and may be charged for a crime that _if convicted_ would lead to a fine large enough to deter him and others from doing something this stupid again.

Seems like a perfectly rational reaction to me despite the overhyped news story. (Slow news day no that there's no 'shutdown' to breathlessly go on about?)

<comment><USER3> Except for the end where they say the NYPD is _now_ investigating it and the person who reported it said he had a sense they didn't know how to handle it. That's why he brought the story to the media. So, yeah the system works if you include media/social networks and the 'overhyping' of attention in to the loop. Would he have been arrested if this story didn't have attention? It seems that the police have no strategy and have not yet thought about how they are going to enforce this FAA rule which is clearly going to be more and more relevant in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems he was arrested for crashing it near a pedestrian, not simply for flying it. He was charged with reckless endanderment for is inability to control the device.

<comment><USER5> To me, I think either way this activity should be banned. Though the activity should be allowed in some rural area with permits. Especially in a dense, metropolitan city like NYC, flying a robotic copter or drone can pose dangerous. especially if everyone were to fly one.

<comment><USER6> "Ban all the things"…

How would one envision something like that to be enforced in NYC (or anywhere): Stop and frisk for drones? House to house, apartment to apartment sweeps?

<comment><USER7> By checking to see whether there's any unauthorized drones in the sky?

<comment><USER8> And if you find one, and the owner doesn't post his face in a video, how do you track it back to him? My greatest concern with this is that they'll destroy RC aircraft as a hobby. There are many experienced RC helicopter and airplane pilots out there who have been flying these safely for decades. The problem is now that prices have come down (they used to cost an order of magnitude more), every idiot thinks they can do it.

That being said, the 'drone' this man was probably flying doesn't really pose a danger to anyone. They're typically made of foam or lightweight plastic and have very little kinetic energy. A full speed hit to the head with one wouldn't cause much harm (this is pretty much true for anything 100 sized and smaller - anything larger and you can start to hurt people with direct hits).

For instance, something like this: [http://www.horizonhobby.com/products/blade-nano-cp-x-bnf- BLH...](http://www.horizonhobby.com/products/blade-nano-cp-x-bnf-BLH3380) weighs 29 _grams_. That's ~1/30th of a kg. This quadcopter: [http://www.horizonhobby.com/products/nano-qx-bnf-with- safe-t...](http://www.horizonhobby.com/products/nano-qx-bnf-with-safe- technology-BLH7680#t2) weighs 16.5 grams. Banning stuff like that would be a huge overreaction. My largest helicopter (I fly RC stuff, if you haven't already figured it out) is ~750 grams, which is definitely large enough to hurt someone, but requiring me to have a license to fly it in my back yard would be crazy - I have 12 acres, which is ample space. Besides that, I've never crashed it, because unlike that buffoon, I know what I'm doing :) (edit - never crashed _this_ one. As stated by another poster, components do fail, even on real aircraft, so it does happen). That being said, because I know what I'm doing, I'd never try flying it off a balcony in NYC.

TLDR; Responsible/skilled people should be allowed to fly, irresponsible people should be held accountable. If they can nail him for reckless endangerment, I think the current laws are strong enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't really agree with calling an RC helicopter a drone. It sounds way more malicious that way. But then again, "Local man found to be bad at flying RC helicopter" isn't nearly as attention-grabbing.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are things you should do differently in densely populated areas like NYC. Flying consumer drones around without any permission or training is just not a good idea.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, gonna have to disagree with you here.

You know how you get training? By doing, by practicing.

There's no need to nanny people--if they're not careful and _if_ they end up causing damage, deal with it then; otherwise just be cool.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but go outside of the city to practice where you don't risk hurting other people.

Handguns are also illegal in NYC- if you want to get handgun training you need to go outside of the city where people won't get hurt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to fly remote control planes. There ARE rules for where you can fly them, because many of them (the ones with turbine engines) are capable of 200+ mph (actually faster, but it's hard to keep track of them) and can weight 10-50 pounds (some of the bigger propeller-powered ones are 100-200+ pounds, though much slower). They are dangerous in the wrong hands, and require quite a bit of training to fly properly and safely.

This guy broke the law, did something dangerous, and deserves a fine. Period.

<comment><USER13> Turbine engined planes in the 10-50 pound range are a subset of remote control planes with a penetration on the order of 0.1 - 0.01%.

Prop-powered 100-200 pound planes are even less common. A 12ft wingspan Senior Telemaster, made of old-fashioned wood with an internal combustion engine, weighs in at 31 pounds, and is not something you can reasonably transport without a commercial truck or trailer.

For the simple majority of people, fixed-wing RC planes involve ARF EPO foam models in the 1 to 2.5 meter range that are ridiculously safe in a direct collision. Other niches may be somewhat riskier, but few equal the things you like to do (aerobatic stunt heli flying with large models is one of them that does).

There is an ongoing problem that such people have with the turbine & super- heavy class hobbyists trying to legislate based on reasonable voluntary safety provisions for what is essentially _payloadless guided missile testing_ , to apply to an FPV Easy Star foamie or a 5lb quadrotor. They are not the same thing, and they do not pose the same danger.

A GoPro-carrying quadrotor is recklessly endangering the people on the ground to an injury on the level of an open-handed slap, an open-handed slap that misses and scratches fingnernails across the cheek if it's unlucky and hits using the rotors. A bruise or scratches, worst-case scenario.

A carbon fiber / fiberglass / aluminum jetfighter model sporting a turbine engine that flies 400mph is an entire other _world_ of danger, akin to hitting someone with a full-size Cessna.

<comment><USER12> > Turbine engined planes in the 10-50 pound range are a subset of remote > control planes with a penetration on the order of 0.1 - 0.01%. Prop-powered > 100-200 pound planes are even less common.

Less common for sure, but plentiful enough. At the club where I used to fly (it had a grass field, on a large ranch in the country), the average plane had a 10-12 foot wingspan (I personally learned on an 8 foot trainer). The biggest planes had around a 20-25 foot wingspan, the one I specifically remember was a B-17, powered by 4 large gasoline engines. The club in the city had quite a few turbine/fan powered planes, and there even was a hobby shop that specialized in RC jets.

> There is an ongoing problem that such people have with the turbine & super- > heavy class hobbyists trying to legislate based on reasonable voluntary > safety provisions for what is essentially payloadless guided missile > testing, to apply to an FPV Easy Star foamie or a 5lb quadrotor. They are > not the same thing, and they do not pose the same danger.

They aren't the same thing, but if people get annoyed with them, it could be bad news for hobbyists, and those who actually do fly RC planes safely. I'd hate to see anti-'drone' legislation that is too broad and hurts responsible hobbyists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting story, but this particular "article" appears to just be a transcript of the video, but isn't noted as such, in which case text like "the small helicopter drone similar to this one" is unhelpful. Also the video isn't well clipped, including some other updates at the beginning. Also the "read original story" link is quite broken.

Alternate source?

</comment><comment><USER15> There was a teenager in New York who died recently when his RC helicopter sliced off the top of his head[1]. Flying these things in heavily populated areas is going to be an issue, whether there is a human being at the controls or it is some future autonomous "tacocopter."

[1] [http://nypost.com/2013/09/05/man-decapitated-by-remote- contr...](http://nypost.com/2013/09/05/man-decapitated-by-remote-controlled- toy-helicopter/)

<comment><USER13> This is a "toy" with a single reinforced carbon fiber main-rotor blade 5 feet in diameter, which is flown pretty much exclusively by people like this for the purpose of pulling very physics-defying stunts, flipping and turning and changing direction faster than a dragonfly could, two or three maneuvers a second in directions that are not aerodynamically favored. It is designed to accelerate very fast, and that means spinning its rotors many times faster than is necessary to hold it up in the air, so it can bleed off that velocity in a 100ms maneuver.

These are not a new innovation - they use dirty 'nitro' (liquid fuel) engines, and have been around for decades.

They are inherently dangerous, adult toys, and anyone flying them without binoculars on assumes a certain degree of risk. Even so: it requires a very unlucky shot to kill a person with a 700-class helicopter, and I find the concept that it 'sliced off the top of his head' sensationalist garbage. Tens or hundreds of people out of the tens of thousands operating these machines end up with deep scratches or partially amputated fingers (you can see them on Youtube), but the time since the last fatal accident is about a decade.

These are _completely unlike_ the safety issues posed by various categories of planes and multirotors, or by remote camera-driven operation of those aircraft. There are very real advantages to a society in which these things are legal, and with a lot of the useful ones, I would be comfortable flying one into my face to demonstrate; The larger examples that can fly heavy DSLRs, perhaps aim for a limb.

It's more like someone demonstrating their finesse with a hobby of medieval flail weapons paid $1000 to buy an authentic one, put on shows entertaining people with it for a few years, and then in a slip-up gored themselves in the back of the neck. The risk and speed is literally the draw with these things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A couple years ago, a guy used an RC plane to record a video of a New York flyover, including the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. The police were pretty cool about it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1966336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1966336)

<comment><USER17> The police were, but the FAA isn't a fan:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/9/4821094/remote-aircraft- pi...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/9/4821094/remote-aircraft-pilot-fights- faa-fine-could-change-drone-rules)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A remote controlled aircraft is not a 'drone'. At least not in the breathless sensationalist sense we're supposed to read into that title.

