911 emergency services go down across the US after CenturyLink outage - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/28/911-service-outage-centurylink/ <comment><USER3> I'm unable to read the article on my phone (ad?) so I apologize if it is answered there, but why is this a long lasting problem? My past two or three (not sure) workplaces have had to failover to alternate providers for office traffic when something broke in the primary, and both had contracts in place and the technical infrastructure to do so in relatively short order. (I don't want to ignore the pre- and intra- effort by ops, I'm just saying it paid off)

Is this outage just breaking those places that didn't have such things (as a result of insufficient budget or skill)? Is there some now-regrettable contract(s) that prevented that from being in place?

Why is a system that saves lives working without the backup that systems that dont dictate life are? While I understand that govt has both budget and hiring issues, i've worked in state govt and there are definitely some highly competant admins to be found, so I wouldn't assume that is the problem without word from someone with more detailed knowledge into this particular problem.

<comment><USER4> Software is hard, and backbones tend to be mono-cultures. This means that there will be bugs which only become apparent when the full fleet has been deployed.

This is why large phone networks have really long rollout periods - <USER2> hopefully catch these things before it affects everything.

This is also why emergency services should not be using cell phones for reliable service during emergencies.

Here's another example from 1990, where the phone network got stuck in a reset loop.

[https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/9/62#subj2](https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/9/62#subj2)

Corporations make similar mistakes with their disaster planning. It doesn't matter if you purchase network connections from two suppliers if they go across the same bridge.

<comment><USER5> My dad spent his career as a natural gas pipeline technician. For a long time they maintained their own radio towers and VHF or UHF (I forget which) radio network. Each district had their own comms guy who maintained the network, and it was very resilient and reliable, allowing the entire company to be in contact essentially anywhere.

In the early 2000s as a cost cutting measure, the company decided to nix the radios for satellite phones on each truck. Of course this proved to be problematic, as the sat phones often had reception issues. They relied on cell phones as backups, which was also quite foolish as the remote compressor stations had very poor reception. They also had issues where someone would leave a voicemail and they wouldn't get notified of it for days or weeks due to some issue with AT&T.

After a couple emergencies where communication was identified as a big issue, they proposed moving back to the old radio system, but they had already sold off the frequencies and dismantled the infrastructure. My dad retired not long after this, but the "corporate bean counter" trope rang quite true here, and in the long run we were all a little less safe because some executive with no field experience wanted to make a name for themself by saving a little money on something that proved to be mission critical.

<comment><USER6> That makes me sad to hear, because not only was this company left with an inferior solution, the man hours and effort that went into the original project (including purchasing part of the spectrum!) was essentially nullified.

It's an alarming trend among new grads as well, who see existing systems as bloated and in need of rewrites. Who would've thought the bloat was kind of important?

<comment><USER7> But then we wouldn't have single threaded wonders like node.js

It's part of our culture that the young kids dismantle the 'old people stuff' setup their new stuff to only re-invent the wheel again and again, run into the same problems that were solved decades ago to only be repeated again.

Remember how TCL was going to save us all from K&R C? Then it was perl to save us from TCL? Then Ruby? Python? javascript, Go or whatever is the flavour of the month?

<comment><USER8> Sure except you've managed to bitch about most major programming languages here without proposing any alternatives.

<comment><USER9> The poster's entire point was that all of them came from a desire to find another option when a reasonable alternative already existed.

<comment><USER10> The logical conclusion is that Ruby shouldn't exist because _shakes fist_ those darn kids should write all programs in C instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From CenturyLink's Twitter feed:

 _" Update: On December 27, 2018 at 02:40 GMT, CenturyLink identified a service impact in New Orleans, LA. The NOC is engaged and investigating in order to isolate the cause. Field Operations were engaged and dispatched for additional investigations. Tier IV Equipment Vendor Support was later engaged. During cooperative troubleshooting a device in San Antonio, TX was isolated from the network as it was seeming to broadcast traffic consuming capacity, which seemed to alleviate some impact. Investigations remained ongoing. Following the isolation of the San Antonio, TX device troubleshooting efforts focused on additional sites that teams were remotely unable to troubleshoot. Field Operations were dispatched to sites in Kansas City, MO, Atlanta, GA, New Orleans, LA and Chicago, IL Tier IV Equipment Vendor Support continued to investigate the equipment logs to further assist with isolation. Once visibility was restored to the site in Kansas City, MO a filter was applied to the equipment to further alleviate the impact observed. All of the necessary troubleshooting teams in cooperation with Tier IV Equipment Vendor Support are working to restore remote visibility to the remaining sites at this time. We understand how important these services are to our clients and the issue has been escalated to the highest levels within CenturyLink Service Assurance Leadership."_

<comment><USER12> This info is related to their much earlier DWDM/transport system outage, which took down a huge number of 10Gbps lit transport circuits starting around 0700-0800 Pacific time on the 27th. The 911 outage for WA began 10+ hours later.

see outages mailing list archives for more details:

[https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages](https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages)

<comment><USER13> This effected Washington, and its still very much on going 24hrs later. Geez is it a pain. [https://downdetector.com/status/centurylink/map/](https://downdetector.com/status/centurylink/map/)

<comment><USER14> Thurston County came back online about 20 minutes ago (0900 PST).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was an incident with similar consequences on April 10, 2014. The cause was a programmed threshold being breached and the impact was 6h of downtime.

Source: "The Coming Software Apocalypse" published by The Atlantic ([https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/savin...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/saving- the-world-from-code/540393/))

walrus01 also linked to [https://www.fcc.gov/document/april-2014-multistate-911-outag...](https://www.fcc.gov/document/april-2014-multistate-911-outage- report) in another comment.

<comment><USER16> > _Operated by a systems provider named Intrado, the server kept a running > counter of how many calls it had routed to 911 dispatchers around the > country. Intrado programmers had set a threshold for how high the counter > could go. They picked a number in the millions._

I'm really curious if there's some explanation that makes this sound less catastrophically stupid, particularly the part where they picked a threshold less than INT_MAX.

<comment><USER17> What do you mean, VARCHAR(8) is a perfectly valid way of storing counters...

<comment><USER18> much better to future proof it by using a BLOB. You know, just in case you ever need to shove something else in there.

<comment><USER19> if you're going to use a BLOB how can you know the type and how to decode it? Make sure to serialize that data with something like protobuf.

<comment><USER20> Nah, describe it using some custom binary format and have a 1000 page spec to document it!

<comment><USER21> Yay, seralised bluetooth! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This will be a post mortem to read. No details yet but I'm wondering where the broken links are? Is it a VOIP glitch or more than that?

Edit: VOIP indeed. Centurylink outage: [https://komonews.com/news/local/centurylink-outage-knocks- ou...](https://komonews.com/news/local/centurylink-outage-knocks- out-911-calls-in-parts-of-w-wash)

<comment><USER23> Today I've learned that vast swathes of the emergency call network depend on just one ISP. I wonder if the old, analogue and copper-only network wasn't more resilient.

<comment><USER11> It was. In the entire history of electromechanical switching in the Bell System, no central office was down for more than 30 minutes for any reason other than a natural disaster or major fire. There are books about Number Five Crossbar and how it worked, and they're worth reading if you design high- reliability systems.

The only central office downtime from a major fire was in 1975 in New York City, resulting in 23 days of downtime.[1] All the incoming cables and the main distributing frame had to be replaced. The switching equipment, on upper floors, survived and just needed some maintenance and cleaning. That was still a crossbar office; it hadn't been converted to electronic switching yet. Worst disaster in the history of the Bell System. Bell switched to less flammable cable coverings, like plenum cable, after that.

Widespread failure of 911 service suggests an overcentralized architecture. 911 requires a phone number to address lookup, so there's a database involved. Widespread failure indicates this was implemented as a remote query service ("in the cloud") rather than read-only database copies of the directory at each central office.

[1] [https://youtu.be/f_AWAmGi-g8?t=110](https://youtu.be/f_AWAmGi-g8?t=110)

<comment><USER24> There's an old AT&T video showing the careful coordination and huge amount of manpower needed to upgrade a single telco switch. They had rows of workers with cable cutters, in order to literally cut the entire service over to the new equipment. Total downtime was just 47 seconds.

(And even during the cutover, they're careful not to interrupt any emergency calls.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saRir95iIWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saRir95iIWk)

<comment><USER25> So, what exactly happened there?

Where were the signals going after the cables have been cut?

<comment><USER11> The new switch was connected to each line in parallel with the old switch, but it was able to ignore incoming signals until told to take over. The old switch was hard wired enough that it could not be remotely commanded to have no effect on incoming signals. The line relay attached to each line had to be physically cut out of circuit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> CenturyLink is critical to 9-1-1 services throughout the U.S. They have a 9-1-1 division to which a very large number of municipalities outsource. Even military installations outsource parts or all of their 9-1-1 operations to CenturyLink.

This CenturyLink division has historically acted very carelessly in regards to securing these systems. Getting them to take ownership of their contractual obligations can be difficult.

Criticism of their operations is very sensitive. Pointing out any vulnerabilities can be prosecuted as an act of terrorism. A post as simple as this one comes with significant risk.

<comment><USER27> While I'm not refuting any of your claims, do you have a source for them? It sound like typical big corp behavior, albeit worse because of the importance of emergency services.

