The end of cloud computing [video] - <AUTHOR> http://a16z.com/2016/12/16/the-end-of-cloud-computing/ <comment><USER2> So we started with centralized mainframes, because it was too expensive for everybody to have their own computer. As hardware improves, computers become cheaper and more powerful and then everybody can have their own, and we move to a distributed model. Then as internet speeds improve, it becomes practical to bring all the compute back in to centralized data centres and communicate with them over the internet from small, less powerful devices. Then as the hardware improves again, the small devices become powerful enough to perform their own computation.

In the talk, he says that the reason we need to do the compute "on the edge" is because the latency between the cloud is insufficient for real-time devices. So what happens when network speeds improve again (better fibre infrastructure, LiFi, etc.)? Will we bring the compute back in to centralized data centres? Will we continue to bounce back and forwards forever, as network and hardware technology leapfrog each other? Is one model _better_ than the other?

<comment><USER3> > In the talk, he says that the reason we need to do the compute "on the edge" > is because the latency between the cloud is insufficient for real-time > devices. So what happens when network speeds improve again (better fibre > infrastructure, LiFi, etc.)? Will we bring the compute back in to > centralized data centres? Will we continue to bounce back and forwards > forever, as network and hardware technology leapfrog each other? Is one > model better than the other?

Well, for one thing, a lot of the examples such as self-driving cars, drones, and any wearable clearly don't allow for use of fiber. Lifi may have some use cases, but again I don't see how Lifi could help something like a drone or self-driving car.

But another point is availability. Wireless connections can drop in and out and our vulnerable to being slowed down by increased demand. Not to mention that the centralized service itself may fail, due to catastrophic power failure, DOS attacks, or any number of other reasons.

If that centralized service or choppy wireless connection is providing you with your todo-list or family photo album, its probably not a big deal to have occasional outages. If the system is making decisions for self-driving vehicles, that will be an unmitigated disaster.

Even if it is only enough logic to help an unconnected car pull over to the side of the road, a self-driving car needs to be able to operate offline, so one way or another, these cards will need powerful computers inside.

And of course, distributed nodes can also fail. A single car's computer may fail, and that's not good. But the AI of every car in an entire area failing simultaneously because power to the local radio tower goes out is going to be way worse.

The other thing, is that as we have with processing speeds, we will eventually hit limits in bandwidth. Using bandwidth efficiently will become a larger priority (as scarcity increases, so will the cost) and the centralized model clearly has a drawback in terms of bandwidth usage.

So, all in all, I don't think it's just a pendulum that swings back in forth forever, but that the future will be a hybrid, but heavily distributed world out of necessity.

<comment><USER2> I agree that not _all_ computation would move back to centralized data centres, but then not _all_ computation is done in the cloud now (vs on your mobile phone). 20 years ago, people would have thought it was insane to send data packets over the internet to edit a document, or any number of other tasks now serviced by SaaS products. Of course there are still some tasks that are better done locally, notably real-time or life-critical tasks. And these SaaS services only became feasible when the connection reliability and speed allowed them to.

All I'm suggesting is that future improvements to connection reliability and speed will give way to another round of SaaS products, perhaps then able to service real-time needs but still not preferred for life-critical tasks. As much as I hate to say it, the first example that comes to mind is surveillance/tracking.

If you think very long-term, like say data-transfer-via-quantum-entanglement, then you could imagine data transfer being insignificant compared to compute time for real-time requirements, so you will naturally offload the compute to the biggest most powerful computer you can get your hands on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't wait for the traditional centralized cloud to fade out. I've been anticipating a model I call PAO [1] for several years—personal application omnipresence. By that I mean applications that run for you personally and are available on all your devices simultaneously.

We've seen gradual movement away from the traditional cloud with several models I call "proto-PAO," such as Microsoft's Continuum. And many applications provide one-off PAO-like experiences by connecting multiple clients to a central server you administrate. But there is so much more to do. I am definitely getting excited, though, that the centralized cloud will likely be replaced in my lifetime.

[1] [http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao](http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao)

<comment><USER5> strangely enough, I've been expecting that as well, but reading your blog post, I differ on how it will be realized.

I think it's more likely people will instead carry identities that describe the applications they have access to, and be able to load those on devices for their identity only, down to the point of being able to walk up to a new PC, attaching the identity, and then having access to the apps on that new PC.

It'll be a 90% solution that's forced to deal with DRM and safe enough remote execution, but it'll also allow you to access your documents from anywhere with a connection.

I know you specifically disagree with the idea of synchronization, but that's more feasible than what you're suggesting imo. synchronizing a document is going to be as simple as saving it into the cloud and fetching a delta at the endpoints.

This will necessarily not work for certain types of applications, no one is probably going to try and do actual CAD work on the go, although they may view it. But for most things it'll work well enough.

<comment><USER6> Onshape.com - check it out. WebGL is good enough for some CAD users.

<comment><USER5> The issue isn't just one of performance, but form factor and input mechanisms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really don't buy it.

In every case he described current devices (cars, watches) - they are increasing in 'cpu/storage' \- but they always have been doing this.

Is their something that inherently changes the topology?

Not really.

Cars will be able to id stop signs - which is naturally a local function, just like 'backup cameras' are a local function today ... but some things like messaging, gps services, customer data, big data - it's going to be on a server somewhere.

Why would your car need to talk directly to your blender?

'The cloud' has really more to do with local/small/office servers moving into consolidated centres with virtualization.

'Logical organization' has not changed: some stuff on 'servers' , some stuff done 'locally'.

<comment><USER8> If your car did need to talk to your blender why wouldn't you want it to do so directly?

<comment><USER7> "If your car did need to talk to your blender why wouldn't you want it to do so directly?"

Sure.

But my car does not need to talk to my blender. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very interesting and while I think the title is a bit "clickbaity" it has some interesting points. He is not claiming cloud computing is going to disappear, he is claiming that due to real-time requirements and amount of data, computing power at the edge will grow, while SaaS and central data analytics will not stop being centralized in the cloud. He claims the cloud won't handle the vast amount of sensor data and I'm not sure he is right, but can't prove him wrong. In any case it seems that cloud providers are already aiming for this direction. AWS has project greengrass for example: [https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/](https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. I still remember Ben pitching me the idea of cloud services in 1999. I thought he was insane at the time. I retain this as the proof that I can't reliably evaluate a business idea ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's an interesting thought experiment but I tend to disagree overall.

I don't think a self driving car is a data-center on wheels. It will not have 100(!) servers built in it. It will have one (or two for redundancy) PCBs with just the right enough of processing power in whatever form makes sense, multiple cores, ASICs, etc. (which would be less than 100 server worth).

I would agree that the more compute cycles will move out to the edge. This is already have been happening with smartphones and will continue with other intelligent devices. The more computers we have in our environment the more the overall portion of cycles move to the edge. The depiction of a smartphone as a dumb terminal isn't that accurate. A smartphone can and does do a lot of things locally. My bet is there is a lot more compute power in all the phones today than in AWS EC2. (though maybe not compute $'s)

The comments on machine learning don't make sense. There is a lot more data for machine learning in the aggregate of all the devices so it will naturally happen in some centralized location. While there can be some machine learning in the edge machine learning is a lot more effective on the aggregate centralized data. So data from the edge will get pulled to central large scale systems. The result of this learning can be pushed back out to the edge to be applied (e.g. in the car).

EDIT: He later on modifies his statement about machine learning happening in the edge and rather some "selection" of the data will be used for machine learning in the cloud... Still doesn't quite add up.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is cloud dead? No! Will it die? Probably not because not everyone wants to deal with some of the complexities involved with building the hardware and networks required to achieve near perfect resilience.

What will certainly going to happen is that we will see more devices online and many of them will be IOT. ESP8266 can be bought for at little as the cost of a double espresso. The hobby electronics industry is booming in the face of Arduino and Raspberry Pi. It is happening.

<comment><USER13> Has anybody dared to research if EPS8266 contains a backdoor? Its origin and mass deployment makes me more than nervous.

<comment><USER12> We will reach a point eventually where it will take a lot of investment to deduce if a hardware component contains backdoors. The firmware of the ESP is opensource through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> While certainly thought provoking I'm not certain that he is exactly correct. What is going to happen is that there will be a lot of devices where a peer to peer model makes more sense. It doesn't mean that cloud computing is going to go away but it will instead change over time.