</comment><comment><USER19> How is this going to end? All radio-controlled planes will require aviation licenses? Maybe they will need tracking devices too? I think I will enjoy watching people scramble to deal with the disruption.

</comment><comment><USER20> People in Egypt started using drones to document the rogue and brutal activities of the police.

So for a government civil drones are a threat. Better make it illegal to fly them in urban areas. And to enforce that drones have to be registered. How convenient.

</comment><comment><USER21> To clarify some of the discussion, there are two separate regulatory regimes at play here.

Navigable airspace is regulated by the FAA and the FAA has recently begun to enforce its rules for UAS or drones (see tensafefrogs's comment). The FAA's view is that the difference between RC and a UAS/drone is whether the operator gets paid. They mostly ignore the RC community.

Then there is a state/local regulation of reckless behavior in general. This is not related to flying, per se. It is related to endangering others.

The pattern of prosecution is the feds going after operators who are getting paid for violating the rules for aircraft (any aircraft piloted or not must maintain separation from buildings, etc.) and the state/local authorities going after RC operators who endanger others through recklessness.

All in all, it seems like we're moving towards a rational system where RC operators can play in safe spaces and eventually we'll have licensing and regulation of commercial operators to work in more challenging environments.

</comment><comment><USER22> Slighlty related: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxBM- JLNyBg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxBM-JLNyBg)

After seeing this video, I do see why people love drone flying so much, it's amazing how much can you see from there that you can't with any other means. (They have other very nice videos, from the costa concordia to Angkor Wat)

</comment><comment><USER23> This points to the sadly much more likely FAA and law enforcement attitude and responses to the advent of rc copters than encouraging the licensing of useful things and tacocopters.

</comment><comment><USER24> I am glad this happened. People like this guy are lacking something very basic: common sense.

As someone for whom model airplanes have been a life-long hobby that I am now passing on to my children I am very ciponcerned about the idiots playing with these "drones". These are the guys who are going to bone those of us who conduct these activities with common sense as well as respect and consideration for the safety of others.

I recently ran into this at a "fun fly" organized by our club. These are rvents where modelers come from all over to enjoy a day of flying --usually with a theme, such as helicopters, flat planes, gliders, scale, etc.

This guy showed-up with a plane equipped with GPS and FPV (onboard video with downlink). He proceeded to fly the thing over people, roads and even over a local campground half a mile away. All of this while I and other club members went from asking for this to stop to almost yelling and screaming at the guy. As things went he ended-up crashing the plane. Thankfully this happened well away of people and property.

Yes, these people are idiots and they need to suffer the consequences of their actions when warranted.

<comment><USER25> You say idiots, I say your cognitive bias is rearing its reality distortion field. Read up on fundamental attribution error and you'll see what's wrong with your comment.

<comment><USER24> My comment is actually fairly objective. I happen to think it might actually be too nice a characterization of people who might be inclined to do such things.

Here's the problem. Let's assume you are right and I am wrong. The person is not an idiot. The person in question is a very intelligent man, highly accomplished in his chosen profession and perhaps even holding an advanced degree from a top university. In other words, someone who would be almost impossible to characterize as an idiot.

OK. Excellent. With that establish, let's examine what this person did: They are doing the equivalent of placing a six to eight pound (or more) incendiary device 200 feet above people or property.

Yes, LiPo's catch fire when seriously damaged, therefore it is perfectly reasonable to characterize them as incendiary devices.

        The potential energy of a 6 lbs object at 200 ft is 1,629 Joules.
        The potential energy of an 8 lbs object at 200 ft is 2,174 Joules.

OK, what does this mean anyway?

        The muzzle energy of a 44 Magnum round is approximately 1,400 Joules.
        The muzzle energy of a 50 AE (Desert Eagle) is approximately 2,000 Joules.

Not an apples-to-apples comparison, of course, rather one to develop a sense of proportion. We can probably say that flying a 6 to 8 pound object 200 feet above people or property is roughly equivalent to potentially shooting a 44 Magnum or Desert Eagle at those people. Again, a rough comparison only for the purpose of trying to evaluate how dangerous it might be to engage in such an activity.

And so, this really smart and considerate person goes ahead and flies such a gizmo above people.

What's the thought process and what is the motivation?

You see, if the person is an idiot when it comes to making such decisions the answer is easy: It's just another idiot.

However, if they are not. If this person is doing this with full command of the facts and full understanding of the risks involved then, well, we might justly be able to characterize his actions as being intentionally and negligently criminal or worst.

My point, in many ways, is that calling them "idiots" might actually be kind. In fact, IANAL but I would suspect when the day comes that someone kills a person with a toy drone we are going to see a temporary insanity defense. Being an idiot, in that case, might actually be an asset. Not one of these people is going to go up in front of a judge and claim to have been fully aware of the risks and issues while deciding to purposely fly a device into the position that ultimately caused someone's death.

To change the frame of reference in order to make it even clearer: What do we call someone who goes to a public park full of people and kids and starts shooting a gun up in the air in random directions. Well, at best. At best. An idiot. In reality, they would be arrested and charged criminally. So, again, calling them "idiot" is actually being kind. The scenario is indistinguishable from that of flying a heavy drone on top of people. They can kill, just like a bullet. Unlike a bullet, they can start fires which can, in turn, easily kill tens or hundreds of people.

So, yeah. I don't see any way to agree with your perspective.

<comment><USER25> At first I wanted to commend you on your long answer since you put a lot of work to explain your position. As I was writing a reply I understood that you have spent so much time to explain in detail why some subset X of humans are idiots, while attributing the motives of their actions to their innate qualities. (read: their idiotism)

This is an exact demonstration of the fundamental attribution error I've posted before.

Moreover, your comment is perfectly applicable to guns and cars with same fancy calculations and characterizations. And I definitely wont get into the discussion about personal responsibility, determinism vs free choice, etc. At least not in this discussion.

<comment><USER24> I don't understand. How would you characterize these people? You are quick to defend them and criticize my position yet offer nothing in the way of understanding how society should view them. Good folk who should be allowed to play with their toys at the playground where your kids play?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Correct title: Brooklyn man arrested for _crashing_ (not flying) drone _in /to_ (not over) Manhattan.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'll be curious to read by what theory NYPD thinks they have jurisdiction over national airspace.

<comment><USER28> This particular incident sounds more like NYPD thinking they have jurisdiction over "people dropping things on pedestrians," which I'm pretty sure they do.

They charged the guy with reckless endangerment, not some kind of airspace- related violation. Seems pretty darn reasonable to me, to be honest.</comment></comment>


How Chrome Changed the Web Overnight - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/How_Chrome_Changed_the_Web_Overnight

<comment><USER2> Can we all say hype? Chrome hasn't changed anything yet. More importantly, it comes with one unique and great advance - the fact that each tab is a separate process.

V8, beyond the hype, doesn't seem to do any better than the upcoming javascript engines from Apple and Mozilla. It may be an order of magnitude better than what is currently production, but it's in the same ballpark as what Firefox and Safari will have soon.

Chrome is wonderful and will probably be my default browser for a while, but it's evolutionary, not revolutionary (except for the per-tab processes). It will push the web forward faster as Google has some great minds working on it and it is very nicely polished and efficient. It just isn't game-changing or revolutionary - it's a nice evolutionary step that's a wonderful program to use.

<comment><USER3> Again. Sometimes an order of magnitude _is_ game-changing.

There are articles about people long ago trying to cram in features into their word processor that nowadays are trivial even in shell that were immensely complex because of less RAM or CPU.

Alot of the stuff thats different I agree is evolutionary, but Chrome has two features: "fast" and "faster". It appears that V8 doesn't blow everyone else out of the water compared to some prototypes. That's fine. Order of magnitude faster than everything else in production is game-changing.

<comment><USER2> The thing is that it is NOT an order of magnitude faster than other javascript engines in production.

The Dromaeo test suite shows the production Safari 3.1.2 on Windows beats Chrome. Wow, Safari before the huge JS upgrade beating Chrome on the Windows platform! The SunSpider suite shows Chrome to be around 40% faster than Safari and 25% faster than Firefox 3, but on par with Safari 4.0 and only a tad faster than Firefox 3.1.

In fact, the only thing that shows V8 as being so amazing is Google's own test which is basically a lot of recursion (akin to Microsoft's surveys that show people love Vista).

Google has a good product, but it isn't an order of magnitude better than what exists today and is on par with what is coming in the future. Heck, pull a nightly of the new Mozilla TraceMonkey engine and you'll see that TraceMonkey handily beats V8 (after 2 months of development rather than 2 years). Oh, and Chrome isn't in production.

Different processes will be game changing. V8 just won't be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't notice anything changed about my web when I turned it on this morning. :(

</comment><comment><USER5> And everyone's opinion of google with it's evil EULA. I just hate that EULA, it's the most evil thing i've ever seen, it makes look Hitler as a well intentioned fellow [I'm exhagerating greatly here, please take no offense, i just wanted to make a point].

Google hasn't changed their EULA for the spanish version and i wonder if this has happened for the many other supported languages.

<comment><USER6> It's distributed under BSD license, no EULA can screw that. Every attempt at it could be averted by getting the BSD licensed code and making own builds without any strings attached.

That infamous EULA was intented for other Google services, and was mistakenly used for the browser. Supposedly (I haven't actually read it) it was already changed/clarified.

