Amazon delivery drivers complain about bad work conditions - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5164407/Amazon-delivery-drivers-complain-bad-work-conditions.html <comment><USER2> I'm a supervisor at UPS, so maybe I can offer an opinion (this is a throwaway account).

I'm not sure if there is anything analogous to the US Department Of Transportation in England, but we have to abide by pretty strict rules here in the USA regarding driving hours. A UPS driver cannot work over 14 hours on a shift, must have 10 hours between shifts, and cannot exceed 60 hours in a week without (IIRC) 38 consecutive hours before the next shift. That being said, we HIGHLY AVOID working drivers over 12 hours per shift, and try to take on a lot of extra help during the holiday peak season so that the work is distributed evenly.

From what I can tell from the article, these are probably inexperienced drivers who may be on their own in regards to organizing their delivery route, sorting packages on their vehicle, and learning their route. Because UPS has a centralized management system (as apposed to FedEx, for instance, which is contract based), we monitor every driver and can send other drivers to assist anyone who begins to struggle.

Its not unheard-of for UPS drivers to pee in bottles (and less often, poop in big plastic bags that are kept handy in the package cars). Its definitely not _encouraged_ , but it happens, especially when you're on a rural route.

UPS drivers have it pretty good because of the collective bargaining that's available through the union. We're definitely going to have some rough days ahead of us for the next few weeks, but peak season is a big deal that we prepare for months in advance.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for your candid response.

Would you be able to answer how many packages the average driver delivers on a route and what happens if a package is stolen i.e who is liable?

Curious to see how often package theft occurs.

Thanks again!

<comment><USER4> I'm not op, but I'm a seasonal driver, and I've delivered about 200-250 packages a day on a suburban route so far. My understanding is that the number of stops you have is directly related to the density of your route. So routes with stops that are closer together have a lot more packages.

On my first day a package was stolen, and I got a stapled packet with all of the information that UPS knew about the package (when it was delivered, what location it was delivered to, where the truck was when it was marked delivered), etc. I have to go interview the person making the claim.

We aren't supposed to leave any packages that are of obvious high value, such as laptops, TV's, or any Apple product. Houses with a lot of claims will be flagged and required to always sign for packages.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Thank you for your reply. Have you heard of Amazon Key( electronic lock so that owner's door can be opened for delivery driver. [[https://www.amazon.com/b?&node=17285120011]](https://www.amazon.com/b?&node=17285120011\]))

Do you have any thoughts on that such as why Amazon would do that and if UPS would do something similar?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On reddit, "spagheddie" wrote:

 _I was once a FedEx delivery driver, so I don 't know how it is for Amazon, but I would imagine it's similar? At FedEx we got paid per package delivered, which means the faster you deliver your packages, the more you are technically getting paid per hour. In addition to this, you'd get a daily bonus for delivering the packages fast. We could take our lunches whenever, nobody cared as long as the packages got delivered. However, very few people ever stopped to eat their lunch. Most people would eat and drive. If there was a bathroom on your route, that's cool, but otherwise you are peeing in a bottle because you aren't trying to waste time searching for a bathroom when you could potentially deliver 4 or 5 packages in that time. All of this holds especially true at this time of the year, when guys are getting ran 6 days a week, with 200+ packages per day, and with the sun going down an hour earlier (night time delivering slows you way the fuck down)._

 _Well what happens when you deliver so slow that you 're making less than minimum wage? I don't know about Amazon, but at FedEx if you were so slow that you made less than minimum wage with your per package deliveries, you were simply paid minimum wage for that day's work._

 _Anyways, there are a lot of shitty jobs to have during the Christmas season but, in my opinion, this is the worst one of them all. The pay isn 't bad if you have your route down; but goddamn you can't even enjoy the damn holidays because you're always on "go" mode._

[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7iv6s9/amazon_dr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7iv6s9/amazon_drivers_are_asked_to_deliver_up_to_200/dr1on4x/)

<comment><USER6> I've noticed this sort of thing a lot in the job market: performance or pay are directly tied to metrics resulting in employees being incentivized into odd behaviors (breaking the law, sabotaging coworkers, skipping breaks/lunch, stagtegically cancelling or avoiding work, etc). This type of management through metrics goes hand in hand with the gig economy and also temp agency/contract work.

<comment><USER7> And the people making those incentives know it! They can't always legally tell an employee to do bad/illegal things, but they sure know how to build a system where thats the only option.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, it's in the company's best interest to have people do as much as possible for as little as possible money. This is why we have worker rights, things like minimum wage and maximum working hours. As well as health coverage etc.

Or should anyway. But nope, money first, people second.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, Ctulhu, for looking out for the common man. :)

On-topic: Workers' rights have taken a backseat due to aggressive lobbying for several decades, not least in the US.

Even in countries with very strong socialist foundations unions are hollowed out to the point where entire fields like IT feel like they have no use for them. Sweden is a good example: IT professionals are sought after to the point where they currently (rightly) feel like they have no use for unions, but when they turn out to be the new factory workers they won't have an already established base to unionize on.

Maybe I'm silly to worry, but I feel like this is all a pretty big mistake.

<comment><USER10> Are you actually advocating for socialism on a site centered around VC-funded tech companies that absolutely couldn't exist in a socialist country? Awesome.

<comment><USER11> VC-backed companies do exist in socialist countries (i'm from Denmark). maybe it's all time Hacker News readers did start arguing for socialism: self- obsession exists now in more abundance than ever and capitalism is doing everything it can to broaden the cloak of its dreadful shadow

<comment><USER10> I guess my point is, the socialist movement in the USA seems to favor things like taxing income over 1MM USD at 90ish percent. At that point, what would possibly be the point of risking a 1MM investment to only make 10% if the company doubled in value?

<comment><USER12> Our system is already structured in a way to incentivize actually reinvesting and doing stuff with that money instead of adding it to one's personal hoard -- think that but enough to actually be effective

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In India, this gets worse. Lot of delivery guys use 2 wheelers and can often been seen carrying a huge bag full of packages on their bikes. Moreover many buildings don't have lifts so they end up carrying this load up 2 or 3 storeys. This is extremely back breaking work and add to that the pressure to deliver packages on time and navigating crazy Indian traffic on two wheelers with such heavy loads. On the other hand I am not sure what can be done.... People are just concerned about their convenience with no regards for rights of the delivery people. And given the level of unemployment it is unlikely that there will be protests from the drivers. While Indian e-commerce booms it will be on the backs of these guys.

<comment><USER14> Sobering, and almost physically painful to read. Probably the only realistic solution is the booming economy in India. Eventually, one hopes, there will be better accommodations for everyone, and the drivers will benefit along with everyone else. I assume unionization would not work due to the huge supply of alternate employees?

<comment><USER13> Yeah... There are too many desperate and unemployed people for unionization to make an impact. You can just get rid of the union employees. Given the poor educational investments lot of people are simply not equipped to exploit the opportunities in booming economy. This basically results in larger inequality since for high paying jobs there is lot of competition due to talent crunch driving wages up. At the same time for menial jobs there is too much labor leading to downward pressure on wages. Combine the two and you have ballooning inequality. My fear is that India might end up there.

<comment><USER15> Bad for employees but when I have been there in the past I was impressed with how quickly things would be delivered from Amazon in Mumbai.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's such a complex situation. Amazon has contracts with small companies who provide trucks and humans. Amazon provides the work, the groups of packages, the routes, the app the drivers need to use to deliver.

The companies compete with each other for more 'routes' each day. They offer to take on more work, to do more. And then they hire anyone they can to fulfill those routes. The drivers themselves are on contracts with the small companies that can end at any time. Not making your rate? Up to the small company to decide if you have a contract tomorrow.

The contracts themselves presume the drivers will deliver a route in a specific number of hours for a fixed rate of pay. But newbies work at a much slower rate. And during the holiday season, they need a lot of extra labor- a lot of newbies.

Who is to blame? Amazon? The companies? The drivers? Capitalism gone mad? Take your pick.

<comment><USER17> 'Who is to blame? Amazon? The companies? The drivers? Capitalism gone mad? Take your pick.'

You can add 'customers' to this list since this is where it all begins.