I am more in agreement with the idea that data analysts jobs will grow. Also think that a lot of apps will have their own databases but instead of ignoring the cloud they will need to occasionally sync with the cloud as opposed to real time access.

I think that RESTful data services will become more of a commodity and that most developers will need a data service, an authentication service, a telecom service and a payment service (and perhaps a few more) to construct a program.

We're not too far off from it happening and the opportunity exists for an ambitious company to offer a Microsoft Office style suite of services to developers. I'd personally prefer it be Stripe or Twilio as opposed to Microsoft or Google that ends up doing it.

</comment><comment><USER14> The solution is obvious. Cache not only data, but functions as well.

I should be able to download entire systems on local devices (a cache hub, a router, a personal cache hotspot, a smartphone), and have them work offline if necessary.

However, this will require a new computing paradigm altogether, powered by a new language. This kind of seamless caching demands a language with superior semantics (API auto-discoversbility) and logic-programming influence. I imagine some kind of predicate store should do the job.

<comment><USER15> Do we really need a new language for this? We already have things that run on both server and client, javascript being the obvious one, where there's already a blending of computation for webpage rendering happening (pre- rendered on the server then the code for updating sent to the client).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The edge is limited by power constraints. Only so much computation you can do before your phone melts.

</comment><comment><USER17> Made me think of the difference between the Central Nervous System (CNS) vs Peripheral Nervous System (PNS).

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

<comment><USER18> so will the internet be more like a mammal or an octopus? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Edge intelligence" is not going to happen in place of the cloud, simply in addition to it. When storage gets smaller in form factor, maybe we will be storing 100s of TBs in a car, but there will still be a data center storing 100s of PBs.

</comment><comment><USER20> Man I'm not even old and history is already repeating itself.

Whatever. Down with the cloud!

</comment><comment><USER21> Thank Spaghetti, AWS is making people stupid.</comment>


Show HN: Nautilus: A Docker Compose Charting Tool - <AUTHOR> http://nautilusdev.com <comment><AUTHOR> The Nautilus Dev Team responded to requests we heard from the dev community around Docker Compose so we developed Nautilus.

Docker Compose serves as a convenient tool for software engineers developing a microservice-based application. Yet, we heard from various developer friends of ours, one who works for the government on the Medicare website, that as the app grows in complexity, the number of containers, connections and container data can become complicated to track and conceptualize.

To address this need, we created Nautilus, an Electron application, that charts out the containers, network connections, port maps and volumes/bind- mounts in a Compose microservice application. No longer will developers need to hold the map of their network in their heads or on a piece of paper. Nautilus will navigate them through rough waters.

<comment><USER2> Any plans for a similar tool for K8s pods?

<comment><USER3> I don't have experience with Kubernetes, but is this what you're looking for?

[https://k8slens.dev/](https://k8slens.dev/)

<comment><USER4> Really cool, thanks for sharing. Didn't know I even had a need for Kubernetes IDE until I saw the site.

<comment><USER5> A lot of that functionality is baked into the Cloud Code extension for VS Code and IntelliJ IDE's.

The UI is almost identical, too.

<comment><USER3> One thing is not clear: with that extension can you manage your cluster or do you need to use one of the cloud solutions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Chrome is trying really hard to prevent me from downloading the Mac App. Its saying 'Nautilus-1.2.0.dmg is not commonly downloaded and may be dangerous' and when I clicked to keep it another pop up came up with 'Even if you have downloaded files from this site before, the site may be temporarily unsafe (hacked). Try downloading this file later.'

I don't have any extra security (that I recall) set up on Chrome so I thought I would let you know.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, you'll have to bypass all those securities if you want to download. We are working on getting our application certified with Apple, Microsoft, linux and all the browsers. If you're worried about security issues, the whole product is open source. You can check it out on our github. But, I promise, everything stays on your system.

If you want to be extra safe, you can clone/fork the repo and compile/build the dmg yourself. First, run `yarn` and then run `yarn package-mac`

<comment><USER6> Good to know! I'm going to try it out, but I just figured I would point that out incase it wasn't known to your team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi there, your images aren't scaling properly on mobile. Just a friendly heads up.

[https://imgur.com/a/PhDWkBU](https://imgur.com/a/PhDWkBU)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for letting us know. Just released a more optimized mobile site!

<comment><USER9> Still not correct. They are still impossible to read on mobile. They stretch vertically as in the image above.

* ios

* IPhone 11 pro max

* chrome

Interesting tool though, bookmarked for when I'm on a laptop.

<comment><USER7> thanks for the input! should be fixed now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems interesting, but I cannot upload proprietary information.

<comment><USER7> the application runs entirely on your local system. no information is uploaded. No network requests are made. if you are concerned about security, Nautilus is open source. You can check out the code on github. You can even clone the repo and package the application yourself.</comment></comment>


(old) How to build a read/write Javascript API - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rakeshpai.me/2007/11/how-to-build-readwrite-javascript-api.html

<comment><USER2> When I saw "old," I perhaps thought you meant it was published in 1998 or so. :-)</comment>


Do Real Magic with Your iPhone :D - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qcG65_w7Og

<comment><USER2> Please explain please explain :)

<comment><AUTHOR> yup .. here it is made an app out of it .. wont be possible without the app :D [https://itunes.apple.com/app/magic-phone-rotator- zing/id5732...](https://itunes.apple.com/app/magic-phone-rotator- zing/id573248760?mt=8)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> haha ..</comment>


StackOverflow down - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/

<comment><USER2> You mean I cant post a question, and get yelled at and belittled by site moderators, only to then have my question immediately closed???

</comment><comment><USER3> "error?aspxerrorpath=/"

Hmm, aspx. I think I see the problem...</comment>


Are You an Angry Programmer? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fagnerbrack/the-angry-programmer-52a93bfcbc3c <comment><USER2> Undoubtedly I am an angry programmer but this article misses the point of why programmers are angry. It is placing the blame on the programmer itself rather than the environment they cause this toxic environment. People don't choose to be angry for anger sake.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, probably, but I shut down as soon as I hit the MBTI pseudo-science.

<comment><AUTHOR> > but I shut down as soon as I hit the MBTI pseudo-science.

You are definitely right!

The way the article was written was very misleading. The idea is that MBTI was used as a hypothetical mental model and some ideas can relate to the author experience of the "angry programmer".

I have edited to make the point clear, any feedback will be much appreciated!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We all are... at some extent.</comment>


The Racism Treadmill - <AUTHOR> http://quillette.com/2018/05/14/the-racism-treadmill/ <comment><USER2> Excellently written and conceived piece. So many good points, I implore everyone reading this comment to actually read the article if they haven't already.

Many people critical of modern progressivism's take on racial disparities are not critical because of some racism of their own, but rather because they want to see disproportionately impoverished minorities achieve success and view progressive racial rhetoric as counterproductive to this end, regardless of how well intentioned the rhetoric may be.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author is a rising star.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a very well written article and talks about an aspect of racial disparities that isn't talked about much in the public sphere: culture. At some point negative aspects of poverty culture in general and black poverty culture specifically needs to addressed and talked about. The impediments caused by negative cultural aspects are real. With regard to education, the only real way to improve schools is to improve the culture toward learning.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article seems like veiled scientific racism to me, and some of the author's points along with the people arguing about IQs in the comments seem to lend some credence to that idea. I don't doubt that culture plays some role in it all, but the author seems to skirt around the idea that Black Americans may have this very distinct culture as a result of being at the bottom of society for so long.</comment>


A deep learning approach to colorizing images, specifically for Pokemon - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cameronfabbri/Colorful-Image-Colorization <comment><USER2> From a deep learning point of view I totally get the appeal of doing this, however...

Surely for the old black and white Pokémon games it would be easier to just rip the assets from the ROM and ask the Pokémon community to re-colour them as a crowd-sourced effort, I'm sure many fans would love to do it.

Would it then be possible to re-inject the assets back into the ROM? (I'm thinking not, as 1-bit images are way smaller than 4-or-8 bit images, and that's not even considering that the original Gameboy ROMs probably don't understand colour images at all...)

<comment><USER3> > Surely for the old black and white Pokémon games it would be easier to just > rip the assets from the ROM and ask the Pokémon community to re-colour them > as a crowd-sourced effort, I'm sure many fans would love to do it.

