180TB of Good Vibrations – Storage Pod 3.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibrations-storage-pod-3-0/ <comment><USER2> I think it's worth (re)reading this comment on the original Storage Pod from several years ago:

[http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/5899-Some-perspective-to- th...](http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/5899-Some-perspective-to-this-DIY- storage-server-mentioned-at-Storagemojo.html)

I have essentially have all of the same questions for Storage Pod 3.0 -- and in particular, what does the software stack look like? (This config is absolutely begging for ZFS, but I have a haunting feeling that something janky is afoot upstack.) I would also be curious as to the specific nature of failures that have been seen with the deployed architecture. Have the concerns from three years ago proven to be alarmist or prescient?

That said: I think it's very valuable to get configs like this out there for public discussion -- and I think it might be inspiring us (Joyent) to similarly publicly discuss our own high density storage config...

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. I'm not technically on the server team, but here is what I understand: we have 450-ish Backblaze pods (each with 45 hard drives) deployed in the datacenter. We are JUST NOW starting to see some old age mortality (increased failures) of the drives we deployed about 4 and a half years ago. We're really happy with the longevity, it exceeded everything we were told to expect.

We group the drives into 15 drive RAID6 groups, where there are 13 data drives and 2 parity drives. This means we can lose 2 drives and not lose any data in that particular RAID6 group. We use the built in Linux "mdadm" tools to do this.

The network interface to a pod is through HTTPS talking with Tomcat (Java web server). Java writes the data to disk (ext4 on top of the above RAID6). Our application (backup) is very specific and performance forgiving, essentially we write data once and then re-read it once every few weeks and recalculate the SHA-1 checksums on the files to make sure the data is all completely, totally intact and a bit hasn't been thrown somewhere.

One of the "luxurious" parts of working at Backblaze is we own BOTH the client and the server. On a customer's laptop, the client pre-digests the data, breaks it up into chunks that make sense (more than 5 MBytes and less than 30 MBytes) and then the client compresses it if appropriate (we don't compress movies or audio because it would be silly wasted effort) and the client encrypts the data, then sends it through HTTPS to our datacenter. Because the client computer is supplied by customers, all their CPU cycles are "free" to us. We can conveniently break up files, encrypt them, deduplicate (within that client) all without spending any CPU cycles at Backblaze because it is done on the customer's laptop before being sent.

Again, the Backblaze storage pods really aren't the correct solution for all "off the shelf" type IT projects. For example, it won't meet the performance needs of many applications. But it does work exceptionally reliably in our experience as a backup solution when you have one or two programmers to help implement a custom software layer in Java.

<comment><USER4> Wow, thanks for the explanation! I would love to learn more about the software you guys use!

One specific question, how do you know if the checksum is correct? Do you keep a database of checksums stored on a specific pod? And if the checksum is not correct, do you have other copies on other pods?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it should use ECC memory and an i3-CPU that supports it. Random memory bit flips in are going to corrupt data at a steady pace.

Intel i3 processors that support ECC: [http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&FamilyText=2nd...](http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&FamilyText=2nd%20Generation%20Intel%C2%AE%20Core%E2%84%A2%20i3%20Processors&ECCMemory=true)

Also, it'd be interesting to hear why Backblaze doesn't use SuperMicro SAS- boards instead with a SAS-expander, like HP SAS Expander.

<comment><USER3> Oh, about the "random memory flips" -> in our particular application, the client running on a customer's laptop encrypts the data then calculates a SHA-1 checksum THEN transmits the file through HTTPS to the pods. The pods write it to disk with the checksum there. Once every couple of weeks we re- read the file and re-calculate the SHA-1 checksums. If there was ever a problem, we would detect it. These turn out to be VERY rare, but they do happen where a file is fine for many years then a bit is flipped "on disk" (we don't think they are in the RAM, but it doesn't matter, it is an "end-to-end" check). We assume this is happening in consumer systems also, but at the rates we see it would be undetectable in consumer's worlds (1 bit per customer lifetime - it would probably create a tiny mis-spelling in a MS Word document, or maybe one pixel would be wrong in one JPEG).

<comment><USER6> Or 1 bit flip could corrupt and entire 128 bites block of AES encrypted data. Openssl would complain when trying to decypher the file giving a "bad magic number" error.

BTW, keep up the great work guys!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The serviceability of those things looks not pleasant. I used to work in the storage industry and got to play with (what is now) NetApp high-density setups [1]. 60 drives in a 4U setup, compared to 45 drives in Storage Pod in the same 4U. But I'm guessing the cost is where Storage Pod really wins out. NetApp gear, even as a JBOD, is really expensive.

The NetApp box has same type of padding for all the drives, but they are much easier to access (pull out trays are stable and easy to use).

Fun issues I saw with the NetApp box (at least 3 years ago): fully loaded with drives, it went over the weight limit that Fedex or UPS would ship with standard shipping. It required freight shipping to ship a single, full-loaded, E5400.

[1] <http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/e5400/>

<comment><USER8> Storage hardware startup here. We can do 72 drives in 4U for standard racks and 120 drives in 4U for deep racks, but it is difficult to service so we're only pushing to early adopters. However high-density servicability can be addressed. Our next system should have same drive numbers in 5U, much easier to swap drives. Not much can be done about the shipping problem, ha ha.

<comment><USER9> And what hardware startup might this be? I'm curious ;-)

<comment><USER8> Sup Yev! Evtron. We're in St. Louis. We have a call with Gleb on Wednesday. Love to chat some time: email@example.com / @israelvicars.

<comment><USER9> Hah, well I'll leave you guys to it ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Our monthly cost for a full rack of Storage Pods with 3 TB drives is $0.63 per TB, while a full rack of Storage Pods with 4 TB drives is $0.47 per TB. "

Interesting coincidence, 180TB of Google Storage comes out at $8560 per month which is $47.55 per TB. Almost exactly x100.

<https://developers.google.com/storage/docs/pricingandterms>

And that does not include the network cost.

<comment><USER11> Well either they're making 99% gross margin, or perhaps they need a few Backblaze Storage Pods.

<comment><USER12> The very high gross margin is more likely - they're charging as much as they can, not as little as they can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unrelated, from their FAQ:

"Look, I'm an Advanced User, and I Already Have a Set of RAID Drives with Perl Scripts to Copy My Files Back and Forth Between My 18 Home Machines that are in a Datacenter I've Built in My Closet. Why Do I Need Backblaze?"

Made me smile, probably because I have more machines than m^2 in my apartment...

<comment><USER14> And yet they don't have a *nix client...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love a good storage story. Its interesting that they still put them behind a couple of gigabit network ports. Using the native network (2 x 1GbE) it would take more than a week with those interfaces on full dump to get a full load off or on to a pod.

I had an ultimately unrewarding conversation with Sean Quinlan (of Google GFS fame) about the futility of putting a lot of storage behind such a small channel (in Google's case the numbers were epicly Google of course but the argument was the same). You waste all of the spindles because the operation rate (requests coming into the channel) vs the amount of data ops needed to satisfy the request, basically leave your disks waiting around the next request to come in from the network. (btw that allows you to make a nearly perfect emission rate scheduler for disk arms but that is another story).

