How long is that Bézier? - <AUTHOR> https://raphlinus.github.io/curves/2018/12/28/bezier-arclength.html <comment><USER2> Why don't you try the analytic method for cubics? The Abel-Ruffini only says that the anti-derivative is not elementary, not that it doesn't exist. The eliptic integrals are non-elementary, but calculating them on a computer is not really different in principle than e.g. computing natural logarithm.

If you plug the desired integral into Mathematica or Wolfram Alpha, it should just spit out the relevant anti derivative expressed in terms of some standard elliptic function, which can then be calculated using some series expansion (or some library of math functions).

<comment><AUTHOR> You're really trying to nerd snipe, aren't you? I spent some quality time with elliptic functions as the solutions to the elastica, and also with the Fresnel integral which of course generates the Euler spiral. So yes, it wouldn't be surprising if there were a closed form solution, and that it might even be more efficient to compute.

So, this would be a good topic for someone else to show off their math skills :)

<comment><USER2> Haha, of course it wouldn't really be much of an improvement over what you already have, and clearly I'm too lazy to do it myself — I would just enjoy looking at it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you're concerned about numerical inaccuracy of an expression, it might be worthwhile trying Herbie ([https://herbie.uwplse.org/](https://herbie.uwplse.org/)), a system that will try to rearrange expressions to minimize numerical error even in corner cases. It usually makes expressions bigger and slower, but since it works by brute force sometimes it even finds simplifications.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Or, to put it another way, it's [sampling] astonishingly slow when high > accuracy is desired

Raph, did you try adaptive sampling? How does the performance compare if you sample with an upper bound on change in angle, versus regular sampling?

Also curious if you wouldn't mind expanding on use cases that need this much accuracy. The main things I've had to use Bezier arc length for are graphics related, e.g. hair rendering, and in that domain you don't need much accuracy at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> These quadrature techniques are strictly more powerful than adaptive sampling. Part of the motivation for this blog post was to raise awareness of quadrature, as it's an excellent general method when you want to numerically approximate an integral.

One reason to compute with excess accuracy is so that you can compute partial derivatives of arclength with respect to some parameter in the inner loop of an optimizer, to drive Newton or related solving. If the estimate has significant errors, then it can throw off the outer optimization loops. Of course, this only makes sense if it's cheap to compute the inner terms; if you have to pay dearly for accuracy, then use a more robust optimizer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've got nice analytical solution for the quadratic bezier: [https://astiopin.github.io/2019/01/04/qbez- parabola.html](https://astiopin.github.io/2019/01/04/qbez-parabola.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool. Does it include your newly designed spline? [https://raphlinus.github.io/curves/2018/12/21/new- spline.htm...](https://raphlinus.github.io/curves/2018/12/21/new-spline.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but I intend to use it as the foundational layer that I build the production implementation on top of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> what's with all the bézier stuff, lately? :D

<comment><AUTHOR> The simple answer is that these days I go where the muse takes me. I'm basically on a year-long sabbatical after leaving Google this summer, where I'm not particularly worrying about making money. I did my PhD on tools for interactive curve design, and I was frustrated while I was at Google because IP issues made working on curves complicated. So when I had some new ideas, it was like the dam bursting, and I've been enjoying lots of motivation and creativity. I started the codebase for kurbo on Christmas and wrote 1300 lines of code that day. I'll keep doing it while it's fun.</comment></comment>


Researchers use brain interface to post to Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.wisc.edu/16576

<comment><USER2> I wonder if the researchers know about Dasher and have considered combining the two interfaces to make text entry even faster? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher>

Or is the issue that people with "locked-in" syndrome often can't even move their eyes? (If they could move their eyes, even a little, then surely an eye- tracking device would be a better interface - where a predefined movement, say, looking to the left twice, would count as a click.)

<comment><USER3> Seems like T9 would be a good match to this technology also.</comment></comment>


Google's master plan [Picture] - <AUTHOR> http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/21470089

<comment><USER2> One of the more entertaining parts of the Google Tour. The master plan now looks a lot more complex nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of the way white boards were covered at a software company I used to work at.</comment>


Apple's computerized glasses won't be ready until 2022 'at the earliest' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/14/kuo-apple-is-working-two-new-affordable-ipads.html <comment><AUTHOR> 'Apple could launch new iPads in the coming year, TF Securities analyst Ming- Chi Kuo said in a new note on Thursday.

'The iPads will be "affordable" and lower-end models, Kuo suggests.

'Kuo also predicts that Apple's computerized glasses won't launch until 2022 "at the earliest."'

Original title too long. It was:

Apple's computerized glasses won't be ready until 2022 'at the earliest,' top analyst says</comment>


Journalists, Made For AdSense Publishers, And Regression To The Mean Of Content Quality (Google is destroying their business models) - <AUTHOR> http://publishing2.com/2007/05/21/journalists-made-for-adsense-publishers-and-regression-to-the-mean-of-content-quality/ <comment><USER2> It's unfortunately true. Some news editor friends of mine are now being measured on the CTR of their stories. These are folk with advanced J-school degrees and years of newspaper experience. But they are now writing the basest, most puerile clickbait to boost their numbers.

It's all popcorn now.</comment>


Twitter Adds Instagram-Like Photo Filters - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/12/10/twitter-photo-filters-here/ <comment><USER2> This is great news.

Anyone who cares about social outside of Facebook/Instagram should be supporting this.</comment>


Startup launching a project. Feedback would be appreciated. - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1695371981/1736365597?token=aeaa46bf

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you a lot for your feedback (it's very hard to get one). First of all, we certainly don't want that our plugin will be used to track people. We hate that too. We are a very small startup so we want to start with clean programming. But I need to disagree with that novelty thing. There will always be things to dislike :)

I would really appreciate if could still answer to one question. Although you don't want the product, can you see that there are people who would want this?

<comment><USER2> not really, to be frank

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> To be honest: Meh. I'm not sure I'd want this product in the first place, let alone pay for it.

For one, I don't need another browser/plugin that could potentially track me. For another, it seems like the novelty would wear off rather quickly with this.</comment>


Best schools for software developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/edu/rankings/ca/undergraduate-software-engineering?trk=edu-rankings-ctg-card

<comment><USER2> Rankings are based on landing "desirable" jobs. "Desirable" is so subjective as to make these rankings meaningless.

They might consider a job of Google or Microsoft to be desirable, but many developers like startups and would disagree (and vice-versa).

If you want a good software job, zealously write software for free and for fun, put it on Github, and look around. It's not hard to find the first rung of the ladder, and from there it's easy to move into roles that are more and more desirable for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Title should probably be edited to say "in Canada." For those interested in the US rankings: [https://www.linkedin.com/edu/rankings/us/undergraduate- softw...](https://www.linkedin.com/edu/rankings/us/undergraduate-software- engineering)

</comment><comment><USER4> I see this is "in Canada". Is there a way to see all schools together?</comment>


Man discovers working 30-year-old Apple IIe in parents' attic - <AUTHOR> https://www.techspot.com/news/78800-man-finds-30-year-old-apple-iie-parents.html <comment><USER2> Not news. I have two working Apple IIe systems sitting in my basement. Anybody want to buy them?

<comment><USER3> I would love to buy them send info to hacker AT NOSQL dot COM</comment></comment>


Apple zero-day vulnerability fully compromises your devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-zero-day-vulnerability-fully-compromises-your-devices/ <comment><USER2> CVE: [https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2016-17...](https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2016-1757)</comment>


Bold pricing strategy (free with rev. royalty) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ezoic.com/pricing.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like they would alienate enterprise clients but free certainly sounds appealing for small shops.</comment>


AT&T Closes its Remaining Usenet Access - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomsguide.com/us/AT-T-Usenet-Access-Closed,news-4055.html

<comment><USER2> all the good free usenet access was gone a long time ago.

easynews is what I have used for a great connection (I think because their servers are only 500 miles from me)</comment>


Why don't modern browsers include precompiled js libraries? - <AUTHOR>

For example, Google recommend using their CDN for a range of js libraries Why doesn't Chrome include these libs as precompiled scripts? On detecting a request for a script hosted on Google CDN, Chrome could check it's precompiled cache first and use it if available. For specific js libraries, this would eliminate some aspects of Sam Saffron's "The jQuery Tax".
The release cycles of stable versions of jQuery, jQueryUI, et al, seem to be longer than release cycles of Chrome & Firefox patches, so it kinda seems practical.
The only issue I can think of right now is potential js library bugs & vulnerabilities being 'baked into the browser'. However I'm pretty sure things like this can be solved. The first thing that comes to mind is it would be treated like any regular browser bug/vulnerability.
Are there any enlightened browser hackers that can explain why this is a bad idea? <comment><USER2> 1\. Browser computes hash for all JS files loaded, and tallies number of uses.

2\. JS files that get a certain number of uses get marked for compilation.

3\. On browser startup, the marked files are recompiled into the binary.

4\. The modules are pulled in when the browser detects an HTTP requested file matches an existing file.

MD5 hashing couldn't be used, due to collision vulnerabilities!

I guess the question is whether the browser's JITter is already as fast as compiling javascript into the binary.

</comment><comment><USER3> Chrome is light weight, unbloated, it's just one of the reasons why I'd say that it has excelled so quickly.

When it starts supporting a tonne of libraries it has to really start beefing up on it's dependencies.

