If PHP Were British (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://aloneonahill.com/blog/if-php-were-british/ <comment><USER2> _Snort_ The idea of the super global £_BISCUIT instead of $_COOKIE - that made my morning.

<comment><USER3> Offtopic - re cookies, the etymology of cookie (or 'magic cookie') as an opaque value is very obscure and has a interesting social side-effect in that it's difficult for average people to get very worked up about websites serving cookies (vs say the more universally understood 'tokens' or 'tracking codes').

While I get that the term originated in the Unix/C world[1], does anyone know if it comes from a particular US dialect or something? e.g. West Coast/Boston?

[1] [http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/cookie.html](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/cookie.html)

<comment><USER4> I don't know why but I (UK, en-gb native) always assumed "cookie" was reference to a fortune cookie in turn a placeholder for the little slips of paper with obscure notes on them hidden inside a sweet treat (ie the website)??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since Rasmus Lerdorf was in Canada, I wonder what this would look like if it were in Canadian English. It would retain the dollar signs and serialize(), but switch to "colour" and "centre". It would be required by law to support a French version for every keyword. All PHP developers would have the advantage of free treatment for carpal-tunnel and other RSI injuries.

What else?

<comment><USER6> The Canadian version would apologize profusely whenever an error occurs.

<comment><USER7> It would also consistently support systems written in allied British-PHP and American-PHP while never drawing attention to it.

Routine would be renamed Poutine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I honestly think that his "what_about-perhaps" construct is nicer than "switch-case".

<comment><USER9> I agree: what_about and perhaps is very clear, not sure about the splendid or on_the_off_chance bits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> exit() would be called brexit() as some of the commenters pointed out... but instead of actually exiting, it will hang indefinitely trying to choose which exit code to return.

<comment><USER10> brexit() is when you try to break from a switch but accidentally leave the EU.

<comment><USER6> Do you mean when you try to `splendid;` from a `what_about`?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In reality of course the only difference is that it gets spelled "colour"...

One thing I'm surprised to have seen only once is use of ¬ as an escape character, because it's so reliably unused for anything at all. (I noticed in the code that this program, which needless to say was written at a UK company, had no way of escaping ¬ itself, presumably because nobody had ever needed that.)

£ also seems a bit underused, but it's fairly specifically the UK's currency symbol, so it's not obvious else you'd use it for.

(But I suspect only UK keyboards have these chars, so it's probably no bad thing.)

<comment><USER12> The funny spelling of _centre_ always gets me too, it just looks so wrong! I can get used to writing words that end in _ise_ as _ize_ , and _colour_ as _color_. But _center_ , _fiber_ , _liter_ , etc just don't sit right.

<comment><USER13> It's just a matter of getting used to. I imagine these spellings do not evoke the same feeling in you, even though they are objectively following the same rule as centre and fibre:

Maple not Mapel

Cable not Cabel

<comment><USER14> Able not Abel

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have to concede that I do prefer the longer abbreviations, especially nowadays when most editors have auto-completion, although of course there are limits. A healthy balance between (0) and (1). This also reminds me of those ridiculously long class names (2).

      (0) my_structured_query_language_connect()
      (1) SHFILEOPSTRUCTW [0]
      (2) InternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonPainter [1]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20018562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20018562)

[1] [https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2007/11/07/and-the-longest- jr...](https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2007/11/07/and-the-longest-jre-class- name-is.html)

<comment><USER16> This is part of the code-as-docs ethos which has really changed how I write everything. I try to make my code as intuitive as possible to obviate comments and documentation that only explain what the code is doing. You could also call it code-as-prose.

This is impeded when languages have popular modules with names that are absolutely unintuitive, like the Python "requests" module. Requests _what_? Oh, HTTP? Then it should have been called _http_requests_. And the module that one uses, urllib3, is actually an HTTP library, not a generic URL library (URLs can be any web request, such as ftp, mailto, jdbc, etc).

<comment><USER17> >> Requests what? Oh, HTTP? Then it should have been called http_requests. And the module that one uses, urllib3, is actually an HTTP library, not a generic URL library

Python has httplib since 2.7. Also urllib in 3.7 contains all of the URL parsing routines, too.

Naming is a hard problem, so frankly I would prefer if names did not try to mimic their corresponding protocols in the first place at all.

It gets even worse when you would like to support HTTP and async HTTP; then HTTP/2, HTTPS, HTTP server, etc... Which one of these libraries are supposed to be actually called "http"? What if there's two libraries with the same functionality?

urllib? Well, yeah - simply because someone wanted to provide a simple HTTP interface. By the way - urllib also provides FTP/local file access routines. So it does mean "a library to access URLs".

<comment><USER16> > Python has httplib since 2.7. Also urllib in 3.7 contains all of the URL > parsing routines, too.

> urllib? Well, yeah - simply because someone wanted to provide a simple HTTP > interface. By the way - urllib also provides FTP/local file access routines. > So it does mean "a library to access URLs".

You're missing my point. These are just random examples of bad naming convention. Yes, Python has some core modules which sort of relate to their name... but everyone uses "requests" and "urllib3", not "httplib" and "urllib" (and urllib3 has no FTP support). And yes, you can name a simple http module anything you want, but if it's unintuitive, it's counter-productive to the humans that have to work with it.

> It gets even worse when you would like to support HTTP and async HTTP; then > HTTP/2, HTTPS, HTTP server, etc... Which one of these libraries are supposed > to be actually called "http"? What if there's two libraries with the same > functionality?

The common solution is to create modules that inherit from parents, to extend base modules for more specific functionality. The names then become hierarchical - io, io::net, io::net::http, io:net::http::2, io::net::http::secure, io::net::http::server, io::net::http::client, and so on.

For whatever reason, Python doesn't support this, and instead creates new unique packages rather than extending pre-existing ones. It's rather annoying for multiple reasons, but specifically to my original point, it isn't code-as- docs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I quite enjoy exploring some of the languages linked here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English- based_programming_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English- based_programming_languages)

</comment><comment><USER19> I did something similar to this many, many years ago with C just for fun.

[https://gist.github.com/sli/718436](https://gist.github.com/sli/718436)

</comment><comment><USER20> Previous discussions:

2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2906480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2906480)

2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5442496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5442496)

</comment><comment><USER21> I feel if this was done for Perl, it would already be an option ala Klingon[0]

[0] [https://metacpan.org/pod/Lingua::tlhInganHol::yIghun](https://metacpan.org/pod/Lingua::tlhInganHol::yIghun)

</comment><comment><USER22> There's one for CSS too.

[https://github.com/hashanp/postcss- spiffing](https://github.com/hashanp/postcss-spiffing)

</comment><comment><USER23> Excel is localized to countless human languages. I wonder if it has a British version.

</comment><comment><USER24> No content of value.

</comment><comment><USER25> I would argue that there is a need for a proper British PHP compiler.

</comment><comment><USER26> I suppose this is meant to be funny.

</comment><comment><USER27> I assume the site is coded in PHP and that's why it's down ;) Text-only cache [1]

[1] [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:imONA_3...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:imONA_3H6VcJ:https://aloneonahill.com/blog/if- php-were-british&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

<comment><USER28> It must be, cause only PHP sites go down under heavy load/s

<comment><USER4> Damn, those PHP sites, they dirty!??</comment></comment></comment>


Delivery Rates on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2699251 <comment><USER2> "Your request triggered a firewall alert."</comment>


Why You Probably Won't Survive as an Independent Consultant - <AUTHOR> http://www.gobignetwork.com/wil/2007/7/24/why-you-probably-wont-survive-as-an-independent-consultant/10179/view.aspx
Don't take the title of this blog post wrong.  I hope you survive as an Independent Consultant... I really do.  Yet before you jump ship for the bountiful glory that is independent consulting, allow me to tell you the story of Zed - a person much like you that failed to realize the true evil that lurks behind the facade of independent consulting.
Meet our Hero: Zed
Meet our hero, Zed.  Long ago, Zed was working as a star programmer for a consulting company getting paid $30 per hour while billing out $150 per hour to their client (probably more).  Zed used his superior analytical skills to learn that his company is being paid $120 per hour more than Zed is being paid.  Thats just ludicrous!
So Zed did what any entrepreneurial minded superhero would do - he quit his job and went to work for the client as an Independent Consultant. This move now got him paid $60 per hour.  The client paid out less, Zed's made twice as much, and that evil consulting company had been banished into oblivion.