<comment><USER28> I at least found the 911 unit:

[https://www.centurylink.com/wholesale/pcat/911.html](https://www.centurylink.com/wholesale/pcat/911.html)

<comment><USER29> To the best of my understanding, they aren't providing the 911 call center here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interestingly the University of Washington put out an email notice nearly an hour before AlertSeattle sent one. You'd think the city would make it a higher priority to let everyone know that 911 is down. Not sure if they did a text message earlier though, currently overseas w/o service.

[https://i.imgur.com/2rlxi7f.png](https://i.imgur.com/2rlxi7f.png)

More info on the outage here: [https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/nationwide- centuryl...](https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/nationwide-centurylink- outage-affecting-911-calls-in-western- washington/281-1e461abb-8b3c-49e2-8a57-764e39466213)

<comment><USER31> _Interestingly the University of Washington put out an email notice nearly an hour before AlertSeattle sent one. You 'd think the city would make it a higher priority to let everyone know that 911 is down._

How long do you think it takes to send out a few million alerts versus sending a few thousand?

<comment><USER32> Isn't there an emergency alert system -- should take as long as sending a radio signal?

<comment><USER31> EAS notification would have been virtually instant. But it's supposed to be used only for immediate life-and-death situations (tornadoes, nuclear war, chemical plant explosions).

Amber/cell phone alerts have a lower threshold for pulling the trigger.

<comment><USER33> I think Seattle eventually activated the local EAS over the radio during the 911 outage, my parents mentioned hearing it, though it was very scratchy and not very intelligible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> And this is why I've made it a habit to save the the local number to the police station where I live, and after moving around a little I seem to have accumulated a few. Always nice to have a backup should you need it.

<comment><USER35> Not just the police department... Fire, ambulance, poison control, dig safely, local traffic control tower (they're about ~9 miles away from me), pharmacy, and suicide prevention (every fridge needs one of those magnets).

<comment><USER36> Seems like the government could very cheaply offer an app that is basically just a geolocated lookup for these sorts of things. The app could basically just be a spatialite database generated from a git repo, and it would only have to be updated periodically, and would never go down.

<comment><USER37> They should but I think it would be a great community project. I'd be interested in helping out, been working on apps for ~3 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates > and monitors 911 services, said the commission is investigating the outage.

Until they "resolve" the issue without disclosing any details...

<comment><USER39> Maybe they will open the case for public comments and insights, then "ignore" those comments because of a "DDOS attack", and then finally not investigate the alleged attack despite earlier on outlining how it was able to cripple public infrastructure.

Could there be a more mismanaged agency than the FCC?

<comment><USER40> >Could there be a more mismanaged agency than the FCC?

or maybe they're all just as mismangaged, but you noticed them in partiular becaue you are passionate about the FCC's mission?

I'd be willing to bet if the average American interacted with fincen, FDA, IRS etc they'd be shocked at the ineptitude. America has been strangling their enforcement agencies for a long time - one could argue there's a direct path from a poorly funded IRS only taking on "slam dunk" cases and ignoring complex money laundering schemes to Trump's election.

<comment><USER41> The fact that it takes a special prosecutor (and the subsequent reporting) to dig into these big money laundering schemes only cements your point even more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Could this happen to have been part of the massive CenturyLink/Verizon outage that's been rolling across the midwest the last day or 2? I know it's been a major pain in the butt for me, but I've been super productive at work not having to worry about answering calls.

<comment><USER12> network engineer for pacific NW ISP here: Yes this is absolutely centurylink related, from what I can observe that it's taken down, and I have my suspicions about Intrado. I think centurylink broke things further trying to fix this morning's DWDM/transport system outage.

See the PDF file linked here:

[https://www.fcc.gov/document/april-2014-multistate-911-outag...](https://www.fcc.gov/document/april-2014-multistate-911-outage- report)

<comment><USER43> Was this 10G DWDM gear? Any idea who's equipment and what root cause was? I'm just curious because I used to work for a vendor that supplied DWDM gear to Centurylink and wonder if this is equipment I designed. 10G DWDM is pretty robust so must have been a pretty massive failure, line amplifier, fiber cut, software upgrade, or something.

<comment><USER12> nothing confirmed yet, it's all rumors and conjecture.

[https://fuckingcenturylink.com/](https://fuckingcenturylink.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> At least the systems to notify of the outage sure worked well, at least for me.

Got an EAS alert while watching TV and two emergency alerts on my cell phone (one generic telling me to call local police or fire, and one telling me a specific number to call for my county).

Furthermore, I now think that a call that came in on my landline at 10:42 PM was probably also a notification. The caller ID just said "wireless caller" and I didn't recognize the number so I ignored it, but now Googling that number turns it up as a cell contact number for my county's Department of Emergency Management.

</comment><comment><USER45> The incompetence of the Roman government once became so great that they lost the ability to provide basic public utilities like the keeping of time. Is this that for us? How could 911 possibly go down? Crazy.

<comment><USER46> 911 is a creaky old system put in place by a Chicago mayor looking to score some points with the electorate. There are thousands of (poorly run, uncoordinated) Public Safety Answering Points across the country, and most tend to contract with just the local incumbent telecom, ensuring any time there is an issue with said incumbent, every call to said PSAP fails.

In the context of most of these PSAPs having already moved to VOIP, there isn't a coherent reason why these calls shouldn't go straight from the carrier originating the call to the PSAP, without middlemen like Centurylink standing by to misroute those calls.

<comment><USER47> > 911 is a creaky old system put in place by a Chicago mayor looking to score > some points with the electorate.

I'm always interested in Chicago history, so I went looking, but couldn't find anything at, for example, [https://www.nena.org/page/911overviewfacts](https://www.nena.org/page/911overviewfacts) . Do you know anywhere this history is written up?

<comment><USER47> Ah, I may have seen what you mean. According to [https://www.countyofunion.org/site/cpage.asp?cpage_id=180009...](https://www.countyofunion.org/site/cpage.asp?cpage_id=180009766&sec_id=180003667) :

> 1976 Chicago claims to have had "the first enhanced 911 system of any major > city" in the United States.

… so I guess in

> > 911 is a creaky old system put in place by a Chicago mayor looking to > score some points with the electorate.

you meant E911 (which, as the linked page points out, is a nebulously defined and variously implemented technology), not necessarily 911?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm surprised cell towers can't tell connected phones what the local emergency number is, and then dial that instead when 911 isn't working correctly.

<comment><USER49> Cell networks (but not towers) effectively do this already - when you dial 911 (or 112), the phone doesn't actually dial the number "911" or "112"; instead it requests a call of type emergency. This is routed by the mobile network itself, according to how it handles emergency calling.

The phone also enters a specific "access class" (access class 10) for emergency calling mode, which lets it join other masts on networks it wouldn't normally operate on. (This is where the message "emergency calls only" originates from)

But if the onward system this "un-numbered" emergency call would be passed onto is unavailable (as it sounds like is the case here) then emergency calls will fail. It might be possible to dynamically reconfigure the mobile network core , but you'd need to configure this on the core, for each and every cell tower or group of cell towers, to route the call to the right alternative lines/number. Whether that system has capacity to handle all these calls is another question.

<comment><USER50> > for each and every cell tower or group of cell towers, to route the call to > the right alternative lines/number

Cell towers have virtually nothing to do with routing calls. That's all centralized in a region with all the towers back hauling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> From my experience for a lot of these 911 centers they are centered around counties(not all, but a lot). Back when they were first being set up with the internet capacity there were two issues. DSL was the only available service within the area, and the centers couldn't afford large enough pipes. Talking early 2000s here. So a lot of these centers got pretty large grants from the feds.

They then hired one of the companies at the time that were doing these upgrades in bulk around the country when the money was flying because the fcc wanted all of the emergency services to move to narrow band from wide band.

These companies came in updated everything to modern and setup the contracts with the DSL providers back in the day(in my rural town I grew up in they just got 80mb cable internet in 2016, prior to that 10mb dsl was the best you could get there) In the west that was Qwest who became Century Link.

But government being what it is. A lot of these 911 centers have languished because there is no desire to invest in updating these systems as they are expensive and hve a difficult upgrade process. So a lot of these centers are just paying to bills and trying to scrape by with minimal funding. And so upgrades and redundancy aren't even considered. Until something like this happens. And the feds might throw some money at the problem. All the centers will get grants to have failover and then will go back into dormancy of just working day to day with no budget.

</comment><comment><USER52> Mass says they restored 911 by 9am, but I just got an alert at 12 noon saying it's down now...

</comment><comment><USER53> I was in a grocery store when my cellphone, in unison with all the other phones in the store gave the clarion call for attention... I thought Russia had finally launched a 1st strike...

</comment><comment><USER54> It wasn't just emergency calls. Most Centurylink service around the US was down intermittently yesterday.

<comment><USER55> A lot of Centurylink circuits are still down in Arizona, and if not down completely, have significant packet loss.

<comment><USER31> A friend texted me that his POS systems that rely on CenturyLink in Nevada have been down for two days. The stores can only do transactions in cash.

Makes you think twice about the cashless utopia the HN crowd imagines.

<comment><USER56> Or to switch to crypto currency that is distributed and eventually consistant

<comment><USER57> I swear the swiftness with which people swoop into these kinds of threads to suggest crypto/blockchain is bordering on becoming a meme.

If the network is fully down, I don't see how the scenario for this business owner changes with blockchain, they'd have the exact same problem with a register that can't close an ACH: backlogged transactions that need to catch up eventually, meaning some card types are going to decline if the POS can't reach a clearing house utilized by the card vendor.