So, at what point should Google allow/prevent access to their CDN. Additionally, the CDN is notoriously slow for updating to the latest versions. How would these changes them be rolled out to the browser? Through updates, or just realllly long caching?

Plus, this would then turn into a kind of DMOZ, where libraries compete to get included and struggle...

Plus the CDN supports multiple versions, does this mean that Chrome would have to support all 22 versions of jQuery?

jQuery is _not_ a defacto library. I don't start a project and immediately think, lets include jQuery. However if it was precompiled, in Chrome, then the barrier for making this choice would be lowered, and I might find myself just including it for the sake.

I think this is totally unfair to other librariesm and it could quite possibly prevent or at least stifle innovation to some extent, since if the footprint of including jQuery in your application is zero, why not just include it, rather than try some other cool DOM project that's not included in the CDN.

<comment><USER4> "Chrome is light weight, unbloated"

Chrome might be fast, chrome might be clean, but with its one process per tab model it will never be light weight.

<comment><USER3> Only just saw this response bryanlarsen.

In response, I would actually say that this is an incredible feature. It makes detecting memory issues during development soooo much easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> JS libraries on the client-side are currently stagnating and will soon be dead, largely, because they won. bind, each, map, filter, etc are now part of the language, with more coming in Harmony. They are becoming less and less necessary. Even animation, the very thing that got them started, can now be done in CSS3. There's no need to include them.

</comment><comment><USER6> Because compiling jquery etc. is not expensive compared to the cost of downloading the script. Each version on Google CDN is already only downloaded once if the cache in the browser works correctly, so the cost is minimal.</comment>


Space: A whitespace alternative to JSON - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/breck7/space

<comment><USER2> Isn't this counter to the original purpose of JSON: serialization. Without braces and quotes, or similar syntax, you can't minify this for transfer over a low bandwidth, high latency connection.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure how you couldn't minify this compared to JSON? Could you provide an example?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What happens if the data has spaces in it or new lines in it? in other words, how do you escape a space / new line?

<comment><AUTHOR> Spaces are not a problem in values and need no escape. To escape a newline in a value, just indent it appropriately. For example:

        myKey this is a multiline string
         and the indent on this line indicates that.
         It can even be 3 lines long :)
        someOtherKey and now this is a separate key/value pair.

Like URLs, new lines and spaces are not allowed in keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting, are there any serious drawbacks from JSON?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question. The simpler syntax reduces the number of rules to remember and shrinks the possible space for bugs. In back of the envelop user testing with non-programmers we've found people can pick up Space significantly faster than JSON.

JSON is really popular. However, the number of people in the world who can read and write JSON is say, between 2-20 million. So a very small percentage of the people who could benefit from reading and writing structured data are currently doing so. Our thought with this is that perhaps if we can get enough adoption and developers involved over the next year or two we could enable a lot more people to collaborate on the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> what about arrays? what if i paste this in a html and you want to copy it? all your spaces will be stripped.

nice thought anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> The underlying data structure of Space is an associate array, like in PHP.

So Space objects are both hash tables and arrays. For example say you had a variable named account with the space value:

        charges
         coffee $2.12
         soda $1.21
         cupcake $2.50

You could access the individual elements of this object like you would a hash table:

         account.get('charges soda')
         // Returns $1.21

Or like an array:

         account.get('charges').get(1)
         // Returns $1.21

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> amazing. simple and efficient. better than json.</comment>


Ask HN: What API provider do you use to take e-checks? - <AUTHOR> Using PHP as development language. Both individual and subscriptions. I already use Stripe to handle credit cards. I don't want to use Stripe for ACH as it appears there is a $500 / month fee. <comment><USER2> Check out bill.com, I know several people happily using it for client billing (including for recurring payments).

</comment><comment><USER3> authorize.net, Braintree

</comment><comment><USER4> PayPal / Braintree</comment>


Comscore: Actually, We Were Right. And Google's US Business Stinks - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/comscore_google_s_us_business_does_stink

<comment><USER2> The aggressive response of the CEO surprised me. It was a departure from the "customer is always right" approach that so many corporate representatives use that rarely rings true to me. While I'm not sure I'd be pleased with his tone if Comscore's success or failure impacted me directly, it was somewhat refreshing.

The referenced misuse of Comscore's data reminds me of some criticism of Wikipedia. Critics claim that one can't rely on Wikipedia to be accurate. Yet, if accuracy is important to you, you should check and review the sources which are provided toward the bottom of almost every article. Researchers requiring accuracy pursued primary sources before Wikipedia, and they still need to pursue them today. Regarding a secondary source as accurate without verifiying it is misuse, just as relying on Comscore's data on Google's domestic performance to project overall international corporate performance was misuse.

</comment><comment><USER3> a boss willing to go to bat for his employees work rather than pass the buck. I wouldn't mind working for them.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone want campaignbar.com before it expires? - <AUTHOR> Domain's due to expire at the end of the month, and I have no use for it.<p>If you do, drop me a line and it's yours! <comment><USER2> I'd like to get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, my email's in my profile, send me an email and it's yours :)</comment></comment>


What If You Could "Date" Companies? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3013349/innovation-agents/what-if-you-could-date-companies

<comment><USER2> You mean, "what if we could consult for companies instead of accepting full- time jobs with them?"

The freelancer who works a gig at a company for a couple months before finally accepting a full time job from them is one of the oldest stories in consulting.

Done correctly, freelancing tends (strongly) to be more lucrative than full- time work, most especially in markets like this one, where sellers of talent have leverage over buyers. Why would anyone in a market like this concede anything to a company like GroupTalent? Serious question; I'm sure there's _some_ reason.

<comment><USER3> Despite what you might think, it is still very difficult for a talented developer to break into freelancing.

Simply put, GT gives developers deal flow.

<comment><USER2> My whole career I've worked with freelancers at both big firms and small firms and my general ambient belief is that the market is full of people quietly beating the returns they'd get from being FT by doing freelancing work instead.

I'm not suggesting that you need to be Patrick McKenzie to execute this strategy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another Silicon Valley startup solving a uniquely Silicon Valley problem. It's amazing the amount of effort and investment that goes into the problem of finding engineers, and comparatively how little goes into the rest of the labor market.

<comment><USER5> I there a reason to think this couldn't be applicable to a million other jobs? Obviously, not all jobs allow this flexibility, but surely many more do than just coders.

<comment><USER4> Labor laws make these sorts of arrangements difficult in other jobs. If the job requires that you go to the office and utilize the employer's equipment, you generally can't work as a consultant. Also, there are issues with workers compensation insurance. Most people also prefer full time work as it has benefits such as health insurance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This should be the only way to hire. I've never hired anybody at my startup that I haven't worked closely with for at least a few months, and it seems sheer insanity to do otherwise.

<comment><USER7> Except this would then: A) Only apply to small "startups" B) Be horribly inefficient.

This doesn't scale, but I'm glad for your startup it works. You like it because you don't have to pay unemployment/benefits for someone that you end up firing, probably, so of course you are going to support something like this (being the one hiring).

<comment><USER6> AFAIK this is how Stripe works as well.

I don't care about not having to pay unemployment/benefits. The reason I like it (or rather, need it) is because our organization is little more than the employees we have, and I want to make sure that they are awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every recruiting firm that does consulting has some language in their agreement (with both the consultant and the client) about a cost (fee) for hiring the consultant directly. Try before you buy has been around forever. If they are moving these consultants around to different companies to find a match, that is somewhat unique. Just placing someone into a contract-to-hire role until the not hire/hire decision is made is not new.

I like contract-to-hire overall, but one problem is that you get lifetime contractors who have no intention of ever converting to perm roles, and they just stay as long as they can. Companies are more inclined to invest in and train a contract-to-hire employee over a pure contract employee. The brain drain can be a problem.

Another issue is contract-to-hire employees usually are paid a premium, and get accustomed to the money, making them less apt to convert. This is particularly troublesome for those that get their benefits through their spouse/partner, where the extra money seems substantial because they aren't paying for benefits or COBRA out of it.

Probationary periods are rather useless in any at will employment state (in the US, not sure about international law). Why put "We can fire you in 90 days if you don't perform" in an employment contract when you can simply fire someone on day 2 if you really wanted to? It seems like a decent motivational tool perhaps, but in markets like software it is just another reason for candidates to potentially turn down work, where the alternative (no probationary period and no expectation of even 90 days of work) is better for both parties.

<comment><USER9> The probationary period is to reduce risk of lawsuits because at-will employment is actually very complicated when it comes to subjective evaluation (i.e. all white collar work) and no one wants to cut a severance check for someone who is cut in the first 90 days.

"At-will" means that companies have the right to execute strategic layoffs, and also to set performance standards whereever they wish, as long as they're uniformly enforced across that job description. (Both of these, I'd argue, are reasonable.) It doesn't allow companies to vary their performance standards for different individuals, or to fire "for any reason". For example, if you work for a 5,000-person company and you're fired for performance after failing on one project and being denied transfer, and you can prove that someone else was allowed transfer under the same circumstances, you can possibly win a discrimination or harassment case (especially because any negative communication about you by management that impedes your chance at transfer can be construed as harassment; this is why the common practice of making performance reviews Enron-style-- that is, part of the transfer packet-- exposes a company to severe legal risk).