    Everything is now right in the world.  Zed is now living the life as an Independent Consultant - the dream job that's easy to start and nearly impossible to sustain.
 But Zed's bliss would not last forever.  Little did Zed know, that a new menace was about to rear it's ugly head - An evil force known as "Nu Bidnsss."
Our Villain: Nu Bidnsss
Within his first year of consulting, Zed was protected (financially) from ever having to deal with Nu Bidnsss.  He was heavily sheltered in the warmth of a paying client to whom he could enjoy a prosperous life.
Yet like every consulting engagement, the client too eventually fell out of love with Zed.  Zed's incredible programming abilities eventually gave the client a product they were proud of, and soon Zed would not be needed any longer.
One day, as Zed left a client "wrap up" meeting, he felt a cold chill across the back of his neck.  He tensed, turned around quickly and saw the most fearsome creature he had ever laid eyes upon - Nu Bidnsss.
Nu Bidnsss Sucks
Without a lofty paying contract firmly in his hands, Zed did not know how to attack Nu Bidnsss.   Beating this evil beast required abilities he had never learned, like salesmanship, networking, and the Shaolin art of the "Ass Kiss."
Zed realized at that moment, that his training was all wrong.  Until now he had made a great living by being a star programmer.  His skills had made him heavily recruited out of college, highly sought-after in his consulting company, and well-paid from clients.  Certainly with these skills he would never have to come face-to-face with Nu Bidnsss.  Yet here he was, staring it down.
The Fall of Zed
Try as he might, Zed could not stop the force of Nu Bidnsss.  It quickly swallowed up his savings, his second mortgage, and all of his credit cards.  As Zed struggled wildly to defeat the beast, he realized that it was not his ability to work for clients that would save his life, it was his ability to get new clients, that would be his lifeblood.

    Alas, Zed has no frigging clue how to get new clients.

 And so Zed was defeated by Nu Bidnsss.  Drained of any of his financial resources, emotional excitement and his seemingly endless list of smart-ass remarks, he was taken by Nu Bidnsss and forced to work in the salt mine cubicles of hell - Big Corporate.
- The End -
Epilogue
This story is as sad as it is consistently true.
Surviving as an independent consultant isn't about actually consulting (it's a given that you can do that.)  It's about finding new business.
As it happens, most people suck at finding new business.  Once the Pixie Dust of the first client engagement wears off, the painful reality of having to beg for business becomes very obvious.
If you truly want to build a business as a consultant, focus on the business of selling yourself, not specifically on delivery.  If you're not good enough to get yourself in the door on your own merits, your life as an Independent Consultant is going to be short-lived at best.  Like our boy Zed. <comment><USER2> Being an hourly consultant at the moment I will attest to the fact that it is much harder then it sounds at first. My only saving grace for being self- employed for the past 10 years is that my client like me and they tell their friends about me.

Having lost one large client at a most inopportune time, I can attest to the perils, but when you get the formula down you can make a decent living and still have time to live.

But the real fun is in creating something larger then yourself and it is almost impossible to do that completley on your own.

</comment><comment><USER3> So...its not enough to be good at something to make it in business, you have to be good at the thing that you're not good at to be able to continue doing the thing that you're actually good at.

<comment><USER4> "Now," the master spoke, "you understand the world of enterprise software development."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> People jumping into consulting also don't realize the costs of:

-Self employment taxes -Business expenses -Vacation (3 weeks a year) -Holidays (1 week per year) -Sick Time (1 week per year) -Errands (a few times a week) -Bench time (all of the time between projects)

You run the numbers and $60/hr starts to feel pretty freakin' ugly.

(note: I was a consultant and built a 20 person consulting biz... And then sold it. I'll never be an hourly consultant again, if I can swing it).

</comment><comment><USER6> How to survive: Take the idea that to be successful you have to "Make something people want." and apply it to consulting. (e.g. provide a service people want) If you want to optimize your per-hour take (since you are bound by your time if you work solo that is the only thing you can significantly maximize) keep on top of your skills and move with the market.

</comment><comment><USER7> It sounds odd, but even when we were billing $150 per hour for Web work (through our agency with 100+ people on projects) the margins weren't that great.

I'm not making a big sales pitch for working with a consulting firm (I sold mine and will never go back). But I wanted to point out that the golden vision of consulting is tarnished at best.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've watched this cycle happen so many times with indy consultants that's it's ridiculous.

Of course there are situations where you may be so good that work just keeps getting fed under the door, but it's the rare exception.

<comment><USER8> Very rare. Client management often is a full time job in itself and can be very frustrating.

Before consulting I recommend finding at least one large client that can guarantee 20-30 hrs of work for at least 8 months. Then use the remaining time to work on other projects, develop relationships and especially target potential large clients.

Otherwise you may end up like me, with lots of good ideas and lots of credit card debt. Still, one learns by trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Um, what the heck is "Nu Bidnss"??? "New Biddings"? That story is hard to understand for non-native speakers...

<comment><USER8> 'New Business' I believe, which I assume expresses the idea of finding new contracts.

Not easy to understand.

<comment><USER7> It's new business. I was thinking about all the cool star wars action figure names and the spelling just kind of grew from there. I should have added the phoenetic version I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, how should one find clients?</comment>


Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay? - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57608585-93/is-google-building-a-hulking-floating-data-center-in-sf-bay/ <comment><USER2> Great article. It's nice to see journalists do actual investigative work, even if it is for something like this. Today's "journalism" seems to be all link- bait opinion pieces mixed in with copy-pastes from twitter.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking exactly the converse: why so much effort for gossip? It's pure tech celebrity gossip in my opinion and brings nothing to the party. Why not spend some more effort on the link between google and NSA? We still don't know how they steal our data.

<comment><USER4> Don't you think that one of the interesting issues raised by a floating data center might be a jurisdictional one? Is it possible that google is actually considering putting some of their infrastructure beyond sovereign control? Maybe this isn't just gossip...

<comment><USER3> this has been answered, it's not possible. It's about making substantial business in the US.

The territorial water is 12 miles wide, it's far. Exclusive economic zone is 200 miles wide, it's really far. Who want to be that far from the coast in the winter without a good reason on the most powerful and dangerous ocean? In the article they say 3 to 7 miles, that's completely territorial and for a good reason: on the first winter storm they'll be plenty happy with sovereign state helping them shelter the thing and save everybody.

Moreover, how do you anchor the thing in international waters? It's very complicated and expensive if the water is deep (which is more or less implied by 200 miles from the shore).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are actually 4 "vessels". Look at the names -- using binary :)

      BAL0001	BY AND LARGE LLC	*	*	C & C MARINE & REPAIR LLC	2010	Freight Barge	2164.0	249.6
      BAL0010	BY AND LARGE LLC	*	*	C & C MARINE	2011	Passenger Barge (Inspected)	2520.0	260.1
      BAL0011	BY AND LARGE LLC	*	*	C & C MARINE	2011	Passenger Barge (Inspected)	2520.0	260.1
      BAL0100	BY AND LARGE LLC	*	*	C & C MARINE	2012	Freight Barge	2164.0	249.6

<comment><USER6> FYI, "Buy N Large" was the fictional Costco-like store from Pixar's WALL-E.

<comment><USER7> I kind of doubt that these two names are related except that they both derive from the same common idiom.

<comment><USER8> Also "by and large" is a nautical term meaning (roughly) "whether sailing against the wind or sailing with the wind".

<comment><USER9> While we're speculating on the meaning behind the name(s) RE:wind, remember that Google acquired Makani Power a while back. They build wind generated power systems using large kites. What better place to put them into production than at sea where there isn't much worry about crashing to the ground.

[http://www.makanipower.com/home/](http://www.makanipower.com/home/)

<comment><USER10> unlikely that the Makani planes would be run from a ship. They each have a huge arc, much larger than the diameter of a traditional turbine.