It isn't so long ago that all people complained about was the time it took for stuff to be delivered and all those 'we called but there was no one in' cards.

So capitalism responded and now folks have something else to complain about.

<comment><USER18> Customers can only choose not demand, so this is simply a red herring to shift and diffuse blame and responsibility to consumers from the primary abuser who is actually doing this, and create an environment of helplessness.

Tomorrow if customers demand 10% of the existing prices are companies going to line up with slave labour conditions to deliver and then shift blame? Responsibility does not work like this.

<comment><USER17> '..are companies going to line up with slave labour conditions to deliver and then shift blame?'

No because we don't drag people off the street and force them to be delivery drivers. There is a level at which people feel incentivised to do this kind of work and there is a level at which they look for something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _" skip lunch and urinate in plastic bottles, and some return to homes after their 9pm deadline"_

 _" the allocation and number of stops, and the volume to be distributed for any given day, lies entirely with Amazon."_

Argh. If true, hopefully someone can verify the claims and raise some visibility.

<comment><USER20> "Use contractors, they said. It's so much easier and cheaper, they said..."

I don't have any evidence as to the accuracy of this anecdote, but when I see those news stories about delivery drivers shitting on someone's lawn, this is right where my mind goes.

'That person probably had an insane deadline to meet and no protections ensuring that they get time for basic and universal human functions.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There was a time when you could give a christmas bonus to the mail man. I wish that the delivery men were more consistent, I would love to be able to give them a cash gift for all the work they do for me and my family on a regular basis.

Unfortunately it seems like during the holidays the usual delivery guy isn't around and it's a chaotic mix of people.

While we are here, I hate that they are now making people deliver on Sundays. Every year I struggle more with the morality of the package economy.

<comment><USER22> USPS now delivers exclusively on Sunday for Amazon. It looks like they are expanding this service with lower wage jobs, with less benefits compared to the traditional postal worker.

I was shocked to receive a package from Amazon via USPS this past Labor day, of all days.

Quite depressing to see the continued erosion of rights workers fought for over the past century, to service one of the most powerful companies in the country. I've been trying to opt myself out of Amazon where possible.

[https://www.alternet.org/labor](https://www.alternet.org/labor) /horrific- new-marriage-between-your-post-office-and-amazon-sunday

<comment><USER23> You are misguided, working on Sunday is orthogonal to treating workers well. I admire your concern, but other metrics shine much more light on concern for humanity.

Growing up in Las Vegas, working on weekends was I think, beyond even what you'd imagine in some tourist destinations, some of those are at least were seasonal. Imagine if your delivery person who you are concerned about, worked weeekends and also in the middle of the night on a swing shift, my parents did.

Were all the casinos great places to work because of all this? Absolutely not, some made Amazon look great. However, I observed:

\- There were big differences in treatment of employees between different operators. The overall effort and concern they had, or did not have, overshadows any single issue. So it's good to call out businesses, but to encourage the right behavior a broader set of metrics is better.

\- Families can be healthy and thrive with weekend and shift work if it's done right, without crushing overtime or 12 hour days, and if they are treated well overall. Things in life just happen at different times come to seem quite normal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I always wondered why not have all delivery done at night? There is a lot less traffic generally between 10PM and 6AM for example, it seems like they could do a lot more deliveries and it would put less load on the highways and be safer and less stressful for drivers. And not sitting in traffic jams means less fuel consumption. Is there some reason why that is not done?

<comment><USER25> Good luck finding any houses at night or being shot while trying to use flashlight

<comment><USER26> pretty much. A couple weeks ago there was a post to the facebook group for my village 'watch out there's a man with a white van shining a torch into people's houses'

To be followed by comments saying 'that's just the Hermes delivery guy'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> dailymail.co.uk really shouldn't be on the front page of hn, its a tabloid.

<comment><USER28> Stop Funding Hate is a pressure group outing major brands and getting the to apologise for advertising in the Daily Mail, e.g. 'Paperchase', last week or so:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42058103](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42058103)

So this is a valid point, HN needs to find better sources that the Daily Mail. In light of this, here you go:

[https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Amazon-Flex- Reviews-E132...](https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Amazon-Flex- Reviews-E1324363.htm)

<comment><USER29> Stop funding hate is a pressure group consisting of a few hundred far-left agitators. Censorship should be opposed in all forms.

[https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/11/stop-funding-hate- nast...](https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/11/stop-funding-hate-nasty- elitist-campaign-press-censorship/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> They're probably reaching road vehicle bandwidth saturation, which is affecting drivers and warehouse workers downstream of the web interface. Refactoring their supply model for depots and reallocating staff to the depots.

Y'know, the Amazon General Store.

</comment><comment><USER31> Yet another point in the "don't use Amazon" column. Yes, it can be slightly less convenient to have to shop around - but if you can afford it, it's worth it for the peace of mind.

Besides, I no longer trust Amazon to send me the actual product listed. The small retailers have been far more reliable in that regard.

</comment><comment><USER32> This "hire contractors" story is getting very familiar, ie Uber. Maybe we haven't had much innovation outside of writing the software and making the distribution chain. We need more roads and transit too.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'd change the verb in the title to "criticize" instead of "complain about".

<comment><USER34> How about "reveal"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> They also deliver very late at night, past 11pm kind of late.

</comment><comment><USER36> pesos have to flow in the right direction...</comment>


Show HN: MassDNS – A high-performance DNS stub resolver in C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blechschmidt/massdns <comment><USER2> // SECURITY IMPROVEMENTS REQUIRED. VULNERABLE TO INTEGER AND BUFFER OVERFLOWS.

well at least it's pretty clear up front. No malloc result checks, invalid format in printfs, probably more.

(I don't mean to be disparaging, please don't take it that way OP. We clearly need more/better tooling in this area in C).

(Edited for clarity)

<comment><USER3> Malloc result checks are generally a bad idea; they're error prone. Better just to run with the allocator configured to abort on failure.

<comment><USER2> Generally agree, (and that's what we usually do in GLib). However, for a general purpose DNS user-space implementation I think it would be good to have something that can be used in both scenarios.

<comment><USER3> That's a coherent argument, but that argument is also, I think, probably responsible for virtually all of the exploitable offset-from-NULL vulnerabilities shipped in C code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ugh, so public resolvers are flooded with requests? Wouldn't it make much more sense to set up a local _caching_ resolver like unbound and feed your queries to it? It would be much more considerate towards the public resolvers and also use less of your own bandwidth.

<comment><USER5> There are valid use cases for this. For example, web crawling needs to do millions of resolutions _one time_ which completely nullifies the need for a cache.

<comment><USER4> For this to be correct, all records to be resolved would need to have completely disjunct labels from the root down. Which they cannot if they are indeed in the millions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not yet managed to setup a single local recursor, such as PowerDNS recursor, to deliver the same performance as the list consisting of multiple open resolvers, although bandwidth does not seem to be the limiting factor. Testing with dnsperf, the best result I am currently getting is about 6,000 resolves per second with bind, for PDNS the figure is even lower for some reason. I will have to dig a bit deeper in order to find the reason for that cap.

<comment><USER4> I'm not surprised at all that BIND performs poorly, look at those graphs (granted this is for authoritative servers, but says a lot about BIND's performance in general): [https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/blog/2013/07/05/nsd4-performance- me...](https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/blog/2013/07/05/nsd4-performance- measurements/)

I'd stick with Unbound. There are a lot of knobs to fiddle with in the config. Be sure to compile against libevent so that you can use the highly scalable epoll as a backend (assuming you're on Linux). Turn up all the limits for cache size etc. Disable DNSSEC validation if you don't care about spoofed records. Ask on the mailing list if you need help, Wouter and his colleagues are very nice and respond very quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "A high-performance non-recursive DNS resolver"

I believe a better description for this program would be a "stub resolver".

<comment><AUTHOR> This is already discussed below and you are right. It was an issue with the perspective of the term recursion from my side. Unfortunately, I cannot change the HN title anymore. (Maybe some moderator can?) The GitHub project description has been changed.

Some of the resolvers might ban/rate-limit you indeed and even send abuse complaints to your ISP.

EDIT: You might have a look at the newly implemented --norecurse option.