What this means is that petabyte pods are going to be nearly useless, although with an external index they can be dense.

<comment><USER16> I could see it being a problem for Google, but Backblaze wants these for archival purposes, not something where there is going to be a lot of reading and writing. The write rate is going to be whatever speed their users upload stuff, divided by the total number of their storage pods. I assume this is relatively small. The read rate is going to be whatever speed their users download restores, divided by the total number of storage pods, which is probably much smaller still.

The assumption here is that data is kept for a long time relative to how frequently it's written and read, so the IO speed probably isn't that big of a deal.

<comment><USER17> No. As you said port speed doesn't matter for data at rest. What matters is ingest/exfil of data due to "exceptional" conditions. Prime cases are cluster/mirror failure. Remirroring existing data to another pod is port limited, as is ingest for pods that are remirror targets.

<comment><USER16> Is there any reason the sources and targets couldn't both be thoroughly distributed throughout the cluster? Nothing says hard drives have to be perfectly replicated, you just need multiple copies of the _data_. I'm imagining that a HD dies, and the extra copies of what it contained are scattered all over. You re-replicate them by scattering them further all over. No one pod has to move any substantial amount of data.

<comment><USER17> Sure. You can absolutely replicate chunks. But you start kicking the problem upstream. A rack down is a couple pb, so you start doing a ton of cross rack transfers to get your replica counts back up. Now you're gated on nic/TOR/agg switch throughput. A DC down and you're gated on nics TORs Aggs & intra DC network. And this keeps adding up $$$ the further you get.

Ms had an interesting paper on data locality in storage last year. Can't recall the title offhand though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am curious where they purchase 4TB disk for $195. That is less than half of most places. That's quite a price break, even if buying in bulk.

<comment><USER19> Seagate 4GB external drive is selling for $180 right now: [http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup-Desktop-External- STCA40...](http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup-Desktop-External- STCA4000100/dp/B00829THLE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1361379018&sr=8-2&keywords=4tb+drive)

Yes, probably not same speed specs, but it's external, which means it usually costs more for the convenience of the housing.

Edit: Unless my math is wrong, the 3GB model is a better price point...$40 for a TB as opposed to $44+/TB for the 4TB version. [http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup-Desktop-External- STCA30...](http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup-Desktop-External- STCA3000101/dp/B00829THQE/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1361379272&sr=8-8&keywords=4tb+drive)

<comment><USER9> Yev from Backblaze here -> We're not above liberating drives from their enclosures: [http://blog.backblaze.com/2012/10/09/backblaze_drive_farming...](http://blog.backblaze.com/2012/10/09/backblaze_drive_farming/)

<comment><USER20> Husking external drives seems like a great way to get a deal.

<comment><USER21> I've done it myself for my home servers. Tends to get strange looks, I can only imagine what buying in the scale BackBlaze did caused for reactions :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's crazy that hard drive prices are still higher than they were two years ago because of the flooding...

<comment><USER9> It's not _THAT_ crazy, the drive manufacturers saw demand stay constant while supply dwindled, there response was to raise prices across the board. They really have no need to drop them again, as quickly as they had been before the flooding. As soon as the first major producer drops prices back to normal levels the others will follow suite, but no one wants to be the first, since people are still buying them at inflated prices.

<comment><USER22> I understand the law of supply and demand, I am merely expressing surprise that the effect has lasted for over two years. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Disclaimer: I work at a company that makes hard drives. Don't forget about their sensitivity to rotational vibration, most often induced by coupling from other drives. Maybe it's not important in this particular application, but it can be a performance killer. To avoid it, 'vibration absorption' is not always the name of the game :) This link has some good background info, and a reminder that there are actual hardware/firmware reasons why enterprise & near-line drives are more expensive than consumer drives: [http://enterprise.media.seagate.com/2010/05/inside-it- storag...](http://enterprise.media.seagate.com/2010/05/inside-it-storage/are- all-hard-drives-created-equal-examining-rotational-vibration-in-desktop-vs- enterprise/)

<comment><USER24> It sounds like they've got enough redundancy that a single drive failure (or even an entire pod) isn't an issue - they use cheap drives and simply swap them out when they fail.

I wish Google's hard drive failure analysis [1] included failure rates and failure scenario statistics for different models, vendors and consumer/enterprise classes too.

[1] <http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf>

<comment><USER23> Knowing Google, I'm pretty sure that their drive population was consumer-grade - I think they mentioned that in the paper. It was interesting that the paper lamented the usefulness of SMART in predicting failures, because one of the things that enterprise/nearline drives buy you is much much richer SMART diagnostics. I wonder what their results would have been with drives that had better diagnostic reporting. I'm also curious if folks that are building 'cold-storage' on the cheap have looked into using DVR drives, they might have some useful characteristics for this application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I bought a used HP MDS 600 on EBay for less $2000 shipped. It doesn't have a computer built in, but unlike the Backblaze it has four power supplies, two redundant and four fans and two SAS interfaces. It also holds 70 drives. I've thought of building a Backblaze before, but if you want to meet your storage needs with a single enclosure, there are better solutions for the money. The Storage Pod is really for when you have enough of them to consider any single one redundant.

<comment><USER26> Obviously a one-off is always going to be source-able from second hand bits and pieces. But if you need to build a these on a regular basis and you need to maintain them then uniformity and slightly higher cost are not an issue.

Nice deal though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Isn't the "use same drives" advice a little dangerous? If you have bad luck with firmware or specific batch of drives - you could be put in a world of pain fast.

<comment><USER9> Yev w/ Backblaze here -> This is true, and we've had bad batches before, but all of the drives and chassis are tested before we put them in to production, having arrays with the same drives minimizes the variables throughout the pod.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Based on not much other than their blog postings, I really like the (for want of a better word) _vibe_ of this company.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wish they support linux

<comment><USER30> Eh? What makes you think it doesn't already?

<comment><USER20> The pod itself does but the BackBlaze client software for the BackBlaze service does not.

<comment><USER30> Sorry, yes, I was thinking about support in relation to the pod itself (the subject of this article) and not BackBlaze in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm interested in maybe having a couple of those boxes for video data, to keep it online for editing bays. What would be the best solution to backup that amount of data - redundant boxes?

<comment><USER32> Yes, redundant boxes would probably be the best bet for data of that size. Remember though, raid is NOT a backup. When possible make sure to send copies to multiple places!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder when the Hitachi 7K4000 4TB 7200rpm drives will hit $150 in quantity 100 or less. I think they were $180 on Black Friday 2012, and $210 recently.

</comment><comment><USER34> whoa. 2.5" (boot) drives more reliable than 3.5". why?!

<comment><USER35> I wonder why they use a boot-drive at all instead of netbooting these things (or use a pair of USB-sticks).

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. We use the boot drive just because it's a tiny bit "cleaner" to boot off a separate drive (and configure swap on that drive) and have all the "data" alone on the 45 drive array. It allows you to boot and THEN reassemble a failed raid array that is on other drives, stuff like that. You could do it off of USB sticks, but I'm not sure about how well that would work with swapping? Maybe it would be fine? In the end it hasn't been worth focusing on yet, the price difference would be really super small. We spend most of our brain cells trying to find cheaper hard drives which account for 80 percent of our costs.