<comment><USER5> True, but that is not true for other languages other than english. At least the spanish EULA is still the same.

So if i build google chrome by myself without any changes whatsoever and use the product of my build do i unbind myself from the EULA?

<comment><USER6> Yes, the code is available under the BSD license, which is basically a "do whatever you want" license. You can download it, you can build it, you can redistribute it. You can even rebrand it and start selling it, although it wouldn't make you the most popular person around the internets.

It's the binary that was (and as you noted, is) distributed under that unfortunate EULA. For me it is really clear that they did not intend to have such an EULA, with the BSD licensed code, it REALLY makes no sense.

BTW, a somewhat similar issue struck Firefox too: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranding>

A trademark/branding issue resulted in Debian Linux having a browser called Iceweasel instead of Firefox, built from the same sources.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Transmitting binary information from one person's brain to another - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/emailing-your-brainwaves-future-communication-266155 <comment><USER2> This -- or future developments in the area -- is of greatest possible interest to people who are profoundly disabled and may be incapable of communicating but remain at some level of capability/consciousness. Even a lossy, slow method of getting information in/out of them lets them participate in their own medical care (e.g. "Do you perceive pain?" " _Yyyy_ " "I'm sorry about that. I'll adjust your medication.") and continue interacting with their loved ones.

<comment><USER3> A quick search for "locked-in syndrome" turns up this citation:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16186044](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16186044)

"It has been shown that more than half of the time it is the family and not the physician who first realized that the patient was aware. Distressingly, recent studies reported that the diagnosis of LIS on average takes over 2.5 months. In some cases it took 4-6 years before aware and sensitive patients, locked in an immobile body, were recognized as being conscious."

<comment><USER4> Based on the Glasgow Coma Scale, people with Locked-In Syndrome _are also in comas, technically_. Figuring it out seems remarkably hard, and is almost certainly wildly under-detected. I'd be interested to see if we are able to use tools like this to discover whether our assumptions about comatose states are at all accurate.

Also, of course, the obvious Inception-oriented ideas would be good to test out as well.

<comment><USER5> You know, I've always wondered why, in edge cases like this, it's not standard to run the patients through fMRI to detect whether or not the patient is actually _conscious_ before just consigning them to a bed with no interaction. Or am I mistaken, and this is routinely done?

<comment><USER3> It's not that simple, at all. From my Pinboard archives (what would I do without Pinboard?):

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/what- anesthesi...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/what-anesthesia- can-teach-us-about-consciousness.html?_r=0)

 _For every 1,000 people who undergo general anesthesia, there will be one or two who are not as unconscious as they seem — people who remember their doctors talking, and who are aware of the surgeon's knife, even while their bodies remain catatonic and passive. For the unlucky 0.13 percent for whom anesthesia goes awry, there's not really a good preventive. That's because successful anesthetization requires complete unconsciousness, and consciousness isn't something we can measure._

Here we have a much more common problem than locked-in syndrome, a problem which anesthesiologists have been studying since before their job had a name, but we can't even solve _that_ because we don't even have a decent working definition of what we mean by "consciousness" in these contexts, let alone what we can measure to determine someone's "consciousness". It's an active field of research, which is a fine thing to remember whenever we start getting too high on science fiction:

[http://www.xkcd.com/1345/](http://www.xkcd.com/1345/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the direct link to the PLOS One journal article: [http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0105225#pone-0105225-g001)

EDIT: A better summary is available below from jawns.

<comment><USER7> The Newsweek headline is pretty misleading, although the study lends itself to being misread.

It looks as though the "emitter" of information (the person who begins the communication) used two different motor movements -- one that represents a 1 and the other that represents a 0 -- to communicate a stream of binary information. An EEG picked up those motor-based signals from the subject's brain.

Then that binary information was sent to another location, where transcranial magnetic stimulation was used on the "receivers," who sensed the 1s as visual stimuli and the 0s as no visual stimuli. After each bit was communicated, they told the researchers whether they saw any visual stimuli.

In other words, the "emitter" didn't just think of a word and that word somehow magically popped into the heads of the receivers. We're a loooooong way off from that.

In fact, if I'm understanding this correctly, the entire gimmick about words like "hola" and "ciao" being transmitted is misleading, or at least irrelevant in terms of what was actually achieved.

Really, the best way to sum this up is:

Binary information is transmitted with significant accuracy using non-invasive neural sensors (for detection) and non-invasive neural stimuli (for reception).

And indeed, I have a sneaking suspicion that neither the accurate detection of binary signals using EEG nor the accurate communication of binary signals using TMS is particularly groundbreaking ... in which case, the only thing novel about this study is that the researchers decided to pair the two.

EDIT: Actually, the paper seems to be implying that accurate communication of binary signals in a computer-to-brain interface is indeed groundbreaking (From the introduction: "the realization of non-invasive CBI in humans remains elusive") but if that were so, one would think that the EEG component of the study introduces needlessly complexity; the researchers could just as easily begin with a predefined stream of 1s and 0s, rather than trying to extract them from someone else's brain.

<comment><USER8> >In fact, if I'm understanding this correctly, the entire gimmick about words like "hola" and "ciao" being transmitted is misleading, or at least irrelevant in terms of what was actually achieved.

You're absolutely right; this study is neither novel nor groundbreaking.

On the sending side, forget 90%, success rates of 99% are easy to achieve with some types of BCI systems such as SSVEP or P300. As for the information detected, you might have heard of the P300 speller[1] which demonstrated an easy way to accurately spell out words using a BCI headset.

On the receiving side we see why they opted for binary communication. The 'telepathy' was nothing more than a flash of light being visible for a value of '1', achieved by blasting a region of the brain associated with vision with magnetic fields about as strong as an MRI. That sounds cool, but it is a technique that has been in use for over a decade[2].

So tl;dr, what these researchers have achieved is essentially stringing together two or three decades-old technologies in a not terribly original way.

[1]: [http://www.cortechsolutions.com/Applications/Brain- Computer-...](http://www.cortechsolutions.com/Applications/Brain-Computer- Interface/g-BCIsys/BCI-Examples/P300-Speller) [2]: [http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/125/3/479.long](http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/125/3/479.long)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.

Not okay. Direct brain interfaces, as cool as they are, make me super-nervous if I'm hooked up to anything not 100% in my control. We can't even keep Windows XP boxes from getting rooted--what chance does a person have?

<comment><USER10> I upvoted you to try to bring you out of the gray because I think you're making a useful point (though I don't think your tone is effective, which is probably why you got downvoted).

Write access to minds is, uh, pretty serious. And we generally suck at writing secure software. So yeah, this is scary. As much as I love the idea of this tech, and want to live in a world where it's ubiquitous and safe and we don't need screens or keyboards etc., I'm not going to be beta testing any of this stuff.

<comment><USER11> i have write access to your mind write now! not so bad, is it?

once you learn not to put extreme trust into anything you think, it won't feel so bothersome. it'll probably help us trust each other more.

<comment><USER10> You have _extremely limited_ write access to my mind - text over the internet is not a particular high-bandwidth or invasive channel. Short of some kind of neurolinguistic programming (which AFAIK isn't really a thing), the worst anyone can do is offend me.

Direct electric stimulation is a pretty different beast. I am normally all for deconstructing arbitrary distinctions, but I don't think this one is arbitrary. There is a qualitative difference between reading text and having my brain internals directly manipulated by electrical impulses.

<comment><USER12> It is not important that you think of pink elephants right now. Or, even, if you can, then, remember a time when you might have thought of a pink elephant? And how the pink elephant made you feel, and then remember a future where you've been thinking about pink elephants for some time. Kind of amazing isn't it, how you came to think of a pink elephant that time? It's kind of warm, fuzzy, comforting pink feeling, just washing pink warmness all over your body and bathing you in the comforting embrace when you think of a pink elephant.

<comment><USER10> Yes, you can make me think about pink elephants (though I'm not convinced you can make me associate them with a warm fuzzy feeling). But you can't change my values or my memories by writing me a paragraph like that. You could if you kidnapped and brainwashed me, but that's also something I plan to avoid. It is precisely because my mind is vulnerable and malleable that I want to limit other people's write access to it.

My house has windows, and you can see in, and you can put up a poster outside my window and I might see and read it and think about something. That's not the same as letting you walk into my house and touch me (or remote control my toilets or whatever).

<comment><USER12> It was worth a try! :-)

All joking aside, the mention of NLP above reminded me of some stuff I'd read a while back. I'm fairly skeptical of NLP, but I can see how some of those techniques might have a certain sort of value.

<comment><USER11> they work really well on people who believe they work. they don't work at all on people who dismiss them.

funny, that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> i can't wait for the first telepathic social network!

i had a psychotic break in 2012 and believed that i was on such a thing - like, i thought it already existed and i was given beta access. i wasn't sure how else to explain it. i could 'talk' with other people just by thinking about them, or set them up for conversations with each other. it was pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Finally, we anticipate that computers in the not-so-distant future will interact directly with the human brain in a fluent manner, supporting both computer- and brain-to-brain communication routinely."

Pretty interesting, history shows that tech gets cheaper and easier over time. If this is also the case here this could change communication as we know it.

By the way, given Newsweeks recent history with the bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto fiasco maybe just link the original source? It seems to be freely available [1].

