AT&T Announces Intent to Build 1 Gigabit Fiber Network in Austin - <AUTHOR> http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=24032&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=36275&mapcode=consumer|mk-att-wireless-networks <comment><USER2> This message is meant for exactly two groups: 1) Google, 2) other municipalities.

AT&T is telling Google that they'll play in any market Google commits to and drive the margins out of it. They want Google to stop doing this, and they're hoping to make Google question its financial model for this capital outlay. (I doubt it will faze Google.)

AT&T is warning other municipalities to not cut Google any sweetheart deals that they're not willing to extend to AT&T. This is a potent message for municipalities that are sitting pretty on financial or other perks they've extracted from AT&T or other telecoms. AT&T is warning them the gravy train stops when they let in Google.

<comment><USER3> Why, it's a clear message to the public as well, which states: AT&T is only ready to improve their service when threatened with competition. Otherwise forget it. At least one has to give them a credit that they had guts to admit it.

<comment><USER4> Yep.

"This expanded investment is not expected to materially alter AT&T's anticipated 2013 capital expenditures."

So, they've had the capability for a while now. They just didn't see any reason to bother with the hassle of deploying a newer technology when they could just keep maintaining U-verse over twisted pair, even if capex stayed the same for either choice. Which is an interesting choice.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, T's capex expenditures are massive, something like $5 billion per quarter or more. So to 'materially alter', it'd have to be like $3 billion _a year_ or more.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. And there is the possibility that they just won't move on anything until FY 2014 or later. Though commandar brings up the point that even if they didn't have the capital themselves to deploy fiber, we _did_ give them the capital once and they squandered it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Speed is not even the biggest thing here. Heck Verizon FiOS offers fiber to the home in NYC and has speeds of 300Mbit/s. I'm sure if they wanted to go to 1Gbit they could. As can AT&T in Austin.

The thing that's exciting about Google Fiber is what it represents -- reasonable cost, no bandwidth caps, net neutrality, etc. Google WANTS its customers to use the Internet as much as possible. The more HD videos people watch on YouTube and the more people surf the web the more ads they show and the more money they make. The opposite is true with AT&T -- they'll start metering and charging the second they can.

I'd take 100Mbit Google service over 1Gbit AT&T service any day of the week.

<comment><USER7> > _Heck Verizon FiOS offers fiber to the home in NYC and has speeds of > 300Mbit/s_

Where? The entire time I've lived in NYC, in neighborhoods with population density between 30k to 70k _people per square mile_ , I've never, ever, ever had FIOS available to me.

Sure, I've heard about the rare building that has it, but as far as I can tell, it's marketing with just enough actual deployment that we can't call it vaporware.

<comment><USER8> <http://www22.verizon.com/local/new-york-fios/> Google search term: verizon fios nyc. Put Manhattan in the search box on the map. Looks like a few hundred buildings in a 1 mile radius from the center of Manhattan.

<comment><USER9> When you look at that map, the majority of manhattan doesn't have fios available, let alone the other boroughs.

<comment><USER8> What? <http://i.imgur.com/r6ZJny0.png> Looking at that map, it's not clear at all that Manhattan doesn't have coverage. And this is only what's within a two mile radius of the center.

<comment><USER7> It only looks like a lot when you're not zoomed in. The density here is very, very, very high. The vast majority of buildings aren't covered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This makes little sense to me. Instead of building in the same market as Google, go build in another market with no competition! Why layout double the infrastructure when and get into a price war when you can do the same thing somewhere else and be able to charge more? That's my pro-business argument.

My pro-customer argument is that this is great for competition in Austin.

My I-live-in-SF argument is why isn't anyone doing this for us? I can't really think of another major city in the US outside of NY, Chicaco, or Boston where this would have the most impact. You have thousands of companies built on the Internet in SF. Lots of us techies live here. Please, give us a choice beyond Comcast!

<comment><USER11> Sonic.net is trying to build fiber in SF. Only held up by permitting issues. Latest update from the CEO is on the forums here:

[https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&s...](https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p7528)

<comment><USER12> That's like saying a manned Mars colony is "only" being held up by transportation issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "AT&T's expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives."

Did Google do the political work here and leave the door open for competition?

<comment><USER14> It's rich that ATT, successor company to Southwestern Bell, is complaining about alledged subsidies to another company to enable a fiber rollout.

Southwestern Bell and its sister baby bells were subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in the 90s in exchange for a promise to roll out a nationwide network of fiber to the home. Needless to say the network never materialized but the telecoms kept the money.