<comment><USER6> "\--norecurse Useful for DNS cache snooping"

Not if the resolver rejects non-recursive queries, as do dnscache and dqcache.

There is a way to resolve DNS domainnames to IP addresses using only non- recursive queries. I do it everyday.

But I've never seen anyone release any program that did this. Your program does not even attempt to do this -- you need to send the queries to authoritative nameservers not public resolvers. But you used the term "non- recursive" so I thought maybe someone had finally tried.

One of the shortcomings of DNS IMO is that the specification allows for the possibility of including more than one name in a query. But no one has ever implemented this, as far as I know.

Despite the design of the DNS, most of the information stored in it is more static than dynamic, and much of it is centralized. Most dommainnames do not change IP addresses very often and there are very large numbers of domainnames sharing the same authoritative nameservers.

<comment><AUTHOR> For DNS cache snooping the usage would of course be different. You would supply the tool with one resolver which does not reject non-recursive queries. Theoretically, one could even perform traffic analyses of DNS resolvers by snooping.

Having implemented the --norecurse option, the title is at least not wrong anymore. One can have non-recursive, non-iterative resolver (which is what you use when you want to perform DNS cache snooping) and the title does not suggest that the tool supports iterative lookups.

Handling multiple questions within one packet is difficult because response codes such as NXDOMAIN are only included once per packet. AFAIK, bind does not support handling such queries.

<comment><USER6> "AKAIK, bind does not support handling such queries."

AKAIK, there is not a server in existence that handles such queries.

Cache snooping is not very reliable. I tested the 999 open resolvers listed in resolvers.txt for example.com and only 643 of them returned an answer. 13 of those answers were fake.

Moreover, there are at least hundreds of thousands of domainnames that will not be in any given cache.

Finally, most internet users are probably not using open resolvers. They are more likely using the ones provided by their ISP, which are not open.

Anyway, I doubt anyone is ever going to release a non-recursive resolver.

I have my own solution which is too embarrasing to release but I can tell you it is usually faster than a recursive resolver if the cache is not already primed with the right records.

To me, "non-recursive" resolution means something specific -- no use of DNS caches. And because of that there's no risk of "cache poisoning".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are the benefits of resolving DNS entries in a non-recrusive manner? A recursive resolve means that the final resolution of the domain is cached by the original DNS server that was queried along with all the servers it took to resolve. My understanding is that this behavior was ideal.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I mean by non-recursive in this case is that the program does not perform recursion by itself as it relies on a list of DNS resolvers. When querying these resolvers, the recursion bit is actually set. However, I agree that the title might be misleading but I am not sure how I could express that better.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, most titles I just brainstormed still suck in some way. Yours is technically true but only locally. Perhaps add something like you just said to the opening paragraph. That reduces confusion on what non-recursive means along with saving reader any wasted time if they were seeking something else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, in order to make it correct, I have implemented a --norecurse option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        if (packet->flags & DNS_RESPONSE_FLAG == 0 || packet->questioncount != 1)

I'm not sure that it does what you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the line of code that pre-checks whether an incoming packet should be parsed at all. If it is not a response packet or if the number of questions is not one, it should not be parsed, simply because the packet parsing function expects a reply packet with exactly one question, namely the one that has been queried for.

<comment><USER10> Operator precedence causes it to be interpreted as:

      if ((packet->flags & (DNS_RESPONSE_FLAG == 0)) || (packet->questioncount != 1))

which at least does not read as intended.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct. Has been fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You may want to test it with [http://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel- resources/domain-regis...](http://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel- resources/domain-registry-products/zone-file/index.xhtml)

</comment><comment><USER12> For easy comparability, request handling rates of tools like this are best described in terms of requests per second, not requests per hour. Also the hardware on which the benchmarks were performed needs to be described in detail.

Are you sure tinydns, which has existed for ages without security vulnerabilities, can't trivially handle 27k requests/second on modern hardware?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not heard about tindydns before but it seems to be a DNS server, not a client.

The tool has mainly been tested on a Hetzner EX41 server. (Ubuntu, Intel® Core™ i7-6700, 32 GB RAM)

<comment><USER12> Ah, you are correct. There is also dnscache, which is part of the same suite. However, it does not do what you are attempting to do.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Free social media publishing for teams - <AUTHOR> http://socialturn.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Developer here. I created this because it was getting very difficult to manage teams and social networking accounts. Because every time a team member would be re-assigned, the social networking account passwords would have to be changed. Security was becoming an issue. This allows you to publish to unlimited Facebook, Twitter accounts. Am adding other services like LinkedIn and Google+ (if they give API access) soon. This service is absolutely free as compared to any other options available online (Buffer for Businesses, Hootsuite etc.). You can add unlimited team members as well as accounts. You can schedule posts as well as use the recommended feature. Happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

<comment><USER2> You really should put all the benefits you've mentioned here on the landing page.

For a new, unknown service, any info on the landing page that helps understand it better will help towards convincing people to give it a try

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, will be adding this shortly. Thank you for your suggestion.</comment></comment></comment>


CSS Baseline: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/12/css-baseline-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ <comment><AUTHOR> The article is from 2012 but I haven't found any newer better way of accomplishing this. Does anyone has experience with this or ideas of how to do this?</comment>


Ask HN: How many $$$ per second does the US economy lose when EC2 goes down? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering :)<p>Anyone got a back-of-the-envelope calculation they want to share? <comment><USER2> If I had to guess, I'd say that's it amounts to a rounding error relative to the "US economy"

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't have the answer but will point out that many estimations will mistakenly forget to acknowledge that a certain percentage of web activity, possibly a large percentage, simply waits for services to come back online.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's probably up due to the fact that reddit is down too ;)</comment>


Ask HN: Which companies / people inspire you? - <AUTHOR>

Some people don't consider anybody as their role model but some do.
Let me start with myself.
Few people that inspires me the most are ...
Ryan Singer (37 Signals), Seth Godin (Marketing Guru), Paul Graham (YCombinator), Tony Hsieh (Zappos), Jason Fried (37 Signals) <comment><USER2> Barry Schwartz: [http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...](http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)

Richard Dawkins: [http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism...](http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html)

Martin Seligman: [http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psy...](http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html)

Philip Zombardo: [http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_o...](http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html)

Dan Ariely: [http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_o...](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html)

Bill Gates: <http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html>

Sir Ken Robinson: [http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_crea...](http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html)

Neil Tyson: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfAzaDyae-k> (and <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPLn9nv26NM>)

Especially Neil Tyson, as a matter of fact. I highly recommend anyone watch every single one of his videos on Youtube, if only to reap some of his overflowing passion.

</comment><comment><USER3> My top 5 (non tech and in no particular order):

        Ronaldinio
        MF Doom
        Madlib
        Bansky
        Aaron McGruder</comment>


Live Streaming solution. - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Obviously there is a lot of tech guys here, and since I know nothing about "live streaming technologie" I was wondering if you could help me to understand something.
I would like to create a based community website which propose "live streaming classes".
The teacher would be able to choose between asking a fee for people who want to enter the classe, leave it free, and, why not, just ask for donation.
The think is, I cant conceptualize in my head, how the streaming part work. Should I consider live streaming services supplier ? or should I host it on my own ?
Is someone enough kind could help me to understand this please ? <comment><USER2> Consider a turnkey streaming service or one of the major CDNs that provide such things instead of running streaming infrastructure yourself.

What about a "Kickstarter for courses?" (that one's free folks) where potential instructors propose a course and syllabus etc and if they can generate enough interest in x days then it moves forward and you take a cut to cover the live streaming + small margin and hopefully record the lectures along with the questions and answers from students.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is... actually, not a bad idea :) Thank you, will consider it during the week end.</comment></comment>


Technology behind LinkedIn Signal - <AUTHOR> http://sna-projects.com/blog/2010/10/linkedin-signal-a-look-under-the-hood/

<comment><USER2> Intriguing post, but for some vague reason their approach sounds overly complex.

I haven't thought about this in any detail but the problem they're trying to solve with Signal is allowing you to search and filter your social/professional stream, but I suppose the volume of data they're dealing with super high which is why they need faceted search and a "distributed realtime searchable database"

Or perhaps it just sounds complicated because there's way too many buzzwords in the post.