And they have, actually: [https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=361713](https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=361713) There's a lot of other mono Gameboy game that have been colorized by fans as well, though for the life of me I can't find the collection of them that I'd stumbled upon like 2 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find this to be neat demonstration of new AI techniques, and a glimpse of what could be done to enhance our favorite game worlds. How about generating additional world areas based on existing ones? Or making your own DLC with new weapons, characters, quests? Or training on one game and generating content for another, to create a cross-over between mario and megaman?

</comment><comment><USER5> Original images ([https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cameronfabbri/Colorful- Ima...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cameronfabbri/Colorful-Image- Colorization/master/images/resized/testing/test_2.png)) are upscaled png images with jpg artifacts, seriously!?

<comment><USER6> They're frames extracted from video as a convenient way to get a large enough training set (50000 images).

<comment><USER2> It's probably still worth running them all though a de-noise filter first tho.

<comment><USER7> Any half-decent "deep learning" system should be noise-tolerant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the results would be improved if the inputs were in the original resolution rather than upscaled. Currently there's some smearing between the "pixels" of the art.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why Diamond though? That one is so different from the gb/gba versions. Prob better result just to stick with 2nd and 3rd gens.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this is pretty neat, thanks for posting!</comment>


Business Insider Is Losing Money but Growing Fast - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2016/03/05/business-insider-is-losing-money-and-growing-fast-thats-why-axel-springer-valued-it-at-over-400-million/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Business Insider lost $11.9 million on $42.4 million in sales last year. Despite the loss, Axel says BI's revenue rose 41 percent from the previous year" A $400 million valuation for this. Axel will need a miracle for this deal to turn out to be financially positive.</comment>


Assrockets and Opportunities (or: Why I Changed Jobs) - <AUTHOR> http://globalnerdy.com/2007/11/25/assrockets-and-opportunities-or-why-i-changed-jobs/

<comment><USER2> What fascinates me is how this proves again the principle of "do what you love": there is this guy who wants to launch a rocket from his ass, and you might be forgiven for thinking that it is just about the most pointless activity conceivable ever. But don't you know it, somewhere perhaps on the other side of the country or the globe, someone is inspired by it to improve his life. So it was useful after all...

</comment><comment><USER3> I am impressed by the sheer number of assrocket references you were able to make.

</comment><comment><USER4> "white kid rectal pyrotechnics" is the best phrase I've heard all week.

</comment><comment><USER5> Always make sure "this end up" is pointed away from the body!

</comment><comment><USER6> A long winded way of saying:

"I am willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want."

For those of you who like books:

[http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Secret-Getting-Absolutely- Eve...](http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Secret-Getting-Absolutely- Everything/dp/1589804864/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196087619&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER7> two things are true about humanty: if it can be tried it will be tried by someone somewhere, and, if it gets you laid it will be tried

</comment><comment><USER8> > _whenever the chef of the restaurant he's trying to save appears to have > lost the passion for cooking, he almost always says "I need to put a rocket > up his ass"._

I only recall this once, and he was referring to the _arugula_ they were cooking with, which is called _rocket_ in Britain. He didn't say _a_ rocket, but rather referred to shoving the arugula up the ass of someone who annoyed him.

So, no. It's the author's misunderstanding due to regional linguistic differences.</comment>


Show HN: Tag a small landing page for everyone - <AUTHOR> Https://tagtag.xyz <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, first of all I made this for fun and still bare bones.

If you submit your Instagram username or email I will contact you, make your page and send you the link :)

And you can use it as a landing page

<comment><USER2> Wait, I added my name and it said "Thank you, we will contact you, check your inbox.", but I didn't add any contact information.

 __LE: __I just realized this is for instagram, the word "instagram" was only faintly visible in the placeholder of the input.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I was trying to figure a way out. Maybe I should make the text smaller on mobile. Did you submit your Instagram id?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Blockify - <AUTHOR> http://www.blockify.me

<comment><USER2> I've done this, except I found it to be mostly worthless.

why?

We all restrict what other people's apps can see of ours.

What does this mean?

most stories aren't visible. The first 10 stories that I see through the graph api correspond to about the first 100 stories I see through my facebook newsfeed (this same limitation also applies to using facebook's own "download your data" app, as it is implemented through the graph api without any special access). This also means that if you post a comment to friend's story (and see on your page/timeline "commented on X...", if that friend restricted api access to their data, you will not only not be able to access the comment (that you wrote), you won't even see it in json dump of the page via the graph api.

In all honesty, the only way to do it "right" (in quotes for a reason, as not really right(tm), and with facebook's current limitations) is to basically parse their dom and rewrite it. That's also something I've experimented with (and have a relatively simple implementation), however, they change things constantly!

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree on the difficulty, but Im not seeing any gaps in my data outside of what I have purposely filtered out. I have it based on pulling my stream, assuming I am the one who is logged in.

I will be sure to constantly compare and contrast the actual FB stream against the Blockify.me stream. The main frustration I am having is that the Graph API response time is twice as long as the REST api, that is now deprecated. We are looking into what calls can be batched and where we can use caching to speed up the app.

I do appreciate your sharing your experience so that I can learn from it.

<comment><USER2> I'm telling you I've compared your blockify stream to my newsfeed stream it has huge gaps. The gaps are due to my friends restrictions. you might not have friends that restrict "foreign" apps (i.e. your apps access to their data). I think that's not the common case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I got tired of the facebook clutter, spam etc. So, after the last backlash over the stream, my partners and I started experimenting in making our own client.

<comment><USER3> It says "Log in to your Facebook account" but it doesn't tell me what I get if I do.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can't believe we overlooked the homepage. Wow. NIFD (Now I Feel Dumb). Great callout HN! Thanks for taking the time to comment! We should have a new graphic up soon.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I rarely use that "log in with Facebook" thing... and I pretty much never use it if I don't know what I'm getting for it.

<comment><USER3> This is basically a reskin of Facebook. "Log in with Facebook" is actually necessary for this app to do anything.

<comment> jack-r-abbit I like the idea of a reskinned Facebook... but that is a pretty broad concept. A set of screen shots and a couple paragraphs is probably all it would take. I barely trust Facebook with my Facebook data. How am I to just blindly trust some other site with my Facebook data without even seeing _anything_ about what it does?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Script Boxr - an in-browser, shareable, JavaScript sandbox - <AUTHOR> http://scriptboxr.cubicle6.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Script Boxr has been a small spare-time project for me over the last 10 days. The goal was to create an environment in which I could write and execute JavaScript and share it easily with a nephew who wants to learn some JavaScript.

This is my first "Show HN" - thank you in advance for any feedback!

</comment><comment><USER2> Great little project! One thing that would be nice would be syntax highlighting and automatic indentation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Syntax highlighting is on my list and I know of a JavaScript library to do it. I hadn't considered autoindent; that one should be interesting.

<comment><USER2> Codemirror seems like the way to go: <http://codemirror.net/mode/javascript/index.html></comment></comment></comment>


After School Programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/09/after-school-programming.html <comment><USER2> This brings back memories of Computer Club in 5th and 6th grade. It was after school a few times a week. Had lots of fun with Hypercard. One funny side effect: my programs were stored on the school computers so during recess on rainy days I would try to make as much progress as possible in 20 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea of After School Programming, if only because programming is a skill and like any skill the earlier you learn and the more you practice it, the better you get and the more of an advantage you have later on in life. It's like kids who do competitive swimming, gymnastics, bowling, wrestling, karate, etc. from a young age. If they stick with it, they tend to be at the highest competitive level throughout life simply because they started sooner and have more practice to develop their skill.

Many of the best programmers I've ever met were coding by middle school on their own self taught and self directed projects.</comment>


Unsafe Haskell (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis194/spring15/lectures/12-unsafe.html <comment><USER2> So, essentially the Haskell compiler allows you to say "don't worry I've got this, it'll be fine -- it's pure and semantically correct, I promise!" because the developers of the compiler know that they can't think of everything and want you to be able to do some really nasty hacks if you have to do so. It's easy to check up that the authors of the libraries you're using aren't using these escape hatches.

Of course, if they or you are using these escape hatches, and it's not correct -- and it blows up -- you've only yourself to blame for subverting the compiler.