Ref: [http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html)

<comment><USER15> <pedantic> Actually, AT&T _is_ Southwestern Bell, not so much a "successor" company. SBC acquired AT&T and changed the name. </pedantic>

<comment><USER16> Actually, I don't think you are being pedantic. The lineage is really important/interesting.

Here, in the Bay Area, the majority of the LEC lines belonged to Pacific Bell (You can almost always tell who the "real" company is by looking at the cable- vaults, the names of the holding company is written in engraved/raised metal that will last for 100+ years). The SF Giants Stadium was born as "PacBell Park"

Somewhere around 1997/1998, SBC Acquired all of Pacific Bell - so 100% of the PacBell LEC lines became SBC lines. Your Phone Bill now read "SBC", and a few years later, PacBell Park became SBC Park.

Then, in 2005, SBC acquired AT&T, and, because AT&T had a stronger global brand, they changed their name to be "AT&T", even though AT&T was now just one component of the larger SBC.

What's _really_ confusing, is somewhere around 2003/2004, LEC competition was deregulated a bit, and the 2003 AT&T starting offering Local Phone services in the Bay area.

So, you ran into scenarios where you would get a visit from both AT&T and SBC trying to sell you local phone services. I actually purchased a pretty good sized Long Distance/Data/LEC package from AT&T for around $15K MRC for our office buildings in Sunnyvale.

The reason this is confusing, is that when SBC acquired AT&T, you now had two classes of AT&T customers, those with SBC legacy facilities, and those with AT&T legacy facilities. For about 5 years after the acquisition, every telecom consultant I dealt with avoided the confusion (for some definition of avoid, and confusion) - by continuing to refer to anyone getting their services from 2003 SBC, as "SBC Customers", even though, for the last several years, their phone bill read "AT&T".

So, ironically, for some customers in the Bay Area, AT&T lines _actually are_ AT&T lines, but for most customers, they are SBC/Pacific Bell lines.

<comment><USER17> Same confusion happened when ATT's cellular business was sold to Cingular, there were two types of customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like Google's long-term plan is starting to unfold. Once everyone has super high-speed internet, Google OS can begin to thrive.

<comment><USER19> Unless Google gets killed by a better search engine. Which is a real possibility.

<comment><USER20> Are you kidding?

<comment><USER21> I thought so too, but then I remembered Watson, and just how far off we are from search being fully context-aware.

<comment><USER22> When somebody says "real possibility," that normally means something like "has a high enough chance of happening that it's worth considering." It is "possible" in the sense that there are things that are better than Google that could exist, but none of those things are here right now, the chances of somebody appearing out of nowhere and coming out with something so much better that everyone switches to it are practically zero. It's not a real possibility — it's just a hypothetical situation.

<comment><USER21> Watson was demonstrated on live television, how is that not a possibility that they adapt that technology into a publicly available search engine?

<comment><USER23> IBM seem to only be interested in applying it to Medical. It's probably way too processor intensive to use as a search engine, and they can make lots of money selling hardware to hospitals instead of making pennies on ads.

<comment><USER24> Processor intensive now. In 5 years? 10?

<comment><USER22> In 10 years, Google will almost certainly have something that takes advantage of the day's computing power as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great - Austin households get two giga-bit networks competing to get first to their doorsteps and the rest of the country gets to watch in wonder.

<comment><USER26> Make it one, Google will almost certainly close shop soon after AT & T does theirs. AT&T then will double prices.

Notice the zingers to Google and to Austin officials: "AT&T's expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives...AT&T consistently invests in U.S. communities -- $98 billion in capital in the past five years, more than any other public company"

AT& T is most likely gonna sue Austin unless they provide them with the same incentives as Google is getting.

<comment><USER27> > Make it one, Google will almost certainly close shop soon after AT & T does > theirs.

Yeah, just like Google stopped making Chrome once other browser vendors followed their lead with a focus on JavaScript performance.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, running an ISP is exactly like, and as profitable as developing a browser based on Apple's work. Running an ISP is surely Google's strong point and core business.

Why didn't you compare Fiber to the [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of- cl...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of- cleaning.html) ?

<comment><USER28> When Google announced Chrome they did not have a history of writing world- class desktop software. Yet Chrome is massively successful.

One thing that Google does better than anyone else (period) is build networks.

<comment><USER26> _Yet Chrome is massively successful._

I've seen non-techie people use Chrome, none of them remembered how and why. My guess is that tried to download something else and it as bundled, or clicked on an advert when using Google. That might explain a large part of success. Chrome is pretty good, but then so is Firefox and (even) IE10.