The distributed messaging queue (Kafka) sound cool though.</comment>


Masks banned in Canadian riots - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/11/04/masks-banned-in-canadian-riots-just-in-time-for-anonymous-day-of-action/

<comment><USER2> _Hopefully, Canadian law enforcement will respect the letter and spirit of the law and arrest only those who commit violent crimes._

When has that ever happened? In my experience, law enforcement _always_ stretches it's powers to the limit, and only retreats when courts or legislatures explicitly set limits. Now, there are limits in this law: the protestor wearing the mask has to be doing something illegal before wearing the mask becomes a crime in itself. But who makes the determination on the scene as to whether the protestor is doing something illegal? Law enforcement. So, while the intent of the law will is to reduce the damage done by masked protestors, the effect of the law will be to give law enforcement yet another legal club to use against all protestors, peaceful or not. After all, if the Occupy Wall Street protests have taught us anything, it is that law enforcement sees any defiance of its authority, no matter how peaceful, as dangerous and illegal. Therefore, my prediction is that this law against masks will be used indiscriminately, against _all_ protestors, peaceful or not. For that reason, I think this is a terrible law and that it should be repealed as soon as possible.</comment>


Cloudflare Reports Massive Slowdown in Network Level DDoS Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-new-ddos-landscape/ <comment><USER2> After RSnake introduced slowloris in 2009, it's been something of a minor miracle that L7 attacks have stayed as rare as they have until now. Don't understand why SYN Floods have been the preferred way to DDoS until recently- they've been obsolete for nearly a decade..

<comment><USER3> Slowiris doesn't affect an async server like nginx, which Cloudflare deploys.

<comment><USER4> You need to configure it properly, though, otherwise you can still easily hit the open file descriptors limits in the OS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > eventually leading to hundreds of Android apps being removed and a process > started to remove the malware-ridden apps from all devices.

So if you download the wrong app, your phone is now part of a botnet and that bandwidth you pay for is part of a DDOS attack. Scary.

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought this is the older way of doing DDoS, like replicating user's behaviour and overwhelming the server with repeated requests. And it's very obvious that any public facing API should be heavily cached and rate limited, in fact, all the major application frameworks provide easy to implement code for these.

But yeah, more developers should be aware of the possibility of this.

<comment><USER7> I am not a ddos mitigation expert, but I am under the impression that the remedies you mention are only going to help with relatively small attacks. It is very inexpensive to buy enough DDOS capacity to saturate a whole server's CPU just decoding requests. Caching and rate limiting aren't going to help you much then.

If you're a serious target these days, you basically need to have your services behind one of the big solutions. Rolling your own is far too expensive for any but the largest players. Cloudflare, GCE, and I'm sure many others offer ddos mitigation for grownups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Cloudflare Reports Massive Slowdown in Ability to Get Publicity From Volume- metric DDOS Attacks."</comment>


Show HN: My exercise bike hooked up to an xbox - pedal faster to drive faster. - <AUTHOR> http://projectexcitebike.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> I am presently typing this from my exertainement bike :)

It's a recumbent stationary bicycle to which I installed a little platform where my laptop stand. I can watch movies, play games, browse Internet social news sites while not feeling guilty for not working.

When I feel zealous I even read technical material, code and do anything that is considered work, however it's more difficult to keep a good cadence when doing too serious stuff.

<comment><USER3> I could see such a setup with a hook between your pedaling and the sleep system of the computer: if you stop pedaling, it goes to sleep quickly. It shouldn't be too hard for someone who knows what he's doing.

Next step is authorizing all the "time-wasters" (hulu, HN...) only on that computer. It would surely work for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should checkout the web cycle: [http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/webcycle-provides- pedal-p...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/webcycle-provides-pedal- powered-internet-reason-to-dodge-browse/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As I've been working on this I've been kicking around the idea of having a small run of these produced. The design is quite practical for this, but the economics are questionable. I feel like at best I'd make my contracting rate, and at worst lose my capital. But it would be fun. Any feedback in that regard?

<comment><USER4> What are the cost of goods on components/labor? It seems like it would be worthwhile to manufacture a small run, if you think you can make your contracting rate. There seems to be bit of a move towards proprietary hardware (Boxee, Smith & Tinker, FitBit) in the star tup world so bringing a physical/electronic product to market is a neat/valuable experience.

Worst case you could just make it a "kit" and sell through AdaFruit or Sparkfun, in that case your cost will just be parts, a cardboard box and some miscellaneous packing materials.

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably 20-30 in parts + 30 dollars for the controller + labor. Yes I would have to sell the xbox control with some minor labor done on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I will buy the Natal version. Maybe you can patent some version of an exercise controller hooked up to a 3d camera system?

This is a really cool thing to have built; I remember playing a game of exactly this nature at Disneyworld more than than ten years ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm very curious if Natal will be able to pick up that kind of skeletal movement and get the kind of fidelity necessary. If so it's clearly a better solution than mine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really want to try this! I want to try it with an elliptical. I currently have a little TV in front of it, do you think a projector would be more immersive == more exercise?

Are the 5 sensors really necessary, or would it be ok with just one?

<comment><USER7> If your goal is to create a more immersive experience to encourage yourself to run more, I'd really suggest plotting an outdoor course[1] and trying to run the whole thing. I found nothing motivates me more than that: you always have a set goal and destination in mind, your scenery's always changing, you're outside!, and you can keep tabs on how well you feel past certain landmarks and watch yourself improve over time.

[1] I use gmap-pedometer.com

<comment><USER6> Very good point. I was loving running outdoors but then my knees started bothering me :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Folks, we have a 1st place winner of the _2010 HN Science Fair_ here. Seriously though, way to think outside the box. X-Box that is, lol.

Really though, nice job, I'm impressed. This is an interesting invention.

</comment><comment><USER9> This would be really cool if it used Power instead of speed....

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that would be a good twist on it, but in a way it always supports that; you can adjust the top speed and bike resistance yourself. The only difference is you need to adjust both controls at once instead of just changing one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This would be much better if speed was a function of |current_bpm - target_bpm|. Rewarding you based on how fast you're pedaling makes no sense.

<comment><USER11> For a racing game, that wouldn't work well at all. You can't change your heart rate with sufficient speed to control a vehicle.</comment></comment>


You Can't Trust What You Read About Nutrition - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-cant-trust-what-you-read-about-nutrition/ <comment><USER2> When I worked in a nutrition department it was common knowledge that people are awful at recalling and reporting what they eat. Obese post-menepousal women in the study would, with a straight face, tell you that all they ate that day was a half cup of green beans. You'd look at their food records and it was physically impossible for them to be alive much less obese on the food they reported they ate. Humans are not only awful at reporting what they ate, they have difficulties even seeing it through the distortions of what they want to see. These are the difficulties associated with nutrition research and one of the reasons why there is so much confusion about what we should eat.

<comment><AUTHOR> My thinking was that by, say, taking a phone snap of your plate at each meal (some chap in the UK did this a few years ago to convince himself to eat less/better) you could produce a more objective record.

Challenge: can you calculate approximate calorific values from images of food on a plate?

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, this has been the approach of a dietary study being conducted by a group doing research on a circadian-focused pattern of eating. The study uses a mobile app as part of their distributed clinical trial design. Participants take pictures of their food with only the option of further journaling. Kind of cool.

Here's the website for the trial (& app)...

[http://www.mycircadianclock.org/](http://www.mycircadianclock.org/)

Here's a video of the principal investigator (Satchin Panda) talking about his research...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-eqJDQ2nU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-eqJDQ2nU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those interested in evidence-based nutrition, I highly recommend [https://nutritionfacts.org/](https://nutritionfacts.org/)

P.S. Dr. Greger's book is a great resource as well. He does a really good job of checking and referencing quality articles from peer-reviewed journals while looking at the balance of the evidence: [https://nutritionfacts.org/book/](https://nutritionfacts.org/book/)

<comment><USER5> first link on there is about cholesterol, and is completely incorrect. they are going back and forth between talking about dietary cholesterol and cholesterol levels in the body as if they are interchangeable. this is an incorrect understanding of human biology.

for anyone looking at this site, i'd be very careful about believing anything it says without doing further research for yourself.