Furthermore, what's the concern with them crashing in to the ground? It's not like they plan to install them directly over populated areas.

<comment><USER11> From the website: "Opens up large new areas of wind resource, including the vast resources offshore above deep water"[1]

Doesn't sound that far fetched that they would try to anchor this to the barge to try to tap that potential.

[1] - [http://www.makanipower.com/why-airborne- wind/](http://www.makanipower.com/why-airborne-wind/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Something similar is being outfitted in Portland, ME.

[http://www.pressherald.com/news/Clues_emerging_about_mystery...](http://www.pressherald.com/news/Clues_emerging_about_mystery_structure_on_barge_in_harbor_.html?searchterm=barge)

The OP is a much better article (The Press Herald is garbage).

My original guess for the barge-building in Portland was a ocean-based prison facility for the government to use for interrogations. But it's seeming like the floating data center idea is much more likely.

<comment><USER13> This is somewhat of a tangent, but how is the tech scene in Portland, ME? It's my hometown and I've had thoughts at various times about returning and setting up shop.

<comment><USER14> The "scene" is cool. There are local meetups, some small, some mid sized. Monktoberfest just drew quite the crowd. As the other commenter said, there ain't much for investment though, and the companies are a mix of web boutiques, large companies (Unum, Idexx, etc), and a startup here or there. I work remotely, which gives me the benefits of being in Portland while making a NYC salary, but even when I was working for a Portland firm I was still making a good wage.

<comment><USER15> +1, I've been working remotely from Portland for 11 years now, great place to live but tech jobs are scarce vs. Boston, NYC, SF.

<comment><USER13> Are you a remote-worker as well? My concern would be that my company in NYC would decide to let me go remote, then change its mind due later about telecommuting and it would put me in a rough spot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My first thought: "Finally I'm interested in applying at Google, if it involves using my captain's license!"

My second thought: "Meh, the job interview probably involves writing a breadth-first search algorithm to search for known pirates in the graph of nearby ports."

<comment><USER17> No, you mapreduce the Pirate search. Send out 100 workers to check on the nearby ports and see which ones come back.

You need to think at Google scale.

<comment><USER18> Or you can be sneaky. Put out some irresistable, yet covert job offers for pirates in the necessary ports, and see where the applications come from.

<comment><USER17> Or put a "Report a Pirate" bounty and crowdsource it.

<comment><USER19> but how do you confirm the validity of the reports

<comment><USER20> There are two types of reports, fraudulent ones and real ones. The fraudulent ones will come from everywhere, while the real reports come only from pirate infested harbors. Therefore just subtract the mean report density and what remains should be random fluctuations around zero plus the real reports. So if a harbor has more than some threshold of reports, then it is pirate invested.

<comment><USER18> At this point in the discussion, you could probably correlate it with the number of the letters "R" in the reports. Because we all know that it's the pirates' favorite letter.

<comment><USER21> Arrrrgh you would think so, but no, it's the C.

<comment><USER22> Ah, laughed out loud for this string of comments. Great job, all. And not a verge "combo breaker"-comment in sight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The middle of the ocean could be a a very high margin location for IaaS hosting.

Due to speed-of-light delays, some of the ideal locations for hosting high- speed trading arbitrages are in the middle of the ocean. Being half way between two exchanges would allow you to notice a small difference in price of some commodity in two different exchanges and buy and sell microseconds before your competitors on the mainland know that there's an arbitrage opportunity. See [http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/stocktrade.cfm](http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/stocktrade.cfm)

<comment><USER24> If this actually worked, there would be boats sitting in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific with computers on them. I have no idea if they are sitting there, but I'm pretty sure if it was an idea that worked, it would be done by now.

<comment><USER25> It's a fairly common (and silly) dismissal of any new effort that "if it worked, someone else would already be doing it".

<comment><USER26> It is theoretically sound: TANSTAAFL

<comment><USER25> It is theoretically sound if you assume that the present state is equivalent to the long-term equilibrium (e.g., ignore friction.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was Googling to find what a boat-based wave-powered generator would look like, and I found this interesting diagram:

[http://www.greenpatentblog.com/2011/12/08/fraunhofers- mobile...](http://www.greenpatentblog.com/2011/12/08/fraunhofers-mobile-wave- energy-harvester-barges-in/)

<comment><USER28> I don't think wave power is deployed successfully yet[1]. The cooling would not be a leap of technology though.

[1] Its under development [http://www.pelamiswave.com/](http://www.pelamiswave.com/) but I don't think its finished yet.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, that's why I was trying to figure out how they would power it.

Diesel generators seem... unGoogley.

<comment><USER28> Plug it in to the mains? I don't think you want tons of servers in the middle of the ocean. How would you get the data out without fibres anyway?

<comment><USER18> Why would you want it to be in the middle of the ocean? Keep it close the the coast, perhaps hook into a cable landing station (where submarine comm cables come ashore.) Running a submarine power cable also doesn't seem too far- fetched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Finally, something with better bandwidth and worse latency than Andy Tanenbaum's station wagon.

> Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling > down the highway. \-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, 4th ed., p. 91

</comment><comment><USER30>
      Google was granted a patent in 2009 for a floating data center

Sigh, there is a _patent_ on floating data centers? For fuck's sake...

<comment><USER31> There's a patent for one specific, detailed design for a floating datacenter. Not for the mere _idea_ of a floating datacenter.

<comment><USER32> I'd be shocked if claim #1 wasn't "floating data center". They always start out super broad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does the data get to/from the platform? Microwaves? Can that work from a slightly moving platform?

My wacky guess would have been off-shore offices for employees that can't get H1Bs.

<comment><USER33> I doubt it; they would have just bought a cruise ship.

Besides, Tata and Wipro have demonstrated that you can just bring people here to work, coop them 8 to a suite in extended stay hotel rooms, and with sufficient lawyering and a couple of hoops, visas be damned.

<comment><USER34> Wait, what? I think I missed this one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Very interesting...

Any chance that this will mean the Govt can't subpoena data from this data center if it is floating far enough from the US coast? Or does it not matter because clearly the US will be the closest harbor?

<comment><USER36> It has to connect to the U.S. somehow. So they can still subpeona data moving through the switch.

There's going to be a cable connecting this to the mainland, which one could argue means the ship is moored to the U.S. coastline?

Might be a fun legal battle.

<comment><USER37> > So they can still subpeona data moving through the switch

Well if they weren't an american corporation they would be doing this anyway. Besides, perhaps the most important data wouldn't ever have to be transmitted into the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> So it appears as though Google is looking towards a future where they are an independent country, or at the very least free from regulation, visa-a-vis Seasteading.

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

<comment><USER39> No, this does not appear at all. It appears they want to save on real estate and cooling costs by having floating data centers.

Google has owns so much real estate and immovable property in the US it is silly to suppose they are thinking of leaving the country just because they built a couple of barges.

<comment><USER34> > It appears they want to save on real estate and cooling costs by having > floating data centers.

Is this really that expensive that's still advantageous considering the costs of a barge + electricity + data link to the sea + fuel + maintenance ?

<comment><USER40> Not only is cold seawater usable for cooling, but the article mentions the feasibility of using the sea for power generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I hope they fit it with sub-surface portholes and webcams.

The article keeps saying "huge", but really that's tiny for a ship. Google could buy an old cruise liner and fit several of those inside. Or maybe Google is going to buy more little ships and plonk one of these in each?

I hope that they have adequate security, because all that gold and copper is worth stealing for some people.

<comment><USER3> I guess they'd better make the first one not too ambitious and ramp up later.

<comment><USER42> It's still in beta.

<comment><USER43> I see. we're slashdot now.

<comment><USER44> Well, actually* it was Stack Exchange that first identified the poison that is metadiscussion.

* tongue firmly in cheek as I knowigly contribute to the problem in the hopes of educating everyone away from it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Somebody told them about docker and this is what they did....