<comment><USER3> Most strongly typed languages have such escape hatches ("Unsafe" in haskell, "Obj" in OCaml, "trustme" in Idris,....) . It's something you always need at some point when the typing is not sufficient to properly account for what you are doing.

For instance, Coq code can be extracted to OCaml code. OCaml type system is less powerful than Coq's, so Coq needs to cheat, and the emitted code is full of "unsafe" features. But the program was typechecked with Coq's type system, and is thus perfectly safe.

Of course, the goal of the language designer is to minimize its usage. That's something the Rust people understood very well, and the unsafe blocks are an extremely good solution to this problem.

<comment><USER4> > It's something you always need at some point when the typing is not > sufficient to properly account for what you are doing.

E.g. FFI becomes horrendously impractical without something of this kind.

<comment><USER5> There's even work to address that with linking types:

[https://dbp.io/pubs/2017/linking-types- snapl.pdf](https://dbp.io/pubs/2017/linking-types-snapl.pdf)

If the component is externally type-checked, the integration can be type checked against the language including it. They're also working on verifying compilers that do that:

[https://dbp.io/essays/2018-04-19-how-to-prove-a-compiler- ful...](https://dbp.io/essays/2018-04-19-how-to-prove-a-compiler-fully- abstract.html)

Previously, others made the assembly languages themselves type-safe. Example:

[https://www.cs.cornell.edu/talc/papers/talx86-wcsss.pdf](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/talc/papers/talx86-wcsss.pdf)

We might eventually be able to drop a caveat or three when talking about where type/memory safety ends. Cool stuff, eh?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the reason Safe Haskell exists

[https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/7.8.4/docs/html/users_gui...](https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/7.8.4/docs/html/users_guide/safe- haskell.html)

<comment><USER7> Also lambdabot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Author calls the unsafe version x7 slower, yet such imperative, impure code wins Haskell benchmarks Perhaps he didn't optimize it well? [https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...](https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/faster/haskell.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Haskell is my guilty pleasure language. I have no idea what I personally would ever use it for, but I admire it so much that learning it is higher up on my bucket list than many other (arguably more useful) things.

<comment><USER10> Learning Haskell definitely affected the way I write _and read_ code in other languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a point to this other than calling unsafe functions is unsafe?

<comment><USER12> Presumably, answering the question "Why does Haskell have all these (seemingly) unnecessary restrictions on things that I can do when doing them (seemingly) won't cause problems?"</comment></comment>


Open source efforts of february - <AUTHOR> http://text.krona.tm/post/18683486214/open-source-efforts-of-february

<comment><USER2> Are you saying that in the whole month you spend 2.5 hours on open-source. Which was really installing and looking up the docs for Wordpress?

<comment><AUTHOR> Almost, the setup was quick but getting familiar with wordpress wasnt quick. And also, it was a low month, I hope to land around 8-10 hours. Also, the time tracking is proabably on the low side, but should be a fair comparison between month at least I think.

Doing the blogposts are a way to force myself to prioritize it, which I havent really done this past month.</comment></comment>


Beyond Reformatting: More Code Cleanup - <AUTHOR> https://www.openssl.org/blog/blog/2015/07/28/code-cleanup/ <comment><USER2> "We now do this consistently: a = malloc(n * sizeof( _a)); "

Isn't calloc(3) the safer paradigm (protecting against integer overflows, in case n _ sizeof > SIZE_MAX) recommanded for this case ? (besides the memory zeroing).

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent stuff. Good to know that last year's security problem has lead to some improvements in process.

I hope the Open SSL team now do regular code reviews of every change, of every line of code as part of their development process.</comment>


DocStore: Document Database for MySQL at Facebook [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.percona.com/live/mysql-conference-2015/sites/default/files/slides/Facebook%20DocStore%20Percona%202015.pdf <comment><USER2> Things like MySQL and PHP have bad reputation nowadays but Facebook shows impressive use cases and improves the technology more and more.

<comment><USER3> While tools like MySQL and PHP aren't as bad as the community makes them out to be - Facebook is a terrible example how "impressive" these tools can be considering that Facebook almost entirely rewrote both of those tools ([https://github.com/webscalesql/webscalesql-5.6](https://github.com/webscalesql/webscalesql-5.6), [https://github.com/facebook/hhvm](https://github.com/facebook/hhvm))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're not stuck with a huge MySQL legacy installation, Postgresql 9.4's JSONB + json_path_ops index queries seem neater. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> MySQL 5.6+ / MariaDB 10 with its InnoDB engine is very popular and suitable for web scale.

PostgreSQL is a good open source alternative for GIS and enterprise needs (Oracle, DB2, MSSQL). Unnerving is a tiny fraction of the Postgres community that acts as trolls.

<comment><USER6> Why exactly is "MariaDB 10 with its InnoDB engine" "suitable for web scale" while PostgreSQL is merely a good "alternative for GIS and enterprise needs"?

I think you may have some interesting information to add, but your comment currently reads like aped talking points, with a dash of accusing someone asking a reasonable question of trolling.

<comment><USER5> The question at the end wasn't there, when I wrote comment. The default postgresql config is rather conservative. It is more an open source Oracle with many of its (former) unique features. PL/pgSQL resembles Oracle's PL/SQL procedural language. [1]

Most people simply don't understand MySQL. MySQL is unique in as it support many database engines [4], it's like a common SQL layer on top of dozens of database engines. MySQL had a bad reputation because of its old MyISAM engine [2], the former default engine (one of many). The current default database engine is InnoDB [3] which is very fast and is what Facebook and many other huge web sites use.

Instead of repeating myself and others, MySQL+memcached is quite popular, check out the highscalability website [5].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL) , [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12622524/postgresql-9-2-1...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12622524/postgresql-9-2-10x-slower- than-mysql-5-5) , [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/110927/would-you- recommen...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/110927/would-you-recommend- postgresql-over-mysql) , etc.

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyISAM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyISAM)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InnoDB](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InnoDB)

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_MySQL_database_en...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_MySQL_database_engines)

[5] [https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:highscalability.co...](https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:highscalability.com+mysql)

<comment><USER4> The question at the end was always there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The queries remind me of UnQL. It was introduced by the Couchbase and SQLite teams as a way to standardize NoSQL queries: [http://unql.sqlite.org/index.html/doc/tip/doc/syntax/all.wik...](http://unql.sqlite.org/index.html/doc/tip/doc/syntax/all.wiki)

<comment><USER8> At least for Couchbase thus was replaced by N1QL: [http://docs.couchbase.com/developer/n1ql-dp4/n1ql- intro.html](http://docs.couchbase.com/developer/n1ql-dp4/n1ql-intro.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of FriendFeed´s Schemaless MySQL.

[https://backchannel.org/blog/friendfeed-schemaless- mysql](https://backchannel.org/blog/friendfeed-schemaless-mysql)

They were acquired by FB.

<comment><USER10> I came here to post just this. Bret Taylor, one of the co-founders of FriendFeed, was CTO @ Facebook after the acquisition.

Also besides FBSON, most of what I've read in those slides looks like PostgreSQL's JSON support:

[1]: JSON type [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/datatype- json.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/datatype-json.html)

[2]: JSON functions [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/functions- json.htm...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/functions-json.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is awesome. We would find it super useful.

Does anyone know if Facebook is planning to open source it, or if not, whether something similar exists?

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand this is or will be a part of WebScaleSQL [1]. But WebScaleSQL does not provide binaries. You have to build it yourself.

An alternative is the JSON Labs Release of MySQL 5.7.7 [2]. The differences are explained in the slides, at the end.

Another great alternative is using PostgreSQL that supports JSON columns stored in a binary format since version 9.4 [3].

That said, I really like the approach of Facebook with DocStore, because of its use of "document paths", instead of functions.

[1] [http://webscalesql.org/](http://webscalesql.org/)

[2] [http://mysqlserverteam.com/json-labs-release- overview/](http://mysqlserverteam.com/json-labs-release-overview/)

[3] [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/datatype- json.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/datatype-json.html)</comment></comment>


Chrome extension for detecting CSRF vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/YelGroup/Yel-CSRF-tool <comment><AUTHOR> Just started doing this, I will be glad to know your opinion. POST request supported. GET and filters will be soon.</comment>


T.M. Landry and the Myth of Meritocracy in Education - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/12/tm-landry-and-myth-meritocracy-education/578149/ <comment><USER2> >And yet, they did not implode the moment they breathed the rarified air of the Ivy League. Some struggled or dropped out, but a number of Landry students—particularly those who had spent more time in traditional schools—simply continued to advance.