<comment><USER6> Not really "incorrect". Dietary cholesterol does effect cholesterol amounts in the body, in addition to other food intake, hormones etc.

<comment><USER7> "Might be true given a million other factors" isn't really the sort of truth you're looking for when trying to get advice.

<comment><USER6> There aren't million other factors. Saying that cholesterol is affected only by saturated fat is not true. just like saying it doesn't affect it at all.

there is no coherent nutrition advice available at the moment, other than observational evidence of various diseases forming when a population is fed an improper diet.

for example, if starchivores like apes are given huge amounts of sugary foods, they will develop atherosclerosis, the same happens if they're given huge amounts of fatty foods. if carnivores were fed huge amounts of fatty foods, they don't get atherosclerosis, only if you do not remove their thyroid gland, if they on the other hand are fed sugary foods, they develop atherosclerosis. so the mechanism involved in absorbing fat and using it (through various types of cholesterol - lipoproteins), seems to be different between the herbivores, omnivores, carnivores. interesting thing about this is that the discrete classification is faulty and that different hormonal balance can give rise to no or different disease.

there's plenty of examples like this one. but it has nothing to do with the individual as population statistic is quite different from needs of an individual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If we're having a thread on nutrition, I want to ask HN about Kefir (fermented milk/yogurt from Russia/East Europe), whether they have tried it, and why there isn't more interest in it considering it has a lot of health benefits?</comment>


Introducing paid subscriptions on GitLab.com - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2017/04/11/introducing-subscriptions-on-gitlab-dot-com/ <comment><USER2> I was already starting to resign having to restrict my CI jobs to skip certain long-running but less-important tasks. But:

> The CI usage cap only applies to private projects on GitLab.com. As part of > our commitment to the open source community, our goal is to continue to > offer unlimited minutes on public projects.

Awesome :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Paid subscriptions are a really good reason to start using gitlab because it promises that they'll be around in the long run.

<comment><USER4> This is a common meme, but unless you are privy to the company's internal financials, you really can't say whether a paid subscription model is more sustainable than others. Just ask newspapers and magazines.

There are many products and services I've paid for that are no longer provided.

Sometimes companies even cancel profitable services that are a distraction from their core business.

<comment><USER3> Having run a couple of companies both with and without an income stream judging by that experience I strongly believe that companies with an income stream are generally speaking more solid than those without. Yes, of course there are odd ducks but as a general rule it is a pretty good one.

And given that this _is_ their core business I don't see them canceling it any time soon.

<comment><USER4> But is adding this subscription a sign that their previous subscription and other revenue efforts are insufficient, and therefore they are flailing for a viable business model and going under in N months unless this really takes off?

Or is it a sign that they are being conservative and responsible and taking the long view on their finances?

You simply cannot tell from the simple fact that they are adding a subscription option.

Edit: If Google or Facebook added a paid subscription model, would you say: "Paid subscriptions are a really good reason to start using [google/facebook] because it promises that they'll be around in the long run."? Would you interpret that to mean they were likely to be better off in a couple of months?

Profitability is the critical factor, not revenue. The Pets.com CEO /bragged/ about $45 million in revenue - with a loss of $150 million...

<comment><USER5> > Edit: If Google or Facebook added a paid subscription model, would you say:

They both do, they sell the ads and users data

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been a huge supporter of gitlab the last few years and have brought it into a few companies. The latest company we opted for their githost.io offering where you get your own instance to avoid the performance issues that they have had with gitlab.com Unfortunately this has really painful with random unannounced outages and the inability to get insight to what is going on when all of a sudden your disk is filling up. Today I woke up to a bunch of messages from developers on my team wondering why it was offline. Only option was to submit a support ticket and hope that I would get a response some time today. It was acknowledged about 2 hours later, but we are still seeing instability. Looking at my ticket history I see that I have filed various tickets every 2-3months for the instance not being available. Not having access to your company git repositories or the CI flow for a day is really unacceptable, and they need to do a lot to show me that throwing money at them will solve it.

<comment><USER7> Sorry to hear about your issues with GitHost - feel free to share any ticket IDs and we can look into it further on our side.

<comment><USER6> Tickets from the last year excluding application bugs, that resulted in downtime. I did not get any notification of outages on these. Everything has been resolved and I am very happy with the product when it is working. I get that some of these are due to companies you rely on for your infrastructure.

#26561 Server Not Responding (No reponse for over a day)

#24895 500 on Application Settings (17 hour for response 24 for fix)

#29731 Sever Not Responding (disk full with no warning [actually at 67% but that hangs backups]) Solution expand block storage which failed several times.

#41739 Repositories Unavailable (Githost infrastructure failure moving storage to block storage)

#45163 DNS failure (DYN Attack)

#22524 Expired SSL Certificate

#72593 Server Not Responding (Data Center Outage)

<comment><USER8> That are a lot of issues, I sorry that you've had all those problems with GitHost.io.

GitHost.io is a service we've offered because GitLab.com was not usable for everyone. One of the problems was the latency of GitLab.com. We're making good progress in fixing that.

Are there other things that keep you on GitHost.io? We've heard that people want LDAP sync and we're planning to bring this to GitLab.com. Is there anything else we should focus on?

<comment><USER6> Not to be snarky but our instance is still non-responsive.

<comment><USER9> Personally, I think there's a lot of Wizard of Oz going on with gitlab. Put up a decent front so far but utterly incoherent/incompetent behind the scenes.

<comment><USER10> I don't agree, their product is awesome and they don't seem any more or less incoherent/incompetent than any other startup/small company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On the page it shows the plan has "All Enterprise Starter features" but there's no obvious link to what the "Enterprise Starter features" are. Had to dig around the site to find it [1].

1: [https://about.gitlab.com/products/](https://about.gitlab.com/products/)

<comment><USER12> This section specifically has the comparisons: [https://about.gitlab.com/products/#compare- options](https://about.gitlab.com/products/#compare-options)

<comment><USER8> Add we'll add a link to that from the page in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www- gitlab-com/merge_requests/5645)

Update: It is live

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Plans don't seem to have a monthly payment instead of annual: [https://customers.gitlab.com/subscriptions/new?plan_id=2c92a...](https://customers.gitlab.com/subscriptions/new?plan_id=2c92a0ff5a840412015aa3cde86f2ba6)

P.S. Why do I need to enter my login again after signing in via Gitlab API?

P.P.S. Group pricing seems unfair. I will be paying 4x for 4 users with the same amount of CI minutes split across 4 users?

<comment><USER7> We're currently only doing annual billing, we may look into monthly billing in the future.

The billing application is a separate app and effectively oAuths with GitLab - you should just be able to click on the login button and if you are already authenticated, grant permission to the billing app.

Interestingly, we've found little to no correlation between the number of users in a group and CI usage. Moving forward, the plans are going to be much more feature-centric than just CI minutes, hence the per user per month pricing model.

<comment><USER3> I think if you bill your customers per year it would be fair to list the prices per year as well rather than 'per user per month'. You're setting up an expectation of a monthly billing cycle with the option to cancel monthly as well. Principle of least surprise and all that.

<comment><USER12> Fair criticism, I've brought it up with the team. Thanks :)

<comment><USER8> We will fix it in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab- com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab- com/merge_requests/5645)

<comment><USER3> Super. That's a pretty quick turn around :)

<comment><USER7> That's live now, thanks for your help.

[https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/)

<comment><USER3> You're more than welcome and I'm super impressed with the speed with which you take feedback like this and put it to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One HUGE drawback is that now free plan is basically Community Edition, and you should pay for Enterprise features such as autosquash commits etc. I thought that Gitlab.com is a showcase of full edition, and you buy it for self hosting if needed.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've experienced so much downtime and other random outages with GitLab that I would probably just go to GitHub if I was going to pay for something.

<comment><USER7> We've been doing a huge amount of work on performance and availability over the last number of releases [1] and are continuing to make big advancements in our infrastructure [2] to host millions of projects on GitLab.com. Expect this to be a lot better now and in the future, especially as this marks a big step in GitLab.com's maturity.