</comment><comment><USER46> Maybe Google will put pressure on the city to upgrade the island's power grid, which has had serious reliability issues in recent years: [http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/treasure-island- endur...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/treasure-island-endures-yet- another-power-outage/Content?oid=2540870)

</comment><comment><USER47> This will get lost in the rest of the comments here, and the article was comprehensive, but:

A friend of mine just got back from Treasure Island (she works as a stewardess on millionaires boats), and hung out with a lot of the guys working on this. This is definitely Google's doing, and she was told that it is indeed a data- centre, but that's all the info she got.

</comment><comment><USER48> another cool thing about floating data centers in california is they're pretty much earthquake proof... built in shock absorbers (aka water).

You can probably charge a premium for easily accessible highly secure data I would imagine.

... assuming megalodon isn't still around

<comment><USER49> An earthquake can cause a tsunami. Depending on conditions, the tsunami wave could be hundreds of feet high. So, not earthquake "proof."

<comment><USER50> Tsunamis are not giant walls of water like what you see in disaster movies. They're more like an unending tide: the water just keeps rising until it floods the area. Anything floating loose on the water at the time is at risk of being carried inland, but is unlikely to be completely destroyed.

A floating data center barge anchored a mile offshore is as close as you can get to tsunami-proof. At worst, its connection to the mainland would be severed if the tsunami destroyed the local land-based telecom infrastructure. Any data located on the barge would still be intact until communications could be restored.

<comment><USER51> Hence why they're also sometimes called "Tidal waves"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Reminds me [1]. Gmail like AI breaks loose and uses fully automated floating data centers. Highly recommend.

[1] book named "Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears:

<comment><USER40> That sounds like the game "Endgame:Singularity": [http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/](http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I hope it is a floating data center. If not, it is a fun detective type article.

<comment><USER54> If it is built by Google and it's not a floating data center, I wonder what it could be.

<comment><USER55> It's the opt-out village :).

<comment><USER56> Not many units there!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Never underestimate the bandwidth of a barge filled with hard drives.

</comment><comment><USER58> Today we went sailing. I took ~62 higher res jpg pictures of this area.

You can see these here: [http://tinyurl.com/floatingcontainers](http://tinyurl.com/floatingcontainers)

<comment><USER59> Awesome Initiative!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> It's startup/incubator space: [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/off/4148978964.html](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/off/4148978964.html)

<comment><USER61> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Maybe this is just so their data centers can be movable between cities so they can negotiate better tax agreements and power contracts.

<comment><USER63> Or to cover peaks like say the Olympics just anchor it near to where it is needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Actual original reporting, wow, sadly unusual these days for any publication. My respect for CNET might be resurrected.

</comment><comment><USER63> Actually it just struck me this might be part of Googles DR plan for California getting hit by the big one

</comment><comment><USER65> I can see it already.

In a dystopian future, when the world as we know it is covered in water, one mythical ship traverses the oceans, powered by stratosphere kites or nuclear power. Nobody knows where it's from.

All we know is that many years ago, it became sentient.

And its name is Google.

</comment><comment><USER66> Anyone consider what the real estate & taxes savings will be with this? For high demand areas where you'd like to set up a data center, something offshore might save a fortune in land costs and property taxes alone.

<comment><USER67> It likely can't be justified on power and real estate costs alone. There are counties in Oregon that give away land and provide very cheap hydro power for data centers.

<comment><USER66> I was referring to areas where real estate is extremely expensive, and data demands warrant close proximity thereto - such as San Francisco. Floating a data center on "free" water surface may be cheaper yet still have thick short data pipes to intended customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> With movable data centers, Google can easily move them across oceans, as popularity and usage of different Google services inevitably shifts across countries over time, in order to be closer to wherever their users are to reduce network latency.

For example an "Orkut data center" would have been very useful to Google in 2008, when they announced they were moving its operations to Brazil because somewhat unpredictably this is where their core user base developed the most: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut)

<comment><USER69> Or you could just shift the processes to a newly commissioned, and therefore cheaper per cpu/ram/storage per dollar!

<comment><USER26> A completely new data center takes years to build and deploy.

<comment><USER69> Sure, but so will finding an appropriate cable landing site, getting a mini- substation built near that landing site, etc.

Cable landing is a hard problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> A massive floating data-centre out in international waters would be a pretty powerful protection against governmental interference in your business. Well, except for the military kind.

<comment><USER71> It's been tried: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/sealand-and- haven...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco/)

<comment><USER72> Not really.

It's a similar idea but comparing Google putting it's resources behind a similar idea to something like Sealand is not really a fair comparison.

The outcome could be vastly different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Seems pretty telling to me, with the patent and coffee shop cashier testimonial.

I wonder how the hardware will hold up to the environmental harshnesses of the open water? Or even just sea spray...

<comment><USER74> I thought that was the best part: corp spends tens of thousands in lawyer time and craftiness to be stealthy, but forgets that it gives corp-branded charge cards to its employees, who won't spend $3.50 on a latte while on company time (and forget to ditch their badges when offsite).

<comment><USER22> Reminds me of the fake Apple company names and back stories when they were building the iPhone and had to meet with cellular companies. (I guess Steve Jobs was less recognizable back then?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Just enough leaks to conclude it's a Google-owned project. Although I can't offer an alternative explanation, I'm a bit skeptical in this post-Snowden world.

</comment><comment><USER76> A datacenter in/near SF doesn't make much sense. Electricity there is just too expensive. And, no, the waves in the bay aren't a solution.

I suppose you might build a datacenter there and then ship it to some third- world port where you don't want to do construction.

While I love the idea of a gmail datacenter in international waters with automatic guns to deter boarders, that really wouldn't fit Google's current political strategy.

</comment><comment><USER77> I believe this was literally Chapter 1 (ok, maybe chapter 2 or 3) of "Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears" [1]. Life imitates art, I guess? Or maybe that author is more prescient than I gave him credit for.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Appears- eboo...](http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Appears- ebook/dp/B006ACIMQQ)

</comment><comment><USER78> Can somebody explain the point behind the secrecy? What does Google have to gain by taking all these steps to hide they're the ones building it?

<comment><USER79> So that the reveal can be done on their own timing, only when things are ready, for maximum desired effect.

Trickling details out about something still taking shape leads to expectation problems, and perhaps less favorable coverage (in magnitude and tone) at intended launch time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> [http://www.subpartners.net/cables/apx- east.html](http://www.subpartners.net/cables/apx-east.html)

[http://www.commsday.com/commsday-australasia/slatterys- radic...](http://www.commsday.com/commsday-australasia/slatterys-radical- funding-plan-for-proposed-australia-singaporeus-cables)

</comment><comment><USER81> Just wondering what the effect of all the waste heat will be on (what's left of) the Bay's ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER82> Google uses Treasure Island for holiday parties, perhaps that's what explains the presence of employees?

</comment><comment><USER83> This floating data centers could be used for more privacy/security. Very interesting article thanks.

<comment><USER84> I am having great mental images of pirate ships full of hackers attacking Google floating data centers in international waters. The floating data centers will of course be stoutly defended by a combination of machine gun wielding robots and Google engineers with laser beam interfaces for their Google Glass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Could this be a routing center for CC payments? That would be a very interesting tax evasion method...

</comment><comment><USER86> It's likely that this is a way to get around the visa limits the US is having. If you build a giant cruise ship and park it on the bay next to google then you can have engineers working near HQ without legally requiring them to have visas!

<comment><USER87> The idea of a bunch of non-citizen engineers working (and living?) in a windowless floating cargo container doesn't seem to me to be something that would be a great idea, PR-wise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Sounds kinda like the fictional Arsenal Gear ship: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_%28weapon%29#Arsenal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_%28weapon%29#Arsenal_Gear)

</comment><comment><USER89> Could this be an attempt to skirt the rules and laws imposed by the US on our (Google's) data? Would Google have to provide data under a warrant if said data is physically located in international waters?

<comment><USER90> if the ship is under US flag, yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-winfield-burns/rich- and...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-winfield-burns/rich-and-busy- potentate-e_b_3951340.html)

</comment><comment><USER92> International waters, immune to NSA?

Also, does wave power really yield sufficient energy?