Netbooting -> we're actively looking into that as an option. But you still probably need a local swap drive.

<comment><USER35> You don't normally need a swap-drive on a storage node (if it needs to swap then something is wrong to begin with), but of course I don't know the details of what your nodes may do beyond dealing out files.

The main advantage of PXE-booting would be maintainability (rolling out upgrades by a simple reboot, etc.) but I assume at your scale you have that already figured out in one way or another.

Either way, thank you for all the insights that you keep sharing with the public! These hands-on blog posts are priceless both in entertainment and education value. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> That's a pretty impressive price point.</comment>


Amazon HNews - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/9KQeW <comment><USER2> That's generally what happens when a company has a conference which announces a lot of new products.</comment>


A 13-Year-Old Takes On Everest, and Sets Off a Debate - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/sports/20climber.html <comment><USER2> I should point out that climbing Everest at this point is pretty trivial compared to what it was when the old masters set out to do it. A friend of mine did it and said it wasn't as difficult as he'd expected. The path is well trodden and known. Forecasts are much better than they used to be. Gear is very light and durable. You often have a team of helpers to carry your gear, guide you, make your food etc. Whereas back then, which is the way we know / think it to be, it was a gamble on your life at best.

<comment><USER3> Is it easier than when Hillary did it? Of course. Is it still incredibly dangerous, where every ascent is a serious gamble with you life? Yes.

There have, even in recent years, been disastrous years where entire parties have been lost. Here's a list of the deaths: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_on_eight- thousan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_on_eight- thousanders#Mount_Everest)

Many more than that number come back down being carried by their friends, with lungs full of fluid, brain damage, black fingers/toes/hands/feet/noses which need to be amputated, or other serious injuries.

A fantastic read is "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer, which covers a really bad year for climbing on Everest.

<comment><USER4> Dangerous doesn't mean hard and easy doesn't mean safe. As long you are among the lucky group who don't run into problems then it's quite an easy climb (relatively speaking)

<comment><USER5> Russian roulette.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In some other cultures a 13-year-old boy would be considered a young man. The problem may be in our culture of delayed adulthood.

<comment><USER7> I guess everybody should have the right to risk his own life. It's just a shame if it is a hype about setting records that would lead to such a waste.

<comment><USER8> The problem is, he's not just risking his own life. Everest is climbed often enough that he's risking the lives of others, too. If he is near another climbing party and something goes wrong, he could block the route, create an obstacle, trigger an icefall, or otherwise endanger them. Granted, he's climbing the less-crowded north route, but it's still a potential difficulty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Regarding risk and climbing, I recently watched the video Committed, Volume II, which has a segment on the Whittaker family, who live in England. Katy and Pete, both young teens when the video was made, were cutting their teeth on the nervy, often dangerous gritstone routes in England. It's fascinating watching their parents belay them on their leads of these dangerous routes, and listening to their attitude toward being parents in these situations. Trailer for the video is here:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEoRyho- Kto&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEoRyho- Kto&feature=player_embedded)

As to the comments about the dangers on Everest--most routes are non- technical, but heading up any mountain is a gamble, given weather and snow conditions.

</comment><comment><USER7> There seem to be so many other more worthwhile things to achieve. What does humanity gain from such records?

Off to break the world record in saying the word "wwiisoodkfhjsuuuggg" for the highest number of times in a row by a human being ever.

<comment><USER10> You're correct, it's not going to benefit humanity substantially. Climbing Everest is a huge physical and mental feat and can only bring personal satisfaction or inspire others. Spending all of your time trying to do something to benefit humanity is exhausting - you must take time off for yourself and live a balanced life.

I would love to climb Everest someday and experience that euphoric moment most mountaineers do when they reach the summit. I feel like life (and happiness in general) is about experiences like this...at least mine is.

If you think repeating "wwiisoodkfhjsuuuggg" will bring you satisfaction then go for it!

<comment><USER7> I am just not convinced that gambling away one's life is the right approach to work-life balance :-)

There are countless other breathtaking things to do and see that are less dangerous. But I don't want to judge it - I simply can not relate.

Maybe one thing could be said for the kid, that he is "hacking" a loophole in society to finance his mountaineering ambitions, namely a fascination with records and young age. Is it a coincidence that at the moment several kids are trying to break the record for being the youngest person to sail around the world? He is now at a unique position to get financing for his project, which would not be possible at a later time of his life.

So if it really is just about seeing stunning mountain scenery and finding the money for it, maybe I can relate a little bit.

I'd rather be the youngest person ever who finds the cure for seven types of cancer or whatever...

<comment><USER10> I definitely see what you mean. I think I relate to it because I have a desire to break away from the monotony of the corporate world. It all depends on the circumstances you're in and what your own personal goals are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone interested in a fantastic 1 hour talk on summitting K2, check this video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zkC9IMQmYA>

I've seen this in person (Chris is the CEO of my climbing gym and I saw this in a library near by) and it was awe-inspiring to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER12> Isabelle Stengers and Dider Gille write in 'Body Fluids'

"What will we say to those who ignore advice and continue to make contacts known to be at risk? Will we treat them as irresponsible, to be lectured to, put under observation, and converted? In that case, our future scenario is assured: that of the child in the glass bubble, for whom the outside environment means death; that of the obsessional struggle against all unmonitored contact as potentially the source of death."

While they are here writing of 'safer sex' discourse, but I think their reminder that our bodies are necessarily exposed to danger. There may be, after all, fates worse than death and perhaps the over-sheltered, over- mediated life (one thinks of Huxley's Brave New World) comes about when all we do is think of the children.

But this is all very speculative, so who knows?

</comment><comment><USER13> He's already climbed 5 of the seven summits so why is this even an issue?

<comment><USER14> Everest, at >29,000 feet, is something like 30% higher than the highest he's climbed -- Aconcagua, at just under 23,000 feet -- and people die from altitude on Aconcagua every year. The 8000m peaks are a whole 'nother ball game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> He's a big 13 year old at 5'10" inches and 160 lbs</comment>


Amazon backs out of Seattle office tower - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-backs-massive-seattle-office-tower-questions-swirl-growth-plans/ <comment><USER2> Ouch! You should always look where you're going.</comment>


Barcode REST API and SDKs for .NET, Java, PHP and Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://saaspose.com/blog/saaspose-barcode/archive/2012/05/24/create-read-and-recognize-barcodes-using-saaspose-barcode.html

<comment><USER2> But for mobile app, you'll have provide your own recognition from camera anyway, what's the point?</comment>


Writtio – Write Better Content - <AUTHOR> https://www.writtio.com/coming-soon <comment><USER2> If you wish to sell a writing service,it would be best to not have missing words and run-on sentences on your landing page.</comment>


An Introduction to Systems Programming with Rust by Lars Bergstrom - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/120512790

<comment><USER2> Hells yeah!</comment>


Cigarettes and Silhouettes: Running the Cancelled LOViT 100 Mile Trail Run - <AUTHOR> https://consequencesofmindfulness.com/2018/02/27/cigarettes-silhouettes-running-the-cancelled-lovit-100-mile-trail-run/ <comment><USER2> If you enjoyed this I'd highly recommend watching the Documentary, "The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young", it's also primarily about a very long trail run in a way, but it touches on so much more throughout. Highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you like this kind if thing, I happened to be reading this yesterday about two cyclists who failed to complete the European transcontinental bike race. I like the way he writes and there are some good photographs.