 _One thing that Google does better than anyone else (period) is build networks._

Even if I assume that as true (surely many will contest it) somehow I suspect that that's not why we don't have 100mbs or GB service countrywide

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's always nice to see a (semi-)free market driving competition and innovation.

</comment><comment><USER30> Much like Firefox forced Microsoft's hand in regards to Internet Explorer it seems as though Google have forced one of the major players hands to innovate in the Internet and bandwidth space as well. Any outcome of this battle will only benefit the people in the end. More choice equals a better deal for everyone and I have no doubt this was never about money on Google's end in the first place, merely a wakeup call to companies like AT&T and Comcast who have stopped trying and let their networks deteriorate.

Considering Google have only spent $100 million on their impressive fibre network thus far, AT&T have a lot of catching up to do here to meet the same service offering Google is giving customers (no network caps, fast speeds, a new and reliable network).

</comment><comment><USER31> AT&T proposed this back in the 90s, yes, in Austin.

Lots of trenching around town, tons of interduct.

Then the winds shifted, and they shut the project down.

</comment><comment><USER32> Back in my Demon Internet days we went through every possible way of solving that last mile. One of the most innovative solutions, that actually got trailed before being "canned" was to backhaul fibre through the sewage system - it was pre existing tunnelling in every home, could be installed by any fool and had negligible effect on "flow"

For some reason it never caught on :-)

<comment><USER33> That's a crazy/brilliant idea! How did the fibre exit the sewage system at the home?

<comment><USER34> Sewage systems are non-pressurized gravity flow and many have cleanouts for service. The line could exit out via the cleanout. My house has a clean out just as the sewer line exits the foundation, and the sewer line itself is a 4" pipe. Lots of room and easy access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> o0-0o I would think this is a classic case of "Follow The Money".

What firms are HQ'd in the Austin and surrounding areas...

[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/state...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/state..). Whole Foods... Dell... I wonder what types of conversations Google & Dell have been having?

<comment><USER35> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_in_the_Dallas...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_in_the_Dallas–Fort_Worth_metroplex)

AT&T, for one.

<comment><USER36> Dallas isn't really in the Austin area. It's a 3 hour drive.

<comment><USER35> My reading comprehension is apparently poor today. I could've sworn the parent comment said "Dallas," not Austin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 100% reactionary and nearly 100% political.

In the Chicagoland area, their DSL service was simply horrible, and it languished, until Comcast started rolling out Internet and triple-play (cable TV, Internet, _and phone_ ).

Suddenly, AT&T's market was at material risk.

Even then, their Internet offerings remained poorly supported, if _relatively_ somewhat improved.

I suspect the primary reason for this announcement is for use in manipulating various political entities, including Congress. Also, some public PR value, from those who are still inclined to believe anything they might have to say.

Note that today's AT&T is really SBC. AT&T was a mostly empty shell at the time SBC bought them up -- largely, I suspect, for the branding.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why are they announcing it the same day as Google? And in the same city, no less? If they've had this capability all this time, what has prevented them from offering good service to customers up until now?

<comment><USER39> From the article:

"AT&T's ... anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives."

They want to make a case out of Google getting preferential treatment to build out its network (which they are).

<comment><USER40> It seems like there should be a pretty easy way around the claims of favoritism: Come up with the terms (e.g. right of way and easy licenses if you install gigabit fiber to x thousand homes with no caps and observe network neutrality), then let companies bid on the contract, and open bidding to any qualified organization. Google can put in a nominal bid and take it if no one submits a competing bid, or AT&T can outbid them if they want, but then AT&T has to pay to build the network under those terms and Google can just move on to the next city.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> How much do you want to bet AT&T never builds anything? This is a classic tactic of them to announce the development of a network and then never build it. They often do this as a means to extract honey from regulators, but it also works to distract consumers and municipalities. It's the equivalent of networking FUD.

Examples: [http://www.muninetworks.org/content/atts-many-broken- merger-...](http://www.muninetworks.org/content/atts-many-broken-merger- promises)

And of course the biggest scam of all: [http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> This is duplicated infrastructure. What a waste of money and effort. Australia's National Broadband Network seems a much better way to handle this kind of thing.

<comment><USER43> They're outside my house right now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> A shot across Google's bow. Google must really be scaring the legacy carriers. Competition is great!

</comment><comment><USER45> I have FTTH with AT&T Uverse yet they only offer at max 22 mbps down / 3 up at around $60/month. Is lack of competition the only reason why AT&T doesn't offer me more speed? I mean why would they? It's either AT&T or dial-up.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is sort of like if Google announced they are building a 50 ft. wall around the city of Austin, and then AT&T announces they are building a 50 ft. wall around the wall that Google is building.