<comment><USER93> Much more likely it belongs to the NSA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> I wouldn't be surprised if it was a GoogleX project of some sort.

</comment><comment><USER95> How would a data centre on a barge cope with constant motion (hurtful for cheap spinning discs?) and data link latency? Presumably cable doesn't work well if the barge moves?

</comment><comment><USER96> _> putting data centers inside shipping containers is already a well- established practice._

Is this true? Does anyone know why? The article seems to assume it without saying why.

<comment><USER97> I'll try to find the link in a moment, but Microsoft was doing something like this 5+ years back. The premise was similar to Google using commodity hardware in their datacenters. Throw together "compute blocks", set them all up and when performance degrades sufficiently you remove the container and install a new one in its place.

EDIT:

Also, I'm surprised I got the time right, for some reason 2005-2012 is one big blur to me and I usually pick the wrong end of that range when guessing when things happened. It also seems that none of these articles mention what I recalled reading in articles years ago about just replacing a box once its performance degrades. I'm either misremembering or that ended up being a non- feature once fielded.

[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/04/01/micro...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/04/01/microsoft- embraces-data-center-containers/)

A more recent article, this one is MS in VA: [http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/02/boydton/](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/02/boydton/)

A critique of the approach: [http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9080738/6_reasons_why...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9080738/6_reasons_why_Microsoft_s_container_based_approach_to_data_centers_won_t_work)

<comment><USER77> The newest Azure data center in Iowa(?) was going to be open air. Basically a pile of these containers in a field, with a big fence over it and a roof similar to a big car-port (no walls). They figured it was going to be better for cooling.

<comment><USER87> Iowa? Doesn't sound like a great idea, they have tornadoes there, which can easily throw shipping containers around.

<comment><USER77> Yep, outside Des Moines. I don't have a reference for the rest of it, that was from conversations with MS employees.

[http://www.eweek.com/cloud/microsoft-parks-cloud- over-700m-i...](http://www.eweek.com/cloud/microsoft-parks-cloud- over-700m-iowa-data-center/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> A place for those with no visa to the USA to work!

</comment><comment><USER99> I can just see google hq now.

"Boy that was quite a storm last night...oh wait...gmail just floated away and is halfway to hawai'i"

</comment><comment><USER100> It might be a NON-HULKING floating data center.

</comment><comment><USER101> This could be part of Google's Project Loon. Instead of building a data center in Africa why not ship one over.

</comment><comment><USER102> It's being built at the same hangar where they shot the Battlebots TV shows.

</comment><comment><USER103> Bruce Sterling will love this.

</comment><comment><USER104> Well looks like we're going to need to Trevor to do some investigation.

</comment><comment><USER105> Maybe they're just trying to lay some underwater cable... to Japan

</comment><comment><USER106> How do you get a patent for a "floating data center"..

<comment><USER107> Submit it to USPTO and other national or trans-national (e.g. EU) patent registries like any other patent.

This one's included in the article: [https://www.google.com/patents/US7525207](https://www.google.com/patents/US7525207)

<comment><USER106> Satire aside. My point was the ridiculousness of it. What's next, patents covering putting data centers in space, under the sea or under stairs etc..

<comment><USER108> There's a Chinese patent on putting a data center in space [0], and a US patent for a _partially_ submerged data center [1], but I can't find anything for putting a data center under the stairs... you should patent it!

[0] [https://www.google.com/patents/CN103186179A?cl=en](https://www.google.com/patents/CN103186179A?cl=en)

[1] [https://www.google.com/patents/US20130044426](https://www.google.com/patents/US20130044426)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> That or a metal gear. My hopes are on the latter.

</comment><comment><USER110> nice information regarding google building hulking floating data center.</comment>


Medical user interfaces in games - <AUTHOR> http://zkirill.com/post/4972211275/medical-user-interfaces-in-games

<comment><USER2> It seems that the UI shown in games and movies is meant more to quickly show the viewer what the screen is trying to say more than it is supposed to be usable to the person. That's why you always see such big fonts and simplified diagrams. It would seem to me that this is generally inefficient because it means you must constantly be switching between views if you want to see more than a giant number a progress bar.

Furthermore, there's a certain one-upsmanship in Hollywood in trying to show how advanced a society is by how many increasingly complicated gestures one has to perform to use the interface. Something tells me that a Minority Report style interface is more tiring and over the long run than a keyboard. Heck, there were people complaining that the Wii has similar issues with extended play of all these waggle games.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed 100%. This is just for inspiration and ideas. I think that the one thing that video game and movie UI gets right every time is the use of color. Blue/green for comfort, yellow for attention, and red for danger.</comment></comment>


Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.fxos/FoAwifahNPY/Lppm0VHVBAAJ <comment><USER2> So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so.

Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.

<comment><USER3> I'm a big supporter of GNU/Linux on the phone.

I don't care if Jolla or Ubuntu don't ever make it as "major" players in the mobile OS world.

I'd be perfectly happy with GNU/Linux mobile software that's as good as the Linux desktop.

I run Linux on my desktop (and laptop), and we're 1% of desktop users. I'd be satisfied with 1% mobile market share. We don't need a billion users, all I want is a hacker-friendly platform, with a good developer community around it (which I think both GNU/Linux on the desktop, and IMO SailfishOS [Jolla] provide).

<comment><USER4> Android is Linux on the phone. It's Linux kernel with stuff on top. Check out Replicant. It removes most of the stuff you might find objectionable.

<comment><USER3> >> Android is Linux on the phone. It's Linux kernel with stuff on top.

Android is just the Linux kernel on the phone -- that's the issue I have with it. It comes with none of the other stuff that makes GNU/Linux great: philosophically/socially it's different, but on a technical level it's missing rest of the GNU/Linux stack (e.g. package management, and the plethora of developer tools -- including languages and libraries). The GNU/Linux stack is developed by a diverse ecosystem of contractors, big and small business, and non-for-profits (e.g. Red Hat, Intel, Mozilla, Samsung, Canonical, Document Foundation, Fujitsu, Google, etc). Android is largely controlled by one company.

<comment><USER5> Is Tizen any closer to this?

<comment><USER3> I honestly don't know what's happening with Tizen these days -- Samsung has invested money into it, but it has (IMO) very little to show. Again, my bias is showing, but I think Jolla (SailfishOS) and Canonical (Ubuntu Touch) have achieved infinitely more with smaller teams and less capital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I still love my FirefoxOS Geeks Phone Keon 2013, it still is my go-to backpacking phone. ongoing long battery runtime, a decent browser for the [https://mbasic.facebook.com/](https://mbasic.facebook.com/), gmail HTML, hacker news. necessary apps are there and work fine: For me that's HERE maps & alarm function.

I love it, because it's un-addicting. android and ios are designed to get your attention, all the time. FirefoxOS ist a tool that is there for you when you need it.

I wish they had succeeded, I even ran an FirefoxOS meetup in Vienna, I will miss it. Now back to my Android Phone, I think it beeped, vibrated or needs me in some other way.

<comment><USER7> Yes, thanks Mozilla for making a timer app that by default neither beeps nor vibrates. Thankfully I only lost one oven load of food before I noticed.

And thanks Mozilla for making an OS that glitches out if you use the power button in the wrong moment, nothing wakes you up better than having to reboot your phone to stop the damn alarm clock.

FirefoxOS is such an unfinished shitfest. I have no idea how 1.3 passed QA. (Nor why Alcatel still isn't releasing any update, even though they're still selling the phone in question.)

<comment><USER8> And for that reason, it's worth recognizing how much work ahead there is for the web platform to be capable of delivering full OS experience.

Only now, pieces of the HTML/DOM/JS spec that have been kickstarted out of need when FxOS was being developed start landing in the spec.

Whoever will try next, will have an easier job because of the FxOS experience.

source: I'm an engineer who worked on FxOS in 2014-2016

<comment><USER9> Or it's worth recognizing that trying to deliver full OS experience with Web technology is a waste of time.

<comment><USER8> "It always seems impossible until it's done."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not only that, they're ripping out support for it from the Gecko code base, which means that the only way to get security updates for it will be to fork Gecko. I doubt anyone has the resources to do that. It's basically dead. (Every non-Firefox consumer of Gecko has met the same fate so far.)