[http://road.cc/content/blog/227874-transcontinentall- tale](http://road.cc/content/blog/227874-transcontinentall-tale)

</comment><comment><USER4> I used to run long orienteering events in the south of Sweden and in Denmark. None of them were ever longer than 25km as the birds fly. Comparing the effort those km was for me to the 160km this lady run, I must say I'm very very impressed.

<comment><USER5> For me it's not even the distance... it's the time. Running 100 miles doesn't sound impossible to me... running for 31 straight hours is what sounds impossible.

<comment><USER6> She did a lot of that time walking. That's an average speed of 3.2 mph, which is just a hair faster than a brisk walk.

Not to say that she didn't do something way beyond what most people have ever done. I once hiked 55 miles over five days in the mountains and that was enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whelp, now I wanna do a 100. After three full Ironman triathlons, my mind is looking for new novel ways to suffer. I'm totally going to do this.

<comment><USER8> You'll get it. I've run two 100s and I'm running my third in a few weeks. The suffering really begins after 100K or so. It's a long time on your feet.

If that doesn't do it for you, let me recommend one of these options:

\- The Last Annual Vol State 500K. [https://ultrasignup.com/register.aspx?did=34762](https://ultrasignup.com/register.aspx?did=34762)

\- The Quintuple Anvil Triathlon. [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/sports/virginia- quintuple...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/sports/virginia-quintuple- anvil-triathlon.html)

You might also want to explore timed races where you run as far as you can on a loop course in 6 hr, 12 hr, 24 hr or 48 hr.

And if after all that you still haven't found what you're looking for, I can only recommend the Self-Transcendence 3100 mile race. [http://www.3100.ws/](http://www.3100.ws/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow! I once did 10 km about 10 years ago and haven't run since. This is inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a great piece; for some reason I love 'war' stories about mega-long trail runs.

But the best thing about this story is the power of a super-supportive family.

</comment><comment><USER11> I did one 100 kilometers last summer in slovakia, It was a beautiful day to suffer! /micdrop</comment>


Ask HN: List of bookmarking services? - <AUTHOR>

We've recently been seeing a good number of new bookmarking services showing up (or launching) here on HN. Most of them do the same things (sync, import, export) with some variation of added or redacted features.
There was an interesting one posted today called Tinmark. It looked good and promising but I was trying to remember what some of the other known ones were. Here's the list I came up with off the top of my head, please add more if you know...
Pinboard
Delicious
Evernote
Historious
Diigo <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

<http://tinmark.com/>

<http://pinboard.in/>

<http://delicious.com>

<http://evernote.com>

<http://historio.us>

<http://diigo.com>

</comment><comment><USER2> Kippt.com

<http://kippt.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Kiip

Zootool

xMarks

Dropmark

</comment><comment><USER4> Linkies

Http://www.linkies.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Scuttle</comment>


Show HN: Spar - Single Page Application Rocketship - <AUTHOR> http://goboundless.github.com/spar/

<comment><USER3> The outerspace background is totally the killing the 'rocketship' paradigm. It kills scrolling performance and uses quite a bit of CPU. Then again a rocketship uses tons and tons of fuel so perhaps this is intentional? =)

<comment><USER4> Winner!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really want to like this, but I can't get behind Sprockets when RequireJS and Browserify exist. Code in comments, obtuse file extensions, `require_tree`, etc. make code modularization an inelegant kludge.

</comment><comment><USER6> The stars animation behind that logo seems to be using quite a bit of CPU...

<comment><USER7> seems like a good excuse to buy a new shiney laptop to me

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I currently use <http://middlemanapp.com/> to accomplish this. It works really well.

<comment><USER9> Middleman looks great; Spar attempts to help on deployment as well as development. Excited to see folks building/using frameworks like these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some of the story behind Spar: [http://www.slideshare.net/wyrmwood/ultramodern-frontend- dev-...](http://www.slideshare.net/wyrmwood/ultramodern-frontend-dev- introducing-spar)

</comment><comment><USER11> The concept is great. I use Spine.app for this myself.

A nodejs stack makes more sense to me because the app itself is powered by JavaScript, not Ruby, and then I am truly decoupled from other languages. However, I can see why someone coming from Ruby would prefer Spar -- even Spine.app includes Sprockets support for Ruby devs.

<comment><USER9> Spar itself requires no knowledge of Ruby, that was one of the design goals. It happens to use Ruby tech under-the-hood, but no user of Spar would ever be exposed to those choices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a ridiculous concept and the opposite of "modern" web development, as it purports to be. Maybe I'm using a different definition of "modern" - <USER2> seems here that it means "using new shiny things" rather than "using accumulated knowledge of web development patterns to build the best user experience." But, I digress.

There is a massive gap here, and with any framework that is purely client- side. Here's what you get if you serve html from the server:

* SEO. You can't crawl a page that loads purely over Javascript. Google has an API to allow access to ajaxed-in pages, but that means modifying you code to fit exactly what each crawler needs. Not going to happen.

* Better accessibility. Yes, some screen readers handle Javascript now, but many don't.

* Page performance. Time-to-usability on a page served by a server is several orders of magnitude faster than when you load javascript, then load data, then render the page. If the server can serve html, you can start using the page while the scripts load and initialize in the background.

If performance isn't a big deal, you want to make awkward hacks to force SEO to work, and you don't care about reaching all possible people? Build a single-page-app and nothing else.

I'm not saying don't make a single-page app; I'm saying be smart about it.

You've got two steps out of three - building an API and a single-page app. The missing middle step is building a second server side app that reads from that API (RESTful, right?) and bootstraps the page, which is built using language- agnostic templates like Mustache. Then, you load your Backbone/whatever JS on top, which takes over, and points at your api. It's easy to do with something like Node that can even share the same code to build pages.

<comment><USER9> Your opening digression is a bit harsh. We're all experienced web-devs, with the accumulated knowledge of building websites that have reached in excess of several hundred million individuals.

SEO - True. There are many different strategies to deliver solid SEO results using technologies like Spar. You can use headless browsers to pre-render and deliver on-demand rendered content, if you know your URL space completely, you can pre-render all documents. Spar isn't an attempt to solve SEO for you, you may not even care if you are building a phone-gap app, for instance. So does that invalidate the technology?

Accessibility: I'm 100% behind accessibility, and if the compatible tricks don't work... do you still make your site accessible for IE3? No... screen- readers MUST catch up. We can all do what we can to help, but shouldn't engineer for the past, which is an orthogonal concern from accessibile technology choices.

Page-performance - I'll challenge the several orders of magnitude claim, we've seen incredible performance w/ the approach, and best-case you're only talking about first-page speed, even ceding that it becomes a much different story later on... and if you're building an 'app' thats a big difference.

<comment><USER12> I apologize that it came off as harsh; it _is_ good, technically, but I also think it's very important to stress what something like this can't do. There's a big mentality right now that "single page apps" are the hotness - and they ARE - if done _right_.