[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0105225#pone-0105225-g001)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder what the implications of a direct brain-to-computer interface, and through that, the internet, are if this interface is left on while you sleep. Would your unconscious mind wander out into the internet? What would it do there?

</comment><comment><USER15> While people futz with their text messages, their facebook, their google, it is telepathy - the ultimate means of knowledge transfer and communication that we seek.

If/when wireless telepathy becomes a feasible technique it would be a breakthrough of greater significance than the internet

</comment><comment><USER16> i understand the greater point of this, but its funny to me to think that we already have api's for this (sight, sound, mainly) and these guys just forgot to read the docs

<comment><USER17> Theses API are broken on some of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If something this sexy only made it into PLoS One, either it can't be that good or the authors have some ideological commitment to PLoS One's publishing values.

</comment><comment><USER19> Step 1: Include the brain wave scanner in future Oculus VR devices.

Step 2: Use virtual reality as the interface for brain-to-computer, brain-to- internet, and brain-to-brain communication.

Step 3: Considering the acquisition of Oculus by Facebook, make these types of communication available on Facebook.

<comment><USER19> By the way, you will get a free Oculus device if you allow it to handle internet-to-brain communication: "Indirect" advertising (through text, video etc.) is a thing of the past. Long live "direct" advertising -- projected right into the brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article is unreadable on mobile. Anyone getting it working?

</comment><comment><USER21> Sure, if you define "words" as a binary "did you see lights?" question.

See jawns comment for what this study was actually about; certainly not the transmission of actual words. Deceptive headline and article.

EDIT: After reading the linked study, I was too harsh; they did actually transmit the words (with a 2-11% error rate) via this binary "lights" mechanism, so you could use such a mechanism to communicate in Morse code. Just not for the sort of subliminal communication inferred in the article.</comment>


TCP-Starvation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Eplox/TCP-Starvation <comment><USER2> This is a really, really old attack. One way to protect against this is by limiting the number of open connections per IP. So if you can have up to 30000 sockets open in your process, 30 per IP is plenty to prevent most attackers.

IPv6 changes this a bit, so one might want to do a limit per subnet, say 30 per /64.

<comment><USER3> >IPv6 changes this a bit, so one might want to do a limit per subnet, say 30 per /64.

Works great until your users use an ISP that hands out /128 rather than /64

<comment><USER4> > ISP that hands out /128 rather than /64

Seriously? Who even hands out one single /64 or smaller? it's not like handing out /48s instead is going to deplete the IPv6 pool space [0].

[0] [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E48+%2F+people+on+e...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E48+%2F+people+on+earth)

<comment><USER5> > Who even hands out one single /64 or smaller?

Budget VPS/dedicated server providers, such as OVH: [https://www.kimsufi.com/en/servers.xml](https://www.kimsufi.com/en/servers.xml)

<comment><USER6> DigitalOcean hands out /124s. Then they realized that blackholes were hitting multiple droplets (VMs) at once because people blackhole entire /64s, so their solution was to block ports on IPv6 instead of doing the sensible thing and handing out /64s to the droplets instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a very old attack (~2000) named NAPTHA. [http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/6B0031F0KA.html](http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/6B0031F0KA.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Surprised by the amount of work done on the research but none(?) on past research on the same topic

<comment><USER9> "Three weeks in the lab saves you three days in the library," as the old grad school quip goes. :)

(And yeah, this is a classic failure mode of TCP...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this similar to Slowloris at all?

Edit: With Slowloris it looks like the connection isn't closed client side though?

Although I'm just wondering they're dropping the FINs anyway.

<comment><USER11> With Slowloris there are no missing TCP packets and client sends the correct request but VERY slowly.

<comment><USER10> Cheers, yeah that's a good point

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is a good tool on Linux for testing such attacks?</comment>


Holes in the English language - <AUTHOR> https://speakinggames.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/the-holes-in-the-english-language/ <comment><USER2> As a native English speaker, I found most of these to be rubbish.

For example, #1 is no phrase for "bon appétit". Yeah we do have a phrase for that - it's bon appetit. What's slightly more annoying is that bon appetit just means good appetite, again not a direct translation of "I hope you enjoy this food".

English has never been a curated language, it's all bits and bobs that have been collected over time. If you were a purist, and tried to remove all words in English that didn't originate in England you'd hardly have any words left.

The more common non-native speaker mistakes like "informations" makes sense when you understand why they exist too - information (meaning any number of facts) is uncountable. How many waters are there in my glass? How many water what?

The sumbarines swimming one got me thinking though. I'd probably say "travelled". To be honest it reminded me more of this Dijkstra quote:

"The question of whether Machines Can Think... is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim"</comment>


5 New Tactics For SEO Post-Panda - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/5-new-tactics-for-seo-post-panda-73982?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=feed-main <comment><USER2> oh wow, blue steel SEO, completely fresh and improved, with 200% more white hat magic unicorns.....

sorry, but the article just resells old seo principles with new buzz words. i love seo, i dispise seos and their tabloids.

<comment><USER3> I love grammar. </snark>

The main message of this comment is right on. Their _NEW!_ SEO tactics include emphasizing your key content and getting rid of duplicate or extraneous pages on your website. What?

<comment><USER4> If I understand correctly, it's this summary article that states what you need for SEO:

"The new SEO, at least as far as Panda is concerned, is about pushing your best quality stuff and the complete removal of low-quality or overhead pages from the indexes. Which means it's not as easy anymore to compete by simply producing pages at scale, unless they're created with quality in mind. Which means for some sites, SEO just got a whole lot harder."

Which to me, means that SEO based on a lot of weak references to a strong entry will not add to your page rank, but now will detract from it.

So, if you have one content page, but 5 paths to get to it, remove 4 of them, and add external links (article recommends via social means) to that one canonical page.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Thinking in Functional programming - <AUTHOR> So, I am working thru the "programming clojure" book. My first lisp language.
I have been finding it very difficult to implement simple problems. I have become familiar with the syntax (got over the = operator typing every other place from my finger memory). While I am comfortable, I feel like I know few keywords without knowing where to use, akin to learning a new language - saying hi, bye, but unable to form a sentence. That is my ponder stop..almost pushes me into procrastination mode
How do I Think in Functional. I catch myself thinking oops(i think of classes,methods..)and i correct myself and end up with something procedural like.
With ref to Uncle Bob's link below , how do I think "inside out"?
II) instead of having another question, I thought of asking it as a sub question from the same link below - TDD in clojure. for one, I don't see a mock object ever created in clojure...please correct me.
I was wondering how to do "TDD" in LISPy languages.
http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/07/19/uncle-bob-jsps-learning-clojure <comment><USER2> I think most functional programmers don't use TDD. Instead, they write little functions (and macros) that do useful things and approach the problem bottom up, constantly trying things out on the REPL and rewriting the code they have already written.

This way of programming seems incompatible with TDD and I would recommend practicing it in order to start thinking functional.

Paul Graham talks about it here:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/progbot.html>

I don't program in Lisp or any other functional language, but I use this style a lot programming in Python and code ends up being pretty functional.

</comment><comment><USER3> I second the call to SICP; it is, admittedly, _very_ hard to deal with not using recursion after reading the first few chapters, but even outside of that, it will change the way you program.

Reading SICP is like taking a freezing shower; it's a bit of a shock at first, but afterward everything is crisp and clear. Colors are brighter and love is lovelier after you read SICP.

Ok, maybe it's not gold-and-bunnies good, but it's pretty good, and should help remove your cognitive stumbling block.

<comment><USER4> I agree, strongly. The best imperative Java code I ever wrote was after I worked through exercises in SICP. The book just taught me new ways to think. I'd also recommend "The Little Schemer", for the same reason.

<comment><USER5> 2nd Little Schemer. Cute but hardcore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think I'd normally say "read SICP" but Clojure discourages recursion in favor of it's looping constructs (due to the non-ability to optimize it on the JVM I'm guessing).

That said, SICP will still teach you to think in terms of HOFs and functions as abstractions, so it'll definitely help out. And it's free online, so the only investment is time.

<comment><USER7> I believe that you can replace directly recursive tail-calls with the `recur' special form to achieve an iterative function manually. If the function is truly recursive, then Clojure will likely behave much as any Scheme would.

<comment><USER6> I haven't looked at the code that gets generated by `recur`, but I'm guessing it creates a trampoline, and it looks a bit limiting. (e.g. you can't recur with variadic functions) That said, probably all of the excercises in SICP could be done with `recur` and `loop,` with a few minor changes. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm kind of in the same boat. There are plenty of resources for learning Clojure, but I haven't found any that help with the transition from object oriented programming to functional programming. I read _Programming Clojure_ and I feel like I know the language, but I'm still working on thinking in terms of functional programming. Interestingly, _Programming in Scala_ has helped some. The hybrid functional/object oriented approach has helped introduce functional concepts with a language that doesn't seem so foreign. It can be difficult to pick up a completely different language (different from C-like languages, anyway) as well as a new programming model at the same time. _JavaScript: The Good Parts_ is also good for the same reason.