[1] [https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab- org/issues?label_name%5B%5D...](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab- org/issues?label_name%5B%5D=performance&scope=all&state=closed) [2] [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/infrastructure/issues?scope=al...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/infrastructure/issues?scope=all&state=closed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Legal at my current and I think any company I have worked at would never approve use because of the terms of service. Issues include but may not be limited to unrestricted use of name and logo for promotional purposes, changes to the terms including material ones are without notice or any time period before they take effect, and binding arbitration in The Netherlands. I would have expected the terms to more closely resemble those of the githost.io service.

Besides the legal issues there is the issue of no availability or performance SLAs. Given Gitlab's performance and availability track record this is a non starter. Especially when combined with the annual billing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there an online document, with the current working backup/recovery/verification procedures? I need some type of guarantee that my data is actually safe, and being backed up properly, before I put money into GitLab.

<comment><USER3> You should ask those questions for any SaaS offering, as well as how easy it is to export all your data.

<comment><USER17> Particularly ones who only recently learned about proper backup procedures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Will paid accounts get faster and more responsive service on the website? One of the biggest issues we have with GitLab right now is the speed and reliability of the website and service. Very often (for a service used/depended on daily by our team) the website would be extremely slow to load, and sometimes our CI/CD pipeline would hang.

<comment><USER12> We've been improving performance for all users over the last year, in the last few weeks we introduced a custom load balancer among other things.

One thing these changes _should_ do is decrease the strain on the shared runners so you don't need to wait as long for the CI/CD pipelines to run. Right now we have some people/projects using a lot more resources than others, which was causing some of the back-up.

We can't really make the site faster only for specific users, and even if we could I don't think we would.

That said, with a proper revenue stream we'll be able to focus more resources toward performance on GitLab.com, so you should see continued improvement.

You can look through our issues labeled performance for GitLab CE[1], the infrastructure issue tracker[2], or our Gitaly project[3] for some examples of progress.

[1]: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues?scope=all&utf...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name\[\]=performance)

[2]: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/infrastructure/issues](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/infrastructure/issues)

[3]: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitaly](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitaly)

<comment><USER8> I wanted to add that the problem of the performance of GitLab.com was not because of the revenue but because of our focus and the fast growth. The revenue will help with paying the hosting bills as we keep growing.

And we'll make GitLab.com fast for everyone, including the free users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> GitLab benefits a lot from Azure and DO credits / free usage. Since they will stay in the cloud the costs will be huge looking into the future and I think it's only a matter of time until the private repos won't be free anymore. No company likes to lose money.

</comment><comment><USER20> I doubt their infrastructure would scale well, even with more income. They still haven't adopt WebSocket/Rails 5, and this would attract more CI runners to DDoS their database.

<comment><USER21> This sounds like you threw in a few buzzwords. Why would a CI runner DDoS their database? How would WebSockets help them scale?

<comment><USER20> They doesn't use any long polling method but periodical fetching method for getting pending CI jobs. This causes massive lock on their database, and once it bring down the server entirely.

<comment><USER22> Heya,

Just wanted to let you know that we introduced long pooling with GitLab Runner version 1.9.0 (~ three months ago).

Also you might want to take a gander at [https://about.gitlab.com/2017/04/10/upcoming-runner- changes-...](https://about.gitlab.com/2017/04/10/upcoming-runner-changes-for- gitlab-dot-com/) We're throttling older runners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting. I would be curious to see how this works out. My understanding was that people went to GitLab for the same reason they went to bitbucket - unlimited private repos.

<comment><USER24> But that's not changing. The free plan retains unlimited private repositories. The only thing that's changing for free is the amount of time they can run CI for free.

As noted in both the article you're commenting on and their (linked in that same article) product[1] site that lists the different plans:

      FREE
      2,000 CI pipeline minutes per month
      Unlimited private projects and collaborators

[1]: [https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab- com/)

<comment><USER23> I should have been more clear. (In my mind) The primary reason why people go to gitlab.com was for "free" tier. This is basically for free everything. Now that CI is paid, I am wondering how this will work out.

For me, this is great news. I generally tend to steer away from free (as in beer) products from startups since it is a sure shot sign of things to come (again, personal opinion).

<comment><AUTHOR> CI is still free. For public repos nothing changes related to CI. For private repos, the build time is limited. However, you always can use a custom runner for your private repo to have unlimited minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How do you know how many CI minutes you have used?

</comment><comment><USER26> The only reason I use GitLab is that they allow me to host private repos for free. Otherwise I'd be using another service, one that's more reliable and has actual users... its name begins with GitHu and ends with b

<comment><USER27> Seems like this will not change though</comment></comment>


Illustration in the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.subtraction.com/2018/05/22/illustration-in-the-app-store/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the Golden Age of home arcade gaming.

Atari box art told a story the cartridge just couldn't deliver.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author is wrong that Google and Microsoft don't do this level of illustration - they do and have for a while. They just do it on their home search screens, not on their App Stores

<comment><USER4> Do you have some examples? I have not encountered either. I'm familiar with bing showcasing interesting photos, which is fun, but not at all comparable to an editorial team commissioning graphical illustration for their content.

<comment><USER5> Believe the parent is referring to the iconic and world famous Google Doodles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When graphic design looks the same everywhere, illustration becomes a differentiating factor. Great to see illustration taking this direction again.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just to provide credit; I believe the sole photo in that entire set was taken by Cole Wilson. Not %100 sure, but it wreaks of his style and composition.

[https://www.instagram.com/colewilson](https://www.instagram.com/colewilson)

</comment><comment><USER8> The editorial additions are just lipstick on a pig. The most important feature (decent search functionality) continues to be absent.

<comment><USER9> Apart from including publisher results in a way that doesn't differentiate those results from apps themselves (a different icon would _really_ help), I really can't say I have any complaints with search. That said, I tend to know the name of the app I want, rather than searching for apps with certain features, so in most cases I'm doing a very basic string match search.

I expect that Apple's approach to curation and discovery helps somewhat lessen the need for better search.</comment></comment>


Parallel Query for Amazon Aurora - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-parallel-query-for-amazon-aurora/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like they can do predicate pushdown to the storage nodes now. And...mainly beneficial for medium-to-highly selective scans of mostly uncached tables?</comment>


Using Facebook JS SDK with Ember.js - <AUTHOR> http://blog.luansantos.com/2012/03/06/using-facebook-js-sdk-with-emberjs/

<comment><USER2> Wow... it really helped me, thank you man!</comment>


Ask HN: What's the right subset of the C++ language? - <AUTHOR> Some common complaints that some people have with C++ is that the codebase often becomes unmaintainable and that people use the "wrong" subset of the language.
What's the right subset of C++ to work with? What's the wrong one? Any references would be appreciated.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> It depends on your project.

Embedded projects that use C++ like to stick to specific features/rules to minimize things like hidden dynamic allocations etc. e.g. std library is sometimes forbidden on some embedded projects. But if you understand the std lib you can use it still and avoid hidden dynamic allocations etc.

Because it depends so much on the project, that is why project standards and coding guidelines become fairly critical regardless of language.

And I disagree when I hear people say the wrong subset of the C++ language. I'd argue instead that it is no different then most any language, for example, C# or Java. Both of which I would avoid parts of the language and included frameworks in some cases and use them in others.

As far as unmaintainable, I have absolutely seen a ton of C/C++ that is nearly unmaintainable. But I have seen equally as much Java, C# and Javascript that is the same, so it is more about architecture and engineering then just the language. I am also a firm believer of choosing my language based on the problem I am solving, the wrong language can make your life difficult and make code maintenance much harder.

</comment><comment><USER3> For what purpose?</comment>


We are Nostalrius, a World of Warcraft fan-made game server. AMA - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/4droz4/we_are_nostalrius_a_world_of_warcraft_fanmade/ <comment><USER2> Not entirely the same thing, but somewhat related: I used to run the largest Ragnarok Online private server for its time, and this AMA is really nostalgic. Well, except how great their community seems to be.

All throughout running a server, I asked myself whether the community was unbecoming (not just towards us, but towards each other), or whether we (and the servers before us) were just doing a terrible job at fostering a positive environment. A few years after we shut down our server, I heard a rather famous League of Legends player had started a private RO server, and a few months later, heard that he flipped out and told the community to f--- off, shutting the server down.