If you apply to a 5-person company and get fired in Month 3 because your boss (probably the CEO) isn't feeling it, you probably don't have legal recourse, because as owner and manager of the business, he has the right to select personnel. If it's a 5,000-person company, and you weren't give a few chances to prove yourself on multiple projects, you can raise accusations of personal bias. (That's why companies implement those horrible 18-month policies against internal transfer-- it's to create the impression of a uniform performance standard-- however, those only have legal weight if enforced uniformly, which they never are.) Even if you don't win, you can bring a lot of HR records into fresh air (which a company doesn't want) as they try to prove that you failed according to a set of rules that is enforced uniformly. Companies would rather pay severance than have the courts getting into their HR records.

The probation period is generally more "at-will" than regular employment. For most companies, probation means a couple of things. First, it means that a no- show constitutes voluntary resignation and therefore can't require the company to pay unemployment. (This isn't an issue at our level, but most people are not as ambitious and diligent as we are, and no-shows happen.) Second, it blocks the "employee should have been allowed transfer before termination" argument because the going assumption is that no one transfers in a probation period. Third, it often means no vacation is accrued, which is relevant when people are terminated early on (because they usually haven't used it). Fourth, and perhaps most relevant, it means that one should not expect severance if terminated in that time.

<comment><USER10> > "At-will" means that companies have the right to execute strategic layoffs, > and also to set performance standards whereever they wish, as long as > they're uniformly enforced across that job description. (Both of these, I'd > argue, are reasonable.) It doesn't allow companies to vary their performance > standards for different individuals, or to fire "for any reason".

This is somewhat misleading. It definitaly allows them to vary their perfomance standards for different individuals (just not to discriminate on a set of specific prohibited bases) and to fire for any reason _except for set of specifically prohibited illegal reasons_. Having consistent standards (both in theory and in documentable enforcement practice) for everyone isn't a requirement, it just helps you _prove_ that the firing was _not_ for a prohibited reason, and that the standards you were applying to that particular person were not discriminatory on one of the specifically-impermissible bases.

Many of the things that people perceive as "legal requirements" aren't actually legal requirements, they are things that are common practices designed to _demonstrate_ that the actual legal requirements are being met.

<comment><USER9> What you say is technically true, but those procedures also exist because it's better, from the company's perspective, to have such demonstration in place than to have to prove, in court, that it did nothing wrong. Companies don't want HR data of any kind (even if it will prove the firm's case) seeing fresh air.

For one example that can be played (by employee) to a win, the most common case of a good person being fired seems to be one in which he's seeking transfer to another team, and the manager decides to punish the "disloyal" report, often with negative reviews and "performance improvement plans" that block transfer outright. In that particular case, it's arguably retaliation (over a legitimate use of internal mobility procedures) and harassment (negative communication interfering with job performance) for the manager to be doing so.

Technically, if a manager interferes with a report's ability to transfer, that _is_ harassment, and bad performance reviews qualify in companies that use Enron-style reviews (i.e. reviews that are part of the transfer packet). That's why Google has secret calibration scores: it's a CYA move. Managers can give positive verbal feedback and annotate it with a smear that the employee never sees. This makes it less likely that a report's lack of mobility will result in a lawsuit.

That's why if you _ever_ see a PIP, you should _never_ sign it, and in fact leave the room immediately. "I have to go to the bathroom". Then you start your internal mobility search immediately. If you do it properly (this includes that you were never there to see the PIP) then the pursuit of transfer happened _before_ the PIP, which hints at a retaliatory context.

This move doesn't work under a probationary period because anyone who seeks transfer when on probation is (reasonable man standard) deemed unwilling to follow workplace policies-- or, more informally but to the point, a flake.

<comment><USER10> > What you say is technically true, but those procedures also exist because > it's better, from the company's perspective, to have such demonstration in > place than to have to prove, in court, that it did nothing wrong.

No, its because having those procedures in place is _how_ they prove in court that they did nothing wrong. If you can prove that you did it for a specific legitimate reason, that proves that you did _not_ do it for a specific _illegitimate_ reason.

Now, its true that that also means that a case is less likely to end up in court, but that's _because_ the evidence exists for use in court, its not some feature of the process independent of its evidentiary value in court.

<comment><USER9> Companies don't want the case to go to court at all. Even if it wins, it looks bad and a lot of embarrassing stuff is discovered. So much of the process is also around making the employee perceive that there is no recourse, or that a case should not be pursued.

For example, most of the time, a person will pursue a case if he or she perceives moral superiority over the other party. So the employer's goal is to equalize that difference, either by bringing itself up or by bringing the employee down.

Severance payments are there to make the employee feel good about the company. It didn't work out, but the company was fair and everyone can move on to a better arrangement. This is a decent way of doing because, after all, most people _don 't_ want to sue ex-employers. They want to move on with their careers.

A PIP's purpose is to make the employee feel bad about himself. PIPs actually make it _easier_ for employees to sue, but are justified on the basis that they will be less likely to do so if they _think_ they have less recourse. I have no idea how this works out empirically.

<comment><USER10> > Companies don't want the case to go to court at all.

That's not in dispute. The point you are missing is that the value of the practices I was addressing (which weren't, you'll notice, PIPs) is still the evidentiary value those practices provide in court, because that evidentiary value is itself the mechanism by which they prevent disputes from ending up in court in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How is this good for the employee? So I quit my job and make a contract for few months, what should I do if they don't decide to hire me full-time? There's lots of risk to me, as companies at GroupTalent probably choose to not hire the employees as often as companies doing 'normal' recruitment.

In addition, I'm not sure how contract-to-hire for 4 months is different from hiring someone for 'full time' and then firing after the few first months if they don't perform well.

<comment><USER12> Hi - this is Manny, CEO of GT. If you a try a company and then FT it may be a great outcome for you too. As you may in the long term not be a good fit for that job. Plus in the process of discovery you made a ton of money (contractor payouts are 70% to 100% higher than regular FT salaries even when it includes benefits!) Your point is right in that try-before-you-buy is not a new construct but rather a corollary of being an at-will employment society. So yes, GroupTalent is just a hiring platform that allows tryouts as a perfectly reasonable alternative.

<comment><USER8> I hope it works out for you. I do like the model, particularly if you allow some rotation between clients for the developers (negative impact on short- term productivity, positive impact on long-term fit).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hm, that's an interesting idea for solving the hard problem of matching talent with orga...

Oh wait, the article's just a PR piece for a startup using a deceptive title instead of something more honest like "GT takes the dating model to the recruiting process."

<comment><USER12> We are using the dating model to the recruiting process. Could not control the title of the article, but thx for pointing that out

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would use this, if it weren't restricted to people who make smartphone apps [1]. That seems to be an extremely narrow focus, even in Silicon Valley.

[1] This might not actually be the case but their info pages only talk about apps.

</comment><comment><USER15> How about I just go in, work, do a good job, and live a life outside of work.

<comment><USER16> That's wonderful, if you have a decent place to work, but you don't necessarily start off that way. Did you read the article?

<comment><USER15> I guess I'm old fashioned, and the solution proposed in the article is just attempting to resolve a recent problem in a new way, rather than returning to what works in a tried and true fashion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is a much better idea: [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/fixing- employ...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/fixing-employment- with-consulting-call-options/)

Essentially, it's a system that allows people to collect some stability income upfront by selling call options on future consulting services. This would also allow intermediaries (like GT) to arbitrage. For example, I'm damn sure there's someone out there who'd pay $750 per hour for my time (or, at least, could justify that much value) but I can't find that person-- and he probably only needs a few hours of my time, here and there. I'd be happy to sell a call option (strike $100/h) for $150/hour and let the option holder take most of the profit ($500) in order to have him doing my marketing and finding those $750/h high-value clients (which I can't).

The one way my consulting call options would differ is that the option holder only gets 95% of the profit; 5% goes back to the consultant. That's to make sure the consultant knows the actual price he or she is billed at.

Employment is already a call option, really. Take software engineers. The median of us is worth less than our salary, but the good ones are worth 5x and the great ones are 20-100x. That's hard to predict, because it's not only a factor of the individual, but also project/person fit and being assigned to high-yield work. Many software engineers at large companies could be rendering over $1 million per year in value, but are being held on evaluative Fourth Quadrant Work ( [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/fourth- quadra...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/fourth-quadrant- work/) ) while management decides whether or not to trust them with a real project. So there's already a call-option dynamic in place; it's just that right now, it works entirely out of employee favor. I want to fix that.

<comment><USER17> I was thinking of something similar for blogging for a while now.</comment></comment>


Red Hat is buying Ansible - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/15/source-red-hat-is-buying-ansible-for-more-than-100m/ <comment><USER2> I think the price point here is about a couple of things:

\- Chef and Puppet are too expensive for most companies to acquire, and have too much operational cost for too little revenue

\- Ansible got a strong following in the SMB space, Red Hat probably thinks they can move that upmarket some

\- Ansible's agentless configuration management has potentially strong applicability in a container world (why do I need a chunky agent to configure resources on my docker image? What if, for some reason, I need to affect change on running docker images? - I realize this is a bit of an anti-pattern for docker, but it was something I heard a lot from big enterprises)

$100m still sounds very high, kudos to the ansible folks who have come a long way in the last few years.