There's also an F#/C# book scheduled to come out later this year that looks like it might be good for learning the functional thought process: [http://www.amazon.com/Functional-Programming-Real-World- Exam...](http://www.amazon.com/Functional-Programming-Real-World- Examples/dp/1933988924/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248098702&sr=8-2)

I found this blog post from Stuart Halloway to be informative as well: [http://blog.thinkrelevance.com/2008/9/25/pcl-clojure- chapter...](http://blog.thinkrelevance.com/2008/9/25/pcl-clojure-chapter-17)

<comment><USER8> Stuart Halloway (author of _Programming Clojure_ ) came up with a rewrite of Uncle Bob's bowling game: <http://github.com/stuarthalloway/clojure- bowling/tree/master>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Mock objects in TDD are there so that after a test you can check that the code under test caused side-effects in dependant objects. (At least, most of the time this is why they exist.)

Functional programming is very much about decoupling "pure functional" computation and side-effects. Using pattern matching you can quite easily write a little machine that performs side-effects given different values. These things are simple and about as useful to unit-test as accessor methods are in oo code. Static typing checks do fine. Also, if it is broken, it tends to be severly broken and not lead to undetected or hard-to-find bugs but simply not work at all.

The interesting code to test is that which is given a bunch of parameters and returns a value that would instruct the side-effectful machine about what to do. This function can be tested with lots of inputs, and you check that it gives the correct instructions (without executing them).

This style of programming exists in OO as well.

Another reason to use Mocks is that they are queried for values that one need control over to rig the unit test. I.e. just a disguised parameters. FP simply doesnt do that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Some generic advice:

1\. Read lots of clojure code. There is clojure-contrib which has lots of little libraries, read through them and see how things are done.

2\. I will second the SICP suggestion, atleast the first few chapters. Bottom up programming, building layers of abstraction, is a natural way of doing things in the lisp world.

3\. The REPL is your friend. Having a really good working environment is crucial to initial learning as well as later development. I would strongly recommend taking the time to set up one of the clojure working environments(Slime/VimClojure/Enclojure) as a first thing, if you have not already done so.

4\. It takes a while, but it gets easier. Keep at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> "3. The REPL is your friend. Having a really good working environment is crucial to initial learning as well as later development. I would strongly recommend taking the time to set up one of the clojure working environments(Slime/VimClojure/Enclojure) as a first thing, if you have not already done so."

I spent substantial amount of time setting up every environment mentioned and ended up with Clojure-Box. I have not tried emacs before; ideally, i should be trying a new language in a known setup, but I prefer the stability of clojure box, so i am taking my baby steps in emacs too.

<comment><USER10> Been there! :). Clojure was my first lisp and I was learning emacs along with it. Looking back, emacs was a really good investment. Also, the ability to develop and debug through remote swank connections is so useful. Slime(with paredit) and swank bring out the best of lisp development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You should be careful you're looking for something that doesn't exist. That keeps you wondering why you don't find it forever. Perhaps you already have the hang of it, but the purists are getting you down, making you think you don't get it. In practice, there is no such thing as purely functional code, just like there is no such thing as purely object oriented code. If you succeed at avoiding state/mutability and side effects and end up with (less) code that you think is easier to understand, then you are simply doing a good job.

</comment><comment><USER12> a couple things that i have seen help get into a more functional state of mind:

make everything you can immutable. find a problem where you can build most of it without changing 'the state of the world'. function takes data, spits out answer which is feed into the next.

refactor commonalities from part 1 by passing around functions, closures, etc etc. all your good functional fun toys.

add your mutable core around the outside.

</comment><comment><USER13> Little Schemer, then SICP. For sure. As for TDD, take a look at SchemeUnit, which I've found very handy in testing the exercises in Little Schemer.

SICP is one of the single most valuable and important texts in CS. Little Schemer is structured as a real training regimen to get your mental muscles ready to handle that theory.

</comment><comment><USER14> Use clojure.test for TDD. There's a bit of documentation here:

<http://java.ociweb.com/mark/clojure/article.html#Testing>

</comment><comment><USER15> Learn how to implement integers, booleans, pairs, tuples, lists, and trees in lambda calculus (and, more specifically, System F)... and you will be able to think functionally.</comment>


U.S. firms urge action on skilled immigrant reform - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/16/usa-economy-immigration-idUSN1E79B0J620111016

<comment><USER2> Skilled labor immigration reform is perhaps the single most important factor for this country to maintain its relevance in the international race for talent acquisition. It's demoralizing (yet expected, I suppose) that it continues to proceed at a snail-like pace.

Perhaps the most telling quote from the article:

"But proponents of more skills-based immigration say the salary differential is overstated. They say immigrants tend to create jobs because they are twice as likely as U.S.-born people to start their own companies and can help improve access to foreign export markets."</comment>


Streaming Video Teardown: Twitch vs. Amazon Prime for Thursday Night Football - <AUTHOR> https://mux.com/blog/thursday-night-football-streaming-technology-showdown-amazon-prime-vs-twitch/ <comment><USER2> Author here in the comments if anyone has any questions!</comment>


After Almost a Century, the 2nd Avenue Subway Is Close to Arriving - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/25/nyregion/after-almost-a-century-second-avenue-subway-is-oh-so-close-to-arriving.html <comment><AUTHOR> Infrastructure costs in general remain bizarrely high: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/27/america_s_sky...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/27/america_s_sky_high_infrastructure_costs.html) or [http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/04/7-reasons-us- infrastruct...](http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/04/7-reasons-us- infrastructure-projects-cost-way-more-they-should/8799/) or [http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/09/public- trans...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/09/public-transport- costs).

<comment><USER2> The NYT article inadvertently addresses the problem: dozens of workers were at the site.

Dozens.

Not hundreds or thousands. Dozens. With all that capital equipment laying around and all the opportunity costs being ignored.

There's a road project near my home that's been going on for more than 90 days now. Many days nobody is on the site at all, even though all the cranes and other equipment are left on site at all times. When the site is being worked it's by at most half a dozen people, five of whom are watching the sixth guy work.

You'd think that lowest-bid contracting would have fixed this but for some reason it hasn't.

<comment><USER3> It reminds me of a story my father told me recently about a mining company and a plastic dinghy.

They had a job to complete that required access to a caustic pond, so they organised a small plastic dinghy to get out and take their measurements.

Even though it was just a dinghy, they still required a certified skipper on board, plus a saftey officer and then the technicians to take the measurement.

They had estimated an 8 day job, not realising that the pond had shrunk by half since the original satellite imagery.

So the technicians fly out and get prepared, but the mining company hadn't organised half the things they needed to. So for the next 8 days the technicians are waiting for saftey and job approvals and twiddling their thumbs.

Meanwhile the skipper and saftey officer are back at the port awaiting the technicians go ahead.

Now the dinghy, it was sitting on the grass at the boatyard. These resources are all charged per day, and while they're booked for the job they are on standby.

At this point, the dinghy on the grass and it's hardy crew had cost the mining company $16000 just for standby costs.

Eventually the job goes ahead, it only takes 4 days because the pond had shrunk so much, and the dinghy is only used for 2 days.

Total cost for the little plastic dinghy and crew was $25000. The mining company was fine with this.

<comment><USER4> I work as a consultant/developer in the B2B software space. Part of my job involves documenting clients' existing processes and converting them to requirements.

The type of inefficiencies you describe are EXTREMELY common. The fact of the matter is that the _vast majority_ of American companies are simply stuck in the 70s/80s (sometimes the 60s) when it comes to how things are done. Most of their business processes are manual and paper-based and communication is archaic, usually relying on many single points of failure, who happen to be human operators. As a result, stuff falls through the cracks all the damn time.

I've been thinking about how companies can manage to stay in business even when they're run so poorly. I've come to the conclusion that it's because many of them, especially the larger ones, face no real competition. All the other companies in their space are run similarly. As long as a decent amount of revenue keeps coming in, the leaders (many of whom are approaching comfortable retirement) simply don't care.

I've also realized that, at the aggregate level, the primary reason the American economy is so ahead of other economies today is due to the head-start it enjoyed following World War 2, when most of the developed world had been devastated while America was virtually untouched. If there had been any sort of real competition, things would be very different today - and we're starting to see that as other economies are starting to catch up.

<comment><USER5> Your work sounds interesting. Do you capture what _really_ happens in the manual system (trust based work-arounds(1) and all) or do you work from what the procedures _say_ should happen? Just wondering.

(1)E.g. An reference number is needed to set up X on a system. To get a reference number you need to get Y to sign off. Y is notoriously slow, and I have been doing this for years. Z lets me have a reference number on trust knowing that Y will sign off because my paperwork will be in order. Someone new would not get that trust until a few successful cycles. C.F. Lave and Wenger, communities of practice.

<comment><USER4> We capture what really happens in the manual system, as well as what should happen. Sometimes the latter is pretty vague, or (believe it or not) simply unknown, in which case we learn the very final goal (e.g. "all invoices should be approved in under 24 hours") and work backwards to discover bottlenecks. This can take many weeks, sometimes months, because it requires interviewing subject matter experts.

Implementing the software comes at the very end, ideally when the underlying process itself has been re-engineered. We found that you can't simply take an existing manual process and implement it in software, because if you do then you also capture many of the inefficiencies and bottlenecks.

<comment><USER5> Excellent answer.

One wonders how you identify the 'subject matter experts', and the extent to which you rely on their answers to questions versus direct observation of what they _do_.

My experience (anecdotal, informal) is that there can be quite a difference between a verbal description and what actually happens, and the difference has to do with situational knowledge (as in "oh yes, I forgot about Fred. With Fred we do ZZ instead")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Next we extend the 7 Subway to NJ?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension#Proposed_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension#Proposed_New_Jersey_extension)

The Path stops about 2 miles from the airport. That would be a good project to finish.