<comment><USER56> Even if you wait for 15 confirmations, that's easily fufilled by the others in a market.

Similarly, for it to make it to the chain only 1 of those 15 confirmations has to connect to any larger network sometime in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why does a congressman not step up and draft a law stipulating:

        * US telecom, an office of US federal government shall
          be founded and it shall serve all federal and state
          governments' institutions. US telecom shall be funded
          by federal sales tax. Government institutions
          themselves shall not be billed.
        * Emergency services number shall be 911.
        * 911 shall be operated by US telecom and US telecom
          shall pay private communication providers in
          international rate every time 911 is called.
        * Private providers shall not bill
          911 calls to their subscribers.

</comment><comment><USER59> Is it me or did TechCrunch recently ruin their mobile experience. I tried to read the article but got so frustrated and distracted by the wonky scrolling I gave up. It's just awful.

</comment><comment><USER60> Is there any information available about how these systems are typically architected and run as well as what sort of availability they generally achieve?

<comment><USER61> I can tell you what 911 Call Taking systems look like, they are mostly a call presentation system, with some call handling features. This issue is upstream of any 911 center however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> context: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18775352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18775352)

<comment><USER63> Since the current post adds information, we'll leave it up instead of marking it as a dupe, and have moved most of the non-time-sensitive comments here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Notes from their massive DWDM system outage earlier on the 27th, which preceded the 911 outage:

        2018-12-28 13:35:00 GMT - Efforts by the Equipment Vendor and CenturyLink engineers to apply the filters and remove the secondary communication channels in the network continue. The previously provided ETR of 09:00 GMT remains.
        2018-12-28 13:27:30 GMT - The Equipment Vendor and CenturyLink engineers continue work to apply the filters and remove the secondary communication channels. Field Operations and Equipment Vendor dispatches to recover nodes locally remain underway. Services continue to restore in a steady manner as troubleshooting progresses following the recovery of nodes. CenturyLink NOC management remains in contact with the equipment vendor to obtain updates as restoration efforts continue.
        2018-12-28 11:04:24 GMT - CenturyLink continues to work with the Equipment Vendor to apply the filters and remove the secondary communication channels. Field Operations and Equipment Vendor dispatches to recover nodes locally remain underway. Client services continue to restore in a steady manner as troubleshooting progresses following the recovery of nodes.
        2018-12-28 10:05:18 GMT - CenturyLink NOC Management reports steady progression of node recovery and restoral of client services. In addition to the remote node recovery process, Field Operations continue to dispatch and assist the Equipment Vendor with local equipment login.
        2018-12-28 08:51:29 GMT - CenturyLink NOC Management has advised that repair efforts are steadily progressing, and services are incrementally restoring. The Equipment Vendor and CenturyLink engineers continue work to apply the filters and remove the secondary communication channels at this time. There have been additional restoration steps identified for certain nodes, which includes either line card resets or Field Operations dispatches for local equipment login, that have impeded the restoration process. Various repair teams are working in tandem on these actions to ensure that services are restored in the most expeditious method available. Restoration efforts are ongoing.
        2018-12-28 07:12:32 GMT - Efforts by the Equipment Vendor and CenturyLink engineers to apply the filters and remove the secondary communication channels in the network continue. Additional information on repair progress will be available from the Equipment Vendor by 07:30 GMT. Information will be relayed as soon as it is obtained.
        2018-12-28 06:00:01 GMT - Efforts by the Equipment Vendor and CenturyLink engineers to apply the filters and remove the secondary communication channels in the network continue. The previously provided ETR of 09:00 GMT remains.
        2018-12-28 04:58:44 GMT - CenturyLink engineers in conjunction with the Equipment Vendor¿s Tier IV Technical Support team have identified the elements causing the impact to customer services. Through the filters being applied and the removal of the secondary communication channels, it is anticipated services will be fully restored within four hours.¿We apologize for any inconvenience this caused our customers. Additional details regarding details of the underlying cause will be relayed as available.
        2018-12-28 04:09:31 GMT - The Equipment Vendor¿s Tier IV Technical Support team in conjunction with CenturyLink Tier III Technical Support continues to remotely work to remove the secondary communication channel tunnels across the network until full visibility can be restored, as well as applying the necessary polling filter to each of the reachable nodes.
        2018-12-28 02:53:38 GMT - The Transport NOC has confirmed that cooperative efforts remain ongoing to remove the secondary communication channel tunnel across the network until full visibility can be restored, as well as applying the necessary filter to each of the reachable nodes. It has been confirmed that both of these actions are being performed remotely, but an estimated time to complete the activities is not available at this time.
        2018-12-28 01:58:56 GMT - Once the card was removed in Denver, CO it was confirmed that there was no significant improvement. Additional packet captures, and logs will be pulled from the device with the card removed to further isolate the root cause. The Equipment vendor continues to work with CenturyLink Field Operations at multiple sites to remove the secondary communication channel tunnel across the network until full visibility can be restored. The equipment vendor has identified a number of additional nodes that visibility has been restored to, and their engineers are currently working to apply the necessary filter to each of the reachable nodes.
        2018-12-28 00:59:04 GMT - Following the review of the logs and packet captures, the Equipment Vendor's Tier IV Support team has identified a suspected card issue in Denver, CO. Field Operations has arrived on site and are working in cooperation with the Equipment Vendor to remove the card.
        2018-12-27 23:57:16 GMT - The Equipment Vendor is currently reviewing the logs and packet captures from devices that have been completed, while logs and packet captures continue to be pulled from additional devices. The necessary teams continue to remove a secondary communication channel tunnel across the network until visibility can be restored. All technical teams continue to diligently work to review the information obtained in an effort to isolate the root cause.
        2018-12-27 22:52:43 GMT - Multiple teams continue work to pull additional logs and packet captures on devices that have had visibility restored, which will be scrutinized during root cause analysis. The Tier IV Equipment Vendor Technical Support team in conjunction with Field Operations are working to remove a secondary communication channel tunnel across the network until visibility can be restored. The Equipment Vendor Support team has dispatched their Field Operations team to the site in Chicago, IL and has been obtaining data directly from the equipment.
        2018-12-27 21:35:55 GMT - It has been advised that visibility has been restored to both the Chicago, IL and Atlanta, GA sites. Engineering and Tier IV Equipment Vendor Technical Support are currently working to obtain additional logs from devices across multiple sites including Chicago and Atlanta to further isolate the root cause.
        2018-12-27 21:01:26 GMT - On December 27, 2018 at 02:40 GMT, CenturyLink identified a service impact in New Orleans, LA. The NOC was engaged and investigating in order to isolate the cause. Field Operations were engaged and dispatched for additional investigations. Tier IV Equipment Vendor Support was later engaged. During cooperative troubleshooting a device in San Antonio, TX was isolated from the network as it was seeming to broadcast traffic consuming capacity, which seemed to alleviate some impact. Investigations remained ongoing. Following the isolation of the San Antonio, TX device troubleshooting efforts focused on additional sites that teams were remotely unable to troubleshoot. Field Operations were dispatched to sites in Kansas City, MO, Atlanta, GA, New Orleans, LA and Chicago, IL. Tier IV Equipment Vendor Support continued to investigate the equipment logs to further assist with isolation. Once visibility was restored to the site in Kansas City, MO and New Orleans, LA a filter was applied to the equipment to further alleviate the impact observed. All of the necessary troubleshooting teams in cooperation with Tier IV Equipment Vendor Support are working to restore remote visibility to the remaining sites at this time. Tier IV Equipment Vendor Technical Support continues to review equipment logs from the sites where visibility was previously restored. We understand how important these services are to our clients and the issue has been escalated to the highest levels within CenturyLink Service Assurance Leadership.

<comment><USER64> Sysadmins and networking subreddits were tracking this as well.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/a9z6tb/centuryl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/a9z6tb/centurylink_outage_west_coast/)

Some areas were fully out. While others (like Denver) saw partial outages/packet-loss as exit nodes depending on the dest were having problems.

<comment><USER65> That thread has some very interesting tidbits. (like this one: [https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/a9z6tb/centuryl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/a9z6tb/centurylink_outage_west_coast/ecoolf8/) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> My two cents... When a company lays off their most experienced engineers year over year over year... this is what happens. Just my humble opinion of the real root cause.

</comment><comment><USER67> Given the past and recent news about ongoing infrastructure attacks the US has been seeing, reminiscent of Ukraine, is there any possibility this is related?

</comment><comment><USER68> Not sure how common the problem still is, but some custom roms for android phones could not use shortcodes, and could not dial 911.

I'd recommend having the full numbers programmed in your phones for emergencies if your playing with new roms.

Also, federal alerts did not go out for the 911 outage, but major cities did. So subscribe to the local alert systems.

</comment><comment><USER69> "In this case, the outage affected only cellular calls to 911, and not landline calls."

Which means its basically the system which determines which 911 center to route a cell phone based 911 call. That this is still centralized, rather than distributed to the geographical towers is crazy.

</comment><comment><USER70> After reading about this earlier today I had the amusing experience of tweeting my local PD asking if "our" 911 was still operational given the situation; apparently it is given their reply tweet.

I do still have the actual "direct" local phone numbers of dispatches for the areas I most frequent.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is this outage for both mobile (cell phones) and landlines?

Does dialing the direct number (XXX-XXX-X911) work?