<comment><USER11> Mozilla of course has every right to determine how it wants to allocate its resources... but to me, this action speaks loudly that you cannot really count on them to stay the course. So, from an outsider perspective, every initiative must be analyzed skeptically, since they may leave you holding the bag.

This is always true to a degree, but the more true you think it is, the less likely you are to jump onto said initiatives.

<comment><USER12> > _This is always true to a degree, but the more true you think it is, the > less likely you are to jump onto said initiatives._

While I'm sad since I can't now run Firefox OS on my OpenMoko phone, while listening to my ogg vorbis files and rocking Chandler, the revolutionary PIM app and posting updates to Diaspora, this should have been the conclusion from the beginning.

It was pretty clear that nothing much was ever gonna come out of it.

<comment><USER13> Chandler (epic distraction) may have wandered off into the sunset but people are still running predecessors Lotus Agenda (DOS era) and Ecco Pro (Win 95 era) to this day. Ecco Pro has even been binary patched to enable Lua scripting. The computer industry has many commercial failures that shipped elements of technical excellence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This outcome should have been obvious to everyone involved. The fact that it wasn't raises serious doubts about the Mozilla leadership.

You can't compete with Android by being slower, less responsive, and ship with less features.

<comment><USER15> Seriously... I avoid Firefox on my (rather beefy) desktop because of how much it freezes. I don't want to imagine how it worked on a 50€ phone, which looked like it was their target.

Maybe they thought Gecko would be ready by the time the OS was going to ship?

<comment><USER16> But this a poor, skewing argument always made by at least one person here. For most FF is very responsive and there are no problems what so ever.

And FF is not FF-OS.

<comment><USER17> > For most FF is very responsive and there are no problems what so ever.

Open dev tools, type `for (;;) {}`. Notice the whole browser becomes unresponsive. This has been improved upon (as in it doesn't block the whole Firefox UI, just merely every single content tab) thanks to Electrolysis partially reaching stable but "there are no problems whatsoever" simply isn't true performance wise (and this is the most obvious one, there are numerous other very well known performance issues with FF)

<comment><USER18> Open your terminal, type ':(){ :|:& };:'. Notice how the whole OS becomes unresponsive.

There is a very simple solution to both these problems, which most people employ to great effect: just don't do that.

<comment><USER17> Besides that doing `perl -e 'for (;;) {}'` and watching your OS burn down in flames (which it doesn't) is the correct parallel, I'll assume you have overlooked that we have no control on what JS does in whatever page we're presented with, and if it's some heavy handed code it has a significant impact on whatever else I may be doing on an unrelated tab, which feels like going back to plain old cooperative multitasking, upon which the above perl code would effectively be a blight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Number 1 reason why I didn't pick up an Panasonic 4K TV, because i knew Firefox OS will be dead some day. And number one reason why I REALLY want an APPLE TV Set rather then Apple TV STB.

Most of the Smart TV on the market today are total piece of Junk. They are what "Smart"phones were before the iPhone came out. As a matter of fact, SmartTV from China are pretty good on the software front, and lacking ( price cutting too much ) on the hardware.

Just wanted to mention about Mozilla leadership. And so call leadership in general, HOW DID these *&@^$% ever got to their position? This is speaking from a user who has been with them before the Firefox era.

<comment><USER20> I want a dumb display and a smart STB -- because I don't want to have to replace a thousand-dollar display just to get new STB hardware.

It's why I have a TV and a Roku, rather than a Roku TV. Why combine them when their upgrade cycles don't match up?

<comment><USER21> AFAIK at this point the dumb TVs all have worse displays.

<comment><USER22> Which is why I just ignore the smart stuff and use a capable STB instead.

<comment><USER23> emodendroket is stating that "ignoring the smart stuff" means disregarding high-quality imaging available on the top-of-line products.

<comment><USER24> Twirrim is stating that "ignoring the smart stuff" doesn't necessarily mean buying a dumb TV, and that they buy a smart TV, ignore a bunch of the TV's features, and replace them by using a separate set-top box.

<comment><USER23> Ah, of course. Ok, chalk it up to muphry's law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A major shame that we are moving our technology from open playforms built to empower to walled gardens built to consume. One day maybe it will shift towards something more progressive again.

<comment><USER26> The most bizarre thing about this is that geeks now even manage to rationalize this away.

That iOS/Apple (of today) are so revered by open-systems loving folks is a little bit counterintuitive.

<comment><USER27> Stockholm syndrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This makes me sad, not because I wanted to use Firefox OS, but because JanOS[1] (a hacked up FFOS) turned cheap Firefox phones into really powerful Javascript-based hardware hacking platforms. It's really quite fun, and I love the idea of abusing the economies of scale of cheap consumer electronics to make creative hardware tools. Most dedicated hardware development boards with all the features of a phone would cost 4 times as much.

[1]: [http://janos.io/](http://janos.io/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe they could work on Thunderbird again; that's a product actually used that doesn't have many real competitors.

<comment><USER29> They have way more competitors in that space, but I still use it because it's clean and bloat free.

<comment><USER21> Really? What are all these desktop e-mail clients other than Thunderbird, Outlook, and Mail.app? And how many of them are cross-platform?

I remember looking into whether there were alternatives for a while and really not being able to find anything.

<comment><USER29> Nylas, Polymail.. just to name a few

<comment><USER21> So a tool specialized for sales professionals (apparently) and a Mac-only product. Well, you can see what I mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've had a developer phone and was quite disappointed with the system. If you really want to sell the advantages of HTML/JS apps, the default ones should've been a lot nicer and full-featured.

I still miss WebOS and my Pre.

<comment><USER31> I bought two of them. Different. They never worked, and were both slow. Mailed one to a fellow HN'er in India, used the other for awhile but was unable to recompile the OS to get things fixed and received zero support online. Felt like the whole thing was compromised from the word go by business people, from my perspective.

I will repeat my take here, for the last time, on where they screwed up: _They screwed up by pretending to target low end devices but still only supporting centralized communications. They should have had Ad-hoc /Mesh Wifi as a requirement, and designed the OS API to give those features to developers._ Developing world people want to send things between one another, not huddle around shared wifi or pay premiums to carriers. I wrote this up in some detail at [https://bug945047.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=840...](https://bug945047.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8407268) ... nobody bothered to reply, except for "wifi supports in FFOS is relied on wpa_supplicant which is provided by partner mostly", ie. the business setup within Mozilla was that the actual device manufacturers were the ones who had control of the _wpa_supplicant_ build, and there was no way for the developers to rely on, require or enforce features in that software being present. Nobody took ownership, everyone lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Good move by Mozilla. Hopefully they continue to aggresively cut other non- core products and concentrate on improving Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER33> What was the point of Firefox OS? I never really saw any kind of marketing around it beyond "Mozilla decided to make a phone OS."

From what I've gleaned, the only differentiating factor was that all apps are Javascript. Like my mom cares what languages her apps are written in.

<comment><USER34> A real open source OS? Youd equally well have asked what the point of Linux was before it picked up steam.

Of course the big difference is that Linux succeeded while Firefox OS failed. But thats after the fact.

I think something like Firefox OS is important, but probably wasnt something Mozilla should have undertaken when their key asset was under massive threat and it keeps dropping other stuff that, admittedly small numbers of people are using, were still successful in Theur niche and could have continued with minimal effort (examples of projects that affected me directly are Thunderbird and Prism).

<comment><USER12> > _Of course the big difference is that Linux succeeded while Firefox OS > failed. But thats after the fact._

The relevant big difference is that Linux filled a need and had a particular niche that had nothing to do with being "libre": it was good and costed nothing to run servers on.

Big UNIX vendors charged an arm and a leg (and often required their own hw platforms to run), and their software was behind the times (to the point that loading the GNU userland was necessary for getting them remotely comfortable to admin/program on).

Otherwise, Linux has been a failure on the Desktop too (statistically, nobody cares if someone here personally uses it -- the original idea of most Linux advocates was that it would conquer the desktop, overtaking Microsoft. Not that "it would get good enough to be used by some users on their desktops". It was already that, back in 1999).