This is quite interesting: completely average students who normally would have no chance of admission can handle ivy league educations. It does appear that exclusive universities are not selecting the smartest 18 year olds in the land but bestowing a title of permanent employment and business advantage on a select group of people of average intellect.

<comment><USER3> I think it's pretty well known that Ivy League schools are much harder to get into than they are to get out of, at least among college-aged people. That's by design, but also partly out of necessity; it's not possible to design a curriculum so difficult that only 2,000 students in the country can graduate, and then accurately select those 2,000 students from 50,000 applicants.

<comment> barry-cotter Reliably picking the top 4% and tailoring the curriculum to them sounds very difficult. With a large enough potential student body and a small enough enrolment a sufficiently prestigious institution can have any kind of student population it wants.

Cal Tech students are admitted purely on academic merit and they're the only elite university in the US with a significant drop out rate. I doubt they have any graduates who aren't in the top percentile.

In practice you're mostly right. Look at schools like Yale Law or France's École Nationale d'Administration[1] where the student body is so smart that half of them would pass the exams if handed the reading list and syllabus for the exams and given a year to prepare.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_nationale_d%27administra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_nationale_d%27administration)

<comment><USER4> >where the student body is so smart that half of them would pass the exams if handed the reading list and syllabus for the exams and given a year to prepare.

Is that unusual?

<comment> barry-cotter Yes. If you give an average class of 15 year olds high school textbooks and past exam papers and tell them you'll give them lots of money if they get a good grade they won't do it. Given expert instruction, dedicated time to learn and every support plenty fail.

If being able to learn independently from a textbook was normal boot camps would not exist.

<comment><USER5> Even students who are able to learn independently need credentials.

And is your statement about the average class of 15 year olds based on research or is it pure speculation?

<comment> barry-cotter Credentials are very helpful but none of the boot camps gives credentials worth a damn and plenty of their graduates get good jobs. Credentials are not always bad everywhere necessary.

My statement about the average class of 15 year olds is based on my exposure to the children I tutor, having been a 15 year old myself, observation and a certain amount of reading in the psychological literature, mostly the monotonic increase in conscientiousness that goes at least into the late twenties.

I actually have great respect for the capacity of teenagers to learn and achieve; I just think very little of their discipline. I've no doubt at least a third of the average high school class could do lambdaschool's front end or data science course. Given a similar level of support, scheduling and structure I'm sure at least a quarter could complete the curriculum of many Master's degrees. But the average college student is older, more conscientious and smarter than the average 15 year old. Twenty percent drop out. More graduate in six years than in four. The average 15 year old is in no way prepared to self study given just text books and a syllsbus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While the Ivy League has been associated with "selectivity," was anyone under the impression that admission came down to "meritocracy"? The Ivys have always been shorthand for "America's Aristocratic Schools" and the dumping ground for rich people's kids. That random people from disadvantaged upbringings can thrive there is hardly a surprise. The only question is where the aristocracy would send their kids if the Ivys opened up admissions to everyone.

<comment><USER4> Right. This isn't surprising to anyone who knows how the Ivys work. It just makes it harder for the Ivys to pretend otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >America's supposedly meritocratic system of elite higher education revolves around an intensive search for the most capable students.

That is an incorrect assumption. The elite institutions want people who will be part of the elite. The big draw for these is networking opportunities. If one of your dorm mates is a Justice, the other a Senator, and the third a CEO of a Fortune 500, when you say found a startup, you are going to be able to pitch your idea to some very powerful and wealthy individuals. Now how do these elite institutions make sure they get future elites. Well, throughout human history and even now, the most likely way to become elite is having parents who are elite. So students who have elite parents are disproportionately represented. The other way to be elite is to have extraordinary talent combined with extraordinary determination combined with some luck. The colleges therefore use test scores/ extracurricular activity etc to select for these people. It is no coincidence that the founders of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook all came from elite institutions as have a majority of Presidents and Supreme Court Justices. The benefit of an elite institution is not the curriculum but who your classmates are.

<comment><USER8> Exactly! If I had the opportunity to go to an institution with Harvard-tier educational opportunities and reputation but no legacy admissions (merit-based only) or one where a third of the students were children of the rich and powerful, I know which one I'd choose.

(Of course, if I was one of those "children of the rich and powerful" I'd probably choose the first school - much better environment for finding opportunities to invest in. Less competition, after all)

<comment><USER9> > Exactly! If I had the opportunity to go to an institution with Harvard-tier > educational opportunities and reputation but no legacy admissions (merit- > based only) or one where a third of the students were children of the rich > and powerful, I know which one I'd choose.

Case in point: I went to a public selective-admission high school where the average SAT scores were comparable to an Ivy (probably 1,450 when I went, over 1,500 today). That's higher than the top private secondary schools. 15 years later, folks are mostly pretty successful (doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists) but not exactly masters of the universe. Nothing compared to what you might see in a cohort of Andover or Exeter grads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >a socioeconomic segment that, due to pervasive discrimination, is notoriously underrepresented in higher ed

This argument is getting very tiring, and increasingly dangerous. There's a laundry list of reasons coming from a poor background is disadvantageous. Especially growing up without a father and with poor nutritional intake.

If we handwave all inequities away with discrimination, then actual, internal problems will never be solved. That goes for all marginalized minorities.

<comment><USER5> Also for white people born into poverty. There's an entire underclass of white people, so often dismissed as "white trash", who struggle with the same broken families, drug- and crime-ridden neighborhoods, failing schools, and (classist) discrimination on top of that, without any help from the leftist elite.

But correcting those problems would require eliminating wealth inequality and disrupt the idyllic lives of the elite. Our attention is directed to discrimination precisely in order to prevent the solution of these actual, internal problems.

We saw the battle clearly in 2016. Hillary's identity politics vs Sander's raceless socialism, and we all know which side Wall Street, Democratic insiders (AKA superdelegates), and the leftist media were on.

<comment><USER11> Why on earth would a lack of _social capital_ in the 'underclasses' require "eliminating wealth inequality" in order to solve? The _material_ living standards of many "poor" people are far from low! If we truly want to be cynical about it, we could actually surmise that what the elite of this country fear most is a ruinous fall in their established _status_ and _prestige_ , not their wealth. No matter what else you might think about '45', the election of a President who built _most_ of his successful campaign on supporting the average folks over the 'out-of-touch' elite also suggests that this is where the actual fault-lines of modern politics are.

<comment><USER5> That's an interesting question, but I've yet to see a plan for equalizing social capital and status that didn't include "raise taxes on the rich". Perhaps you know of one?

<comment><USER11> Social capital is not something you 'equalize' by raising taxes on the rich; it's something you _build_ by introducing the norms and institutions of civil society even among people who were formerly socially excluded and marginalized. As one example, unions are a notable case of an institution which has played a non-trivial role in improving social capital/civil society among the "underclasses" of many developing countries.

<comment><USER5> Oh, that's what you meant by social capital. I meant things like jobs, health care, education, and most importantly, opportunities to excel.

I think any attempt to blame the underclass for their situation is simply ignorant of the problems faced by people who don't have access to those things, and the reasons why people whose best hope appears to lie outside the "norms of civil society" choose not to obey the norms of a system which is set up primarily to preserve wealth - that is, to preserve their exclusion and subjugation.

<comment><USER11> Actually, it's pretty much both. And I absolutely agree that any attempt to blame _individuals_ for their plight is absolutely misguided. Not least because it's rather misleading to even talk about people "choosing not to obey" the norms of civil society as a relevant issue - the fact that this is even a _plausible_ choice simply shows that the self-sustaining aggregate of norms, solid institutions, _real_ opportunity to be economically productive and even to excel (and not just pointless make-work) and the like were never properly established in the first place - that these people, in a way, are indeed being excluded and subjugated, if perhaps only via inaction.