It's hard for many people to imagine a community more "toxic" than in League, so I had just figured, perhaps the failure wasn't our fault. Reading the comments in this AMA really makes me think though, that there was actually a solution, and we had just failed in community management.

My words of wisdom here: lots of people focus on product development, but the community is often just as, if not more important; don't neglect it.

<comment><USER3> I played on Nostalrius for a bit. The sense I got was that the community was mostly populated by older people (by internet gaming community standards, at least) who quit WoW years ago and wanted to relive the experience. So the baseline of maturity was a bit higher than average, and people got along well. On top of that, while there were various 4chan/reddit/insert-notorious- community-here guilds, they mostly kept to themselves outside of world PvP.

I played a tiny bit of RO back in the day, and instead got the impression that the community was mostly populated by teenaged anime fans, so of course the baseline for maturity was lower. And with the way the web was so much more fragmented back then, most of the kinds of people that today would make a thread in a notorious community saying "hey there's a new private server launching, anyone wanna start a guild?" would instead have to be obnoxious in the in-game chat until they found like-minded people.

I wouldn't beat yourself up too much wondering about how you could have done things differently, because at the end of the day the intrinsic appeal of certain games to certain demographics has by far the greatest effect on what kind of community will develop around it, and if you're making a direct clone of an existing game, your hands are obviously tied. In all likelihood, it was out of your control from the moment you turned the server on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I loved Blizzard when I was a kid, playing Starcraft for hours on end till my parents told me to go to bed. Then I started playing Wacraft 3 oh boy was I addicted. Sadly the Warcraft 3 phase died for me with Warcraft 3. World of Warcraft just didn't cut it for me, it really wasn't the same type of game and I couldn't see the creativity of players with custom maps anymore. I loved the maps of Warcraft 3 like "Life of a Peasant" and on Starcraft I loved "Evolves" and similar maps. I bought Starcraft 2 but I never really got back into it, not yet anyway. I'm currently on Linux so it'll be complicated for me to play any Blizzard games anytime soon.

<comment><USER5> I'm no expert, but it's interesting enough to note that League of Legends was born out of a Warcraft 3 map/mod.

Had Blizzard stifled their freedom to create (they used to provide a map editor with earlier games), the worlds most popular video game may not exist.

<comment><USER4> There's also DOTA 2 which was a mod of Warcraft 3 as well. Valve decided to make a sequel to it, I think they hired the guy who created the mod if I remember correctly. They did similar with some other games, I guess since a number of Valve's own games were made out of mods for their own games.

<comment><USER6> Dota 2 was not a mod, Dota was the mod. And Blizzard did not hire the guy that created the mod. Valve hired Icefrog who maintained the mod after the original creator(s) left to go create LoL/Riot. Icefrog went on to create Dota 2 at Valve, while the actual creators of the moba genre (the original Dota mod) created LoL. Blizzard not hiring either the creators or the maintainer (Icefrog) of the Dota mod has to be one of their biggest mistakes imo.

<comment><USER7> There was a Mona in Starcraft too. Dota was just the game that refined the concept enough for it to become mainstream.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Learning Golang – favourite resources? - <AUTHOR> It's time I picked up another language, and Golang looks to sit in a nice spot (as well as teaching me new concepts cf Python).<p>Since it's been around a while yet continued evolving, which books/resources/courses do you recommend for learning it? <comment><USER2> I found William Kennedy's blog to be invaluable when learning Go. He's also a top bloke.

[https://www.goinggo.net](https://www.goinggo.net)</comment>


Abruptly WFH: What Changed and What Stayed the Same - <AUTHOR> https://linearb.io/blog/abruptly-wfh-what-changed-what-stayed-the-same/ <comment><AUTHOR> Is everyone else seeing the same impact on cycle time?

</comment><comment><USER2> How do you calculate cycle time?</comment>


Ask HN: How is routing done on maps? - <AUTHOR>

Ask HN: How is routing done on maps?
I've seen Google and Yahoo doing routing on maps but now even a small startup in my locality have a routing API (so it sounds that its not expensive). How do they find out routes on maps?
Is there any method to do it? I'm trying to solve a problem that needs routing data and would like to know the route points of service roads etc, which Google or Yahoo Maps do not show (they mark only the shortest routes). <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure Google uses a variant of Dijkstra's algorithm by default.

Here's a thread where they go through how to use Dijkstra's manually with the GMaps API:

[http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps- API/browse_thread...](http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps- API/browse_thread/thread/1b5d38969d72dc0c)

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out <http://www.openstreetmap.org>. They provide open-source map data and code (like rana which has a module for routing) that does least-cost routing. There are a variety of approaches based on simple graph algorithms like naive A*.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but I need to have the routing points right?

 _naive A_ * Can you explain?

And what's rana? All I need is route points between places even for service roads via programatic access (an API). I would like links to free resources (I'm a student)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I wasn't sure what kind of answer you were looking for. OSM provides exports of the street data which gives you the ability to either:

A. Run a pre-existing routing program on it, such as <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Rana>, or

B. Write your own (which would require knowledge of algorithms such as <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm>)

There are also services where people do these things for you, and for low volume, they might not mind if you programmatically scrape their results. A good example is <http://www.batchgeocode.com/>

Properly, Rana isn't intended as a package for programmatic access, but it does include code which does what you want:

* <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/PyrouteLib> \- Pyroute is probably exactly what you want.

* Rana's routing module: <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Rana/Modules#route>

<comment><AUTHOR> I just tried Gosmore (found about it on the OSM wiki). installing it on my ubuntu seems to be a bit tricky, so I haven't yet installed it (some errors).

Rana and Pyroute sound cool to me since they are in PYthon. And the software requirements to run rana or Pyroute match my system (linux). So I'll choose one of those after trying both.

Thanks for the tip

<comment><USER3> Sure thing. You may as well try Pyroute first, since the system requirements there are a subset of the Rana requirements (it doesn't require GTK or Cairo, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Though Google shows the shortest route by default, you can drag the line to select alternate routes, and the instant updating suggests the other paths are already locally loaded. So their APIs may already provide (or leak) enough info for you.

But even if they don't, you can probably buy the same data from their source or another provider. (See that little 'Tele Atlas' copyright at the bottom of Google Maps? Or 'NAVTEQ' at the bottom of Yahoo Maps?)

<comment><USER5> I haven't done a lot of research on this but don't they use a few metrics other than just the basic distance between the two end points? I would think it is a weighted average of a few metrics. Distance, average time(they have traffic data), number of stop lights, etc....

<comment><USER4> AFAICT, they prefer shortest time route, not shortest distance.</comment></comment></comment>


Google-flavored Bootstrap theme - <AUTHOR> http://todc.github.com/google-bootstrap/index.html

<comment><USER2> You have permission from Google to use their name? Google is a trademarked word, <http://www.google.com/permissions/> , I would suggest a rapid name change.

As it stands this is clear trademark infringement [http://www.google.com/permissions/trademark/our- trademarks.h...](http://www.google.com/permissions/trademark/our- trademarks.html).

<comment><USER3> Of course they do! That would be copyright infringement otherwise!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"License: Public Domain"_

I don't believe the author here is legally able to do that, since it's a derivative work of Twitter Boostrap (Under the Apache).

Correct me if I'm mistaken.

</comment><comment><USER5> So...regular bootstrap but "flat" buttons? I like it, but it seems they just copied everything over including the "Built with Bootstrap" examples even though those are bootstrap and not Google Bootstrap. Even the "examples" are regular bootstrap.

Really just a bit different colors and making the buttons flat is all that is changed yet they have the entire site/examples.

<comment><USER6> All the buttons are Google buttons' color scheme. Took me a while to notice that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe this should have been a theme submitted to bootswatch rather than it's own site?

</comment><comment><USER8> Can you specify what relation to Google this project has?

</comment><comment><USER9> Title: Google flavoured bootstrap theme

</comment><comment><USER10> The author of this Bootstrap theme has clarified the license and change the name of the repo available here now <https://github.com/todc/todc-bootstrap>

</comment><comment><USER11> Dupe from 1 day ago with 6 comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5151445>

</comment><comment><USER12> Lame... why not simply use bootswatch to create a Google theme?