EDIT: one more piece I didn't think of here - the openstack side of things is an area where Red Hat has made big long-term bets for the future of the company, and it probably helps to justify the price in terms of backstopping their openstack support.

<comment><USER3> I really don't understand why an organization would want to use Docker (besides buzzword compliance) if they were planning on mutating running containers. What's the advantage?

<comment><USER4> I think one thing to keep in mind about Ansible is that it's an orchestration tool that also does configuration management. We've integrated Ansible into our workflows in such a way that it kicks off everything we need to do, even if that involves just coordinating some info between APIs. We don't mutate containers at all - merely get Ansible to make things happen around their deployment and communication.

<comment><USER5> How do you use ansible to deploy your containers, if I may ask ? We're looking into the docker module right now, but I don't know if it's good or what. Currently we're launching container via systemd and manage the unit files with ansible.

<comment><USER4> We're running all the containers on Mesos hosts, so really all Ansible needs to do for us is talk to Marathon. We realized early on down this path that to accommodate scale we'd need to have some sort of scheduler. Mesos happened to be the most robust.

We originally tried the docker module in Ansible but found it had a few problems. There's been a lot of work on it since, and I expect it will be in a much better state when Ansible 2.0 is released.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This clearly is much more about Tower, consultancy, etc, than their main product, but their yaml encoded language is an abomination; masquerading as 'declarative' and easy to read, yet piling on loops and conditional statements and an unintuitive inheritance tree of global and local variables.

<comment><USER7> Spot on. I'm constantly amazed at how many projects use _serialization formats_ as a "programming language". LiquiBase, NAnt, MSBuild, Ansible.

<comment><USER8> Maven or pretty much anything XML based

<comment><USER9> In defense of maven it does provide neither branching nor looping statements so refering to it as a "programming language" is hard to justify.

<comment><USER10> Neither does HTML and the L stands for language.

<comment><USER11> Notice how the M stands for "Markup" and not "Programming"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I found this sentence funny "Representatives of Red Hat and Ansible did not immediately respond to requests for comment". I take it to mean: "we wanted to run the story as quickly as possible; still it would have been nice to get superquick comments by RH or Ansible; tough luck, though."

<comment><USER13> To me "did not _immediately_ respond to requests for comment" smacks of neediness and self importance on the reporter's part (answer me now, you fools, don't you know who I am and what power I behold?!) and the people that would respond to such comments being in the middle of dealing with something more important at the time (perhaps answering a queue of queries that came in first, or queries from people who are more important to their world view). If I were RedHat or Ansible and read that sentence the reporter and/or outlet would be added to a "never respond to these people for at least 24 hours" list...

<comment><USER14> I have always read it as "did not respond to requests for comment, but we didn't give them much time."

<comment><USER15> More like "Both companies didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Its 8:30PM and no one's taking my calls or responding to my emails, but we're an online publication and want _our_ content to go viral and get maximum eyeballs, so we'll run this story anyway."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ansible is best of breed. But didn't Red Hat hear? Immutable infrastructure is the future!

[http://michaeldehaan.net/post/118717252307/immutable- infrast...](http://michaeldehaan.net/post/118717252307/immutable- infrastructure-is-the-future)

<comment><USER17> Yes it is, but the future is not evenly distributed, to paraphrase William Gibson. For many enterprises, even Ansible's current model is already way out there in the distant future.

Also, I think Ansible's idempotent model actually works nicely with immutable infrastructure. Why? For _development_ of your stack. While messing around with it, you probably don't want to rebuild the whole thing from scratch. Of course you can play funny games with caching of remote packages and so on, but that's getting into Ansible territory anyway.

So I think a good model for immutable infrastructure is to use a tool like Ansible to develop the stack, then in production you would use the same tool to spin up immutable instances.

<comment><USER18> Exactly. You still need something that holds a template of the stack somewhere. Ansible can play that role very well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My experience with Ansible has not been so pleasant. Especially performance is a jobstopper. In my environment it takes 20 min for 12 Servers to be setup with some Redis, Elasticsearch stuff. Quite some become_user directives, but 20 min for this kind of stuff is just not acceptable. After all, application settings needs to be tuned and iterated over, too.

My idea was to develop the infrastructure with Ansible, e.g. no ssh to change some httpd settings at all. Everything via Ansible. It worked very well as long as the playbooks and number of servers was very small.

<comment><USER20> This has been my experience as well. Even using a small subset of a playbook via tags can take a long time, especially if you're doing a run in serial. One of our deployments that only affects six servers takes fifteen minutes.

This can be mitigated somewhat by putting Ansible on the target machine, downloading all the necessary files to that machine, and then running Ansible locally... but that seems awfully fragile to me.

I am much more interested in Salt's ZeroMQ path these days. It seems to scale better, at least on paper and in my few small tests.

<comment><USER21> I'd be interested in hearing how this stacks up against simply running the tasks via shell scripts, because the time to install packages/do other tasks is orders of magnitude higher than the connection overhead. Things will always be slow when doing `serial: 1`, so I'd definitely recommend a canary setup where you run a play with a small serial batch followed by a play with no serial limitation - that'll speed things up considerably.

Finally, when using ControlPersist with pipelining mode in Ansible, it's as fast if not faster than zeromq or our own accelerated mode (which we will be deprecating at some future point when older SSH installs are not as common).

<comment><USER20> I'll admit to not knowing what ControlPersist is. I have some reading to do, it would seem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ansible creator, founder and CTO Michael DeHaan previously worked at Red Hat where he helped build Cobbler.

<comment><USER23> Also, Michael DeHaan stepped down and left the company early 2015.

<comment><USER24> So this could explain why his very active github activities suddenly stopped early 2015, I just presumed it was due to consciously allocating more time for management and leadership.

His github contributions rate and depth for ansible while still the CEO in y2014 has been a great inspiration for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting! Ansible is great technology. Not as mature as Puppet or Chef, but it's getting there. However Red Hat is currently heavily pushing (what I understand to be) their own fork of Puppet inside Satellite 6. So quite a few RHEL customers in the process of rolling out the latest Satellite is probably going to want to hedge their investment in it. Perhaps there is some Red Hatter here who could comment?

<comment><USER26> Speaking of mature, CFEngine has been around since 1993 and is now in its third generation. I just wish they would do a little marketing.

<comment><USER27> I think what makes a product like ansible catch on is its use of a simple scripting language like python. This makes project participation more accessible.

Ordinary sysadmins can write their own ansible modules with ease. It's possible that cfengine has that now but ask sendmail about repairing an old reputation.

<comment><USER28> Actually I think it's more the YAML config files than the fact it's written in Python. I learned 80% of Ansible in probably 10 days of writing playbooks and going through the infrastructure at my new job.

Also I used to work with Puppet in an 8000 server environment and Ansible and Salt both are so much more fun and easy to use than Puppet. I hear the same thing over Chef too.

Last Ansible is the only one that doesn't require any agents installed and does everything via SSH. At first I didn't think I'd like that coming from Puppet but, I can do everything I need to without another daemon to worry about.

<comment><USER18> My thoughts exactly on all points except the last one.

It's definitely good to not be _forced_ to use agents everywhere + a dedicated "mothership" instance, but sometimes I do wish I had Ansible agents on my instances, just so I could "git push" the whole thing and forget about it.

Looking forward to Red Hat following on their good old habits and open- sourcing Tower.

<comment><USER28> Well to be fair I use Codeship with Tower to do auto-deployments so, if I "git push" to dev I'm done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ansible is a fantastic tool. I put it up there with Rails, Backbone, and jQuery. The shadow of Puppet and Chef is large, but many are starting to see the light.

I hope that Redhat will accelerate the growth of this very well engineered platform.

Congrats to the Ansible team!

</comment><comment><USER30> Congrats mpdehaan2. Good to see good engineering getting rewarded. Testament to a great project you conceived and started.

</comment><comment><USER31> Supposedly a > $100mm deal. Both companies are already headquartered in N.C., and Ansible has a ton of momentum in the RHEL and OpenStack arenas, so it would make sense to pull the project into the fold.

One thing I wonder is how much the project's priorities would shift away from (if at all) anything non-RHEL-centric.

<comment><USER32> As a Red Hat customer I'll be interesting to see how it affects the complete fucking shambles that has been the Satellite 6 rollout, which was supposed to be full Foreman/Puppet integration for provisioning and config management.

Apart from the fact that it's been a shambles, Red Hat have been solidly pushing customers down the puppet route. I expect there will be some grumpy meetings in the next few weeks.

<comment><USER33> Reminds me of their switch from Xen to KVM from RHEL 5 to 6, so I wouldn't put it past them to change course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It is official now [https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat- acqui...](https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-acquire-it- automation-and-devops-leader-ansible)

</comment><comment><USER35> Wonder what caused such a high valuation. They definitely didnt seem to have enough revenues to justify it.

<comment><USER36> I would imagine it is not so much about Ansible's general valuation in the industry but about its value for Red Hat (a.k.a -- Red Hat is not buying Ansible for its revenues but for its technology).

<comment><USER37> What are you buying when the technology is open source?

<comment><USER36> The direction in which the technology evolves. That's also the reason why Red Hat hires a lot of upstream developers[1]. It is easier to tailor your services and offer better support (ie: the revenue stream for Red Hat) for OSS when the developers who write it are on your payroll.

      https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions
      http://www.redhat.com/en/about/blog/red-hat-leads-open-source-contributions-to-kernel

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Every time I use some "configuration management" tool I wonder whether it's really better than just using shell.