<comment><USER35> Actually being "free/open/libre" software has had everything to do with the success of Linux.

However, I've heard the high cost of UNIX licenses in the early 90s was the reason why Linus decided to start his project.

Also, Linux has never been "a failure" on the desktop: you seem to think that the definition of being successful is to have a complete monopoly.

<comment><USER12> >Also, Linux has never been "a failure" on the desktop: you seem to think that the definition of being successful is to have a complete monopoly.

Complete strawman.

First, I used the Linux advocates' own definition of "success": Linux overtaking MS on the desktop, and the fabled and continuously moving "Year of Linux on the desktop". Which never happened.

Second, what "complete monopoly" rubbish, which I never alluded to? Linux has less of 2% on the desktop (by all browser-based stats). For a completely free OS, that's a failure. 10-20% would have been a great success.

<comment><USER35> I get somewhat weary when I hear somebody say that "Linux is a failure on x because..."

Anyway, where did you get that definition? It is the view of the Linux Zealot. To say that it some sort of general definition is just silly.

You also seem to think that if an operating system is free (as in cost?) people would automatically go for it. That is simply false.

In any case I think Linux will outlive Windows. Windows is pinned on one single player and Linux is has reach over many.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The title here is really misleading. Commercial development stopped a while ago. What was announced today is the removal of some code from Mozilla's codebase that will make it impossible for the community to keep working on b2g OS.

</comment><comment><USER37> Not unexpected, but a bummer. I suppose this means my Firefox OS powered Panasonic TV won't get any more updates too.

</comment><comment><USER38> The main issue with FirefoxOS was the performance(of the devices and perhaps also the OS itself). I had the first firefox phones(I think the brand was ZTE) and they were basically rubbish(i.e. they had a 1sec or more lag). I would take a Nokia 6600 over that any day.

Mozilla tried to market it as a low cost alternative but nobody wants low cost rubbish. You are better of with a feature phone.

I think the biggest mistake was the reliance of the OS on javascript. It was dead on arrival or better said from start.

</comment><comment><USER39> The problem with FirefoxOS was that you could already run web apps on iOS/Android; there was no compelling value besides the "privacy" component, as low-cost Android phones already existed. And as I've noticed on other Moz- centric threads, privacy is not enough of a benefit for people (even the tech savvy!) to use a poorly-performing product.

</comment><comment><USER40> So the pattern seems that zippy-compiled-modern-language-strongly-typed stuff works as a basis for a framework on devices, No? Why not just go with that paradigm for a new Firefox OS but call it "Phoenix OS" or something? Would be cool if they abstracted that for JS developers with ReactNative-like developer experience on top of it so it was more approachable as well or just let Facebook do that. Dumb idea? Good? This is probably not taking into account the cash buckets raining from the two ivory towers that already did it though.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm super grateful to Mozilla for trying. I think we'll eventually get to an open source web phone, but we're not quite there yet.

It's a tough market because as soon as you release something, there is a ticking clock until all of the low cost manufacturers release something cheaper and faster. Moore's law is not your friend when you're trying to differentiate a mobile product.

Beyond that general difficulty, a web phone faces some specific inevitable challenges:

1) No access to the "app world" of Instagram, Snapchat, etc

2) Can't optimize performance to the same degree

3) Web app access to hardware devices is limited

I think those are things you can't fight, you just have to accept them, but they are _really_ hard to accept. This is the key psychological hurdle in any new web phone design project.

But let's get over them for a second and see what we're left with. The web also has some indominable advantages:

1) Instantaneous installation/startup of new "apps"

2) Long tail of web content can be a first class citizen in the UI

3) Novice-friendly development platform, i.e. "show source", embeddable HTML widgets, etc

4) Cloud-based by default

5) A community who will deploy infrastructure for free, so long as it is open source and decentralized

If I squint my eyes, I can imagine a web browser that really tries to capitalize on these things. From first principles, I think a development platform where the infrastructure for getting started is free-ish, apps and development environments all load instantaneously, data is never lost because it always lives in the cloud, emerging standards allow data to federate freely between services... you just float around allowing app access to your cloud data... such a platform would have substantial advantages over something like iOS or Android.

Those advantages may or may not be able to outweigh the inherent platform weaknesses I mentioned, but I can at least imagine it becoming a major player on mobile.

I think the trouble for Mozilla is there are still quite a few research projects there:

How do you federate data between services?

How do you host open source web apps in such a way that neither the programmer nor the end user has to be a sysadmin?

How do you make it easy to write performant, mobile friendly apps?

How do you organize a decentralized global community to adopt good usability practices?

How do you design a web browser so that web developers can make simple, fully integrated apps that fit into a more unified mobile experience?

I think if you could design something that at least solved all of these problems in a simplistic way—not fully robust, but a proof of concept with a few core apps, messaging, video, etc—and you really leaned in to the kinds of experiences that become uniquely possible on a platform like this, and then refine the shit out of it in an empirical Apple-style user-centered design tsunami, I think you might have a leapfrog product that could put Android and iOS on their heels.

Maybe.

If you could make it fundamentally easier to build and deploy web apps, you could get a huge store of long tail apps, which would form a kind of exclusive content moat. Not because those apps would be inaccessible on iOS or Android, but because they would be second-class citizens there.

To different extents Google and Mozilla have both been trying to tackle some or all of these research projects in different ways. But I'm not even sure if it's time yet. Maybe we just need to wait a little until some more of these answers shake out. Or maybe Mozilla just lacked the strategic vision to really know what to hammer hard on here.

But I am totally grateful to them (and Google) for trying. I still am drinking the Kool-aid. I still think the web is the future. Thousands of people are working on these problems all over the world. I think as Ethereum matures, it will fill in a lot of the gaps.

So, I think the Firefox can rise again. We'll see.

</comment><comment><USER42> While I was very excited for FFOS and it's sad to see it go because I generally follow Mozilla endeavors.

I prefer my phone to be a phone and not a general purpose computer. The less complexity the less problems incurred. Few vendors are willing to put in the really hard optimization to make a lowend device work well.

The lowend target of FFOS was an additional concern because it meant the software had to be that much better.

</comment><comment><USER43> [https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile](https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile)

</comment><comment><USER44> Ubuntu phone is still on.

</comment><comment><USER45> There goes the chance of any updates on my Panasonic TV I guess... I wonder if there will even be security updates.

<comment><USER46> Maybe not security updates, but you may get some advertising updates[0].

[0]: [http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1...](http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1416894724)

<comment><USER45> Don't get those in this model/country...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I was really hopeful for a ChromeOS competitor. Guess I'll have to wait. Maybe Ubuntu's mobile OS?

<comment><USER48> ...why not just regular Ubuntu?

Or well, any lightweight Linux distro, really.

There's also this, in case that comes closer to what you see as ChromeOS competitor: [https://cublinux.com/](https://cublinux.com/)

<comment><USER49> I don't want to use the terminal on a phone

<comment><USER48> ChromeOS isn't on phones, is it? Ubuntu also doesn't really require terminal usage either way...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Sad news for me

<comment><USER51> While yes, it's kinda sad, I also think this was obvious the second the first Firefox OS phones were shipped. The _idea_ was good, but the execution and result was completely underwhelming.

And after the dud launch, whatever momentum had been there, simply dried out. _Nothing_ major has happened since launch for Firefox OS, while Android and iOS have had several major releases.

That it took Mozilla this many _years_ after the fact to admit this failure, is (as other comments) a sign of bad leadership.

The effort spent here could have been much better spent elsewhere. And these days Mozilla needs to spend its resources efficiently more than ever.

IMO the whole "connected devices" initiative which Mozilla also mentions here (I had completely forgotten about it) will suffer the same fate. It's not connected to anything they currently do, or anything they have a natural ability to reach out to. Whatever drives this initiative, it seems completely disconnected from engineering.

Unless they kill it now, we'll see a similar announcement in a few years. And that too will be resources that could have been spent more wisely.