I've had issues on both when there was no widespread outage to the point I've given up on the utility of 911 and try to put the local police department's number in my phone for emergencies.

</comment><comment><USER71> From 1990, these guys were so ahead of their time (yea, I know, institutional racism != IT infrastructure, but still...):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPNK0VspQ0M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPNK0VspQ0M)

</comment><comment><USER72> Is 911 in the U.S. still that wildly disparate patchwork of networks and operations centres?

<comment><USER73> You say that as if it is a bad thing. Decentralizing key infrastructure and emergency response systems seems like a good idea.

<comment><USER74> Absolutely. Especially given this widespread failure, the last thing I want is more central control.

<comment><USER75> There needs to be some central or regional oversight body to ensure standards are being met, equitable access is being maintained, etc. A lot of poor areas are undeserved by these patchwork networks and several infrastructure deficiencies can compound. Example: poorly maintained roads leads to potholes, those lead to drivers swerving or getting otherwise surprised leading to injuries, which are insufficiently addressed by local healthcare. Imagine if we had a tyrannical electric utility who cut your power for a bill paid one day late.

<comment><USER73> > There needs to be some central or regional oversight body to ensure > standards are being met

You mean something like your local, county, or state governments and their agencies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> So, now there is proof that our national emergency 911 system has a possible vulnerability. Hope this will be addressed with some prioritity.

</comment><comment><USER77> Should cell phone users be plugging in 360-693-3111 as an emergency backup in the event 911 goes down in the future?

</comment><comment><USER78> I'm quite surprised no fallback/failover was put in place for a critical tier service like this.

</comment><comment><USER79> time to switch to aws

</comment><comment><USER80> lol, The Purge (2018)

</comment><comment><USER81> "When an emergency strikes, it's critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help," said Pai in a statement. "The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth and duration are particularly troubling."

In response CenturyLink is now offering a new service, called "911 Fastlane", that guarantees that your 911 calls will get through and will be prioritized ahead of calls from standard CenturyLink accounts. This service is only an additional $10 a month.

Of course, satire.

<comment><USER82> Why did you feel the need to post this weird piece of NN propaganda in a completely unrelated thread?

<comment><USER83> It seems related to me.

<comment><USER82> Could you help explain why? I really don't see any connection between NN and this story.

I understand that NN is an important issue for the BigCos employing many HN users, but I'm not really convinced we need their talking points to be brought up in every single vaguely network related thread.

<comment><USER83> Ok, so it's tangentially related. Even though it was meant in satire, it seems like something that a big telco _would_ try to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Why is it centralized??

<comment><USER85> Put it on the blockchain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Strange Apple doesn't push their own tech for this. They could include it in Messages and release on Android. For Android there would be a store button where you could see all the new stuff from Apple and buy an iPhone. Would do a service to the 50% of the world's population who's entire community communication network is owned and mined by FB.

<comment><USER65> Apple doesn't do this kind of infrastructure. Their stuff only works if the rest of the network works, which seems to be what's falling over here.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you efficiently reset/refresh your brain when it's fried? - <AUTHOR> When studying I run into the issue of getting to the point where my brain is exhausted and I need to take a break.<p>Have you run into this issue? What are the most effective ways you've found to reset your brain so it feels as fresh as it does when you wake up? <comment><USER2> Sleeping for eight to nine hours works well. Talking a walk in a park or in a forest is also good.

</comment><comment><USER3> The only way to make your brain as fresh as when you wake up is to wake up. Which means you have to sleep first.

There are some shortcuts you can take in the short term. One is caffeine (which requires large doses if you have a tolerance, will prevent focus if you overdose, will make you crash hard eventually, and will interfere with the sleep you need to be properly refreshed and focused.)

Another is amphetamines (all the downsides of caffeine, plus longer term negative effects, plus legal issues. TL;DR: really bad idea).

Sugar is... well, on HN it's almost political. But let's stick with the non- controversial claims like the fact that it'll make you crash pretty quickly; will cause weight gain if you're not cutting back proportionally on calories elsewhere; and that too much of it can cause diabetes.

There is one substance that I recommend ingesting that can perk you up a bit: water. Even mild dehydration can cause brain fog and low energy. And ok, it's technically possible to consume enough of the stuff to cause negative side effects other than the need to pee. But most of us find it difficult to consume that amount if we tried.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Free Server/App Monitoring Solution - <AUTHOR>

What software do you use to monitor your servers and the services running on them?  I'm looking for Nagios competitors that are better and easier to set up.  Right now, I've got a few Perl scripts that send emails if the disk gets full or if my site isn't returning the expected content, but it's not ideal. <comment><USER2> Zabbix was also pretty simple to set up and it comes with a bunch of monitoring tool out of the box if you have the client agent. My last job was considering it instead of trying to update and practically re-write our Nagios configs that were dragged from v1 to v2 and incompatible with v3.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I recall correctly, Zerigo's (<http://zerigo.com>) Watchdog service has a free tier.

I've used their monitoring and DNS hosting for a while, and have been thrilled with everything; performance, service, control panel.

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks pretty interesting. Thanks for the tip!</comment></comment>


What disturbed me about the Facebook meeting - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@glennbeck/what-disturbed-me-about-the-facebook-meeting-3bbe0b96b87f#.p9qj1m32z <comment><USER2> I'm a Republican. Been working in or for valley companies since 1998. Engineering then business. The last five years I've felt my views become increasingly marginalized. The left in the valley has become increasingly vocal, from the c-suite down, and I've been reluctant to express my views for fear of retaliation (See Mozilla's ex-CEO.)

The valley isn't a place focused on the innovation and free thinking that gave it a rep as libertarian. It's focused on money and power at an international level and it's found the left worldwide as the most amenable to that path.

Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, Benioff, Tim Cook... These are the narcissistic, self-righteous, power-obsessed business leaders from almost every dystopian novel or movie the last 100 years - and they are creating the very technology to give themselves real, orwellian, big-brother control, hand-in-hand with governments.

I fear my future, my children's, and their grand-children.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any proposed solutions to these issues? I'm asking because I can't think of any that aren't extremely liberal in character, like government putting limits on these businesses or affirmative action for conservatives, as Beck discusses in the article.

Perhaps he's wrong but your complaints of being "marginalized" and against the "money and power" of big business don't sound traditionally conservative. The traditional conservative line would be that you should stop complaining. Mark Zuckerberg et al are more talented and deserve the money and power they've attained because they worked harder and smarter than you have. If you would just work harder and smarter you would easily overcome these problems on your own.

<comment><USER2> Can't reply to all the comments here, but yours is very worthy of a reply. If I have time today, I will get to it, but very busy at work already.

On one hand, I understand why you have that perception of conservatives. We haven't done a good job of communicating our principles lately (which is why Trump won the nomination, in large part - but in fairness it's also a tough thing to do with so many institutions stacked against us: media, academia, govt administration, etc.)

On the other hand, that's not quite a conservative viewpoint, and you've also picked up on the wrong threads in the fabric of my dystopian nightmare.

In short... I wouldn't punish them for being successful. I just don't want the government helping them or working with them. The government exists to protect our rights - especially from infringement by the powerful (in business or government.)

Instead the power hungry in business and government are teaming up. Teaming up to spy on us, control us, and enriching the businesses and cementing the control of bureaucracy at the same time.

Eg. in spying and violating rights, where does the government end and business begin?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your reply! What you're describing is very close to what Tocqueville describes in Democracy in America - that the US has achieved a balance between three parts of society: political society (the gov't), economic society (business) and civil society (social bonds that tie people together in their communities or the judiciary).

I can appreciate your self-description as "conservative" vs. "Republican", because they're very different. The Republican party has tried to so simplify their message to "lower taxes", "let the market decide", and "small government" in such a way that they're only really representing economic society. That means that they're also ignoring important checks on economic society that Tocqueville noticed were key to avoiding something like the French Revolution. (Tocqueville also speaks at length at the need for a balance between complete equality and complete inequality to avoid unrest).

Republicans have eviscerated taxes on business and created economic imbalances like lower taxes for capital gains, inability to discharge student loans in bankruptcy, bailouts to banks "too big to fail", restrictions on aspects of civil society like unions, "trickle-down economics", etc. These once added checks and balances to economic society and helped preserve civil society.

Strong civil society is what lead to a Great America of small towns, family businesses, and general prosperity for hard working people....all of which are in danger today. Wal-Mart is the antithesis of a strong American Civil Society. You simply can't have a company propped up by government welfare and anti-union legislation like Wal-Mart and a culture of successful small businesses at the same time. It's an oxymoron.

I think what conservatives are seeing is that the Republican ideal to simply remove all checks and balances on the free market has been poisoning the strong civil society they're trying to rescussitate. When you're feeling like the government is working against you, it's true. Civil society is getting eviscerated and your ideal "equality of opportunity" is getting b-slapped by the invisible hand of the rich and powerful capitalists.

Even Adam Smith made great points for the necessity to check the invisible hand in the Wealth of Nations. He describes the necessity of gov't sponsored public works projects, of checking monopolies, and of public education to avoid the "torpor of the mind" that economic society would lead us to without any checks to it.

Unfortunately few Republicans clamoring for lower taxes and free market economy know anything about the Wealth of Nations. Their one-dimensional policy opinions are creating more of a problem and hopefully more people will start calling themselves "conservatives" because they're trying to conserve equality of opportunity instead of simply parroting "Lower taxes", "Free market", and "Who is John Galt".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "What happened to us?"