Basically you lose a lot of time searching the web for how to do things that you already know how to do in shell, but the benefits are not so clear.

<comment><USER39> I thought so too for a long time. Until that time when I upgraded the RAID10 on our database servers from a 4 drive to a 8 drive configuration (which requires rebuilding the whole array if you want the performance benefits). Getting the intricate configuration of the two machines (postgres streaming replication works, but has a lot of moving parts to keep in mind) back without having to remember any details was absolutely priceless.

Completely wiping and reinstalling the main database servers (one after another of course) during the day while the system was in active use and completing the process with zero user intervention, that felt amazing.

Since then, whenever I had to reinstall a machine for one reason or another, I always appreciated the immense speed-up I gained by not having to ever manually re-do the configuration.

Better yet: All the years of growing the configuration, all the small insights learned over time, all the small fixes to the configuration: All are preserved and readily available. Even better: By using git, I can even go back in time and learn why I did what and when.

"Why am I using TCP for NFS? Oh right - that was back in december of 2012 when we were using UDP and we ran into that kernel deadlock" \- that's next to impossible to do when you're configuring servers manually.

<comment><USER40> I don't think devit challenges the "automate" part, only the "separate tool" part. In Ansible you specify a sequence of commands just like you do in a shell script.

<comment><USER41> Take the time to learn a tool like Ansible. It is not about replaying a simple sequence of commands (imperative). It is more about declaring what you want your system to look like, and letting the tool decide which pieces need to run based on the current state of the system.

It's like make vs a shell script. If you use scripts to build your programs, you either have to write your own checks to test whether every step is necessary or not (cumbersome, error prone, and quite complex) or you just script it to build from scratch every time (inefficient).

But for systems management, rebuilding from scratch can be worse than just inefficient. Imagine if your script reinstalled MySQL from scratch every time you ran it...

<comment><USER38> Most shell commands are actually "declarative" in a sense.

If you run "apt-get -y install foo" that means that you want "foo" to be installed. If it's already installed, it just does nothing.

In Ansible, you'd use "apt: name=foo state=present" which does exactly the same thing as the apt-get command, but requires a web search to figure out how to write (assuming you know normal Linux system usage but haven't memorized Ansible).

The only differences seem to be that Ansible tells you whether the command made a change or not, and that you can parse the Ansible configuration with an external tool (assuming there are no loops/variable/etc.), but both of these things don't really seem that useful in practice.

<comment><USER39> > "apt-get -y install foo" that means that you want "foo" to be installed. If > it's already installed, it just does nothing.

not really. If you do that it means that you want to update foo to the latest version the system knows about.

And other commands fail if the thing they are supposed to to is already done. Like `adducer`. So you could still run it and assume a failure to mean "the user already exists" \- but it could of course also mean: "the user didn't exist, but creating it failed".

Then you start to have a look at the exit code which may be different between the two cases.

But every command behaves differently, so you need to learn all of this.

With Ansible (or puppet), the syntax is always the same and the actually needed operations are abstracted away.

<comment><USER41> Again, my advice is to take some time and learn the tools before discussing their strengths and weaknesses.

You missed more Ansible strengths, like detecting changes and restarting only affected services for example. Show me the idempotent shell script which does apt-get to install some dependency, updates some configuration file, and then starts or restarts a service depending on both the current state of the service (was it already running?) and whether the apt-get or config file change actuallly modified things.

Then scale that up. A lot.

There is even more. If you care to learn it before dismissing it.

<comment><USER41> Oops, this was meant to reply to the parent of whom I replied to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wondering if RH will let Tower become Open Source.

<comment><USER42> Red Hat has a history of buying closed source software and releasing it as Open Source (KVM, Gluster, Cloudforms etc) so I would expect Tower to be open sourced. Assuming Ansible have the rights to all the code of course and dont license it from someone else of course.

<comment><USER15> Gluster has always been an OpenSource project IIRC.

<comment><USER43> Correct. There was a time, pre-acquisition, when some separate management- console bits were not open source, but nobody cared about those bits anyway and now they're long gone. The "GlusterFS" file system part, which is the part everyone except one misguided CEO (now at Docker) cared about, has always been completely open source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This does make me wonder how it'll impact their eventual move to Python3. They've been hesitant to move due to a lot of their customer base being on RHEL5/CentOS5, I can't imagine that this move will help matters.

</comment><comment><USER40> I always wonder why cf-engine is so unpopular on HN. It has some nice advantages like no dependency on ssh or a scripting language. It is not as simple to get started, though.

<comment><USER45> Is SSH really a dependency you have to worry about though? Basically every server out there runs SSH.

<comment><USER20> SSH's major problem here is performance. When you need to orchestrate dozens of servers with many separate tasks, then the slowdown is very noticeable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Hi all. I am a GM at Red Hat, and I have been deeply involved in the acquisition of Ansible. It's great to see so much interest and so many good questions. I hope that my blog post can help answering some of them: [http://www.redhat-cloudstrategy.com/why-did-red-hat- acquire-...](http://www.redhat-cloudstrategy.com/why-did-red-hat-acquire- ansible/)

Alessandro

</comment><comment><USER47> I think that this will fit nicely with the Cockpit project which should "revolutionize" remote administration (it isn't bad). So now Red Hat wants to add something for wholesome orchestration, which was really needed in that space.

</comment><comment><USER48> I like what I've seen of ansible but a lot of their modules are a complete mess. I've run into problems with both their AWS and Docker modules and ended up resorting to a series of tasks running shell commands because it was more reliable and didn't require me to install a specific version of some python library on every single machine.

</comment><comment><USER49> I hope they don't kill the free version of Ansible!

<comment><USER50> Has Red Hat ever done this with anything? I think a lot of their products exist as open-source versions. Satellite -> Katello, OpenShift is open-source, CloudForms -> ManageIQ, Red Hat Identity Management -> FreeIPA, RHEL -> CentOS. I suspect the list goes on and I have a hunch they will open-source Tower in the near future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> If you're new to Ansible. I've created about two hours of free screencasts on it. It's a very simple to use and understand configuration management tool.

[https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/43-19-minutes-with- ansibl...](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/43-19-minutes-with-ansible- part-1-4)

[https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/45-learning-ansible- with-...](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/45-learning-ansible-with-vagrant- part-2-4)

[https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/46-configuration- manageme...](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/46-configuration-management- with-ansible-part-3-4)

[https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/47-zero-downtime- deployme...](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/47-zero-downtime-deployments- with-ansible-part-4-4)

<comment><USER52> Wow, what's with all the spammy replies to this comment?

<comment><USER53> Either it's a strange coincidence or someone spent a lot of time and care creating astroturfing accounts. All are old, have comments and submissions, seem like real people.

<comment><USER54> They all appear to have suspiciously low karma and durations of consistent activity. I think someone _cough_ went to a lot of trouble..

<comment><USER51> Are you for real? Look at my account history. You really think I'd spam HN. Been on flights all day or I would have addressed these comments earlier. Suspect these are just happy people. More than willing to address this with HN admins if they have any questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> If ansible is worth 100 what is saltstack worth?

<comment><USER56> Are you implying it's worth more or less?

Or not implying anything but hoping someone here has an answer or analysis?

<comment><USER55> saltstack is a bit harder to get started but it is, IMHO, a much larger product. I am implying saltstack should be worth more. That said, ansible may prove to become more popular and grow to be bigger than saltstack.</comment></comment></comment>


Why the U.S. carrier group is scrap metal - <AUTHOR> http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-die/

<comment><USER2> It's not a good day when the #2 story on HN is a War Nerd piece.

This "scrap metal" BS is typical of the kind of hyperbole nonsense Redditors get off on. Just because there exists a weapon that can destroy a certain target, doesn't make this target worthless - if that was true, everything is "scrap metal" since the first nuclear bomb.

<comment><USER3> I admit I stopped after the first page, but to use a chess metaphor, this article is about how the chess game is over before it starts because black's bishop is doomed because white has a queen. Even if every word is true, it's an analysis so myopic that the value of analysis is a flat zero.

Besides, I remember similar analyses before both Iraq wars. Today you can get away with describing that army with various denigrating terms, but I'm old enough to remember how the Iraq army was the world's third-best at the time of the invasion according to pundits everywhere. (To be honest, I have no idea if it was true, and it's doesn't really matter since I'm specifically talking about the punditry and commentary.) People who know what they are talking about sound sober and realistic, not hyperbolic and bombastic. (And of course merely "sounding sober and realistic" doesn't prove they do know what they are talking about.)

<comment><USER4> As far as I remember it was the third biggest, not the third best.

<comment><USER3> Oh, but don't forget: "Elite Republican guard" and "experienced from their wars with Iran". There was a whole series of talking points. Philwelch may be correct on the 3rd vs. 4th point, but I am pretty sure the talk was of them being the third/forth _best_. (Possibly the pundits think they could have beaten China in some hypothetical fight, since at the time neither could have really projected force at the other to speak of.)

I did say _pundits_ , after all, and I'd add those making the analysis for political reasons. More sober analysts knew better, including the ones who actually planned operation, after all. The fact that they were grossly wrong because of their various motivations is sort of my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ship-based anti-ballistic missile missile?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-161_Standard_Missile_3>

check.