</comment><comment><USER47> Not even a hint of when this is slated to happen? Talk about 'me too'-ing.

</comment><comment><USER48> Keep slapping 'em into shape Google. Good job. Come to NY!!

</comment><comment><USER49> So.... AT&T can actually do this if they try and have competition threatening their ologopoly (which they and Comcast claim doesn't exist...)

</comment><comment><USER50> I'll believe it when I see it. I don't think AT&T is a capable enough institution to beat Google to the punch on this one.

</comment><comment><USER51> Who knew competition would lead to this...

</comment><comment><USER17> Legally Austin is under no obligation to give AT&T the same deal.

</comment><comment><USER52> Yeah, and I announce intent to build 1 gigabit fiber in my home as well!</comment>


A Yak Shave with SGI's EFS (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pizzabox.computer/posts/sgi-efs-yakshave/ <comment><USER2> If you are ever playing with an SGI machine and need help I would recommend that you stop by irix.cc, ever since nekochan went offline its been the forum of choice.

Normally when you need to mount an SGI ISO/Disk Image

-Get the offset info with fdisk:

fdisk - l ./disk.img

-Insert that into your mount command like below:

mount -t efs -o loop,offset=$((64*512)) ./disk.img /some/mount/point

As far as installing I would highly suggest anyone with a box try to find the DINA VM for network installs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17462483](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17462483)</comment>


Answers On-Demand: A startup turns to small business - <AUTHOR> http://sagefront.com <comment><USER2> your early access form on the front page is messed up, (the form sends to [http://sagefront.co](http://sagefront.co) instead of [http://sagefront.com](http://sagefront.com))

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks a lot for letting me know that the form got screwed up. That's pretty embarrassing. Really appreciate it.

<comment><USER2> No problem - you also may want to think about serving your site over HTTPS, people care a lot more about that nowadays.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point...we need to get that set up today. Thanks!!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dropbox Unveils Sync API For Mobile Developers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/06/dropbox-unveils-sync-api-for-mobile-developers-allows-apps-to-work-with-cloud-based-files-as-if-they-were-local/

<comment><USER2> What about merge conflicts?

Looking at their API docs it looks closer to rsync than to an API you could use for collaboration. I don't think you could edit a document on your iPhone and iPad at the same time. Both clients' changes would just stomp over each other. <https://www.dropbox.com/developers/sync/docs/ios>

What I'd like to see is someone offer operational transformation as an API. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_transformation>

<comment><USER3> If there is a conflict then a conflicted copy file will be generated and then either the user or the app can use that to merge changes.

<comment><USER4> But while that paradigm might work fine on a desktop, where you can have multiple files viewable at a time (i.e. different halves of the screen), and an extremely easy way to copy-paste, it does not work well for a touch device, where both of those assumptions are invalid.

<comment><USER5> 1Password is a great example of an application doing this well -- when there are conflicts, 1Password detects this, and there is an application-specific workflow that helps the user resolve the conflicts. It's pretty slick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to see someone use this to build a browser-based way to use web-app- type things stored in Dropbox. I have a TiddlyWiki [1] stored in Dropbox, and I can view and edit it from any computer with Dropbox installed. On mobile, I can view the .html file (with effort) using the Dropbox app, but can't save, follow relative links to other Dropbox files, or do things like load external .js or .css files from Dropbox.

[1] <http://tiddlywiki.com/>

<comment><USER7> The beauty of HN is that this is pretty much the only place where you can meet the person with exactly the same exotic nerdy problem. I am thinking about moving from TiddlyWiki on Dropbox to Simplenote that (IIRC, at least when you pay) can synchronize notes to Dropbox, has a native iPhone app and a whole roster of 3rd party clients for other mobile OSs and desktop clients (<http://simplenote.com/downloads/>).

<comment><USER8> I was exactly the same TW/dropbox until a couple months ago...

I'm almost finished polishing up an App I wrote for personal use that edits/ synchs a folder of .txt files. (Maybe this weekend I'll get around to finishing it?)

Its not groundbreaking but it'll be available iOS and Android - then use your favourite text editor on pc/mac.