The thing that drove me, a lifelong conservative, into the arms of Bernie Sanders; the Republican party (and the conservative group in particular) are so hard core on social issues that are to be blunt, disgusting (things like preventing homosexual marriage and abortion) and completely antithetical to the idea of "keeping government out of things." No I don't like everything the Left wants to do, but I also have no love left for the Bible thumping I'm-ignorant-and-proud-of-it crowd.

I have too many homosexual friends who I know are good people. I have too many friends who had their contraception fail and aren't in any position to raise a child, recognize that, and want to wait to accept abortion. And more and more I'm realizing that the party of "leave us alone" wants the Government involved in way more things than the other one.

I don't know when this happened, I don't know why, but if you want the explanation there it is. You guys bank harder and harder on ignorance and fear every year until now you've got a candidate like Trump, with practically no ideas and nothing to offer except new things to fear.

I won't belong to the party of fear.

<comment><USER5> Your question is probably rhetorical, but it happened because the Republican party decided they needed to bring social conservatives (especially Southern whites disaffected by the Civil Rights Act) into their coalition. See "Southern strategy" [1].

I believe anti-choice specifically was brought into the party platform during the Ford years. Outright homophobia was pretty mainstream until well into the 90s, and wasn't much of a differentiator between the parties. Democrats just soft-pedaled their position while the Republicans, specifically the fundamentalists who had grown in power since the 80s, made AIDS and gay marriage boogeyman issues in the "culture wars" [2].

For the record, both parties are coalitions and involve this kind of compromise between different constituencies (see Dems and organized labor, et al.)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#1990s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#1990s)

<comment><USER4> Actually it wasn't, I appreciate the links. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previous:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11732166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11732166) (10 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11732430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11732430) (2 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11734973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11734973) (1 comment)

</comment><comment><USER7> I find this article a bit ironic, given that Glenn Beck spent years at Fox News stirring up the ornery attitudes that he denounces here.

<comment><USER8> Well, his point is that he thought he was attacking people who wanted a special treatment in life, and now he found himself aligned with people who were doing that exact thing. It wasn't really about being aggressive _per se_.

He's always been an ultraconservative nutjob and I don't see that changing, but it's refreshing to see someone showing he can see the problems with his own argument and can self-criticize a bit. Tomorrow we'll go back to our scheduled program of people shouting at each other, but can't we happy that today is a good day, for once? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This page contains a link in the first paragraphs that links to [http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/05/19/what-disturbed-glenn- abo...](http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/05/19/what-disturbed-glenn-about-the- facebook-meeting/?utm_source=Medium&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=Medium- post20160519) , which appears to have the same text.

<comment><USER10> Yeah that's confused me too. I don't understand why, other than advertising, I suppose

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I enjoyed this piece a lot. The introspection is real. Also, what the hell is the controversy at the core here? It was never linked referenced. What spawned the meeting?

<comment><USER10> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11726588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11726588)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> To pretend or make out that you're some kind of marginalized group, that you're being ignored or exploited or taken advantage of or just not getting what you're supposed to be entitled to, and that you're afraid and worried and unhappy -- it sounds so lame and cheap, and in the end, boring.

Never heared of this guy, but doesn't seem I missed anything.

</comment><comment><USER13> Throws a lot of shade. He is good at the "I don't enjoy feeling like a victim. Victims are bad. Here is a list of why we are victimized."

</comment><comment><USER14> Can you remind me again about 1984? What happened then?

<comment><USER15> Reagan got re-elected.

<comment><USER14> Was that good or bad?

<comment><USER16> If you're trolling, please don't.

<comment><USER14> I am trying to simply understand the true significance of 1984. Most online searches point me to George Orwell's book. I am definitely not trolling. Being young and born in the 80s it is hard to understand these kind of things.

<comment><USER16> Your best bet is to continue your online searches, as they are pointing you in the right direction.

<comment><USER14> :) I think it is the book but I have heard folks use it in a different context like the other guy who said Reagan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please add the pundit's name [Glenn Beck] in the submission.

<comment><USER18> Its hilarious how this comment alone exemplifies exactly what he's talking about when he says that conservative voices are being marginalized in silicon valley. We need to make sure we brand the post with his name so us cushy liberals can be protected from these mean and different viewpoints, right?

<comment><USER19> yes, but at the same time, Glen Beck represents the more 'religious' aspect of the far-right. That's the whole issue with the right (IMO) is that it was hijacked by the (Hypocritical) religious people, whereas there was almost NO ONE representing the right-center folks who are fiscally conservative, yet socially liberal/acceptable (live and let live).

I already know who my state with vote for, which allows me to vote who I want to (Gary Johnson). The 2-party setup (debates, etc...) won't allow anyone in who doesn't identify to one extreme or the other.

<comment><USER20> > Glen[sic] Beck represents the more 'religious' aspect of the far-right

The article linked is not based on a religious view. In fact, the only mention of religion is a comment intended to ridicule the comments of others at the table from the right who Beck implies are being morally inconsistent.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Privacy Loss in Apple's Implementation of Differential Privacy on MacOS 10.12 - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02753 <comment><USER2> While I like this work, the title may be misleading to people who think of "privacy loss" as something distinct from "differential privacy".

What they show is that as you use Apple's implementation, the differential privacy parameter grows (providing weaker guarantees as time passes). They don't show that they can bypass the mechanism and it's guarantees, just that Apple has rigged the implementation to decay the guarantees as you continue to use it (note: decay stops if you stop using Apple stuffs).

<comment><USER3> This is a known weakness with differential privacy. Depending on how much noise you inject into your data, your analytics either approach meaninglessness or the privacy decays.

The hype machine surrounding Apple did not want to hear this and were just caught up with the idea "Apple could data mine you while maintaining ur privacy".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny that almost everyone in this threat seems to "get" Differential Privacy and thinks of it as a good tool. But when it was discussed for Mozilla Firefox everybody was appalled and enraged. (Thread at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15071492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15071492))

<comment><USER2> I think the big difference there is that Mozilla was proposing opt-out differentially private data collection, whereas I believe Apple has historically been opt-in (with the default being no data collection).

<comment><USER5> Do you believe an opt-in in necessary with a (properly implemented) differentially private collection mechanism? Just curious about your take on this.

<comment><USER2> I think that is the ethical thing to do, yes.

Differential privacy _does_ statistically disclose information about you, and whether the quantitative bound used is up to your standards is a decision you should make before it happens. Given that user-level understanding of DP is so low, I don't think defaulting people in to levels chosen by others is a good idea. I 100% guarantee Mozilla doesn't have the background to make this choice responsibly, and doesn't have near the DP expertise the RAPPOR team has / had (who I also wouldn't trust to chose things for me).

Ideally, the use of differential privacy would make you more willing to opt in (when you have a choice) rather than being a smokescreen for organizations that simply want to harvest more data (which was Mozilla's stated motivation).

Edit: fwiw, there are some cool "recent" versions of differential privacy that let the users control the amount of privacy loss on a user-by-user basis. So, you could start at 0 and dial it up as you feel more comfortable with the tech. This incentivizes organizations to be more transparent with what they do, as it (in principle) increases turnout.

Edit2: For context, Apple's "default" values appear to be (from this paper) epsilon = 16 * days. That means that each day you are active, the posterior probability someone has about any fact about you can increase by a factor of exp(16) ~= 88 million. So, numbers matter and I am (i) glad Apple made it opt- in, (ii) super disappointed they aren't at all transparent about how it works, and (iii) thankful that the paper authors are doing this work.

<comment><USER6> And it seems that the "default" values will be increasing further in iOS 11 -- to 43 * days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So now Apple's privacy system is only stupidly more secure than everyone else's instead of absurdly more secure.

So 16 per day sounds like a lot more than 1 or 2 per day, but what do these numbers mean? Presumably 16 per day is a theoretical maximum if you were to generate every kind of privacy related data ever day. But is 16 really a lot? How high would that have to cumulatively go in order to be useful for extracting reliable info on an individual? Wouldn't the info collected on an individual still have to be associated with them? Frankly I'm not really able to determine any of that from the paper.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could someone please ELI5 how an "intimate" provider (such as Apple, Google or Microsoft) can collect _any_ data ongoingly without eventual loss of privacy?

<comment><USER9> Let's say you wanted to count how many of your online friends were dogs, while respecting the maxim that, on the Internet, nobody should know you're a dog. To do this, you could ask each friend to answer the question "Are you a dog?" in the following way. Each friend should flip a coin in secret, and answer the question truthfully if the coin came up heads; but, if the coin came up tails, that friend should always say "Yes" regardless. Then you could get a good estimate of the true count from the greater-than-half fraction of your friends that answered "Yes". However, you still wouldn't know which of your friends was a dog: each answer "Yes" would most likely be due to that friend's coin flip coming up tails.

Source: Google's RAPPOR project

I pointed to some open source repos on my blog post from 2015 [https://www.quantisan.com/a-magical-promise-of-releasing- you...](https://www.quantisan.com/a-magical-promise-of-releasing-your-data- and-keeping-everyones-privacy)

<comment><USER10> In that case though, you would know that the "No" friends are definitely not dogs, and the "Yes" friends are possibly a dog, so it seems like the dogs would still not be completely anonymous. Wouldn't the dogs be better off not partaking in the survey and being narrowed down into a group of possible dogs?