[http://www.nj.com/traffic/index.ssf/2016/05/push_to_expand_t...](http://www.nj.com/traffic/index.ssf/2016/05/push_to_expand_the_path_network_gains_more_support.html)

<comment><USER7> Hong Kong Airport made me realize how idiotic it is that we don't have these rail links:

\- PATH to EWR

\- 7 to LGA

Not only does Hong Kong have a subway terminating inside the main terminal, it runs separate from their MTR line, takes 30 mins to get into Central and makes a handful of stops at major MTR junctions along the way. It felt like public transit working exactly as it should.

<comment><USER8> I've turned down 3-hour layovers before that required change of airport in NYC because I'm not confident it's enough time.

On the other hand, I take the Chinatown buses in / out regularly. It's a pretty smooth arrival experience in comparison.

<comment><USER9> There's an effective private bus that does NY airport transfers. EWR is not so good, but I'd be confident about LGA/JFK.

Discovery _is_ a problem. When I only occasionally traveled to NY I didn't know about this bus. My NY-based girlfriend told me about it.

<comment><USER8> Do you the name?

<comment><USER10> There are more than one around the city, but I usually take [http://www.nycairporter.com](http://www.nycairporter.com) to get to/from JFK/LGA and Manhattan when I don't want to take public transit (usually because I have a lot of luggage).

I live within easy access of one of their pickup/dropoff stops in Manhattan, so it's quite convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> NYC is missing a lot of connecting lines for instance in Brooklyn. Most of them run in parallel, and something like circular or orthogonal connecting lines could be have been really useful.

<comment><USER12> That's why we need the Triborough RX. [http://ny.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11830816/the-triboro- regional-...](http://ny.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11830816/the-triboro-regional- plan-association-proposal)

But MTA funding is controlled by the state, meaning that all subway funding needs to be balanced by upstate highway funding, meaning that super high return projects like this (which could probably justify themselves based on the improvements in real estate values as Hong Kong does) are not happening.

<comment><USER11> They should be building more railroads upstate. In general, trains feel severely lacking in comparison with Europe for example.

<comment><USER12> There's not enough density to justify trains in upstate New York. But we should be spending tens of billions to upgrade the Acela corridor (which runs east of upstate NY) to something comparable to Europe's high speed trains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Paywalled so I can't read it.

<comment><USER14> Use private window.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! Had no idea I could use a private window to unpaywall!</comment></comment></comment>


Planet Scaling - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2016/7/18/how-does-google-do-planet-scale-engineering-for-a-planet-sca.html <comment><USER2> This is a nice quick overview of what is covered in-depth in the Google SRE book [0].

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Site-Reliability-Engineering- Producti...](https://www.amazon.com/Site-Reliability-Engineering-Production- Systems/dp/149192912X)</comment>


RevenueLoan Raises $6m  To Loan Your Startup Money - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/07/revenueloan-raises-6-million-to-loan-your-startup-money/

<comment><USER2> They have an awesome application form: <http://www.revenueloan.com/apply.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> If I've got a company with a million dollars per year in revenue, I'm well past the point that banks won't loan me 100K. So I'm not sure exactly who this service is trying to target.

<comment><USER4> Certainly not companies who can get another loan, but want a lower interest rate. FTA:

> Instead you give them a percentage of your revenue over time until you've > paid them back 3x – 5x the amount borrowed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> And what if you go under?

I'm buying shin guards just in case.</comment>


Can you get cp to give a progress bar like wget? - <AUTHOR> http://chris-lamb.co.uk/2008/01/24/can-you-get-cp-to-give-a-progress-bar-like-wget/

<comment><USER2> There was one in gentoo a while back with a -g option... It got removed from cp source since someone didn't like it.

Man I'm a nerd.

</comment><comment><USER3> I usually just background the cp and ls -l the source and destination files. Not as pretty, but it works just as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> 'scp <user>@localhost:<src> <dst>' works reasonably well when I need it...

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't that be much slower than using cp?

<comment><USER6> I suppose it would depend on whether or not 'cp' would find itself disk-bound in the same situation.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Schema – API to Build and Scale Ecommerce - <AUTHOR> https://www.schema.io <comment><USER2> I've been following this since it appeared on HN as fwd, and would actually quite like to use it in an upcoming project. How far off is the python client?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear that! For the time being we recommend using the HTTP endpoint with `requests` for python. The official python client will take some time longer because we haven't seen a very big demand for it vs other priorities. However, if anyone is interested in developing it with us, please contact me at eric at schema.io.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are you currently self hosting? - <AUTHOR> Ask HN: What are you currently self hosting <comment><USER5> In a similar thread 8 months ago I broke down my self-hosting infrastructure : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15106197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15106197)

Since then I have added a few things, partly from that thread.

The big things were hosting Sandstorm.io, which is a complete self-hosted google-apps/office365 type setup that is very easy to use and has great functionality. My entire family uses it for a variety of things that we used to use independent files or google apps for. Nicely collaborative.

I have also recently started self-hosting a meta-searchengine called Searx in order to extricate myself from google on another front. It has also been pleasantly easy to set up, and the aggregated and collated search results have been excellent. Its much faster and more usable than I dreamed of when I decided to test drive it. It anonymizes all browser/os/etc fingerprints to keep the search engines that you query in the dark about your habits. I've toyed with tunneling it over TOR to make the whole thing even more private, but that may slow things down too much. Again, my family have pretty much all switched to it.

I even use both of these things externally (protected by https, geoip blocking and simple auth)

I have also added a minemeld server for IP blocking and DNS blackholing of malware/spyware/C&C servers etc. This is an excellent Ubuntu based free server put out by Palo Alto networks. I combine this with the existing blocking/blackholing I do with the someonewhocares blocking lists. It really keeps browsing from my home network faster, safer and mostly ad free.

Also hedgewars and teeworlds for mindless family multiplayer action

<comment><USER6> You mentioned Minetest back then. I had a look at it recently and it seemed like it's not that much fun without mobs. Could you describe your Minetest setup in more detail? I'm sure it can be used to get more fun of it than I managed to.

<comment><USER5> Modpacks and worlds for minetest are a bit tricky, since you need the right version of all the mods for things to work properly, and sometimes newer versions of minetest break old mods, so there is definitely some manual labour involved in setting up a nice modern server where everything just works. It can be frustrating finding a subgame or mod that you want to use but hasn't been maintained and is broken.

The whole thing can't be too hard, because my kids running Debian were able to download and install dozens of subgames and mods to their computers and self- host for their brothers. All I had to do was show them how to unzip, move and (if required) rename folders.

The directory that mods are placed in will effect how it is loaded. It would be redundant to write it all out here, so check the wiki [1].

The best place to find out what the newest mods are is the forum [2], specifically the mods forum

For a good game (essentially a modpack) to start with, try Mineclone [3]. It tries to create a Minecraft clone, and is very active. My kids were also obsessed with Lord of the Test[4] for a while

[1] - [http://dev.minetest.net/Installing_Mods](http://dev.minetest.net/Installing_Mods)

[2] - [https://forum.minetest.net/viewforum.php?f=46](https://forum.minetest.net/viewforum.php?f=46)

[3] - [https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=16407](https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=16407)

[4] - [https://wiki.minetest.net/Games/Lord_of_the_Test](https://wiki.minetest.net/Games/Lord_of_the_Test)

<comment><USER6> Great, that's exactly what I needed - thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Around 2 years ago, I started building my own E-Commerce platform. It started out as a Shopify alternative and now, it's a whole different ball game. It has all the features of marketing automation from Marketo mixed with the backend interface of Amazon.com plus an inbuilt Mailchimp. This means, you can sell a mixture of digital and physical goods online.

The whole thing started off as a side project while I was working as a consultant at the time, and now it's my full time job. The whole thing is hosted on Google Cloud, in particular AppEngine, so I don't need to worry about DevOps.

I refuse to empower companies like MailChimp who treat their customers like shit. The good thing is, I don't need to pay any percentage of my sales to anyone and no one is holding my data hostage like Shopify - who take your money, take your data and ask you to pay more to access it (checkout how Shopify analytics works).

I run a bunch of E-Commerce dropshipping businesses with this platform and it has served me well. I used Elixir/Phoenix/VueJS for my stack.

<comment><USER8> What's wrong with WordPress and WooCommerce?

<comment><USER9> It's a blogging platform with ecommerce bolted on. I suspect it's a little bloated. Indeed, my experience with it was that in many respects it was very sluggish and inelegant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is a pretty good thread discussing precisely this, from the selfhosting community at Reddit.

I think it has a lot of good entries, which complements this thread well:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/7n6bgh/what_sof...](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/7n6bgh/what_software_do_you_have_running/)

Closely related, but with a different focus is the Homelab community. Quite the rigs some of these guys have set up. [http://reddit.com/r/homelab](http://reddit.com/r/homelab)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm self-hosting a tool to monitor our cashflow and keep our expenses (open source if anyone is interested [0], though only translated in Dutch at the moment). It runs on an Ubuntu Azure VM, with a SQL Server database.

[0]: [https://github.com/Sebazzz/financial- app](https://github.com/Sebazzz/financial-app)

</comment><comment><USER12> Ok...