Email me if you want to beta test in a week or two?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this handle conflicts? Multiple mobile devices and offline mode can get pretty hairy pretty fast.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've had an idea for an app that would need some kind of sync service. This looks promising but I'm not sure about asking users to provide their Dropbox login in my app. No, I'm not worried about security because that information stays local to the device. I guess I'm worried about the user experience. I suppose it's better then having them create another login for my home brewed service.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if this will allow creation of folders with characters such as ":" in their names. Dropbox supports these characters in their clients but the API rejects them making it impossible to operate on some files. Very annoying when you've put the effort in to making an app to work with Dropbox then discover the API is subtly crippled and they apparently have no plans to fix it.</comment>


A peek inside Moleskine notebooks by artists, designers, architects, etc. - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/559-a-peek-inside-moleskine-notebooks-by-artists-designers-architects-etc <comment><USER2> I wouldn't have suspected video to be the optimal medium for displaying the contents of a notebook. And I think I would have been right.</comment>


Ask HN: A FOSS Alternative for Notion or Roam Research - <AUTHOR> Hi,
So in my uni, we are having a FOSS Club(amfoss.in), we are looking for a good team notes management thing like collab, edit and do things, share etc.
Currently, we are doing most of the thing using Google Docs,
We have found Roam Research[1], seems promising but the thing is, it is super expensive for us to afford as we are fully student-driven club since 14+ years. So another alternative would be Notion[2], it is for a single user it is free for now. But not sure how long will it be and will it be changed in the middle.
So, we were curious what are some really good alternatives to both which can be collab and used, if it is OSS Solution then would be great, so we can also volunteer for the development too.
Right now I found,
1 Trilium: https://github.com/zadam/trilium
2 Outline: http://getoutline.com/
3 Joplin: https://github.com/laurent22/joplin
4 Notable: https://notable.app
I haven't used, before trying if some people in HN did use any of these or also Notion/Roam Research, would be a great help to her your views regarding this.
Even if it is only for individuals and it is a good OSS Solution then that would be also fine,
[1]: https://roamresearch.com
[2]: https://www.notion.so <comment><USER2> I've been using obsidian [1]. It's free for personal use and the files are stored locally. Very good alternative to Roam. It's not open source tough.

[1][https://obsidian.md/](https://obsidian.md/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone is building an FOSS, selfhosted Roam-Clone here:

[https://github.com/athensresearch/athens](https://github.com/athensresearch/athens)

</comment><comment><USER4> Tiddlywiki is something I've wanted to try out myself for this use case. It seems like a good solution but I haven't had the time to sit down and set it up. It also hasn't seen any hype/postings about it in quite a while, which either could be seen as it being deaf or that it is working well for everyone using it and they don't feel the need to talk about it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps wiki.js could be an option

[https://wiki.js.org/](https://wiki.js.org/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm using VNote [1]

[1] [https://tamlok.github.io/vnote/en_us/](https://tamlok.github.io/vnote/en_us/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Both have student plans with varying levels of discounts. I would get into contact with them and see if they can help out.

Notion for Students: [https://www.notion.so/Notion-for-students-teachers- adc631df1...](https://www.notion.so/Notion-for-students-teachers- adc631df15ee4ab9a7a33dd50f4c16fe)

Roam Scholars: [https://twitter.com/Conaw/status/1273423163381039105](https://twitter.com/Conaw/status/1273423163381039105)</comment>


Where Did The Magic Go? - <AUTHOR> http://mgalligan.com/post/11032316740/where-did-the-magic-go

<comment><USER2> _The human race has become spoiled. Every day, new and incredible technology debuts, and we just seem to brush it off as expected, or worse, a late arrival. So where did the magic go? What happened to the days when we would be blown away by a piece of wax that could record sounds? Or pictures that could move? Or the miracle of human flight? We expect things now._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions> Modern inventions happen so frequently that they lose their impact. In the 1st millennium, AD, you see 1-2 major inventions per century (e.g. bridges, dams, gunpowder, banknotes). In the latter half of the 2nd millennium, that number jumps to 4-5 (e.g. steam engine, thermometer, blood pressure cuff, printing press, newspaper). The reason for this is that the earlier inventions, plus a larger population make it more likely that new inventions will be discovered. In the era from 1800-present, we have seen hundreds of revolutionary inventions (e.g. light bulb, radio, telephone, television, computer, nuclear energy, automobile/gas pump, internet, airplane, helicopter, IV pump, digital media). It's hard to continue to be impressed by individual inventions when they are happening so frequently. Some inventions from the last 50 years that have become commonplace are: DNA testing. GPS, smartphones, microprocessors, LCD, LED, compressed digital media, fiber optics, tablet PC, ATM, email, internet. Compare that to people who only saw the invention of the steam engine and the cotton gin during their lifetime.</comment>


Ancient Man Didn't Exactly Live in Harmony With the Land - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/science/earth/21ancient.html?_r=1&hpw

<comment><USER2> I say this as an SUV driving republican voting nature lover:

A lot of people's first reaction to hearing this is something along the lines of "haha, _see_ , hippies, see how stupid you are!??!".