<comment><USER11> The implementation of this should give a random answer when not being truthful.

If the coin comes you heads you answer truthfully. If it comes up tails, you flip the coin again and answer if the yes if the coin is heads and no if the coin is tails. You can then no longer know if anybody is (or is not) a dog.

The probabilities can be adjusted to provide more or less privacy (while making the data less or more useful). For example, if you only answer truthfully 0.1% of the time it would be hard to know anything about anyone, at the cost of knowing the total number of dogs less precisely.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HTC sends Fantastic Four push notification ad - <AUTHOR> http://geekscribe.com.au/blog/2015/8/5/htc-serves-fantastic-four-push-notification-ad

<comment><USER2> Behavior like this is why my Galaxy S4 was my first and last Samsung phone. They had a pre-installed "Beaming Service" that couldn't be disabled that would randomly show notification ads for unrelated software... at 3am waking me up on a work night. "Oh but Samsung has gotten so much better now"... Yeah, not going down that route again. I don't understand how a company like HTC or Samsung would think something like this was OK and not permanently lose them a paying customer.

<comment><USER3> > randomly show notification ads for unrelated software... at 3am waking me up > on a work night.

Sort of unrelated, but this reminded me of a time way back when. Back when AOL Instant Messenger was still widely used. I was awoken by a buzzing sound. I had 5.1 surround sound speakers at the time on my PC and this buzzing was going all over my room.

Being 2-4AM on a school night, I'm tiredly trying to figure out what in the world is making this noise.

Took me a bit, but I powered up my CRT monitor to find a "swat the fly with this flyswatter and win!" advertisement inside of AIM.

It was from that point on that I made a conscious effort to eradicate all advertisements from any applications I use.

<comment><USER4> I did the same thing for a similar reason. For years now I've refused to use any ad-supported software that I didn't absolutely have to use. I pay money for whatever I use, but unfortunately sometimes the companies I pay still put ads into their product. I was a subscriber to the NYT online for far longer than I should have been, paying $15/mo to still see ads on their site and app. I paid for Hulu Plus for one month and canceled when I realized even when you pay you still see ads.

"We only have good/relevant ads!" I don't care. I might trust you, but I still don't want to see your ads. Let me pay you to get rid of them. If you don't do that, I'll use an ad blocker.

"But that's stealing content!" No it's not. You gave it to me whether I saw the ad or not. In the US, where I live, dollars are legal tender for any debt public or private. If I owe you a debt, either accept cash or block me. If I go to a free concert sponsored by Bud Light, you can't force me to drink your beer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My Samsung Smart TV started doing this recently. A small banner ad scrolls across the top of it telling me about some new app that I should download (presumably on the TV's app store?).

It seems to me that once a product (TVs, smart phones, tablets, etc) becomes a commodity, the business model is to _immediately_ stop focusing on creating well-built products that sell themselves, and start focusing on your new product -- the _user_.

<comment><USER6> Samsung's TV popups drove me crazy. I ended up just completely disconnecting it from the internet. I would like to use a couple of the built in apps but it just isn't worth it.

<comment><USER7> Same thing here. I was seeing a pop-up for a service that was going to be discontinued. Thanks Samsung, I really needed to know that.

I was also seeing "smart ads" when it detected some out-of-band signal for ads I was seeing in Hulu. It would pop up some UI on top of the display that would let you "learn more". Thanks again Samsung for enriching my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apparently, from _their_ perspective, it's OK to cross that line:

* It's not your notification area; it's theirs -- they control what shows up on it.

* It's not your operating system; it's theirs -- they control what it does.

* It's your not phone; it's theirs -- they control what you can do with it.

It could get worse. I imagine it's only a matter of time before we start getting ads inserted _within_ our personal messages (e.g., "click here to read the rest of your mom's email"), or asked to click through ads to change phone settings like display brightness, or even forced to see ads before we can use the phone to make non-emergency phone calls. _Their_ imagination is the limit!

\--

Edits: added e.g. in parenthesis to clarify what I meant.

<comment><USER9> > _I imagine it 's only a matter of time before we start getting ads inserted > within our personal emails_

I remember when just about every free e-mail provider did this in the 90s.

<comment><USER10> I still see this today

Sent from my iPhone!

<comment><USER11> That's not just an advertisement.

I always make sure to have an email signature on my phone that lets people know I'm on a phone. Specifically it says "Sent from my phone, excuse any brevity or typos."

Sending a response from your phone should carry different expectations, so I consider "Sent from my iPhone" to be entirely forgivable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apple isn't immune to this either! Every once in a while, U2 starts playing on my phone inadvertently. I didn't ask for that music, thanks.

How is this behavior acceptable? Didn't Tim Cook tell us that Apple was the one tech company that won't sell-out its users?

<comment><USER13> Look, the U2 album thing was a stupid move, IMO. But it seems like a totally different class of offensive; 'We sent you an unsolicited free album!' versus 'We're sending you unsolicited advertisements!'.

And you can of course delete that free album if you don't want it. That'll solve your inadvertent playing problem.

<comment><USER14> OS X Mavericks will also constantly nag you with notification to upgrade to broken Yosemite.

<comment><USER13> Yosemite doesn't seem broken. That aside, you are being deliberately disingenuous by comparing a software update notification to unsolicited advertising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google needs to do something about the general load of crap that comes on most Android phones. I just switched from a Nexus 4 to a Galaxy S5, and even considering the massive jump in hardware specs I am consistently less satisfied with my phone-using experience. I don't want to have to install a custom ROM and lose stability and camera performance just to avoid being bombarded with Samsung and AT&T crap every 10 minutes.

<comment><USER16> Google doesn't need to do anything about it; buyers need to factor it in when they buy phones. Some people don't care, other people care a lot, and it's possible some people even like TouchWiz(tm) and its ilk.

But yeah, that's why carrier-unlocked Motorolas and Nexuses are pretty much the only phones I'd consider at this point.

<comment><USER17> ...and some people have no clue whatsoever and will form an indelible impression of what Android is like based on the experience they have with whatever phone the store salesman recommended.

<comment><USER18> It's the same reason many people come to hate Windows and switch to the "pure, friendly, easy" OSX. They buy whatever laptop was recommended to them at Best Buy and have to deal with all of that preinstalled malware that makes the machine a piece of junk. Very few consumers ever get to work with "plain" Windows without all the junk the OEMs put on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hate every aspect of this. I don't even own an HTC phone and I feel rage.

What consistently gets me about this sort of thing is the corporate-speak that the apologies are inevitably wrapped up in – like HTC is doing users an awesome service by piping adverts directly to their phone. I don't get how someone could ever consider this a feature that a user could possibly want.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://m.reddit.com/r/htc/comments/2p3bso/heads_up_to_anyon...](https://m.reddit.com/r/htc/comments/2p3bso/heads_up_to_anyone_that_has_the_htc_gallery_app/)

Previous bad behaviour from HTC (pushed an update to their app that automatically uploaded photos somewhere)

</comment><comment><USER20> My phone provider (Fido, Canada) used to call me weekly to try and sell me random crap. Every single time, I would complain that I find being cold-called by a service I already pay for extremely rude. "But Sir, we're trying to offer you the best service possible, in no way is this rude". It took the threat of legal action to get them to stop...

Shaw TV inserts ads taking up about a third of the screen real estate when browsing channels. When asked, I was told this was for my benefit and there was no way to disable it. Again, shoving ads in your face even though you're already a paying customer. I'm cancelling my TV subscription again (I pretty much never use it anyway).

When going to the movies, all the major movie theatres will practically coerce people into turning up early for the official showtime ("get a good seat while you can!"), then proceed to show nearly 30 minutes of advertising (after having paid $15 for my seat...). I now go to independent movie theatres whenever I can.

I recently bought a wireless HP printer for which the software is absymally bad. After installing it (twice), I proceeded to disable all the "cloud" options (this has to be done on both the PC AND the printer itself...). Throughout the installation, it keeps marking options as "recommended", such as having to register your personal details on their website. Any non-savvy user would easily fall for this. I missed one option (I don't even recall whether it was actually available) and ended up with a bunch of icons on my desktop for offers, as well as a huge icon in the taskbar displaying popups every so often for "special offers". I complained to HP, haven't heard anything yet (and doubt I ever will).

Unfortunately, I have many more examples such as these... But to address the point made by the author:

> Let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

It is already happening, and in full force. How this sort of behavior is even legally tolerated is beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER7> HTC's approach to adding these is IMO backwards. They should have implemented opt-out before rolling these things out:

> _We will be implementing a way for you to opt out of receiving these > promotions, but we hope that displaying native and limited promotions in > this way will help you discover new and useful apps and /or products and > services._

[http://www.droid-life.com/2015/06/16/htc-device-owners- prepa...](http://www.droid-life.com/2015/06/16/htc-device-owners-prepare-to- see-promotions-in-blinkfeed/)

<comment><USER21> You can at least switch to another launcher to disable blinkfeed but I'm guessing its out of the frying pan into the oven with many of these:

[http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-get-rid-of-blinkfeed-on- yo...](http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-get-rid-of-blinkfeed-on-your-htc- one/)

<comment><USER22> > This ad was pushed to my phone despite my use of a custom launcher.

From the first message in the reddit thread

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any word if this is Sense-driven and if it will be avoided if you use an alternative launcher? My instinct says yes, since it's supposed to be Sense that HTC was rolling out ads to, although the fact that it showed up in the Notification bar makes me wonder if it bypasses the launcher altogether.