It's nonetheless a mistake to presume that such subjugation "preserves" wealth. It _actively destroys_ wealth, whether or not it functionally preserves an existing social hierarchy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Achieving The Network Effect: Solving The Chicken Or The Egg - <AUTHOR> http://brianbalfour.com/post/25027886124/the-network-affect-solving-chicken-or-the-egg <comment><USER2> Regarding type #2 as described in the article:

We discussed that problem a few times between the current batch of nReduce startups, more specifically there are a few social network projects (or projects with social network features) being developed and nowadays you'll have to strive for outright domination in order to have a chance with a concept like that. This is a tough proposition in a market where the willingness of users to sign up for (and invest time into) walled gardens is becoming very limited for understandable reasons. Which is sad, because I think there are still some great innovations to be made in this sector and the big players have no incentive to do so.

In our case, a few of us are probably going to try and solve this problem by having a federated model that allows us to have one large userbase of people that can interact across servers. This is where my own project fits in, so I'm very excited if we can make some inroads.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some excellent advice from Chris Dixon on the chicken and egg problem: [http://cdixon.org/2009/08/25/six-strategies-for- overcoming-c...](http://cdixon.org/2009/08/25/six-strategies-for-overcoming- chicken-and-egg-problems/)

and also by Joel Spolsky: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> Sometimes not all chickens or eggs are equal and its not just the amount of each but the specific identity of which chicken or which egg... If that makes any sense.

Not sure if a sports example will fly on HN but here goes:

So, let's say you wanted to create a platform/network for High-School athletes to connect with and get recruited by college coaches. The Athlete can post highlight video, stats, info, etc to gain exposure. Coaches can view these, interact with and find athletes that usually would not be on their radar.

With that as an example you can see where the "general" network externalities model assumptions fail. (where simply the number of and not the individual identities of other adopters matter)

In recruiting there are the athletes who are actively recruited and need not compile their own game film and make/post highlights because coaches have long had them on their radar and will acquire these things on their own. They do not need the network as much as lesser athletes and may actually be hurt by it.

Then there are the majority of high school athletes that may have the talent to play at the next level, be it Div I or III, or even at non scholarship offering institutions.

For these athletes an "Identity-specific" network externalities model is more congruent. In this model each user's benefit is a function of the identities of those who adopt. A lesser athlete's benefit derived from the network would be positive/increasing when an athlete of higher status adopts the network, and negative when someone of lower status adopts.

Then when you to the sport-specific recruiting differences, football/basketball vs lacrosse/soft-ball,.also hockey and baseball being a whole different animal with the inclusion of pro team scouting into the high school athletic experience.

Anyways, just a thought, another layer to contemplate

</comment><comment><USER5> As a startup working with this exact challenge, I enjoyed this post. Emphasis on the value prop on both sides is critical, and evangelizing users is your best hope.

Paul DeJoe from Ecquire watches his referrals metrics closely and uses those to judge user evangelism. If a user will recommend you to someone else purely out of the positive experience they believe that person will get, then you've got something.

Thanks for the insightful post.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. I'm glad you found it helpful. Building networks/platforms/communities is extremely tough. Hoping more shared tactics will come out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do you have more examples of brute force approaches that have worked? I think it's often overlooked, and necessary even if you have narrowed the target audience as you have suggested.

<comment><USER6> By Brute Force, I think I mean just incentivizing the audience in some way. The two most likely ways to incentivize are:

1\. Monetary - Yelp paid reviewers a couple bucks a review. At Viximo we paid out guarantees. Glam paid out guarantees on minimum CPM's to early publishers.

2\. Social Capital - From stories I've heard about LinkedIN, Reid Hoffman and early employees got friends to use the network and invite others.

3\. Early Access/Coolness - You see this with beta invites, restricting early access, etc.

<comment><USER8> AirBnb also owes some success to a bit more gray/black hat approach if I remember correctly: [http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a- billion-do...](http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion- dollar-company/)

Sometimes you gotta do what it takes.</comment></comment></comment>


Letterbox-shaped products come into their own - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/16/post-modern-letterbox-shaped-products-come-into-their-own <comment><AUTHOR> A bit confusing until deciphering the Britspeak, where "letterbox" means both an actual box (whether with a slot or lid) and a slot through a door. The article refers to things that fit through a standard mail slot.

See also [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_box](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_box)</comment>


Can Large Scale NAT Save IPv4? - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/can-large-scale-nat-save-ipv4 <comment><USER2> It will delay the problem for another 10, maybe 20, years but it will not solve the problem.</comment>


Ask HN: Creating screencast to raise funds? - <AUTHOR>

Hi. I am trying to launch a startup but I have no coding skills so I decided I would hire someone to code it for me, but to do that I need money.
The only skill I have is creating videos, and so I am thinking that creating screencasts and intro videos for startups would be a good way to go.
I am looking for advice on how to get screencasting gigs, and how much I might charge for them.
For example, say I can create the intro video on dropbox.com, how much should I be charging for that?
Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I tried following you but I think I failed. What specific questions do you want answers to or advice on? I have a lot of experience in the screencast arena and I'm happy to offer tips/ideas but I can't really figure out what you are asking.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to know how I can get screencasting gigs and how much people pay for them.</comment></comment>


2015 is the year that Tumblr became the front page of the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/03/11/move-over-reddit-tumblr-is-the-new-front-page-of-the-internet/ <comment><USER2> >implying image macros didn't originate on 4chan

But anyway, Tumblr has a reputation for really, really soapboxy stuff. It's not all like that, but soapboxing is encouraged there. This might lead people to denounce Tumblr; the real issue is the people on Tumblr, and really only a subset of them cause trouble.

The same can be said of many websites.</comment>


Cancer fears could prevent Google Glass from ever becoming a phone - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/57312/cancer-fears-could-prevent-google-glass-from-ever-becoming-a-phone/ <comment><USER2> Can Bluetooth do that, though?

I also heard some fears about their "bone conduction" for audio (i.e. may make you deaf in the long term). But I don't know how true any of it is. I hope Google is the taking health issues very seriously.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google can counter with: Google Glasses are unlikely cause cancer. Let us repeat it, Google Glasses are unlikely cause cancer.

;)

I for one, would not wear them regularly, even if they were useful and stylish. By the time research comes in, it might be too late for many.</comment>


Xen vs. KVM: network, CPU, and disk performance compared - <AUTHOR> http://vmstudy.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> Those graphs are brutal. The graphs are 3d and on angles, so numbers that are the same actually look different. Just a complete mess. I know thats not what the post is about, but It makes the post considerably less useful and the graphs considerably less usable.

<comment><USER3> Note also that it swaps the colors between Xen and KVM between the first group of graphs and the second group. Very poor presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We use virtual machines to emulate larger networks, particularly when we need true independent actors at the edges. We chose KVM over Xen because it is easier to get an embedded system to run on emulation than it is to run on a hypervisor kernel. Also, some systems are just not able to be hacked at in that way. Our performance has been good, its nice to see how our intuition shakes out compared to actual measurements.

Some notes I have on top of the article:

Network performance monitoring:

\--iperf has a tendency to use a ton of cpu. This can impact network performance metrics. Lately I like using the 0mq performance tests, slightly modified to last longer than the default 10s.

\--In my setups KVM adds approx .5ms latency to network transit, when using para-virtualization through a tap device and bridge, having the host os do the routing.

\--The virtualized e1000 works better in most cases than any other NIC KVM will virtualize.

CPU performance:

\--The best results for KVM come when setting cpu affinity, if you have a workload that coincides nicely to 1 vm/core, there is a performance boost.

</comment><comment><USER5> I found it odd and jarring that for the first 2 graphs, KVM is blue and Xen is green, while for the CPU graph, Xen is blue and KVM is green. For all subsequent 3-way comparisons, KVM is back to blue and Xen is back to green.

</comment><comment><USER6> A bit off topic, but is anyone using BSD jails these days?

<comment><USER7> Nope, but I use Linux-VServer which is basically jail for Linux. It works well with little performance penalty.

<comment><USER8> How's your experience with vserver? I use openvz. It's ok...the technology works, but the docs are less than desirable. I'd switch to vserver if I could maintain the same experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With the way the Xen kernel has lagged, this in very encouraging. For KVM, all that I have to do is enable it in my latest kernel sources.</comment>


Apple not providing LGPL webkit source code for latest iOS 4.3.x - <AUTHOR> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2011/05/06/#20110506-applewebkit_lgpl

<comment><USER2> For iOS 4.1, which came out in September 2010, absolutely no GPL code for it (or later versions, like 4.2) was posted until March 2011. That's not 8 weeks: that's about 6 _months_.