Just because humans at one point blindly destroyed everything they came in contact with does not mean that they should continue to, or should dismiss doing so as acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER3> We humans like to think we're special, but we're not, even in the realm of environmental damage.

It's part of why I love traveling through and around the state of Oregon: so much is named after beavers.

<comment><USER4> We're special in that we can decide what effects we want to have.

<comment><USER5> ... except when we fail to act on our supposed ideals, which seems to be most of the time!

I suppose that if we assumed that humans were like some species of giant ant, then our spread accross the globe, destroying species, altering coast lines and spewing out poison, would be a marvel of nature!

If each complex species that enters and alters an area is "degrading" it, what is the most desirable ecosystem? A giant mound of plankton?

<comment><USER6> Isn't it a marvel of nature? We're consciously shaping the world to suit ourselves. We're being very destructive and savage in the process, but destruction and loss is natural.

I most enjoy the comments one sees online made by people who talk about how our biology is going to doom us to destruction. The point they miss is that being aware of our biology allows us to circumvent it, to some degree, and that's a part of evolution to. Mental/technological evolution still counts as evolving.

<comment><USER5> All the "environmental destruction" is natural. But, to the degree that we even can choose, we should think about whether it's desirable.

<comment><USER3> That's a pretty tall order. After all, we often don't know what's desirable in a much narrower context in the present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this really news? I mean someone very very confused might actually believe that ancient man was magical. But doesn't everyone know about the Mammoths and all the other giant fauna that went extinct when man arrived? Only Africa still has giant mammals probably because they co-evolved with hominids.

</comment><comment><USER8> Related NPR story (& 5-minute audio):

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1121245...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112124572)

</comment><comment><USER9> It might be interesting, and you guys might like it, but this isn't news.

Seriously. anybody really interested in environmental issues should have known years ago that all creatures that live on this planet change it -- sometimes to drastic effect. Some of the practices the article didn't go into are even more devastating, such as the use of fire-hunting, or early attempts at mining and smelting (which polluted vast areas of wetlands)

The real question is: what would we like our environment to be like today? I think people get this romantic, mushy-headed feeling that somehow it's only modern humans that have had a noticeable impact on things, and that "if it were only like it were five thousand years ago" or some such that it would idyllic. By having a slanted preconception like this, it actually hurts conversations about where we want to go by adding a lot of finger-pointing and posturing where none need exist.

(Sorry -- must have a bit of grumpiness to get out of my system today)

<comment><USER10> Yes, this is news. It presents specific, _new_ evidence of the practice. The general idea that ancient humans had negative impact on the land was recognized as not being novel in the lead: "The idea that primitive hunter- gatherers lived in harmony with the landscape has long been challenged by researchers, who say Stone Age humans in fact wiped out many animal species in places as varied as the mountains of New Zealand and the plains of North America."

I see this tendency with scientific articles a lot. An article presents a new finding within an existing framework, and someone feels compelled to point out that the existing framework is old hat. This ignores that the news in the article is the new finding, not the existing framework.

<comment><USER9> It represents specific new evidence. Got me there.

My point, somewhat rhetorically put, was that the framework itself is what is new for most readers here, not the specific piece of information. And that's sad.

<comment><USER11> Actually, this might just be an important point in the discussion of what exactly "does or doesn't belong" on HN. It seems like all the highly-voted, well-liked, and highly-commented articles tend to discuss some sort of revelation of _pattern_ , not revelation of fact. In other words, hackers like to read about new, effective abstractions (for seeing the world in general, not just for code.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well, of course. What else does anyone think happened to all of the ice-age mega-fauna? Human beings moved in and ate everything that was big and slow.</comment>


A Silicon Valley startup is helping the Steelers prevent player injuries - <AUTHOR> https://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2018/12/21/steelers-technology-player-injuries-james-conner-pittsburgh-sparta-science/stories/201812200061 <comment><AUTHOR> Google? Meh. Facebook? Eh. Amazon? Who cares.

Helping the Steelers win? Finally! Something that really matters!

</sarcasm (do I really need this tag?)></comment>


AWS Responds with Price Cuts: Google vs AWS Pricing Round 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/aws-responds-price-cuts-google-vs-aws-pricing-round-2 <comment><USER2> I'm surprised this is being cast as Amazon _responding_ to Google's price cuts- the AWS conference was scheduled months in advance so if anything Google heard about the price cuts and announced their own just ahead of the conference as a (successful; apparently) attempt to take the wind out of Amazon's announcement.