</comment><comment><USER24> With Android phones turning into commodity hardware, is there any other road? Have PC makers figured out how to make money without crapware?

</comment><comment><USER25> I did not get this on my HTC One M7. Still one of the best phones ever.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it still feasible to learn Ruby / Rails in late 2019 - <AUTHOR> A bit of context first: I was a PHP developer up to 2014, when I moved into management roles. Since then, I did a bit of Node (I personally don't like it) but nothing else. Back in my PHP days Rails was all the hype (I guess that's gone now?) and I wanted to learn it, but never got the time.
I am now at a crossroads, I'm fed up with management and want to transition back to development over the next 2 years. I can devote 1-2 hrs/day to learning something new. End goal is to work on small to mid sized projects in the SaaS space.
Now, every time I look at Ruby, it feels daunting because the language is quite big. Rails is even bigger. What bums me down really is that there are folks who have been doing Rails for 10+ years and I'm only starting, so job opportunities don't look promising. Also, Rails evolved so much, a lot of tutorials are out of date, as are gems, plugins etc.
So, given all of this, what would be your take, or alternative to learn? (With the hopes of working with that tech full time in 2022) <comment><USER2> I have been making a living building Rails apps for over a decade. It's never too late, and while Rails is no longer the cool kid on the block, it is worth learning because:

1\. There's still a market for it. It shines at early stage, and plenty of companies like it, and the community is still decent (even though the energy of the early days is gone).

2\. Many other newer frameworks and languages have borrowed many concepts from Rails and Ruby. Your learnings will translate!

3\. It's not all about money. Yes, you can make great money working with Ruby and Rails, but it's a fun language and framework that cares about developer happiness (though, yes, there's unhappy areas). So pick a language and framework that makes you enjoy your day. That's why I have worked with Ruby so long.

4\. Diversify. It's not just about one language and framework. Learn other things too. Don't put all your eggs in one basket (as it sounds like you kind of have with PHP). I particularly love learning Go, Dart, TypeScript, Vuejs, Nestjs, Swift, etc. Those are just a few. The point here is you learn the fundamentals in ways you will carry to whatever your future in programming will bring by taking some learnings from each one.

5\. If you don't actually enjoy learning new languages maybe consider another career? Not saying you should drop out of programming, but do what you love. We have one life to live. As cliche as that sounds, it's true!

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't focus on what you don't know. You can follow some tutorials without knowing what every line of code does and just repeat it in places for a bit. You can add to a working app and tweak things to learn more. It takes a surprisingly small amount of knowledge of Ruby or Rails to do things once you have a working example.

Learning to use git is a second mental task but worthwhile since it lets you get back to a 'known working state' whenever you're messing around and get to a nice point, make a git commit.

</comment><comment><USER4> Learn what you enjoy. It makes more sense to be an expert at something you can actually be passionate about. Even though Node.js is quite popular, it'd be a total chore for you.

Not sure why you think Node.js is bad, but the general industry trend seems to be moving away from big frameworks to solve all of your problems, to smaller libraries that cover less territory (at least, this is my experience, focusing on the front-end space).

</comment><comment><USER5> You haven't missed the bandwagon. Rails is still fun, popular and has a solid job market.

Use the official tutorials to build a weekend project, host it on Heroku, reach out on popular Rails slacks, freenode #rails. It's a very friendly community, welcome :)</comment>


Ask HN: Your ideal laptop? - <AUTHOR>

Your "perfect" laptop? Want some opinions.
I run a web dev company - currently run a 13" 2012 macbook pro. totally comfortable moving to linux (will keep macbook for iOS dev), and spend most of my time in the console - virtual box/vagrant etc.. Also like to keep my machine in my backpack...
thoughts? <comment><USER2> The Retina Macbook pro 13", with the keyboard from a ThinkPad X60.

Seriously, the only thing stopping me from switching to a macbook for everything I do is the lack of an intact ins/del/home/end/pgup/pgdn block sitting above the backspace key. Every one of those keys has an equivalent, but every one requires two hands to do. Since you usually (in windows at least) chord those keys with a second hand anyway, you have to make the mother of all hand contortions to do something as simple as a ctrl+home to get to the top of a document.

It's a shame. They make such good laptops, but their keyboard scheme is just a frustration bomb.

Second place: A ThinkPad X60 with this year's CPU, memory capacity and SSD.

Third place (and thus, fallback): A ThinkPad X60 for $150 of eBay, with maxed (4gb) memory and 512gb SSD.

<comment><USER3> I'm ok with the MBP keyboard, I'd like something in the 13" MB Air footprint w/ retina, 16gig ram, and 512gig ssd. But I'd settle for the 13" Retina MBP with 16gig -- I currently have two gens older w/ 8gig.

Unfortunately, I don't want to put up with the size of a laptop that would have a keyboard comparable to the IBM Model M keyboard. So, when at the office/home, das Keyboard is my goto keyboard solution. Love the mechanical switches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Things that I'm currently looking for (from more important to less important):

      * 8 hours battery life (while coding)
      * Not scorching hot (the Powerbooks and Macbooks circa   2007 or so were infamous for this)
      * Haswell / 4th gen Intel processor
      * 8GB+ RAM
      * 128GB+ SSD
      * Warranty covers spill damage (this happens to me quite a bit)
      * Trackpoint / nub (I got acquainted with the nub afer spilling coffee on my trackpad)
      * Convertible to tablet with pen (I do a fair amount of illustration)
      * Discreet graphics card
      * Backlit keyboard

I think my love of the trackpoint limits me to Thinkpads, but I'm always on the lookout.

<comment><USER5> Quit drinking around your computer already!

Or drink your coffee out of one of those thermal cups with a built-in straw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like everything about the 13" laptops, but the screens are too small. So I'd go with the 15" MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Those laptops ended up being too expensive, and I couldn't wait for the Haswell versions to come out, so I ended up with a Samsung Chronos 7 780z5e (which after some tweaking is pretty good all things considered).

</comment><comment><USER7> I finally made the switch this summer to a Macbook Pro 13" Retina and it has been an incredible change from the Dell/Lenovos I used to have. The thing is blazing fast, the screen is amazing (especially for Lightroom/Photoshop) and is much lighter. I really can't ask for anything else. I wish it had an Ethernet port though.

<comment><USER5> >I wish it had an Ethernet port though.

You may already be aware of this, but just in case you're not, you can buy an adapter for Ethernet for $20-$30.

Lots of people don't think Ethernet ports are important anymore, but I've been to quite a few hotels that still have wired internet.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I absolutely had no clue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love my macbook pro for many reasons but for me, the most important one is their magic trackpad. Their trackpads are just awesome and I haven't found any other trackpad nearly as slick. I would love to get a Linux-only laptop, but the regular mouse just kills my hand (and my productivity).

</comment><comment><USER9> I have an Asus gaming laptop that I run Ubuntu on. I seem to have about the same use-case as you. Mine is large so it barely fits in my backpack, but it does.

My ideal laptop would be this one with an infinite battery life.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for Lenovo to update the X1 Carbon to Haswell. (Presuming that doesn't somehow mess up Linux support!)

</comment><comment><USER11> I basically want a Macbook Air-like computer, Haswell processor, but not from Apple. 8GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, and absolutely NO touchscreen!

<comment><USER12> Any reason not from Apple?</comment></comment>


Amazon Unveils Futuristic Helicopter-Plane Hybrid Drone for Deliveries - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-05/amazon-poised-to-test-chopper-plane-mashup-for-drone-deliveries <comment><USER3> > Its propellers have a slight S-curve designed to lower their noise to make > them more acceptable for use in populated neighborhoods, Kimchi said. The > craft is far more stable in high winds than more traditional drones, he > said.

Noise is my main concern with drone delivery networks. I have been playing with radio controlled aircraft for most of my life. I see drone delivery as inevitable, but living near a noisy drone delivery route could really lower quality of life for the people on the ground.

<comment><USER4> > Noise is my main concern with drone delivery networks.

What about 20-50 lb flying machines falling onto sidewalks, roofs, and streets?

You don't see amateur RC aviation enthusiasts flying their model airplanes in the middle of the city, and I sure as hell don't want to see a corporation doing this on an industrial scale.

Why not ground-based drone delivery?

<comment><USER5> Why are you downvoted? Safety is a thousand times more concerning - the drones will mechanically fail, they will hit bad weather, they will collide with birds, there will be new drone delivery market entrants and will need coordination across systems... If a drone fails at an expected operating altitude, it can kill someone easily on the ground. If it fails at height over a highway, what if it kills a bus driver or causes a tractor trailer to lose control? What if they hit electric lines? What else can go in flight corridors at the same altitudes? Do they container chemicals or voltages that first responders have to be aware of?

<comment><USER6> There's a reason why it's taking so long for Amazon to get FAA approval for drone delivery and this is exactly why. There are people in important places asking these sorts of questions already.

My guess personally, is that drone delivery will ultimately just be a tool for a self driving truck to get the package from the truck to the door. Drones are not nearly good enough as it stands today to do end to end deliveries at an industrial scale outside of maybe a few rural areas.

<comment><USER7> The same people in important places that approved the 737 Max?

<comment><USER8> In the sense that they are human, yes. Even in the sense that they work for the government, which narrows the pool to 20,000,000+

But also, no. Not the same people.