When comex (<http://twitter.com/comex>) and saurik (<http://saurik.com/>) asked for it (via emails to email@example.com and firstname.lastname@example.com) around last November, I don't think they got any response from Apple —until this year. Then, Apple let them know that it would be up "within a week". I think the iOS 4.1 and 4.2 code actually went up about three weeks after they received that email.

saurik has even more examples of them not releasing the [L]GPL'd code near the top of this post: <http://www.saurik.com/id/4> — "Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple ends up on the bad end of a GPL-related lawsuit."

(In my opinion, the fact Apple has posted _any_ code for iOS 4.3 at this point is a big step in the right direction: they're not perfect yet, but at least they've got 8/10 of the projects up.)

<comment><USER3> > In my opinion, the fact Apple has posted any code for iOS 4.3 at this point > is a big step in the right direction: they're not perfect yet, but at least > they've got 8/10 of the projects up.

The truly weird part, to me, is that with as much (L)GPL code Apple releases they don't seem to have an automatic, systematic system in place to handle that. Even for a project as big as iOS.

<comment><USER4> I think the problem is that doing so is a zero-revenue effort. Why spend man- hours putting together an automated workflow for source release when you can just do it manually (and lazily) every time someone complains? That doesn't justify it, of course, but looking at it that way makes it seem not-weird.

<comment><USER5> This is risky, because lawsuits can have damage awards. If you decide not to comply with a contract you've agreed to because "it's a zero-revenue effort", that could look bad in court.

Legality aside, it looks pretty bad from a human interaction perspective: "we took thousands of man-hours worth of code from the community, but we were too lazy to spend even one man hour to upload a tarball to our website and follow that community's wishes". The fact that they are legally-obligated to not act like that just makes it even worse.

<comment><USER2> But is it really an hour? I doubt that Apple uploads the code they actually used: it's likely that code, and then lots of removed components that would reveal too much about how something works (e.g. there are no build scripts or Xcode projects for JavaScriptCore releases, only the code itself).

At least, they would need to make sure that none of their proprietary code slips out. That likely involves more than "svn checkout; tar; ftp", maybe even lawyers to check it.

<comment><USER6> _there are no build scripts or Xcode projects for JavaScriptCore releases, only the code itself_

Not true. See JavaScriptCore.xcodeproj in ...

[http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/JavaScriptCore/JavaSc...](http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/JavaScriptCore/JavaScriptCore-7533.20.20/) [http://svn.webkit.org/repository/webkit/trunk/Source/JavaScr...](http://svn.webkit.org/repository/webkit/trunk/Source/JavaScriptCore/)

... and if Xcode isn't your thing, just run the script "build-webkit" ...

<http://svn.webkit.org/repository/webkit/trunk/Tools/Scripts/>

... build instructions in plain English here ...

<http://www.webkit.org/building/build.html>

<comment><USER2> That's true for standard WebKit, and even the Mac OS X version, but not for iOS.

For example, the latest iOS JavaScriptCore release (4.2, [http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/JavaScriptCore/JavaSc...](http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/JavaScriptCore/JavaScriptCore-621.1/)) has no Xcode files like the one you linked does.

I haven't read the LGPL lately, but is that a violation? Do they have to provide enough information to build your own copy?

<comment><USER7> Yes, it is.

"For a library, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the library."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apple, as with many other companies, does not understand that it has to release the source simultaneously with the program using it.

Despite the articles claim, Apple has not released the source in s timely manner for previous versions of iOS, instead waiting for it to be pointed out or for version N+1 or N+2 to be released first.

<comment><USER9> Nothing about the GNU family of licenses requires simultaneous -- or "timely" -- release of source for a binary. Just because it's _usually_ done that way in the OSS operating system world doesn't mean that it _must_ be done that way. (In fact, it's usually the other way around for OSS: the source precedes the binaries.)

Nor, by the way, are they required to release it to any random user out there; they are only required to release it to people who receive the binaries (it's not clear if this must be honoured if the binaries aren't received legally, but I suspect it does).

<comment><USER10> I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure it implicitly requires reasonably timely release of source for a binary. There's nothing in the license about any period of time that you're allowed to leave it before providing source, so I assume it's supposed to be fairly immediate. To put it another way, the license would be useless if they were allowed to wait 100 years before providing source. Since that's clearly not okay, why should waiting 6 months be okay either?

<comment><USER11> _Fairly_ immediately?! What the hell does _that_ mean? We all need to spend less time talking out of our asses, playing armchair lawyers, and more time either heads-down coding or going to law school.

<comment><USER12> ... and maybe we all need to spend less time being aggressive asses.

They made it pretty obvious that they were speculating, and were not trained in law. What, is that illegal now? Is it bad form? Is it offensive? They make a fairly good point about allowing an infinite period of time, which adds to the discussion.

You, by insulting the poster needlessly and grossly missing the point of the post, have added nothing to the discussion.

I usually try to refrain from doing this, since I'm also adding nothing to the discussion, but this is becoming an alarming trend.

<comment><USER11> Yes, speculating i.e. talking out of your ass is offensive. It wastes everyone's time. It's a dangerous trend. Baseless speculation forms the bedrock of the vast majority of content that appears on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. It is dangerous because it's "facty" but has no value.

You and your sanctimonious defense of people's right to spout what you admit is nonsense are part of the problem. Part of a healthy culture, whether it's our culture at large or "hacker culture" is a respect for facts and thoughtful, informed opinions based on knowledge and experience. The "victim" of my comment is pissing all over a set of ideals that we should all hold sacred.

<comment><USER13> Civility plays an important part in effective communication. You may feel that you are merely stating your opinion directly and with force. But an argument is only as strong as its ability to persuade. When you put people on the defensive--when you force an emotional rather than rational reaction--you rob an argument of its power.

Aside from that, there are two other reasons to be more civil. One is that it's just a nice thing to do to treat people respectfully even (or especially) when you're telling them they're wrong. But if that doesn't persuade you, it's worth remembering that civility is explicitly required in the HN Guidelines.

<comment><USER11> Good points. I, however, am dispirited by watching comments devoid of value not getting subjected to the same sort of enthusiastic down-voting as comments that reflect exasperation at those very vacuous, time-wasting comments.

A culture that prefers polite nonsense to harsh truth-telling is a weak culture. At the very least, both should be punished, but I don't see that here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a hardcore Apple fan, I strongly hope one of the non-Apple contributors to Webkit sends a source request to Apple with the implicit threat of lawsuit.

Big companies don't treat others with kid gloves when it comes to licensing and copyright, so why should we take it from them?

<comment><USER15> You can send the request yourself. Any third party is allowed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While in all likelihood it's a legal and bureaucratic issue causing delay, I can see how this is considered bad form.

However, I've made an attempt at understanding the source release obligations under the GPL and all I get from it is: When you release to the public, you've got to release the source. But at no point have I found a "it has to be released immediately."

[http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePos...](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic)

The only clause I can see Apple potentially hiding under is Section 3.B of the GPL. ie. as long as they have the door open for written requests all is well.

<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html>

Can someone please clarify for me how the "well intended" spirit of the license works versus the real world legalities and requirements ?

<comment><USER17> Copyright law prohibits distribution of derived works. The LGPL is a license which gives permission to distribute software if certain conditions are met. In this case the license is from the many authors of Webkit and it permits Apple to distribute a derivative work (the iOS browser). If you think about it that way then "immediately" doesn't really come into play. If Apple provides a copy of the source when asked, they're complying with the license. If they don't they have no license. Technically, they are infringing copyright every time they distribute a copy of iOS.

If someone sues, would a court award damages for the copies distributed or enjoin distribution of iOS until they comply? I doubt anyone knows because AFAIK no case has ever made it that far. Typically (L)GPL disputes are settled long before they make it to court, because the cost of litigation for both sides is high compared to the remedy desired (release of modified source).