\- 4 x Samba4 DCs on various LANs (file server, ldap, krb, dns, ntp)

\- Interconnected at VPN hub in London on Linode over wireguard

\- "Road-warrior" VPN via ocserv, shadowsocks and strongswan

\- Plex

\- Nextcloud + OnlyOffice

\- 2 x Windows Server 2008 R2

\- Postfix/Dovecot/Horde for mail on a Samba DC for fast LDAP

\- Private internal family blog

\- Simplesamlphp and mod_auth_mellon for SSO, authenticates via kerberos, if not then SSL (my family use smartcards) and finally username, password and TOTP, all verified against AD

\- Transmission

\- Xen Orchestra (for managing xcp-ng)

\- Rockstor (OS for my NAS using BTRFS RAID10)

\- django-ca (for PKI for smartcards and internel certs)

\- Used to run Citrix XenApp but now aiming for all desktops to be Linux, so looking at deploying ThinLinc

\- Asterisk (all our family have FXO adapters on their phone lines, and all phones have FXS adapters, saves on our international phone calls, and all routed over our VPNs)

I'm a student of languages at uni, but I dunno maybe I should do sysadmin or something

</comment><comment><USER13> IRC server, IRC bouncer, personal website, contracting website and Matomo Analytics. I like the control you get with self-hosting and the ownership of data.

</comment><comment><USER14> I self-host a few things on a cloud instance, and some other on a Raspberry-pi at my home.

On the cloud instance:

\- Tinc VPN

\- FTP and a postgres server

\- NextCloud - For storing files

\- ZNC - IRC Bouncer

\- Lounge - IRC client

\- Prometheus - TSDB for aggregating emtrics

\- Grafana - For displaying the above metrics

\- Cloudtorrent - A nifty app when I don't want to download torrents on my machine.

\- Monica - An app for managing personal relationships, as I'm really bad with remembering people.

\- Cloud9 for a web-IDE.

\- Gitea - for mirroring some git repositories.

\- FreshRSS - RSS Reader

\- Some personal projects

\- Traefik - the webserver I use for all these services.

\- HAProxy - To proxy traffic from a virtual IP to the raspberry PI at my home.

The rPi is connected to the cloud-server over over tinc VPN. It hosts things which are related to my media:

\- Traefik - <USER2>

\- Prometheus - for monitoring purposes.

\- Sonarr, Radarr, Jackett - for downloading some TV shows and movies

\- Transmission - torrent client

\- Ubooquity - for hosting comic books

\- Kodi - for browsing/playing media.

</comment><comment><USER15> \- Email with hmailserver (Windows only unfortunately, but easy to install and configure and with an optional web interface).

\- websites (apache, php), on which I host: personal websites, friend's websites, a synchronised grocery list for my gf and I, an URL shortener with file upload capabilities that has some handy features (I'll show-hn this one day, but currently the server is too underpowered and https too unstable), some front ends for websites whose front end I don't like, and a gazillion other scripts written since I was 17 or so.

\- ftp (Filezilla server) for friends to change their website

\- mysql which can be publicly logged into as read-only for some databases

\- openvpn

\- I'm a member of the ntpd pool (surprised that nobody abused that one yet)

\- backups

\- irc bouncer (quassel)

\- Factorio (game) server and other games when desired

I also used to host my own dns servers, but after becoming an amplification vector this wasn't really worth it. I might again in the future though, because it seems like rate limiting a source IP should mitigate it for 99%.

And I used to seed torrents (also illegal, admittedly, but also some foss) but I've been using that less with Spotify, little gaming, and just generally less free time on my hands. There's no need for it anymore.

Finally I'd like to be a Tor node but my server can't handle the crypto. It'll get a few kbps of bandwidth and annoy clients because it's so slow. No point to that.

This costs me about 300 euros in hardware and 25 Watts of power. Next upgrade is scheduled for this summer, after my degree, when I can retire my current laptop. It'll draw a bit more, some 71W peak (24W idle), but it'll also be a huge upgrade in speed and will allow me to virtualize things. The current hardware is from 2014ish and while my own software works fine, something like WordPress takes 25 seconds to generate a single page. (For comparison, a custom written blog does a few mysql queries and rendering in some 15ms.)

</comment><comment><USER16> In the future I want to learn to stop writing my projects from scratch and start learning how to confidently host and contribute to existing projects.

However, as of now I'm hosting:

On a VPS:

      - Personal websites (career and hobbies, built on a custom PHP framework)
      - Websites for groups/friends (communities, file sharing, built on a custom PHP framework)
      - HAM radio contact log (Web based map and historical logging, built on a custom PHP framework)
      - Game engine projects and demos (built on a custom JS game engine)

Isolated on my LAN:

      - Network of pi's with webcams doing motion detection (using Motion + custom shell scripts + rsync)
      - A server to view those pi feeds on (nginx + custom site on custom PHP framework)
      - <USER3>
      - Small "media center" (tried a custom site, now kodi)

On a different VPS:

      - Minecraft server
      - A web server to view the world map (nginx)

Some things I'd like to add in the future:

      - Google docs/drive alternative
        - (Or otherwise) a shared recipes/shopping/photosharing to use between me, my gf, and/or my family
      - DDG/Google/Bing search alternative
      - Network ad blocker
      - <USER4>
      - Public transit schedule/map display for my commute
      - A safe way view some of my LAN-based tools remotely

I'm also interested in learning the best practices for data storage/backup/recovery. Taking my data out of the hands of other providers has made me increasingly worried about hardware or software issues losing my files.

</comment><comment><USER17> 23 docker containers total, some 15 or more services:

\- linuxserver/transmission

\- traefik

\- odarriba/timemachine

\- gitea/gitea

\- tt-rss (tiny-tiny-RSS)

\- ubooquity

\- speedtest-exporter (+prometheus/grafana)

\- radicale (caldav/carddav)

\- lychee

\- Resilio

\- Emby

\- AirSonic

\- wiki.js

\- Jackett/Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr

Orchestration is via a single host docker managed with Terraform over OpenVPN.

Have all the code (and 5 blog posts) at [https://git.captnemo.in/nemo/nebula](https://git.captnemo.in/nemo/nebula) (self hosted as well!)

</comment><comment><USER18> By self hosting, do you mean on a hosting service I pay for or my own computer/network?

For the latter, either everything or nothing depending on how you count it, since I outright refuse to buy 'licenses' for programs or run them on the 'cloud' and make sure to have everything running on my computer (ideally standalone).

So in that sense, all data is locally stored and all programs are of the buy once, use forever kind.

On my web hosting accounts, well then two websites really:

Wario Forums ([https://warioforums.com](https://warioforums.com))

And Gaming Reinvented ([https://gamingreinvented.com](https://gamingreinvented.com))

Plus a few files for fan games and projects that people I know wanted a permanent host for (read, not something like Dropbox or Mediafire). For example, Mushroom Kingdom Fusion, Super Mario Fusion Revival and Mega Man Day in the Limelight are hosted on the same server too.

</comment><comment><USER19> File Sync: SyncThing ([https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/))

IRC client: The Lounge ([https://thelounge.chat/](https://thelounge.chat/))

Trello clone: Wekan ([https://wekan.github.io/](https://wekan.github.io/))

I highly recommend all of them. Also experimenting with self-hosting NextCloud ([https://nextcloud.com/](https://nextcloud.com/)) to more easily share files with friends and family, and so far so good. The Awesome-Selfhosted list on GitHub at [https://github.com/Kickball/awesome- selfhosted](https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted) is a decent place to find projects worth looking into.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't self hosting anything right now other than my side projects. But if you want to self host anything cool there's an awesome list of that [0].

[0] [https://github.com/Kickball/awesome- selfhosted](https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted)

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't trust the cloud, so I self host everything.

 _Internet facing:_

1\. Custom SMTP Mail Server. Does specific filtering and anti-spam (using SpamAssassin)

2\. Various Websites, both personal and professional:

\- [http://www.Jaruzel.com](http://www.Jaruzel.com) (personal bits and bobs)

\- [http://www.MattOwen.com](http://www.MattOwen.com) (.net, .org, .co.uk)

\- [https://www.weegeeks.com](https://www.weegeeks.com) (rss reader app)

\- [http://www.fuzzybuttons.com](http://www.fuzzybuttons.com) (small webshop, self written e-commerce code)

\- [http://www.writersgifts.co.uk](http://www.writersgifts.co.uk) (small webshop, self written e-commerce code)

\- [http://www.Greblord.com](http://www.Greblord.com) (keeping the memory of a dead friend, alive.)

\- A custom web-chat server that works through ALL corporate proxies. ;)

I'm in the process of migrating to a new Webserver, and then I can finally switch to SNI based HTTPS, and secure ALL the sites properly.

 _Internal Servers:_

1\. SpamAssassin (Ubuntu)

2\. 2x Active Directory Servers

3\. File Server (12Tb) (Windows Storage Server)

4\. IoT Server (runs tasks, listens to events etc)

5\. MS SQL Server

6\. MS Exchange Server

7\. Several other small single-purpose servers. (Various OS's)

8\. Dedicated set of VMs for Lab work (I'm a systems architect)

With the exception of the File Server, everything is virtual. My Production VMs run on one large HP Tower workstation and my Lab VMs run on another similar HP box (both are 32Gb, 4Tb, 2x Xeon CPUs). My File Server is self- built tower PC stuffed full of disks as several RAID arrays.