Ability to part 4 acres of sovereign territory 12 miles off your shore with 70 fighter aircraft on board? Priceless.

Air supremacy solves all sorts of problems, including striking the the anti- ballistic missiles in their silos/bunkers/trucks/staging areas.

Now, the real issue is people taking this bait and all of sudden thinking "maybe those Republicans know what they're talking about one defense." Um, no. Because the real answer is "who the hell cares?" Anyone really think we want to go to war with China? Anyone think China really wants to go to war with us?

<comment><USER6> The idea is that you store anti-ship missiles on civilian craft, then swarm a carrier group and launch a sneak attack from tiny speed boats and fishing vessels. Air supremacy does not solve that, and there is currently no defense against such a swarm.

Everyone thought battleships were invincible until they turned out to be exactly USELESS with the advent of good carrier-based airplanes. Its quite possible that the anti-ship missile, in large deployments in a post-war declaration period, has done this to the carrier.

Even though the Japanese were smart enough to launch the attack on Pearl harbor, the US and Japanese navies were both certain their battleships would be important in the upcoming conflict, and the Japanese navy trained intensely for large scale night-battles among fleets of battleships. Everyone woke up overnight to the fact that battleships were exactly useless, and it was a rude awakening.

<comment><USER7> You are thinking about a different article - this one: [http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6779&...](http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6779&IBLOCK_ID=35)

The article being discussed here is the one about new Chinese ballastic missiles as the newest threat.

<comment><USER6> I read the article, but this one builds on his previous ones about the ballistic missile threat to carrier groups, and most of the confusion in these discussions would go away if people read the previous articles as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought the whole point of the latest CIWS and last-option missile batteries on carriers was to protect against missile attacks, ballistic or not? Granted, stealth and/or mach 10 is hard to defeat, but in general, the whole point of having a carrier is to keep the carrier in a "safe" spot, and use its vast array of aircraft to _project_ power towards the arena of hostility...

<comment><USER6> That is true. But the idea is that anti-ship missiles are now so easy to produce that you can deploy 100 or 1000 of them on small vessels and launch them all at once in a surprise attack to totally overwhelm the carrier group's defenses.

<comment><USER8> That makes more sense; thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This doesn't seem particularly newsworthy. The general thrust is that any nation willing to declare war on the United States could potentially sink its aircraft carriers. OK, we'll stipulate to that, but really does that reduce their value today?

<comment><USER6> I have to say that it does. Consider the carrier group nearest Iran. If the theory is true, all Iran needs is a fleet of civilian boats equipped with anti-ship missiles to defeat the US carrier group. That is exactly what happened in at least one war game that tested the scenario. In other words: Pearl Harbor 2.0 is coming soon, the next time we project power from a carrier group against anyone with an organized defense.

Thats newsworthy. I don't know if its true, but it parallels the fall of the battleship so much that it sounds plausible.

<comment><USER10> _Pearl Harbor 2.0 is coming soon, the next time we project power from a carrier group against anyone with an organized defense._

Why didn't this happen in the first Gulf War? Ballistic missiles and small boats aren't exactly new technologies.

<comment><USER6> The idea is that anti-ship missile technology has become more widely distributed since the gulf war. Is it crazy to think that Iran can match Argentine technology from the 80s?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If this is true, why isn't it classified? I don't think any government is in the habit of exposing the 'single point of failure' of their war systems.

As some of the commenters on that article have pointed out, this smells more like a budget-approval game than an actual credible threat...

<comment><AUTHOR> The comments to the article are excellent and very informative.

Whether or not the new Chinese missile exposes a single point of failure, I suspect that the Gary Brecher is still right, and that the U.S. Carriers are completely obsolete. Between submarines, swarms of cruise missiles, swarms of small boats, and ballistic missiles, it's hard to imagine carriers surviving very long in an all out war. Of course this doesn't really matter, because in such a war nukes are the main worry. But this does mean that the money spent on carriers is completely wasted.

<comment><USER12> I think that carriers are completely obsolete in an all-out war, but the article is moronic. They certainly aren't obsolete because of "ships have no defense against ballistic missiles."

A ballistic missile is basically a bomb with a different delivery mechanism. Instead of being dropped straight down from a plane (like dive bombers of WW2) or diagonally down (like laser-guided bombs of today), it's boosted to altitude with a rocket motor, and then gravity takes it back to earth. The flight path at the end is basically the same, though. That's what makes it "ballistic".

Carriers have _never_ had a defense against bombs - they certainly didn't in WW2. But y'know what - they usually didn't need one, because the bombs would often miss on their own. Or if they hit, they wouldn't cause serious damage, instead being stopped by the carrier's armor plating. The Harpoon doesn't pop- up to avoid CIWS (it's usually easier to hit something coming down at you from above than something skimming just over the waves - there's less radar glare from the water, and the angle of attack changes less as the missile moves in closer.) It pops up so it can hit the more lightly-armored superstructure instead of the armored hull, potentially causing fires and knocking out critical electronic systems.

We moved to cruise missiles for a reason: they have a much higher chance of scoring a hit than ballistic weapons. If 80% of your weapons will miss on their own, you don't need to worry about getting through the enemy's defenses, you need to worry about increasing your accuracy. Cruise missiles aren't particularly easy to shoot down either.

As for nukes - yeah, they'll take everything out, as the U.S. found out at Bikini Atoll in 1946. The defense against nukes is the knowledge that if you nuke a U.S. carrier battle group, you will have a few hundred incoming SLBMs within a couple minutes, ready to blow up every single major Chinese city.

Personally, I think the real threat to carriers is the cruise-missile swarm, coming from dozens of small fishing vessels. Cruise missiles are cheap, they can be mounted on relatively small vessels, and if they come at you from all directions, they'll totally overload all your air defense systems. It's not hard to find a couple hundred private boats and put 1-2 cruise missiles on each of them.

<comment><USER13> _It's not hard to find a couple hundred private boats and put 1-2 cruise missiles on each of them._

I imagine that it's extremely difficult to do this undetected, which is why we have intel services.

<comment><USER12> Say that the intel services say that _every_ small craft is having missiles loaded onto it. What do you do then? Shoot every boat on sight, civilian or military, on the theory that it _might_ have a cruise missile on board?

Many of these boats don't even show up on radar. They're not a big enough target for you to hit with missiles. Even if you could, the missile costs more than the boat. So you'd need to dispatch a destroyer or a bunch of aircraft to strafe it with gunfire.

But then you leave your destroyers/aircraft open to counterattack from small boats. At $30k a boat and $500k a cruise missile, how many of them do you have to sink to equal a $100M aircraft or a $1B destroyer?

Incidentally, Japan had a similar plan for defense of the home islands in WW2. They produced nearly 6000 Shinyo, suicide motorboats with a crew of one and a massive explosive in the bow. As the American invasion fleet entered home waters, the plan was for these to swarm the fleet and blow up as many vessels as possible. I suspect this is a major reason why we dropped the A-bomb instead of going forward with an invasion of the Japanese home islands.

<comment><USER14> There was a proposal to build lots of fast, highly maneuverable catamaran vessels using stealth technology and armed with cruise missiles. If I was China, I'd be building a few squadrons of those things. (You could even have them leave the missile behind in the water, to pop up and launch itself towards the group at a predetermined time, making it much harder to find the launch platform.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another view [http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20090403.a...](http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20090403.aspx) as the "annual magic missile announcement"

</comment><comment><USER16> I am not a weapons expert, but some questions pop in my mind:

How do you hit a moving target from 2000 Km away? Using satellite images? UAVs serving as spotters? Well, worst-case scenario the U.S. carriers could release collosal amounts of smoke and create such a thick smoke-screen that no light or IR radiation would penetrate.

The Chinese could try to guide the missile remotely with a human operator being fed with "real-time" video, but good luck steering a missile at Mach 10 with a joystick, LOL.

Moreover, at Mach 10 the transmission delay could be a serious problem. After all, electromagnetic radiation takes some time to travel 2000 Km -- approx. 7 ms (to which one must add the processing delay) -- and controlling a missile with super-fast dynamics with a 10 ms delay is not trivial. A thought experiment: try driving your car on the highway at 200MPH, with your windshields covered and with no sensing other any "real-time" video of the road ahead which has a delay of 100 ms. Good luck!

If the enemy missiles use radar, they're giving away their position. Advanced high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARM) could perhaps try to intercept them. A desperate counter-measure could be to release immense ammounts of metal strips to fool the missiles' radars.

If I remember right, the U.S. Navy had plans to equip carriers with super-mean machine guns capable of shooting 1 million bullets per minute, thus creating such a thick cloud of lead that no enemy missile would be able to pass through. Sounds low-tech, but it could work, right?

<comment><USER17> We think alike.

A carrier group is moving at 20 knots. Taking 10 minutes to reach the target, _the group has moved 3 or 4 nautical miles in any direction._ And it's not like you can have a radar lock on the target from the instant you launch.

Launching has its own perils. Assuming your launch system survived a first strike, or you start a sneak attack, satellites, airplanes, and ground support personnel can watch a missile being launched. There exists an intercept for ballistic missiles in early boost phase from several platforms: laser and anti-missile-missile come to mind.