<comment><USER7> I get your point but the relevant agency division FAA AVS employees 7,200 people [0]. Fewer than that are involved in certifying aircraft safety. Agencies like all other human groups have cultures.

[0] [https://www.faa.gov/about/plans_reports/congress/media/fy17_...](https://www.faa.gov/about/plans_reports/congress/media/fy17_avs_wfp_final.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a really novel design.. few moving parts, and solves the main issue with multirotor drones.. namely that they are incredibly inefficient in terms of power required to fly.

When the initial hype about Amazon drone delivery came out I remember saying it wouldn't work cause multi-rotor drones are so inefficient.

This will make it work... it'll use a fraction of the electricity if it cruises in "plane mode".

If the max Payload is 5lbs I doubt it's going to weigh 50lbs. Maybe 10-20lbs, but the battery weight is the big thing.

<comment><USER10> > it'll use a fraction of the electricity if it cruises in "plane mode".

That'll depend how efficient the wing is. Usually there's trade-offs when doing a hybrid design (see V-22 Osprey).

Perhaps the trade-off is still a net benefit in that configuration though...

> If the max Payload is 5lbs I doubt it's going to weigh 50lbs. Maybe 10-20lbs

Not sure, in my RC flying experience, these aircraft can't lift much weight at all. Ounces are a serious concern, let alone pounds. Adding 1/4 extra weight is a big deal for something this small and without large wings to generate lift - the rotors are going to have to do a lot of work to get off the ground.

It'll probably need to be a pretty big aircraft to have enough battery carrying capacity to guarantee a safe round-trip with possible complications with wind, loiter time for safe landing, obstacle avoidance, etc, and big enough to support the 5lbs load without impacting flight characteristics too much.

<comment><USER9> For sure you are right about it having a lot of challenges and the total weight vs battery weight vs payload weight is a huge one.

But remember the wing design is competing against "no wing" so it is easy to be a huge improvement. Normal drones don't really get to throttle down and they have to do all their flight controls through engine speed adjustments. Normal flight controls use almost no power & when this thing builds up a head of steam it will be able to throttle back to cruise.

It looks like a closed edge biplane when it transitions.. the closed edges help efficiency. It can probably be optimized for a very narrow speed range as well so I bet they can come up with a very nice airfoil design.

<comment><USER10> > It looks like a closed edge biplane when it transitions.. the closed edges > help efficiency

Perhaps. It could also be mostly to stabilize the aircraft in forward flight, since that's more efficient by itself with a "pulling" rotor than a traditional quad-copter setup (using differential thrust from each motor to control movement and stability).

The closed wing doesn't look very large, so we'll have to see just how much lift they actually get out of it. The airfoil design may not generate much or any lift but instead just be used for control, such as a typical horizontal/vertical stabilizer of an aircraft.

Or perhaps it does generate some lift and helps a bit. Just looks rather small for that role, but I could be wrong. RC aircraft often defy principles that apply to their full-sized brethren.

> (FTA): Amazon declined to release some specifics on the device, citing trade > secrets

I guess we'll just have to wait for some more specifics.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure why they would bother with the effort of this if the wing wasn't generating lift.

<comment><USER10> I don't know, just speculating it's not providing much lift with it being so small. But, it definitely would help stabilize the aircraft in it's forward flight configuration. You're probably right in that it's doing both.

Was hoping they'd release more details. It's not like RC aircraft have much secret sauce to them... other than Amazon's proprietary package compartment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome video of the drone - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HJtmx5f1Fc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HJtmx5f1Fc)

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately no audio of the drone itself so we can judge its noisiness.

<comment><USER13> Even if you had audio, still can't judge the noise level unless there is a reference sound there too. Such as general highway noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool but I can't understand why you'd need such a delivery system? MAYBE you can imagine a scenario where you need to air lift a vial of snake anti-venom very quickly but that's a fantastical, far edge-case. Theres simply no reason that an auto-automobile can't handle 99% of deliveries.

Drones can't go that far. They can only carry tiny payloads. They use a ton of energy just to hover. And lastly- they are much more dangerous than ground- based transport, for the simple reason that _they can fall from the sky_.

Whats to be gained by putting deliveries in the air?

<comment><USER15> Sorry to be blunt, but you're speaking from ignorance. Take a look at statistics for cars and re-think your position on the relative safety of the two modes of transporting goods.

<comment><USER16> I believe he's talking about the future when automonomous cars are commonplace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Curious how well it will deal with locating the correct place at the correct house to deliver the package? One way to achieve this might be to only use the drone after a human delivery person has delivered a package and tagged in Amazon's map database where packages should be dropped. Or perhaps the house resident uploads a picture of their house with the drop location?

<comment><USER18> Maybe residents would place beacons where they want the drones to land?

<comment><USER19> Indeed, the beacon is a landing pad that customers place in their front or backyards (ideally back). See (3) in the following link:

[https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/a820748/amazon-prime-air- dro...](https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/a820748/amazon-prime-air-drone- delivery-service/)

As for which house, that's via geocoding (convert postal code to GPS). Reasonably accurate for North America, unclear about other parts of the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> chroem- The annular wing is an interesting touch. It should reduce induced drag at the low Reynolds numbers these drones typically fly at, by eliminating the wingtip vortices. I was working on a very similar design for a while, and I placed the props at the wingtips to cancel the vortices instead.

Also it would be interesting to see what their power electronics look like. You get a 20x reduction in thrust demands by going from hover to flight mode, but the problem is that the efficiency of brushless motors also tends to be absolutely dreadful when you run them at 5% throttle.

<comment><USER20> would it be possible to have 3 of each motor.. the one at low and the one at high.. it seems like in theory you could run all 6 to take off, but let them coast when "flying" versus gaining altitude?

<comment><USER21> That's absolutely doable, though you would have to prevent the inactive props from spinning and/or feather them to reduce drag. I don't really see variable pitch props on these though, the weight and complexity penalty would probably be excessive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://blog.aboutamazon.com/transportation/a-drone- program-...](https://blog.aboutamazon.com/transportation/a-drone-program- taking-flight)

Lots of talk about vision, no mention of LIDAR. Computer vision is getting better faster than LIDAR is getting cheaper, expect a lidar-less future.

<comment><USER23> LIDAR provides an additional layer of safety that seems well worth the marginal cost for those producing self-driving cars, where human lives are at stake, even if not applicable to delivery drones.

Do you believe that the future is LIDAR-less, or that the delivery drone future is LIDAR-less?

<comment><USER22> Did you see the picture of this drone? Do you think it's incapable of killing someone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is very clever, but clever usually loses out to practical in the end. Zipline[0] has a delivery drone with even fewer moving parts! It looks an awful lot like an airplane.

[0] [https://flyzipline.com/](https://flyzipline.com/)

<comment><USER25> That doesn't look like a very practical way to drop deliveries for an individual house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd understand the use of this in very spread-out rural areas, but for dense urban areas this is nothing more than a PR exercise to create headlines and improve hiring. Sort of like "self driving cars" and "AI" for Google. You go there to work on exciting stuff and end up getting assigned to some bullshit godforsaken backend nobody wants to work on.

</comment><comment><USER27> I haven't seen a design quite like this before, but it seems like a natural hybrid of existing Tail-sitter planes and the current popular drone configuration.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail- sitter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter)

</comment><comment><USER28> Very smart design. No moving parts other than the motors.

Still, hitting one of these in a 152 could be fatal. Pilots are wary of drones for a reason. However, I think they'd be more receptive to the idea of Amazon using them than a random person (assuming Amazon cooperates with the FAA).

</comment><comment><USER29> Ugh I hate designing around the stupidity of suburbs. Pnumatic tubes in dense cities: so much more efficient.

It's cool but only if you stop thinking how all of this is a hack around the utter failure of planning at any interesting scale in gsi country.

</comment><comment><USER30> Could someone elaborate on what the use cases would be for something like this? I understand it will carry small items you buy off Amazon prime but that can't be the end of the roadmap for drone based delivery, can it?

<comment><USER31> walgreens has ~10,000 locations of ~10,000 square feet of products that are overwhelmingly under 5lbs and does ~20B/year in revenue.

whoever solves drone delivery will disrupt the convenience store market. its right there in the name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Posting about how they're going to take over delivery while being investigated for antitrust stuff is an interesting choice.

</comment><comment><USER33> Ok Google, "how do I build a faraday net for catching drones and preventing transmission after catch?"

</comment><comment><USER34> Are these allowed to fly over my property? And if so, am I allowed to shoot it down? Asking for a friend.

<comment><USER35> Does your friend also object to planes flying over their property?

(I would point out that the main reason people have objected to drones flying over their property is privacy: up to now, the only use-case for a drone is remote viewing – which some would find creepy/intrusive. I would posit that now drones can theoretically offer tangible real-world benefits --e.g. parcel delivery-- this will gradually fade out as an objection for most people - <USER2> as most people would tolerate a postman delivering letters to their house.)

<comment><USER34> No, because they are 30k feet off the deck and, more importantly obviously, contain people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Wait, this guy's family name is seriously Kimchi? The drone is cool but learning Kimchi is a surname is blowing my mind

<comment><USER37> I don't get the reference, would you mind explaining? On a related note, I've always been baffled by Coursera founder & ML fame Andrew Ng's name. How am I supposed to pronounced it?

<comment><USER38> "Ng" is pronounced somewhat like the "ung" in "sung" but with the vowel shortened.</comment></comment></comment>