 _Future stuff:_

1\. I'm about to launch a Gopher Server, running on my own custom software.

2\. I've installed a weather station and will be logging all that info to a dedicated website.

3\. At some point I'll start re-running my MUD server as well.

<comment><USER13> You're not the first to mention Gopher. I'm curious what you use it for?

<comment><USER21> Hosting old forgotten files mainly. Some people actually blog with it (phlogs).

if you want to know more, then [https://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/](https://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/) is the place to start.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! It's just a tad before my time so I've never been exposed to it before. Will read up on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My side and pet projects, all on one server:

\- [https://en.openspanish.org](https://en.openspanish.org) (spanish dictionary, still improving)

\- [https://en.openrussian.org](https://en.openrussian.org) (russian dictionary)

\- [http://weeks.michel-helms.de](http://weeks.michel-helms.de) (overview over your life, alpha)

\- [http://nextmovie.co](http://nextmovie.co) (german movie discovery website)

\- [http://veryinteresting.io](http://veryinteresting.io)

\- [https://finsheets.io](https://finsheets.io) (import PayPal/Stripe transactions into G Sheets)

<comment><USER12> Your russian dictionary and de movie discovery site are awesome! many thanks :))

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's what i host myself:

Edgerouter 5 POE handles DHCP and L2TP/IPSec. PiHole on a Raspberry Pi 3.

Intel NUC (FreeBSD, with jails for each service):

      Nextcloud
      Resilio Sync (cross mounted to NextCloud)
      Gitea
      Emby
      Time logging application (for use with GeoFency iOS app)
      Surveillance (read-only, camera, environmental sensors)
      Sonarr
      NzbGet
      Deluge
      PostgreSQL
      ZNC
      Jupyter Notebook Server
      Nginx for proxying the above services

Synology DS415+ (Not accessible from the internet)

      Fileshares for the services on the NUC.
      Backups of data.

Linode VPS

      Mail server.

I'm currently trying to decide if i should buy a HPE MicroServer Gen10, run FreeNAS on it, and replace the above with that.

</comment><comment><USER24> \- Exim, MTA ([https://www.exim.org](https://www.exim.org))

\- Dovecot, MDA ([https://www.dovecot.org](https://www.dovecot.org))

\- Nginx, HTTP(2) Server ([https://nginx.org](https://nginx.org))

\- Gogs, Git service ([https://gogs.io](https://gogs.io))

\- Coldsweat, RSS aggregator ([https://github.com/passiomatic/coldsweat](https://github.com/passiomatic/coldsweat))

</comment><comment><USER25> On a related note. Where is a good place to start learning how to do all of this?

What is a reasonable 80-20 progression of most bang for the buck things?

I have a macbook, 2 windows laptops, two wifi routers, and a surplus 1u rack server I picked up after a company datacenter upgrade.

I don't know if that's typical, but I'm sure there are others with a small pile of devices and no idea where to start.

</comment><comment><USER26> Doing a small self-hosted Nextcloud to sync my KeePassXC database across devices. cPanel + Softaculous made it a breeze and the syncing works fine. Considering expanding my use of Nextcloud apps on my phone but haven't found many good ones on F-Droid so far, or at least getting them to work hasn't been obvious.

</comment><comment><USER27> Jira, Gitea, XenForo, WordPress, custom CMS, smtp gateway, custom scan server, custom image gallery, custom ecommerce system, asterisk node, custom imgur- like site that supports any file type (and previews for many) with additional command line upload/download interface, ldap, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few more.

</comment><comment><USER28> 'm running the following:

* SMTP, using Postfix with my own greylist software

* HTTP, using Apache

* GOPHER, wrote my own gopher server (source code available via said server)

* QOTD, again, wrote my own

* DNS, running bind but it's not visible to the outside world. It's authoritative for all my domains; the company serving up my zones slaves off my DNS server.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would like to host my own iCloud storage, anybody got some good reads/links on that? e.g. owncloud, or synology cloud software that can can used for apps that normally would use iCloud for storage?

Or am i still sleeping on monday morning and dreaming of this to be actually possible?

</comment><comment><USER30> Usenet :) [http://csiph.com](http://csiph.com)

</comment><comment><USER31> I would like to self host a few things, but my ISP uses CGNAT. And to get static IP I have to get SME plan and separate static ip addon pack. SME plans are costly and have lower speeds.

<comment><USER32> You could try Kimsufi or Hetzner to get some cheap VPS or Dedicated Baremetal to host on. Selfhosted doesn't only mean hosting on private premises, the core idea is rather (IMO) to host it on hardware you paid for no matter where it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Some years ago I helped a friend to set up a server in OVH with Webmin in order to host a couple of low traffic Wordpress sites.

I regret the day I thought that it would be a good idea...

</comment><comment><USER34> I took everything down for 25 as I have a day job and really don't want to spend the time to figyre out if everything is compliant with GDPR.

<comment><USER35> If you are self-hosting services for your own use then I don't think GDPR could be a problem.

<comment><USER21> If the sites store other users info, then they fall under GDPR regardless of whether you are a company or not. I'm in the same boat here and this week will be purging all identifiable user data that is over 90 days old, and emailing the remaining users with 'opt in' emails. Then I will be updating my backends to do this automatically on a schedule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Gitlab, Teamcity, Nginx, flask, neo4j, elasticsearch, kibana, samba, bind, openvpn, Plex, postgrsql, ssh.

Everything in kubernetes

<comment><USER37> Do you mind sharing with us the cloud provider and an approximate monthly costs for those? Thanks!

<comment><USER23> With the exception of GitLab, i'd think all of those could be run on a single $5/mo VPS.

I run Gitea/Emby/Mosquitto/Sonarr/Deluge/NZBGet/Nginx/PostgreSQL/Nextcloud, plus a couple of my own services written in Go and Django, and it all runs on a Intel NUC with a celeron and 8GB Ram.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I run Syncthing with a couple of devices. I'd just rsync, but it's complex to do with android.

</comment><comment><USER39> A couple of tiny hardware side projects that aren't counting on thousands of users anytime soon

</comment><comment><USER40> personal website (wordpress! yeah, i know!) self developed (websocket based) multiroom distributed group chat webapp (built it to learn how pub sub works) rethinkDB elasticsearch

Edit: also Nginx, MySql(for wordpress)

Hosted on two DigitalOcean $5 boxes

</comment><comment><USER41> I've started doing this as a hobby, to see how many services I regularly use can be replaced. They're all behind an nginx reverse proxy + letsencrypt cert on a hetzner box.

IRC: [https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge/](https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge/) (Use a lot, and it works decently well)

Cloud: [https://github.com/nextcloud/server/](https://github.com/nextcloud/server/) (Works surprisingly well, however, I've heard there are security issues)

Analytics: [https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/](https://github.com/matomo- org/matomo/) (I'm comparing how much I'd lose out compared to google analytics, if I ever move away from it)

Chat: [https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/](https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/) (never really use it, just wanted to see how it works)

Git: [https://github.com/gogits/gogs](https://github.com/gogits/gogs) (Mostly for mirroring git repos)

Browser IDE: [https://icecoder.net/](https://icecoder.net/) (I'm able to edit the code for the bots/projects I host from the browser itself)

Calibre library front end: [https://github.com/janeczku/calibre- web](https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web)

Pastebin: [https://github.com/LINKIWI/modern- paste](https://github.com/LINKIWI/modern-paste) (never use it)

Linkshortener: [https://github.com/LINKIWI/linkr](https://github.com/LINKIWI/linkr) (occasional use)

Mail + mailbox + webmail: [https://mailcow.email/](https://mailcow.email/) (Had to spend a bit more time, but now it is able to deliver mails to gmail/outlook/icloud without issues. I use it as a mailing solution for all the selfhosted projects which need smtp)

Online Markdown editor: [https://github.com/joemccann/dillinger](https://github.com/joemccann/dillinger) (Used quite a few times)

Minecraft server

Music streaming: [https://github.com/phanan/koel/](https://github.com/phanan/koel/) (I'm not a native english speaker, so quite a few songs I listen to aren't on spotify)

Neo4j, mongodb, mysql and postgres: For all database needs.

Server monitoring: [https://github.com/firehol/netdata](https://github.com/firehol/netdata)

Photos: [https://github.com/Chevereto/Chevereto- Free](https://github.com/Chevereto/Chevereto-Free) (I use it quite a lot to host images I'd have used imgur instead)

R Studio server, and Jupyter notebooks: For work/hobby programming

I've had a lot of help from [https://selfhosted.libhunt.com/](https://selfhosted.libhunt.com/) and [https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/)

I"ve had to move from one VPS provider to another while testing, so I have a handy guide for setting up quick here: [https://github.com/itsmehemant123/basic-vps- setup](https://github.com/itsmehemant123/basic-vps-setup) .

I have a separate guide for hosting each of the above projects behind an nginx with https, but its quite rough right now. So its private.

</comment><comment><USER42> Syncthing

Kanboard

Wordpress

Hugo

tt-rss

Dokuwiki

</comment><comment><USER43> \- Seafile

\- Rocket.Chat

\- Some snaps to play around with

</comment><comment><USER44> OpenTTD

<comment><USER45> awesome</comment></comment>