> do you still make your site accessible for IE3? No...

I subscribe to the ideas behind progressive enhancement, so I don't have to _make_ that choice. An application can be built that works everywhere, for every technology, with little development overhead (and in my experience, the lowest-experience-first PE approach generally leads to better code anyway.) This isn't just theory - I've done it with apps large and small, and it _works_. I highly suggest <http://filamentgroup.com/dwpe/> to find out more.

> best-case you're only talking about first-page speed

I'd also argue that that's what matters most to visitors - numerous studies show that there's a dropoff as that first page takes longer to load. Here we have the difference between loading a page, being useful, and then loading scripts vs loading an (empty, so faster) page, load libraries, load templates, then load data, then push the template to the screen. Additionally, if you're doing server rendering, you can probably cache that first hit at the web server level and avoid even hitting the web application at all.

The difference won't matter if you have a tiny app, so you don't have much js to download - but it will make a big difference if you have anything reasonably-sized.</comment></comment></comment>


Playing 1K chess for the ZX81 without a ZX81 - <AUTHOR> http://marquisdegeek.com/code_chessbots <comment><AUTHOR> The basic idea is that you use an emulator to run the original code, and tie it into a chess bot.</comment>


5 Big Data Trends to Watch for in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.texasenterprise.utexas.edu/2015/01/05/innovation/5-big-data-trends-watch-2015

<comment><AUTHOR> Nevermind the clickbait title, I think there are some pretty important ideas here that aren't commonly discussed.</comment>


The Sunspot Enigma: The Sun is "Dead", What Does it Mean for Earth? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/the-sunspot-mys.html <comment><USER2> A couple relevant links:

[http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/11jul_solarcycleupda...](http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/11jul_solarcycleupdate.htm)

NASA solar physicist David Hathaway thinks that this is mostly alarmist nonsense, and after looking at his solar cycle graph, I'm inclined to agree with him. The Maunder Minimum was a huge departure from the cycle, and it's far too early to extrapolate and assume a similar departure.

<http://www.spaceweather.com>

Space Weather tracks daily sunspot activity, as well as lots of other cool tidbits of current astronomy.

<comment><USER3> There is some serious smack-down in that NASA article.

"In the early 20th century there were periods of quiet lasting almost twice as long as the current spell."

"In summary, "the current minimum is not abnormally low or long.""

"Hathaway anticipates more spotless days, maybe even hundreds, followed by a return to Solar Max conditions in the years around 2012."

Along with some interesting graphs, it looks like everything is business as usual for the sun.

A google search on the author, Rebecca Sato, shows that she typically writes lots of "what if" and other fluff pieces.

Sounds like fear mongering to me.

<comment><USER4> Whatever it is, what does it matter if we can't predict what's going to happen? As far as we know, the world's getting warmer and its time to start buying priuses wherever we can afford them ;)

<comment><USER5> > As far as we know, the world's getting warmer

Temperature peaked in 1998.

<comment><USER6> It would be nice to have a reference for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The earth acts as a block body so it's input energy must approximate its output energy or its temperature changes. So what magnitude change in input energy would equal a change of .7f? Well black body radiation (power out) = (T1^4 - T2^4) [in kelvin] so 1.0057x the power output or .57% but the estimated change in solar output is ~0.1% variation over the last 2,000 years which does not add up.

Granted the global temperature is not uniform and the earth is not a true black body but these numbers are not even close and it would take a huge swing in solar activity to get changes in the 1+ deg range.

PS: La Niña - is the likely culprit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it possible that the disappearance of sun spots for the first time since the "little ice age" indicates a huge swing in solar activity?

<comment><USER7> They disappear every ~11 years and have been for a while but the next cycle has not started yet so some people think it might be while. Anyway, check: (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation>)

Edit: If you graphed solar radiation received at the outer surface of Earth's atmosphere you would see solar output over the last 100 years as a long line of 1,366w/m with some peaks at 1,367w/m and a possible drop into 1,365 territory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Global warming + Miniature ice age = There is a God!

<comment><USER8> In competitive academic debate, we've long been reading evidence that we're 'due' for a new period of global cooling and so all the global warming activity is good because it's helping stave off the next ice age.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, in the 1970s the "green" movement was very worried about a new ice age, and the solutions they proposed to global cooling were, strangely, almost the same solutions now proposed to combat global warming.

<comment><USER7> There are always wacko's saying the end is near but most of them are far from credible. Unfortunately it can be hard to tell who is full of it when they extrapolate past reason. Anyway, particulate matter does lower global temperatures but unlike CO2 it does not stay up for vary long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can any of the physics gurus here offer an explanation of how sunspot activity is related to heat output? It doesn't really explain that in the article. Less heat output means less fusion reaction, means less magnetic activity, means lack of sunspots, I presume?

<comment><USER11> The sun is actually a very good insulator. All the heat is generated in the middle and takes millennia to reach the top.

So anything that basically "mixes" the sun will cause more heat to be emitted. No sun spots=no mixing, and all the heat remains trapped.

I think that after trapping heat for so long, the sun gets hotter and generates more sun spots because of all the extra energy. The sun spots bleed it out, and the cycle continues.

<comment><USER12> Uh, what? Sun spots come from the magnetic flux tubes from the inner layers becoming unstable and rising to the surface, forming loops. If anything, I'd guess that sunspots _inhibit_ the flow. The mixing happens mostly because of the persistent convection cells in the sun and of course the turbulence.

I don't know offhand the answer to the parent's question, but in my experience, the above doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER11> Convection cells are the baseline mixing, but any activity in the sun, and sun spots are far from quiet areas, despite being dark, would cause additional mixing.

Why would you say sunspots would inhibit the flow?

"magnetic flux tubes" would not arise from nothing, they would arise from large amounts of ions moving (making an electrical current), and therefor mixing the suns layers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also, the statement "That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700" is inaccurate. Actually, the period from 1650 to 1700 is not for the little ice age, but for the Maunder Minimum, the previous period when there were few sunspots. The little ice age has no sharp beginning, and is variously said to start almost anywhere after the medieval warm period - say anywhere from mid-14th century to the mid-17th century. The little ice age ended with the beginning of global warming in the mid-19th century.

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_ice_age>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's not important here is the amount of radiation coming from the sun.

What is important is the systems at work within the sun. A blank sun is the calm before the storm.

Solar flare : Dec 21st, 2012.

<comment><USER15> Gotta love that Mayan calendar Voodoo.</comment></comment>


Moving toward continuous deliver/continuous integration - <AUTHOR> Hey lovely community! We are looking to move towards a culture of continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery - what would your top tips be when starting to make this change? <comment><USER2> Start writing down the bash commands that you use to build and deploy your app locally.

For manual steps just write down a description to make a "do-nothing script" [1] to transition with gradual automation .

Then you can turn those into the rough draft of your CI/CD a pipeline.

If you use a common system there might already be adapters for your CI/CD platform of choice to make it even easier.

GitHub Actions is a good simple system to start with if your code is on GitHub.