<comment><USER52> > it took Mozilla this many _years_ after the fact to admit this failure

The first Firefox OS phones shipped in early 2013. After spending around two years trying to make the project work, Mozilla stopped releasing new versions in May 2015 and officially started winding down the project by the end of 2015, as mentioned in the linked newsgroup post. So it wasn't really many years at all; also, it's hard to place the blame on "bad leadership" when the current CEO didn't come on board until the middle of 2014.

<comment><USER7> By middle 2014, many FirefoxOS phones were already months behind on updates and neither Mozilla nor the hardware vendors were putting any effort into supporting their own flagship devices. By that point, the app store was useless, because you couldn't install any apps on most devices due to ABI breakage between versions and a fragmentation worse than Android.

Neither CEO did anything to mitigate this issue. I don't know how that's _not_ bad leadership.

(Not that updates would have helped much: 1.3.0, the last and only FxOS version my phone received – which is still sold by Alcatel – was _much_ worse than Android 2.0 in terms of UX and stability. I have no idea how anyone thought this was in any way ready to ship.)

<comment><USER53> > Neither CEO did anything to mitigate this issue. I don't know how that's not > bad leadership.

Arguably that's great leadership because the CEO knew instantly to cut his or her losses, and not give into the sunk cost fallacy by pursuing this failing venture "because we're so invested in it already; we just have to try harder you see!"

<comment><USER54> And yet an entire year would pass after that before they announced that the project would be wound down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> i would like ff to implement commonjs modules and support nodejs lib and modules in a elevated mode. users would be able to host a chat server by visiting an url, settings could be saved in localstorage or local db.

</comment><comment><USER56> I really loved the idea of it, it was so intutive. Really sad to see firefox os go :(

<comment><USER57> Wtf hoe was it on any way intuitive?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Another dead project by Mozilla, not sure when they will understand they don't have resources like Google

<comment><USER59> Google has plenty of dead projects too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> When they ditched the Firefox phone I new it was over. They didn't really give it an earnest try. Smells a lot like HP's destruction of webOS. I would not be surprised if powerful players in the industry pressured them to drop it.

<comment><USER61> Yeah, the "FirefoxOS for internet of things" speech was complete bullshit. It was obvious. The worst is the lack of honesty from Mozilla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> So when I signed up for FF sync last night that was a waste of my life? The only reason I was giving them a shot is Chrome's goofiness. It crashes my GFX card on Win10 (constantly) and always has threads open for hardly-ever-used extensions.

<comment><USER63> Firefox OS is getting discontinued, not Firefox the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> > _While work at Mozilla on Firefox OS has ceased, we very much need to > continue to evolve the underlying code that comprises Gecko, our web > platform engine, as part of the ongoing development of Firefox._

So, according to the history of past announcements, if I translate from Mozilla speak to normal English, Gecko will be abandoned in March 2017.

<comment><USER7> I don't think Servo is mature enough yet.

<comment><USER65> However, WebKit and Chromium are. They are already experimenting on an Electron based browser called Tolfino and on iOS Firefox is built using the WebView.

<comment><USER66> Mozilla experiments with a lot of stuff, and on iOS _any_ browser has to be built with Webview. None of that means anything.

<comment><USER61> The point is Mozilla previously said FirefoxOS would live on through Internet of Things projects when they discontinued Firefox phones. They are using the exact same PR when shutting down FireFoxOS relative to Gecko. The question is, is Mozilla capable of maintaining its own browser engine today? both from an engineering perspective and from a financial perspective ? Let's see where Rust and Servo are going in the next 3 years.

<comment><USER65> Yeah, but that's just how Mozilla's PR comes out. It doesn't mean they'll abandon Gecko.

I think it's more likely they'll make Gecko/Firefox into community led projects and dissolve Mozilla Corporation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


HN Submit button - <AUTHOR> http://saicharan.in/blog/2009/07/12/hn-submit-button/ <comment><USER2> I submit about one out of three posts that I write to HN for consideration.

Out of those, HN'ers usually upvote about one out of three to the front page.

Out of _those_ , only about one in ten are really great posts.

I don't mind those odds. Heck, if I could write a great post every time I went to bat I'd be a famous author and not a consultant. I just enjoy writing. But I think there is a bit of self-censorship that goes on at HN with submissions and comments that I don't see elsewhere. I'm perfectly happy with folks submitting everything they write. I just think when we start flooding the net with HN submit buttons we're really stressing out the filtering mechanism past it's design limit. We've already reached the point where you have an hour or less to catch articles on the new tab before they roll off to page two. If folks are going to have to go digging through several pages of new articles everytime they visit it's going to be a turn-off, I'd think. (Although it might grow the site, which means that there is always going to be trade-off between culture and volume around here -- but I digress)

So I'm not crazy about the button. Nice hack, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a fine idea, but could possibly end up lowering quality of topics on HN. By making it all too easy to submit stories, quality may be endangered in a longer run due to rapid flood of links.

But then again, perhaps the voting system can hold its own well against that.

<comment><USER4> Actually, one can probably write a wordpress plugin that auto-submits a post own your own blog to HN, and then adds a "comments" link at the end of the post to point to the HN page containing your submitted link--effectively using every HN page as your comments page.

pg can probably filter based on repeated submissions from the same IP to prevent this type of abuse though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The thing with HN is that if a website owner cares enough to put the HN submit button they could just as easily sumbit there own article.

I guess if the button worked as an upvote/ submit like a digg one it could be useful.

<comment><USER6> It does, although the author probably didn't intend it. If a submission is a duplicate, you're redirected to the first submission and it gets your automatic upvote. So the first person clicks it and submits it, and then the following clickers think they're submitting it but are really voting it up. I think it'd be cooler if _looked_ more like the Digg button (which shows the number of diggs), but you'd have to scrape for the current number of upvotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> totally unnecessary for the kind of topics covered on HN. A lot of posts aren't time sensitive at all, and the ones that are generate enough interest without making the process any easier.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to break up charges for recurring billing? - <AUTHOR>

I recently had a conversation about the best way to do recurring billing.  We identified a few pros and cons for a variety of approaches.   I am interested on the HN take. (NOTE: This is technology agnostic, and more of a conceptual discussion)
1) Prorated First Month, all recurring clients are billed on the first. + Cash flow at the beginning of the month + Cash flow lines up with bills. + Easy to do maintenance on recurring billing system (only runs once a month) + Reasonably easy for users to understand - small partial month transactions for people who order late in the month.
2) Prorated 1st month with 2nd month prepay + (all of the above) + Even more cash flow early on, as every client is always one month ahead on payments - some clients might not want to prepay for 2 months at once - bill might be different then what the expect to pay, i.e. signup now for $15 costs them $29 (if they order on the 2nd of the month)
3) Everyone is on a 31 day cycle + everyone charged a flat $15 for every charge. - Billing period slowly shifts around, not the same day every month - cash flow spread out throughout the month - harder to do maintenance, as billing must run every day
Other ideas: 4) Only Annual + large amount of cash on hand - might scare away new users
5) Instead of prorating first month, call it a trial period, that starts 'now' and ends whenever your billing cycle begins. - confusing to end users - lost revenue due to trial
What is 'your' take? (your.. the collective HN) <comment><USER2> 1) Standard practice. Good for accounting purposes.

2) Unnecessarily complicated for end-user. Also messes with accounting because you don't want to record revenue earned for the second month in the first month.

3) Accounting nightmare! But nonetheless, common practice throughout the web industry.

4) Should be an option for end-users. Common practice, but again ensure you're deferring unearned revenue.

5) Eh, just sounds kind of cheesey. Why should a user who finds your site one day before the first of the month only be treated to a 1 day trial? Trials are good for the end-user, but use it in conjunction with #1.

These options should not be used exclusively, i.e. I would favor using 1 and 4.

Sorry for the accounting comments. I'm taking an accounting course right now and couldn't help but throw my comments in there. It's still important though.

<comment><AUTHOR> For #1 how would you handle situations where someone signs up up on the 20th of the month. Would you charge them for 10 days, or for ~40?

What about if instead they signup on the 28th of the month? 3 days or ~33?</comment></comment>