</comment><comment><USER13> get a lawyer

</comment><comment><USER14> There's some serious NIH-ism at Google.

<comment><USER15> I don't think the author of this fork works at Google.

<comment><USER14> You may be right, but I recognize some of Google's design language in this fork. Look at the buttons for example, they are flatter than those in the original work by Twitter.

<comment><USER16> I think the author called it Google Bootstrap because it has google style elements. I suspect the name of this project will have to be changed to not include the Google trademark.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why do many corpses found in Europe's peat bogs show signs of violent death? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/27/dark-matter/the-curious-case-of-the-bog-bodies <comment><USER2> I don't find the thesis convincing. Bogs sound like a "gateway to the spiritual world" in the same way the Hudson River is for American gangsters - a great place to stash a body you don't want found. Particularly the guy whose throat was slit.

<comment><USER3> I would disagree with this analysis. Since the bog is so successful at preserving the remains it would be a horrible place for "gangsters" or anyone murdering someone else, to dump a body. A body which years later would still be recognizable as the victim.

The notion of it being a "cheap" way to bury people which was unlikely pass disease along to the village and would be nominally odorless is more compelling to me. You need look no further than a modern equivalent in New York ([http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/15/nyregion/new-y...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/15/nyregion/new- york-mass-graves-hart-island.html?_r=0)).

So I am more likely to believe that it contains people who the elders dispatched or perhaps died in a crime without any family to claim.

<comment><USER2> >I would disagree with this analysis. Since the bog is so successful at preserving the remains it would be a horrible place for "gangsters" or anyone murdering someone else, to dump a body. A body which years later would still be recognizable as the victim.

Except nobody would find it unless you put it near somewhere inhabited. Surely the fact they were there for thousands of years is a testament to that.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the two hypotheses are mutually exclusive. A place well suited to a ritual burial (for the reasons of not attracting carion feeders or otherwise not poisoning resources normally used) would also be well suited to burying victims that people would want to hide.

To me, a bog seems like a place that would leave little trace on the surface relatively shortly after a burial. It would, as a result, serve just as well as a means of symbolically "sending someone to another realm" as it would concealing a murder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (Shrug) Seems like someone who's about to die peacefully of old age or disease would be inclined to do it somewhere other than a peat bog.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why? Because how many times have you fallen into a peat bog and couldn't get out?

</comment><comment><USER7> Misleading title: the tagline asks the question but the article does not attempt to answer it.

I think we should in this case use the original title "Why _Do_ So Many […]?" instead of rephrasing it to be an indirect question.

<comment><USER8> The article doesn't try to give a single definitive answer; instead it lists some of the probable causes for a range of different cases. Which is fine by me.

But I agree that the title here is unrepresentative is of the real article, noting that "Why do so many corpses found in Europe's peat bogs show signs of violent death?" is actually the subheading of the article's real title: "The Curious Case of the Bog Bodies".</comment></comment>


Iraq War's Manhattan Project- information warfare on the battlefield - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/print_friendly.php?ID=cs_20091114_3145

<comment><AUTHOR> Bob Woodward was going around talking about a Manhattan Project like breakthrough that was responsible for Iraq beginning to improve, but never said what it was.

From reading this article, it sounds like the NSA was identifying imminent insurgent attacks in real-time, and then feeding fake information to lead those attackers into traps so we could drop a bomb on them. It'll be interesting to read the full story when the inevitable books are written about it.</comment>


The Cowardice of Nick Denton - <AUTHOR> http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2015/07/18/the-cowardice-of-nick-denton/ <comment><USER2> I should point out that this post shaming the Conde Nast CFO followed about three raving angry posts against reddit that were submitted on the same day. Reddit of course is owned by Conde Nast. Considering that gawker usually has no more than 10-20 posts per day on the main site, it is extremely unusual for four of them to be aimed at the same company.

Furthermore, in an interview in pando daily, an ex Gawker editor said that Nick Denton once complained to him that silicon valley companies "do not fear me anymore."

For someone that has followed Gawker for many years now it is becoming increasingly likely that Nick Denton is using Gawker to scare/blackmail other companies to do his bidding. Gawker has always had periods of intense criticisms of some company (Google for example) that start and end suddenly without rhyme or reason.

The fact that Nick Denton eventually took down this post of course does not matter at all. The damage has been done.

My guess is that old Nick Denton wants something out of Conde Nast, and that is why he is applying full pressure.

</comment><comment><USER3> Agree 100% with this post.

Gawker's response to this controversy demonstrates that they are amoral. Yes, they fucked up by posting it in the first place, but the response--removing the post and having the CEO issue this mealy-mouthed non-apology reflects an unscrupulous mentality. A) you can't take something back on the Internet, you can only discuss and move on from it, and B) Denton isn't sorry for posting, and his tone amounts to "I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids."

Ever since Gizmodo got kicked out of CES for drunken stupidity I have not respected Gawker. Every time they sink to a new low, they embrace it with enthusiasm and pride. This latest example really shows their true colors though. Gawker has no moral compass. Anyone who advertises on any of their properties should be ashamed.

Someone should dox all their executives and see how they like that. Bonus points for taking it down the next day and saying "sorry, not sorry."

</comment><comment><USER4> The odd thing about this entire kerfuffle is that other Gawker network writers argue that the story should have stayed because of journalistic integrity. Natasha Vargas-Cooper of Jezebel posted "Stories don't need an upside. Not everyone has to feel good about the truth." ([https://twitter.com/natashavc/status/621858660319297536](https://twitter.com/natashavc/status/621858660319297536)) and Jason Schreier of Kotaku posted an interesting list of considerations ([http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=172267922#post1...](http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=172267922#post172267922)):

 _1) If a separate branch of your company did something that disgusted you, would you jump on Twitter to criticize it, or would you take the time to have conversations internally and see what was being done rather than getting angry on social media? Even if you were unhappy after that, do you believe raging publicly would help? Especially when you work for an entirely different entity and have nothing to do with decision-making at the branch in question?

2) Is it possible to simultaneously believe A) that the article was vile and should have never been published; and B) that the business department of a news organization should never, ever have the right to make editorial decisions in any way?

3) Is it also possible to believe that no matter how harmful or horrible an article may be, it should never be removed, because that's not how the internet works? Because you can't just make something go away? And because when a news organization makes mistakes, the best move is to update, apologize, correct, clarify, follow up... not to erase something and pretend it never happened?_

This seems to indicate that the issue is more about ignorance of journalistic ethics than malice.

</comment><comment><USER5> I respectfully disagree with this on the grounds of hypocrisy. When the media splashes on the front pages the sordid sex lives of heterosexual people, no one bats and eye. It's eagerly repeated, reported, and becomes fodder for news pundits and comedians. Yet when it's a gay person, everyone loses their fucking minds. Why? I think that's hypocrisy and a double standard. I am a gay man and I think the outing of ANYONES private life, gay or straight or anything else, is a gross injustice.

</comment><comment><USER6> Gawker has been banned on HN for years. Spillover gawkery seems just as off- topic, not that the indignation isn't justified.

We've penalized this post, but won't kill it, because the thread has some good comments.</comment>


Meet the Bros of /r/WallStreetBets Who Lose Thousands of $ Day–And Brag About It - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/money/5405922/wall-street-bets/ <comment><USER2> What is going on in WSB is quite complex. You have:

1) Patsies who believe WSB advice and lose everything

2) Degenerate gamblers

3) People who photoshop fake gains/losses for teh lulz

As a result it is one giant exercise in delusion and I feel bad only for the people who lose a year's pay on options that have a 0.1% chance of breaking even.

<comment><USER3> You also have people who completely truthfully make a killing, not tricks no dishonesty. The thing is if you have people betting not up and down on the same thing and betting big, then somebody has to win, and more often then not the winners will post their story, leading to a biased image of a group that wins more than it loses.

<comment><USER2> Most of people doing the winning on options trading are the big institutions writing the options to the punters :(

<comment><USER4> The house always wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The tagline is 4chan combined with a Bloomberg terminal</comment>