I wonder if there's a role for "Copyleft Trolls", i.e. litigators who acquire copyrights to GPL or LGPL source, then sue license violators with the intention of collecting damages rather than just compelling release? US copyright law allows statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed.[1] If each source file is a separate work, there could be a lot of money at stake. In other words, the Righthaven strategy[2] applied to source code instead of newspaper pictures. Perhaps I should apply for a business method patent on that idea.[3]

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyright...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyright_infringement) [2] [http://www.google.com/search?q=righthaven+site%3Anews.ycombi...](http://www.google.com/search?q=righthaven+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com) [3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_method_patent>

<comment><USER16> Merci.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm still waiting for that "open" FaceTime specification.

</comment><comment><USER19> Are you sure about that?

<http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore>

Edit: I would greatly appreciate an explanation of what is inappropriate about the above link.

<comment><USER20> Could downvoters explain what's wrong with link to webcore trunk?

<comment><USER21> I didn't downvote, and IANAL, but I believe I know the difference.

When releasing a product with GPL/LGPL source, the requirement is to provide either the source or an offer to provide the source which corresponds to the _exact version of the source code used in that product_ "on a medium customarily used for software interchange".

So, if there were tags in the webkit repository that said "iOS-4.3.2", "iOS-4.3.3", etc. then Apple could take a tarball of it and someone requesting source could be provided with the tarball and optionally a link to the correct tag in the repository.

However, waving in the general direction of the source repository and saying "it's all in there somewhere" doesn't constitute compliance. Even if one of the Safari versions tagged in that repository happens to be the exact source that ships in some iOS 4.x, Apple has to make that relationship clear because (AFAIK) iOS is the "product" in this case, not Mobile Safari, given that the two are indivisible from the end user's perspective.

(Again IANAL, so this is all mostly based on lurking the Gpl-Violations.org list, reading their Vendor FAQ, and dealing with some reluctanctly GPL compliant companies.)

<comment><USER22> This is what I'm guessing as well, but unless Apple uses heavily customized versions of WebCore for their iOS releases, this seems like a decidedly trivial violation. Doesn't excuse Apple, but hardly worth all this fuss.

Also, seriously, downvoting both GHFigs' and xentronium's comments is pretty lame, folks. (Feel free to downvote mine: I'll never see the score.)

<comment><USER23> The LGPL requires that I am able to take Apple's provided source code, make my own modifications, and somehow compile/link the result into the program that is using the binary build.

And, for the record: Apple's provided source code (which /is/ heavily modified for the iPhone), when they do provide it, isn't even complete enough to compile (it is missing a bunch of code for the WAK* classes), so Apple has simply never been in compliance with this license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You just need the copyright owners to sue now. The copyright holders can also ask the SFLC do it for them, I'm sure they would love it.

<comment><USER25> One doesn't have to start with a lawsuit. One starts with a nice polite letter, on actual paper, to Apple's legal department reminding them of their LGPL obligations and pointing out that they're past deadline and perhaps they should poke the relevant engineering team?

Then if that gets no satisfaction you have your lawyer send the same letter. Then a nastier letter. Only then do you begin to think about preparing a lawsuit, which is expensive and probably overkill.

What you _don't_ do is put up a passive-aggressive blog post. This post doesn't even tell us how many letters have been sent, or by whom, or to whom, or when. Have we even asked the _support_ folks or the engineers, let alone Apple legal?

I can barely find the stomach to blame Apple's engineering team for prioritizing strict and timely license compliance somewhere below: Making their boss Steve Jobs happy, releasing features that paying customers care about, and sleeping. Fortunately, it is not my job to blame them. It is the job of Apple's legal department to blame them. Has anyone asked Apple's legal department?

<comment><USER26> If they don't want to spend their time complying with the software license, then they're free to not use open source licensed code in their products. Microsoft do just that, and they never have to worry about compliance issues.

I don't think Apple would appreciate it if I downloaded iWork and instead of paying them said "Promoting strict and timely license compliance falls somewhere below sleeping".

<comment><USER25> It is true: Apple will not appreciate it at all if you pirate iWork. But will they sue you?

Does anyone have a news story about Apple suing the (many, many) Apple software pirates? So far as I've heard, they don't even send very many nasty letters. Presumably not because they don't believe in paying for software, but because it's strategically unwise.

Anyway, if Apple fails to respond in timely fashion to a series of inquiries they can, indeed, eventually be sued, and maybe that will even be the best move. Perhaps a suit against Google will proceed at the same time:

[http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/03/25/google.not.sha...](http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/03/25/google.not.sharing.android.3.source.to.public.yet/)

Though in that case, as well, I doubt it will come to that.

(One of the many virtues of starting your own business is that you soon learn all about the practical limitations of contract law. People violate the letter of your contracts all the time. What are you going to do about it? The law is a relatively blunt instrument; it is expensive and difficult to bring it into play, often more difficult than your unpaid invoice is worth.)

<comment><USER5> _Perhaps a suit against Google will proceed at the same time_

Indeed. It seems like applications that have code from non-Google employees have changed, as well as the Linux kernel itself.

<comment><USER27> FUD : every GPL bit of Honeycomb has been released since January.

<comment><USER5> Yes, you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So is the issue here that they have not packaged it up for people and put it on opensource.apple.com? Is the source not available in the official repository at webkit.org?

<comment><USER23> No, it isn't: Apple uses a modified version of WebKit and WebCore for iOS that is not present in trunk. For WebKit they are allowed to hold back these changes, but for WebCore they are not. They do anyway, however, and have actually /never/ provided a copy of WebCore for iOS that is complete enough to compile (in particular, the code for WAK* is redacted).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Who holds the copyright on that webkit source code in question?

</comment><comment><USER30> We have an update! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2530086>

</comment><comment><USER31> Knowing how evil and secretive Apple is, I would not expect them to care much about open licenses.

</comment><comment><USER32> This only becomes a real issue when one of the KHTML copyright holders makes it an issue

which they haven't.

</comment><comment><USER33> Anyone else find this to be a bit over-dramatic?

They have released every other version and just haven't released the 4.3.x one yet. There is no indication that they refuse to release it ever, the site still says "Coming Soon" and it has still been < 2 months since 4.3 was released.

Yes, I understand that under the GPL they're supposed to release it simultaneously with the launch, which they failed to do, but is this really front page news?

<comment><USER34> Yes. I take license violation very seriously. Imagine if Apple was violating a Microsoft license in this way. They'd be sued in a heart beat. Companies need to realize the (L)GPL is serious. It's not something you can just ignore because it's convenient.

<comment><USER35> But surely openness is a spectrum, and if they've released versions in the past, and they claim they will be releasing this one, then that still counts as being "open"?

<comment><USER36> Anything related to Apple is always a good source for some sensationalist piece.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cold fusion reactor "independently verified" - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/156393-cold-fusion-reactor-independently-verified-has-10000-times-the-energy-density-of-gas The paper: http://ecat.com/files/Indication-of-anomalous-heat-energy-production-in-a-reactor-device.pdf <comment><USER2> I am skeptical because of the story of Andrea Rossi, the inventor of the device:

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=it&tl=en&js...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=it&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=it&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fit.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPetroldragon)

</comment><comment><USER3> That's jetpack level energy density!</comment>


Ask HN: What do you look forward to in your free time? - <AUTHOR> I'm a software developer (mid twenties) and I often don't know how to enjoy my free time. I don't want to do programming, since this is already my day job (~ 40h week) and I find it mentally exhausting to do in my downtime. Other than that I feel like I don't have many interests which help me enjoy my free time. As a result, I usually end up watching Netflix with my girlfriend, browsing HN, cooking, playing a bit guitar and idling away after work / on the week ends. In general that's ok for me, but I'm slowly realizing that this is very repetive and doesn't fulfill me. I don't enjoy sports (not doing any at the moment, but considering it just for health reasons), I don't enjoy partying, exhibitions, city trips, shopping etc. Socializing with friends tends to exhaust me (and also often involves board games, which I don't really enjoy, either).
Sometimes, I feel as if the thing I'm looking forward to the most is my work. However, that's not really relaxing for me, which is why I feel quite tense, unbalanced and unsatisfied lately.
So, my question to my fellow HN readers: What joyful things do you do in your free time? <comment><USER2> I am twice your age, I look forward to good sleep.

My wife says I am world champion napper.</comment>


JavaScript Pudding: Express and Backbone and React and Bootstrap – Front-End Starter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/EdwardReed/javascript_pudding

<comment><USER2> what does it do? Would you care to explain the purpose please in your readme file? Thanks.</comment>