Interesting that they dropped by the same amount; either it was a lucky guess, Amazon adjusted their adjustment at the last minute, or AWS has a mole.

<comment><USER3> I'll go with Occam's Razor: Amazon just responded to Google's newly announced pricing. To believe they guessed correctly or they have a "mole" is pretty far fetched.

<comment><USER4> So your version of Occam's Razor is "Amazon hurriedly cut prices on a profitable service without much time for evaluation" over "someone at Amazon told Google about upcoming price changes while Google had time to decide they could jump in early on it".

I'm not saying that either interpretation is _wrong_ , but I think your use of Occam's Razor here says more about your assumptions than the nature of things.

<comment><USER5> Could it be that Amazon had a less significant price drop planned, Google announced theirs and Amazon decided to increase their drop to match? Amazon would have already evaluated what they could drop to, so they'd know as soon as Google announced they could match.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that could be it too.

I'm really just responding to the idea that "a mole" is farfetched. There's a reason that Apple is known for being incredibly paranoid about people leaking business secrets: it happens, often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I keep expecting Amazon to change their reserved instance policy. Who's going to commit to reserved instances during an ongoing price-war?

Amazon themselves proudly announce it as their _42nd_ price drop. That's not really a strong selling point for long term contracts.

<comment><USER7> Kind of frustrating, really. I just bought 2 reserved instances about 6 weeks ago. Would have saved a nice penny if I waited.

It's definitely nice to see the pricing become more affordable over time though. Before this cut I really struggled going with AWS, but wouldn't even need to think about choosing them after this reduction.

<comment><USER8> You should contact support. I hear aws is really nice about offering price reductions in situations like yours.

<comment><USER9> Based on my experience today, I can attest to this. If you purchased recently, they may very well accommodate you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am wondering how many and who in enterprises are using Google cloud? I understand few startups, typically associated with Google in some way, are using google cloud. I just can't imagine many enterprises putting up with poor customer service and ego of Google.

<comment><USER11> I work for a large enterprise using Google's cloud. It's quite a different experience from using our own servers to handle the same thing. We are now at the whim of a company that doesn't always announce changes until they've happened, and those changes don't always work within our business model.

Yes, it's a nightmare.

<comment><USER10> Just curious why did you chose Google cloud over AWS or Rackspace. Migrating from internal servers to public cloud makes sense in some instances. Have you looked at private cloud for example using OpenStack or vCloud?

<comment><USER11> The business moved to Google Apps for email and document editing. As soon as that happened, development teams began to see an "in" to getting cloud services (previously disallowed) because "it's just Google!" That escalated to basically anything "Google" is allowed, so everyone is using Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if Digital Ocean will even lower their rates?

For now, I've noticed their Competitor Pricing page is just redirecting to their normal pricing page.

[https://www.digitalocean.com/competitor- pricing/](https://www.digitalocean.com/competitor-pricing/) (just redirects)

Cached copy: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:I33lI_P...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:I33lI_PgDJ4J:https://www.digitalocean.com/competitor- pricing+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER13> Now can they just lower the compute and storage outbound transfer rates? :)

</comment><comment><USER14> As I look at the pricing wars, I realized something: If you choose to use "cloud" based in your projects or businesses, you will never know the long- term costs associated with operating in the cloud.

The cloud provider can raise or lower prices as they see fit. What prevents these for-profit companies to keep lowering prices and not raising them?

<comment><USER15> Nothing really, although on the flip side if you've got machines in a co- location data center that lease comes up for renewal and your prices are going to change. Often they _will_ go up because the data center folks figure its harder for you to move than negotiate. As long as AWS and Google prices are 10x the cost of self running for large deployments that won't be an issue, but when they start getting closer to parity it is going to put the data center guys in a world of hurt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Heroku could give startups 20% discount for a year.

<comment><USER17> Heroku runs on AWS (as do other competing PaaS offerings). They'll probably pass savings on to their customers, but they have to cover costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We waiting on dropbox now</comment>


Show HN: Metaframe – search your data warehouse from the command-line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rsyi/metaframe <comment><AUTHOR> Some background: Often you need a quick reminder of table names/column names of frequently-used tables. This stores this info locally so it's super easy to search, quickly. You can also take some personal notes that are stored alongside table metadata.

For smaller companies, this is a viable, very very quick alternative to standing up existing OS catalogs.</comment>


YouTube Wants Creator's Suggestions to Curb Misuse of Dislike Button - <AUTHOR> https://www.news18.com/news/tech/youtube-wants-creators-suggestions-to-curb-misuse-of-dislike-button-2023001.html <comment><USER2> The title should have _Creators '_ instead, something the first sentence of the article gets right. I thought it meant the creator of YT.