But let's say you reach apogee and you have radar lock -- after all, a carrier is nothing if it isn't a big hunk of flat metal in an otherwise noisy ocean. So you're 100 miles or so up at mach 10 and you're heading straight down at the carrier.

At this point the Aegis system kicks in with the RIM-161 system. It's another proven system designed to do what -- that's right, take out ballistic missiles.

Assuming you make it through _that_ , then you've got the phalanx system, a system which uses radar to throw up a hailstorm of lead at a missile headed for the carrier.

Now I've said nothing of Electronic Counter-Measures. You can be assured, however, if you're using radar that radars can be jammed, fooled, and made to spit out confusing data. There are all sorts of other fun games you can play with ECM, but I'll leave that for another day.

I think there's a real danger, no doubt. But the end of carriers? All carriers are rotting scrap heaps? Please. That's a lot of yelling and attention-seeking blogging, not serious analysis. (Not that I know anything, but I do know a few things)

<comment><USER16> _"I think there's a real danger, no doubt. But the end of carriers? All carriers are rotting scrap heaps? Please. That's a lot of yelling and attention-seeking blogging, not serious analysis."_

I wholeheartedly agree. In my most humble opinion, an emerging fad is to announce the collapse of all things American. This _meme_ has been gaining momentum for years. Now we hear stories like:

\- the U.S. dollar will soon be worthless and the American economy will collapse.

\- the U.S. will disintegrate into a bunch of smaller countries.

\- all American technical jobs will move overseas, mainly to India and (guess what?) China!

\- the U.S. Military is at its most vulnerable point in History.

I will believe in doomsday scenarios when I have the numbers to analyze. Like John McCarthy once said: _"He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense."_

<comment><USER18> While I agree to a point, I would like to add that this meme has not sprung spontaeneously from a vacuum - in my opinion, it is a fairly well-deserved reaction to American hubris on a wide spectrum.

One only need turn on Fox News for a few minutes to hear the familiar "I believe America is the greatest nation on earth", "greatest country on earth", "greatest nation in history" - you may not personally be a fan of Fox News but the fact remains it is the most popular news network in the USA, so must be considered to have some representative credibility - or if you don't believe that, just listen to George W. Bush's similar words. As a native of another country, I can attest to the laughter, then annoyance, then sneering cynicism about all things American such oft-repeated nonsense provokes. And I am far from anti-American.

I don't personally believe that America is headed inevitably for ruin and poverty, but its post-WWII shine is definitely wearing off as it takes its more rightful place as just another country - a big, rich, successful country mind you, but not the God-appointed Country of Countries in the minds of the "Greatest, Free-est, best nation on earth" crowd. It's not hard to understand the _schadenfreude_ this inspires as the hubristic boosterism drifts yet further from reality.

Everyone hates a braggart. Everyone rejoices, at some level, when the braggart is shown up to be the vain fool he always was. There's an element to this in the meme you describe, I think.

<comment><USER17> Something was bugging me about this comment. I think this is it: _Everyone hates a braggart_

Why would I hate a braggart? I could care less about people bragging about their stuff -- cars, clothes, country, whatever.

The only reason I would hate a braggart is, unfortunately for this context, if I felt inferior to them. But otherwise, who cares? They're just a bore. Lots of people are bores, about all kinds of things. I don't wish them any ill or harm, and I would not rejoice to see them brought down. I just find better things to do than hang out with them. That is, once again, unless I felt that they had something I really needed or envied.

I guess that's the rub, huh.

EDIT: I'm very sorry if my comment seems rude. I'm sure there's a better way to say what I wanted. I just didn't want the idea that hating people who brag was somehow a normal or acceptable thing to do. It's not. I say -- let braggarts be braggarts. At least they seem happy about whatever they feel so superior about.

<comment><USER19> _Everyone hates a braggart_

It's a cultural thing. Scandinavians and Australians in particular hate braggarts and even have phrases for this cultural tendency: janteloven and tall-poppy syndrome.

Other cultures have responses for the boastful which range from eye-rolling and groans (UK) to active encouragement (NBA, pro boxers, battle rappers).

<comment><USER18> Haha, right on. Native Australian here : )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hardly news

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE writes in 1912 !

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/22357>

"It is an amazing thing that the English, who have the reputation of being a practical nation, never saw the danger to which they were exposed. For many years they had been spending nearly a hundred millions a year upon their army and their fleet. Squadrons of Dreadnoughts costing two millions each had been launched. They had spent enormous sums upon cruisers, and both their torpedo and their submarine squadrons were exceptionally strong. They were also by no means weak in their aerial power, especially in the matter of seaplanes. Besides all this, their army was very efficient, in spite of its limited numbers, and it was the most expensive in Europe. Yet when the day of trial came, all this imposing force was of no use whatever, and might as well have not existed. Their ruin could not have been more complete or more rapid if they had not possessed an ironclad or a regiment. And all this was accomplished by me, Captain John Sirius, belonging to the navy of one of the smallest Powers in Europe, and having under my command a flotilla of eight vessels, the collective cost of which was eighteen hundred thousand pounds. No one has a better right to tell the story than I."

Captain John Sirius is, of course, a submarine captain.

and as submariners say :

"There are only two types of naval vessels:

Submarines....... and Targets!"</comment>


How HEY made us care about their email service - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BorUVHSnAyk <comment><USER2> Had a look at the pricing and that was it. No amount of marketing can justify the outrageous yearly charge, even though it's a nice product which like Apple products sacrifices functionality in the name of simplicity. Problem is as with Apple, people stick to what they know. I've shown this to one of my non techie friends and they absolutely hated it. Suggesting to give it a try, the answer was what's the point? No one's gonna pay more to get a lot less, and hey offers far less even if your buy the marketing story. Feed or paper trail is not something many can live with.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Came across this, it's a really great break down on how HEY did their marketing.</comment>


Free Email Services (Without Phone Verification) - <AUTHOR> https://red-dot-geek.com/free-email-services-no-phone/ <comment><USER2> Openmailbox would be lovely, but I had the same experience of extreme slowness. Even their web client is slow—which, fine, I'll use Thunderbird, but I could not get POP or SMTP to work. (I currently use Protonmail.)</comment>


Astronomers Surprised to Find Asteroid With Rings - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/03/asteroid-ring-system <comment><USER2> That we can predict the alignment and make observations of such unimaginably distant objects never ceases to amaze me. There's just something - I don't know - satisfying about the collective drive to figure things out and accumulate knowledge.

Also, this discovery puts me in mind of my favorite new science fiction series, The Expanse [0].

0: [https://www.goodreads.com/series/56399-expanse](https://www.goodreads.com/series/56399-expanse)

</comment><comment><USER3> ESO press release: [http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1410/](http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1410/)

Paper: [http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/es...](http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1410/eso1410a.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised this is a surprise. There are asteroids/minor planets with moons. Why not rings?

<comment><USER5> If you put a ring on an asteroid, i think that everyone would agree that it would stay there. What's surprising is that the dominate theories of ring formation don't really allow for something this small to form rings. Too small for tidal forces. Weak gravity would mean it's hard to hold the products of a collision. If the asteroid has shepherd satellites, they would be even weaker.

At least, that's why I'm surprised.

<comment><USER6> Not if the asteroid passed through a comet tail, esp tangentially, it could easily capture water ice which would condense to a ring. Look at the gravity on phobos and demios which are way smaller than this thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The cosmic bling

...is the name of my new hip-hop group

</comment><comment><USER8> Captured & crushed Kuiper belt object, perhaps tossed in by Neptune???

</comment><comment><USER9> Water Ice? Looks like a breadcrumb to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> What do the other asteroids call him, the Lord of the Rings?

<comment><USER11> He probably has the title of Ring Bearer.

<comment><USER12> You mean Ring Bear?

<comment><USER13> This new comment approval system is working out great.

<comment><USER12> No more jokes on HN?

<comment><USER14> HN has _never_ been a very good environment for jokes. One of the big goals of HN was to optimize for signal, both quality and quantity. Jokes are noise. If you want to do Reddit-style pun threads, you can go to one of the many subreddits that welcomes those. There is no shortage of places to find jokes on the Internet, but there is a severe lack of places where you can find thoughtful comments by knowledgeable people.

Paul Graham wrote in one of his essays about Hacker News:

 _The most dangerous form of stupid comment is not the long but mistaken argument, but the dumb joke. … Whatever the cause, stupid comments tend to be short. And since it 's hard to write a short comment that's distinguished for the amount of information it conveys, people try to distinguish them instead by being funny._

 _… Bad comments are like kudzu: they take over rapidly. Comments have much more effect on new comments than submissions have on new submissions. If someone submits a lame article, the other submissions don 't all become lame. But if someone posts a stupid comment on a thread, that sets the tone for the region around it. People reply to dumb jokes with dumb jokes._

(What I've Learned From Hacker News: [http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html))

<comment><USER15> I agree. Sometimes, though, a properly inserted joke can dissolve heated arguments. In NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) it's called a 'Pattern Interrupt.'</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Aiding is Abetting - <AUTHOR> http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/954/moyo/ <comment><USER2> It's apparently more complicated than that. Here's a review by one of her former professors:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts- entertainment/books/review...](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts- entertainment/books/reviews/dead-aid-by-dambisa-moyo-1519875.html)</comment>


IBM Watson's Next Venture - <AUTHOR> http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/42451.wss#! <comment><USER2> "it will make its IBM Watson technology available as a development platform in the cloud".