[1]: [https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/07/15/do-nothing- scripting-...](https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/07/15/do-nothing-scripting- the-key-to-gradual-automation/)

<comment><AUTHOR> brill

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Moving towards a culture of CI/CD means that your team needs to move toward agility, so implementing agile methodology will help your team move faster into the mindset of CI/CD. Of course the tooling to use is the most important part. Our tool Microtica ([http://microtica.com](http://microtica.com)) can help you automate the entire software delivery process. Try it out and let me know what you think.

<comment><USER4> This feels backward, I don't get how CI/CD is dependant on agile.

CI/CD can enable some agile practices for sure, but CI/CD provides a lot of value without implementing any of the agile methodologies. But having CI makes it easier to practice TDD and enforce coding standards. And having a test environment running the latest code should tighten the feedback loop between developer and stakeholder. These are good things no matter how you organise your work. So start with a CI/CD pipeline and then go from there. You may or may not want to adopted ideas from the agile toolbox.

Ps. This isn't directed at you Maria_micro, more at the implied agile methodologies. "I saw the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by [grooming meetings]".

<comment><USER3> True story! But the problem i see here is a bad implementation of agile that unfortunately a majority of teams have. That's why they are stuck on meetings forever and ever. Been there done that :) Agile practices (the real ones) are similar to DevOps ones, and CI/CD is a major part of them. Automation will bring you far along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think one of the most impacting decisions you can make here is what kind of environment setup you want. Do you want to only have a production environment? Dev and production? Dev, stage, production? Depending on your answer there will change the level of investment you need for moving that culture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes this makes sense

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I strongly recommend getting your Git / SCM workflow right before implementing Pipelines :-) Of using Git, you might want to make sure that everybody works according to a defined work flow such as Gitflow.

Pipelines can only work if everybody strictly sticks to the rules.

<comment><USER7> Also have a look at GitHub flow: [https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/](https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/) and GitLab flow: [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/gitlab_flow.html](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/gitlab_flow.html) which are in my experience better suited for CD than GitFlow. YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can you describe your current workflow and tooling?</comment>


Ask HN: Will upgrading make any difference for development with JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> The majority of projects I work with use Webpack + babel or typescript or whatever. Basically there's some chain of tools and transformations, which update the browser when I do any change.
On many of them the development is quite slow, so for example if I make a change in a file, then I have to wait like 4-5 seconds (an sometimes it can be worse) until I see the update in the browser...
Anyway, my question is is it because the tools are slow or is my laptop is slow. In particular which parameters should help speeding this up. Is it RAM? SSD disk? CPU?
P.S.: My working horse is early-2015 macbook pro 13 inches. I would happily upgrade to the fastest beast out there if I had a guarantee that it will speed up my flow significantly <comment><USER2> While having faster CPU/RAM/SSD helps, I think the biggest impact is number of CPU cores. One core is dealing with desktop apps and the browser. I see your model seems to use a Intel Core i5-5257U which has two cores. I saw a huge jump in build scripts (not webpack but similar enough) when I upgraded to a 6 core MacMini compared to my laptop. 2019 models of 13 inch laptop have 4 cores, the 15 inch either 6 core or 8 core. (even iPhones have 8 cores now).</comment>


Show HN: I learned to code and launched my new startup (Please Give Feedback) - <AUTHOR> http://www.5thingstoday.com/

<comment><USER2> You might not want to get involved in the todo-list space. there are tons of free alternatives -- and $20 a year is steep for something that notepad could do (the site is nice though, well done)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

Its really understand your point which was the one thing that was stopping me from building it but I felt the fact that the app "forces you" to focus on the important things which is something I needed.

I have 10 users already and I'm already working on my next project.

<comment><USER3> This is full of entrepreneurial awesomeness. Like the parent, I thought: 'meh - I wouldn't pay for it, so why would anyone else?' The fact that you've got paying customers already is a huge reminder for me that my opinions are not those of my (potential) customers, and I need to stop projecting my own opinions on them. That's not to dismiss the (great) idea of building products/businesses that you WOULD be a customer of, but narrowing things down to ONLY the things that you would actually do/use narrows your market down to a pretty small number (often 1).

Congratulations to you on getting your first product shipped!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank You Very much for your kind words.

More great products to come hopefully.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PHP in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://talks.php.net/etsy18#/ <comment><USER2> Glad to see PHP moving more fully towards static typing :)

Also the monotonic clock - I wrote an extension back in 2014 for this ([https://github.com/metaloha/phpTimer](https://github.com/metaloha/phpTimer)).</comment>


Every Ruler in Europe Every Year Since 400 BC - <AUTHOR> http://thesoundingline.com/map-of-the-day-every-ruler-in-europe-since-400-bc/ <comment><USER2> Really well done! Though for me this also underlines how ambiguous terms like "ruler" can be. For example, at the very end, it shows "Willem Alexander" as the "ruler" of the Netherlands. He's the ceremonial king with virtually no political power. Yet, Germany is shown to be ruled by Angela Merkel, the political leader of the federal government. Yet, despite not being a monarchy, Germany has a person with a role very similar to Willem-Alexander: President Steinmeier. Unless you're German, you have probably never heard of him, for good reason. The video should've probably either replaced Merkel with Steinmeier, or Willem-Alexander with the Merkel of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte.

This is not to nitpick on this excellent video: it's to illustrate how hard to is to explain, analyze and visualize history. This stuff is nuanced! Pick any random date in the past in this video, and there may well be something similarly "wrong-ish-but-not-entirely" somewhere on there.

<comment><USER3> Along the same lines, even kings didn't exercise absolute power. One of the recurring themes in the history of the Persian empire before Alexander was how frequently the far off governors of Egypt and Anatolia would rebel. How much control does a king have if their governor and their own army and were two months away by letter?

The Macedonian warlords who took control of Alexander's territory actually had to negotiate with cities like Athens and Rhodes. The cost of attacking them to get them to obey was too high. It was better to negotiate reasonable taxes. If a king can't set tax rates unilaterally, they aren't very powerful either.

Power exists along a long continuum.

<comment><USER4> I think you're slightly missing the point. Absolute power doesn't mean your subjects won't rebel. Nor does it mean there are people beyond your sphere of influence.

The likes of Cyrus the Great by any reasonable measure had absolute power but obviously no influence over, say, China.

Absolute power here really means that the ruler's power is unchecked. In the US for example, the president's power is checked by Congress and the courts. This is really the rule of law. The typical model for monarchs of old was quite simple: whatever the monarch said was absolute.

As an aside I recently listend to Dan Carlin's 3 part series on the Achaemenid Persian Empire titled the Kings of Kings (~20 hours of listening) and thoroughly enjoyed it. It spans a ~200 year period from Cyrus the Great to Alexander the Great and it covers subjects such as the Egyptian rebellion and how harshly the Persians came down on the Egyptians (if you believe Heroditus).

What's interesting about the Persians is just how critical this period was to the development of Western civilization. He raises the point with something like the light bulb if Edison hadn't invented it, someone else would've.

But there are two events in this period that changed history in ways that could've had completely different outcomes. Cyrus the Great reportedly freed the Jews and rebuilt the Temple and it can be argued if that hadn't happened, it may have spelt the end for Judaism and all the offshoots (so Christianity and Islam too).