>Apparently, the dislike button has been misused and YouTube creators are not about it.

That's the subheading, which also seems wrong - there's a word missing, right?

Where's that dislike button..</comment>


First Object Teleported from Earth to Orbit - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608252/first-object-teleported-from-earth-to-orbit/amp/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I have a wrong notion of what is an "object" but in this context, I would at least expect it has a non zero mass.

The article is simply about entanglement of photons: "To perform the experiment, the Chinese team created entangled pairs of photons ... They then beamed one of these photons ... They kept the other photon on the ground"

Using an ad hoc 3D printer to send a copy of a virus hundred kilometers away, as in Craig Venter's book "Life at the speed of light", would be a much greater achievement.

<comment><USER3> theese experiments are done for completly other purpose then this article suggest. otherwise "teleporting" photon would be pointless because you can just emit photon somewhere where you would like it to be. and it would be exactly the same photon. and not just "To all intents and purposes"

<comment><USER2> You did not tell what is this "other purpose", but you might think about cryptography. Entanglement enables a mechanism where a secret key seems to exist only when it is activated from another location.

That way a satellite would be preloaded with hundreds of "hidden" secret keys and one of them would be available for encrypting only when it would be decided on the ground. A quantum twist to Merkle's puzzles.

I am not convinced by this kind of quantum cryptography. I am sure it would be possible to crack it, because all cryptography proposals are overly complexifying a little aspect of a much larger problem, and someone just look at another aspect of the problem and easily defeats the proposed cryptography scheme.

It is a pattern that we seen an incredible number of times, when do people will recognise it and adopt a more humble, honest and safer way to implement security?

Indeed I am yet another random guy on Internet, I am not versed in quantum cryptography, and I did not work on cryptography since a long time. But on the anecdoctical side, 12 years ago I had to work on identity/security and at that time when I told my colleagues that public cryptography was no more safe, they were baffled. For them it was pure non-sens, yet I could crack (factor in prime numbers) simple keys on my little laptop and RSA stopped a few years later their famous RSA challenge [0]...

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge)</comment></comment></comment>


How to choose a low cost VPS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.redfern.me/choosing-a-low-cost-vps/

<comment><USER4> My favorite host is prgmr.com. They have plans which fit even the smallest budget. The support is friendly and competent. You have access to an out-of- band SSH-based console and rescue image, so you can do arbitrary command-line maintenance stuff.

You can install whatever version of whatever distro you want. You can upgrade on your own schedule. You can even do more exotic things like install a custom kernel or even BSD (anything with Xen guest patches will work). You can use LVM.

The best part is that they give you tools to fix things yourself. You don't have to use some half-baked web UI whose creator didn't envision your use case. You don't have to file a support ticket and wait for the staff to get back to you for most maintenance tasks; you can just reboot in rescue mode and do it yourself.

> VPS control panels

I've worked with a few different hosts, and I've never found a web-based server management UI that isn't slow, buggy and generally half-baked.

<comment><USER5> I like prgrmr. They used to be cheap, but they aren't anymore - <USER2> everyone else lowered their price.

I'm paying $10/month (+$1/$2 more for outgoing traffic) for a 256MB Rackspace Cloud. It costs $8 or so at prgrmr - it is 25% but it's only $2, and rackspace always has space and bandwidth (unlike prgmr which has no spare capacity every now and then).

Minimal rackspace is now 512MB @ $16/month (comparable prgrmr is $12). If you're doing anything nontrivial, I suspect rackspace is a better option.

<comment><USER4> From Rackspace FAQ:

> Can I import my own image or export an image of a server?

> At this time, you would have to pick from our Linux distributions or Windows > images.

I want to upgrade the OS on my schedule, not theirs. I want control of my own backups. And I really, really want snapshot capability, running / under LVM or btrfs. None of these seem possible from my interpretation of this answer (although I can't conclusively say they aren't).

You're right, though -- the pricing isn't bad at all.

<comment><USER5> > I want to upgrade the OS on my schedule, not theirs.

You can. But you can only install from their images. After that, you can "apt- get dist-upgrade" or whatever at your own rate.

> I want control of my own backups.

I think they give you that.

> And I really, really want snapshot capability, running / under LVM or btrfs. > None of these seem possible from my interpretation of this answer (although > I can't conclusively say they aren't).

Likely they can give it to you. They have really excellent chat support - <USER3> ask.

I've got 300 days of uptime on a $10/month VPS, that's working flawlessly since the second it was installed. I know from other people that they have fantastic support - but I can't vouch for it myself - I've never needed it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>