Future tense, and no bucket to drop an email into for notifications :( Would take no time at all to buy the parked watsoncloud.com domain (or something!) and flip up a launchrock page (... or something!).

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if this could be used in conjunction with Wolfram's new project, mentioned yesterday.

[http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/11/13/something-very- big-i...](http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/11/13/something-very-big-is- coming-our-most-important-technology-project-yet/)

</comment><comment><USER4> If anyone from Watson every wanders through HN, I - and everyone that have replied to this comment - am interested in API access.

christian [dot] genco (at) gmail

<comment><USER5> Me too :) varun [at] semantics3 [dot] com

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why haven't Google, Microsoft, etc built a similar machine to Watson and play a fully-computerized version of Jeopardy? Ken Jennings optional.

<comment><USER7> Because they aren't selling supercomputers?

<comment><USER8> I would estimate that Google and Microsoft each operate more servers than IBM and they are definitely in the analytics business. (I consider Watson more analytics than HPC.)

<comment><USER9> Not true. Watson style analytics requires HPC, the kind that Google and Microsoft do not (need to) build. Although, that might change with time as (cheaper) computers get faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> With the troubles they are having in non-US markets, along with other American companies, thanks to NSA, they need something else to survive.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-leaks-hurting-us-tech- sal...](http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-leaks-hurting-us-tech-sales-in- china-2013-11)

<comment><USER11> That is wishful thinking, the US dominates the internet now more than ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Glad to see that they've finally backed off from the "Watson will revolutionize healthcare" pitch.

<comment><USER13> I honestly believe it will. Maybe not Watson per se, but a distributed Waston- like system that can provide cutting edge diagnostic / treatment suggestions to the entire world will be hugely beneficial.

Just imagine if anywhere on earth with cell-phone service can have 'first- world' medicine without the need for dedicated doctors. That'll probably be worth a few years of life-expectancy by itself.

<comment><USER14> According to a presentation I heard two month ago it's not good enough yet. They can make accurate predictions in many cases, yet not in all/enough. At the moment they see more potential in analyzing health insurance claims, as falling back to a human expert is easier.

<comment><USER15> Do you still have a link to the presentation ? It sounds interesting.

<comment><USER14> I'm sorry, it was a presentation of an IBM researcher during the BioASQ workshop. Perhaps you can find the slides/a summary on the BioASQ.org website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, will they actually let you run your code on Watson supercomputer? Or is it just an access to API documentation?

<comment><USER17> You call an API, and it returns a result. The Watson hardware is nothing more than a Power 7 box.

<comment><USER16> Actually, it's many Power 7 boxes (original Watson had 90) clustered together. But it's really cool if they provide access to their hardware (via API).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't wait for the Watson API.</comment>


The Copyright Office Belongs in a Library - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/copyright-office-belongs-library <comment><USER2> This only highlights how the intention of copyright as put forth by the framers has been distorted through the lens of business. Book publishers thought libraries might be a threat to the "modern" publishing industry in the 1800s, just like the movie studios thought home video would kill movies. They were incorrect on both counts, however with the ease and low cost of digital copies, there actually IS a great deal of money to be made without actually doing more work by perpetuating the endless copyright. Given how money focused politicians are, and how much influence business plays with them, its not a difficult argument to make, especially when the argument is money versus the betterment of society and future creativity. One is easily measured now, the other is not easily measured, and only pays off on the scale of decades.

Disney took public domain stories, and made billions by creating their own versions, and now seek to prevent others from doing the same. The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who died 85 years ago this month) found only partial relief in the extension of the money machine, with stories and characters before 1923 now in the public domain, and stories after 1923 still under copyright 92 years later! Sherlock has become a huge influence not just in other creative works, but derivative works such as TV shows and movies that pay no royalty to the Doyle estate. Doyle himself was influence by other authors, such as Poe, as well as real people.

The intent of copyright was to give limited protection to the creators of creative works, because while society as a whole benefits from the arts, it can only occur if there is a benefit to the creators. So we gave them a limited monopoly, just like patents, to enjoy the fruits of their labors before they became part of society as a whole. Few artists want to create works that only a select few can enjoy, however the financial interest is in doing just that. Just as software patents threaten our industry (and patent abuse on the whole threatens many industries), copyright abuse threatens the enrichment of society as a whole. We do not own our children, we only raise them for a while and unleash them into the world. The same is true with art. That is the way it was meant to be.

<comment><USER3> > Disney took public domain stories, and made billions by creating their own > versions, and now seek to prevent others from doing the same.

Could you please give an example? Is Sherlock Holmes a character groundlessly appropriated by Disney?

<comment><USER4> The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Ugly Duckling, Three Little Pigs, Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Beauty and the Beast, Alladin, The Princess and the Frog, Frozen.

And many, many more.

<comment><USER5> Very few of those would be copyright infringement were the stories not in the public domain.

<comment><USER6> Try writing and selling your own Mickey Mouse story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No, how about a museum (of antiquities we no longer require)

<comment><USER8> Do you also support closed source software companies being able to rip off any open source code released under a copyleft license? Because the legal recourse offered to them relies on the same mechanism.

<comment><USER9> I'm not lo_fye, but in my opinion, if we can get full elimination of copyright ( _and_ software patents, must be both), the trade is absolutely worth doing, even though I currently license my own work as AGPL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not a huge fan of copyright, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this analysis. The clause providing for copyright is an Article I, Section 8 clause. Generally Speaking (except for the post office) the AIS8 duties have legislated details, but execution is left to the executive branch. For example, the USPTO is part of the department of commerce. It's not clear as to why the copyright office, which is justified in the same clause that justifies the PTO, shouldn't be part of the executive branch.

</comment><comment><USER11>
       Your link may be on-topic but it's awfully pink and salty.
       -- J. Random Kuron

Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads

[http://www.warplife.com/tips/law/copyright/music/legal- downl...](http://www.warplife.com/tips/law/copyright/music/legal- downloads.html)

"Enjoy Free Music without getting in trouble by downloading the legal MP3s that many musicians provide as a way to promote themselves."

I wrote this in response to the RIAA's effort to convince the public that all music downloads are legal. You can download anything you want provided you have permission of the copyrigh holder, it is in the public domain or local laws permit it.

The RIAA responded by publishing their own legal music downloads list. They were all sites that carried tracks from the major labels. As that page was effectively giving my own free advertising they took it down after a few months.

I need to verify and update the links, I have that written down on my ToDo list. Maybe Tomorrow.

Musicians: List Your Band's Website [http://www.warplife.com/tips/law/copyright/music/legal- downl...](http://www.warplife.com/tips/law/copyright/music/legal- downloads.html#reciprocal)

I estimate that my copy and Kuro5hin's together have had ten million pageviews.

Note: "Legal" doesn't imply "Free" though most are free.</comment>


How to speed up an aging MacBook with a solid state drive - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2011/08/how-to-speed-up-an-aging-macbook-with-a-solid-state-drive.ars <comment><USER2> This guide should probably mention that TRIM support is not enabled for after- market SSDs under Snow Leopard or Lion. You are relying completely on the SSD chipset's internal garbage collector to tidy up dirty pages and stave off SSD rigor mortis.

Luckily, the OtherWorldComputing SSD the author chose has a SandForce chipset with a very good garbage collector unlike say an Intel SSD which doesn't. Whether or not the author was aware of that when selecting this particular drive over any other, the guide fails to provide this explanation to the reader.

I've read that the TRIM Support Enabler software will turn on TRIM in Snow Leopard or Lion for after-market SSDs, so Ars might want to check that out and maybe mention it in this guide.

<http://www.groths.org/?page_id=322>

Likewise an investigation into different SSD firmware updaters is probably warranted. Many firmware updaters for SSD drives I looked into will only run in Windows which can be a real pain considering this is a guide for MacBooks.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have an Expresscard SSD (Filemate 48GB) on my 2007 Core2Duo MBP. I have installed Snow Leopard, moved all the frequently used apps on it but still point to the old home directory on the hard drive.

The SSD gets quite warm easily, but it actually makes my laptop feel snappier than my work laptop (2010 Core i7 non-SSD). A cold boot takes less than 12-15 seconds, most of it trying to read settings from my home folder in the old hard drive. I believe the ExpressCard uses PCI Express interface which is much faster than SATA on older macbooks.

Here are some resources from my bookmarks:

[http://onethingwell.org/post/1610589228/ssd-two-electric- boo...](http://onethingwell.org/post/1610589228/ssd-two-electric-boogaloo)

[http://www.macworld.com/article/145185/2009/12/mbpssdcard.ht...](http://www.macworld.com/article/145185/2009/12/mbpssdcard.html)

[http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2009120322015125...](http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20091203220151255)

</comment><comment> buff-a Unggghhhnnn. 15mb/s for 4k random writes???? Was this a cheap, budget SSD or is there some staggering bottleneck on that particular mac that is bringing it to its knees?

But, yeah, an SSD can breath life into an older mac book. I've got a year-old Vertex 2 on a newer MBP (2009) and I get >200Mb/s for 4k random writes. The 1.5gb vs 3gb connection wouldn't explain the 10x difference.</comment>