The second was the Battle of Marathon, which was a turning point that stopped the Greeks being ruled by the Persians and probably greatly influenced Western civilization ever since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the worst kind of clickbait/linkbait website, embedding other people's content for profit. Please change the URL to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpKqCu6RcdI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpKqCu6RcdI)

<comment><USER6> It was also submitted at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163910) under another indirect URL, although that article did at least add a whole bunch of "What is a despot?" waffle to the original video. (-:

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I get a humbling feeling watching this video. Every one of those people on the map were super important at a place and time, but everything they did or ruled is now represented by a 1 or 2 second blip in the video among thousands of other fleeting blips.

The author/creator of this video seems pretty humble himself: His "About" entry on YouTube says, "I make maps. Location France." Nothing else.

<comment><USER8> The "Pale Blue Dot" photograph strikes the same chord for me. Carl Sagan's reflection on it can be especially moving [1].

 _[...] The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. [...]_

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot#Reflections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot#Reflections)

<comment><USER9> As someone who has never been religious and has all the traits to be scientific-minded, I will play the devil's advocate and say that Sagan's pale blue dot never struck a chord with me at all. Significance can be compared with size, now? This whole idea contradicts the very nature of being human which is to make up meaning according to the culture and trends of the time. Not to mention that even the tiniest piece of the universe, say, a quark, or a tiny physics formula can have eternal significance within the grand scheme of things. Overall the message of peace among people is well-received, but the tactic is cheesy and not well thought-out.

<comment><USER10> > This whole idea contradicts the very nature of being human which is to make > up meaning according to the culture and trends of the time.

We all do it: we have assumptions in form of learned concepts or experiences, place importance on some of them and then use it to prove a point.

You state that it didn't "struck a chord with you at all" and then proceed with your assumptions / value system ("... physics formula can have eternal significance within the grand scheme of things"). For all positions, assumptions and opinions there exists a position where all of it doesn't matter.

Trying to be scientific is also a belief system. Recognizing that all human beings share the trait of having assumptions (some of them called facts) and deriving behavior and opinions from it is the key.

This understanding can support empathy which was generally a good strategy to have in the past (e.g. even monkeys implement fairness concepts based on individuals trying to manage resources in groups which IMHO is one important aspect of the origin of empathy).

I can understand your position of relativism, but it's very close to nihilism. This is not inherently bad (nothing is good or bad, anyways - I'm also a big fan of relativism), but it can be detrimental to mental health and overall well-being.

The tactic may be too simple to "get you", but your point of view is equally flawed in another way (as well as mine).

The question is: What are _you_ standing for if you don't find his arguments convincing? Nitpicking and being anti is not a good long-term strategy, maybe we can help him with better arguments for empathy that resonate with scientific-minded thinkers like you.

<comment><USER9> Bane of humanity is that they are glorified copy machines, creating flawed simulations in their minds and trying to validate themselves using others. So I strive for one thing I know I cannot achieve: to produce thought original enough that will let me die with pride.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure that you're going to work this out :)

> glorified copy machines

> So I strive for one thing I know I cannot achieve

There's some serious cynism going on here. Maybe cabaret artist is something for you to consider. The late George Carlin was incredibly funny because of it.

Some people love jokes based on materialistic and dry analysis of human behavior. I do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> noir-york Fantastic video!

Seeing centuries of European history flash by reminds me of the rich history - whether you count it in blood, culture or intellectual progress - of the part of the world that I happen to live in, and rather proud of it.

Its one thing to know of the decline of the Roman empire, its another to see the rapid decline graphically.

</comment><comment><USER11> When I first saw this I was hoping for a commentary on some secret, ancient feature on european distance measuring devices

<comment><USER12> Glad I'm not the only one. I thought I was going to see a slow progression of measuring devices and how we went from a somewhat straight stick with notches to what we have today.

<comment><USER13> folding straight sticks with notches? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It was interesting reading this after reading the Ribbonfarm essay on the Thirty Years War, because it shows just how damaging civil war is:

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/03/21/the-winter-king-of- the...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/03/21/the-winter-king-of-the- internet/)

After Rome breaks up in 476, the Italian peninsula is left a patchwork of small city states that frequently change ownership, and (except for invasions by Theoderic and Justinian) doesn't re-unify until _1871_.

The 30 Years War under Ferdinand II in 1617 similarly broke up the Holy Roman Empire - the largest power in Europe for nearly 7 centuries - into a small aggregation of city-states with constantly shifting borders, and they also didn't reunite until Bismarck & Kaiser Wilhelm I, also in 1871.

WW1 did the same to the Austro-Hungarian empire, which still hasn't recovered and may never, and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 did the same for Russia and the Warsaw Pact.

<comment><USER15> Makes you wonder how and why the United States was able to recover from its own civil war within a relatively short amount of time.

(Although it could be argued, possibly, that we haven't actually recovered, but rather buried our disagreements and enmities deep down, and they still occasionally resurface.)

<comment><USER14> Same thought occurred to me as I was searching for counterexamples.

My initial hypothesis is that civil wars fought over _economic systems_ tend to result in reunification afterwards with the more efficient economic system establishing hegemony over the less efficient one, while civil wars fought over _culture_ tend to result in universal ruin. So the U.S. Civil War was ultimately a contest between manufacturing (Union) vs. slave plantations (Confederacy), and the Union won and re-established hegemony because it was better able to mobilize its railroads, arms production, shipbuilding, etc. There are a few other examples that support this, eg. the Russian Revolution pitted the feudal landed aristocracy against the urban industrial working classes, and was won by urban industrial working classes, who subsequently reunified the country (at least until Communism fell apart in 1991).

That hypothesis can't explain why the Reds defeated the Whites in the ensuing Russian Civil War, though - the White coalition included large numbers of the liberal urban bourgeoise. It also can't explain why the Communists defeated the Nationalists in China, yet subsequently adopted an economic system much more like Taiwan. And it doesn't explain why the English Civil War (which was Catholic vs. Protestant, like the 30 Years War) was comparatively bloodless and resulted in greater unity rather than disintegration.

I wonder if it may have something to do with the organizational abilities of the leaders (the Union, Bolsheviks, and forces of William of Orange were all quite well-organized compared to their adversaries), or of the relative power balances between them. Both of these are still fairly unsatisfying as answers though.

<comment><USER16> The English civil was not religious, was not "Comparatively bloodless", and resulted in a 10 year dictatorship

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://youtu.be/IpKqCu6RcdI](https://youtu.be/IpKqCu6RcdI)

So you can just directly watch the video.

<comment><USER18> Also tip, you can set speed to 2x (or 0.5x if you like) in YouTube

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Did anyone else click this article thinking there would be pictures of old measuring sticks?

<comment><USER20> Absolutely

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nicely done! I just watched the whole thing beginning to end, with a bunch of pauses to see connections.

Though I wonder, for my native Hungary in the post-WWII times I think the Presidents are listed, but those are pretty much ceremonial roles, not actually "rulers". The power would probably be with the Prime Minister (and some of them do tend to think of themselves as sort of kings)...

</comment><comment><USER22> I love how the 'ruler' of switzerland changes every year (from the 19th century onwards) Because that's how it is, every year the ruler changes, rotates among the 6 ministers.

<comment><USER23> Same thing happens to pre-Italy at the beginning of the video.

<comment><USER24> And Athenes which had the democracy long before other countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In the end things get a little bit murky (perhaps earlier as well but I wouldn't know).

For some countries the map shows the person who actually ruled but wasn't head of state (such as German chancellors), for others it shows powerless constitutional monarchs (such as Elisabeth II).

</comment><comment><USER26> If you squint your eyes and play the video really quickly, this looks less like the result of thousands of years of directed human endeavor and more like a bubbling cauldron or any other natural physical process.

A couple patterns emerge from watching this. First, there's a _lot_ of entropy in terms of border definitions and leader turnover. The now Italy region had a new leader every year for a stretch, until eventually Julius Caesar. We see as the video progresses, the mean leader reign per country/region seems to go up significantly. Like the bubbling cauldron is congealing.

A second trend that appears throughout the video is the rise and fall of dictators/conquerors. You'll see periods of relative stability, until suddenly a new leader appears and like a cancer, spreads to neighboring regions. Soon enough though, that cancer recedes as the dictator is deposed, almost popping like a bubble (to mix metaphors). You see it with Napoleon, you see it with Hitler. It's easy to see that throughout history, a single malignant character has the capacity to cause an extraordinary amount of disruption.

<comment><USER27> Under the Republic, Rome was supposed to elect two consuls every year, with term limits that prevented the same person from being elected consecutively. Naturally, that system fell apart in practice, but remained in effect de jure.

Publius Gnaeus Dipshitus may have been elected Consul during the era of Sulla or Marius or Pompey, but guess how much real power they executed.

<comment><USER28> Good points.

This video, while a nice visualization and introduction to the topic, obviously had to simply things a bit. In addition to the aforementioned "two consuls per year" bit, the video usually only listed one of them.

For example, in 216 BC the Roman leader is listed as "Terentius Varro", or Gaius Terentius Varro, who served as consul with Lucius Aemilius Paullus. During this year, the Romans (under command of the two consuls, as they were usually designated as commander-in-chiefs as well) suffered possibly their worst defeat ever at the Battle of Cannae against Hannibal. During this defeat, Rome lost perhaps 20% of its military-age male population. Both consuls apparently died in the battle as well.

Presumably Varro is listed as the leader this year, because most of the blame for the defeat at Cannae was attributed to him. However, this may have been due to Paullus having a more influential family who was able to defend his legacy.

If you're interested more about this, I highly recommend this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvGqp2gpo3s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvGqp2gpo3s)

The related channel is also great: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv_vLHiWVBh_FR9vbeuiY-A](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv_vLHiWVBh_FR9vbeuiY-A)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is great but kinda confusing. What's up with large parts simply staying white in the beginning? Northern Europe only starts to get some names around 709 AD, at which point a lot of Eastern Europe is still white.

Does that mean we don't have any good records from these regions during that time or is this simply on account of too many small tribes sharing these regions and the author (understandably) not wanting to go with so much detail?

<comment><USER3> People did reside in those areas but we often don't have the names. In some cases we do. Caesar wrote extensively about his campaigns in present-day France and he mentions the leaders of the Gauls quite a bit. So this map should include them. At least, it should show the area as "Gallic tribes."

<comment><USER29> > At least, it should show the area as "Gallic tribes."

That'd probably a good solution which doesn't make it look like most of Europe is missing its population.

I guess the creator didn't go with that because it wouldn't fit with the theme of showing actual rulers and not regions of influence by tribes.

<comment><USER30> I liked the variant with names of countries and population count better that was published four months earlier: [http://youtu.be/UY9P0QSxlnI](http://youtu.be/UY9P0QSxlnI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I watched the Anatolian region, seems to be highly accurate.

<comment><USER31> same here, as it looks like a central hub during those times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> it is a bit misleading calling these people "rulers" as some of them have pure representative role, compared to prime ministers with executive powers

<comment><USER33> I was also thinking it's misleading because while the tribes to the north may not have had as an extensive written language as the Romans and Greeks, they certainly had rulers.

<comment><USER34> I'm willing to accept that as necessary; we can't expect the creators to have access to information that may not exist, so it's better that they put nothing than something inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Seeing all these empires and countries changing hands, unifying, expanding and breaking up again makes me think more about the concept of national identity tied to a geographic spot as very problematic.

If I went back in time 200 years, 500 years then 1000 years to the exact same spot odds are I won't feel more related to the people I meet than people from any other spot in Europe.

<comment><USER36> Rulers and nations or nationality are not the same. Just because you happened to be conquered for some time doesn't mean, that your language, culture and customs will change.

<comment><USER35> No, but given enough generations with the new empire odds are culture, customs and language will probably change in the conquered area.

<comment><USER36> At the time, nobody really cared about the languages and cultures, they cared mostly about regular payment of the taxes. Language become only important, when you had the ambition to get a job at the royal court or somewhere nearby hierarchy-wise. Since the monarchs were getting married across the entire Europe, it was unknown, which language will be the next hip one.

Languages and nations got their prominence only after French revolution, as a new bonding for the statehood, once the monarchs were gone.

If something really wanted to change the customs and culture, it were religions, not empires. Not even Roman Catholics managed that, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The end of this video appears quite stable. But there were tons of lengthy stable periods prior to that!

<comment><USER38> The stability of the Pax Romana is so clear in this video. Small wonder the American Founding Fathers sought to emulate it when starting from scratch, rather than the chaos that ensued after its fall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> For anyone that would like to know more about the stories of those people, I can recommend the History of Rome podcast and its many great descendents.

Personally I find hisotry becomes a lot more interesting and memorable, when it's all woven together in the one big story that it is.

</comment><comment><USER40> Pretty cool, very interesting to see European history at a glance! Thanks! One suggestion - the very end has often presidents where prime ministers have the most power - perhaps changing it to PMs would be more comparable to ancient/medieval rulers?

</comment><comment><USER41> Bit disappointed that Britain shows Vortigern and Ambrosius Aurelianus in the 5th century, but not Magnus Maximus (Macsen Wledig), who's historically much better attested, in the 4th.

</comment><comment><USER42> Awesome! Reminds me of the after match game review of civilization.

</comment><comment><USER43> The data for the rulers I can get from WikiData <3, but are the land coverage polygons open source aka available somewhere? I would love to use them in my own projects.

<comment><USER44> I looked for something like that a while back but did not find it. It would be great to have. It is also interesting to think about how a data model for evolving geographical boundaries would look. Preferably as a set of "patches" rather than yearly snapshots?

<comment><USER43> I understand that a company which has invested in these maps wants a ROI, but really, the polygons should be in the public domain and improved on accuracy. I can imagine a lot of people would be interested to work on this.

<comment><USER44> Yes. Perhaps the next major Wikipedia - like project :-)

<comment><USER45> I once thought of such a project - a dynamic map of borders and battles/army movements through history. Perhaps crowdsourced ala Wikimapia/OpenStreetMap. But never tried to work on making this project reality. Could have even scientific value, but also high potential for quarells, and need to somehow represent uncertainty, probably.

<comment><USER46> It isn't moving very fast, but OpenHistoricalMap is an existing thing:

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

It is based on the OpenStreetMap tech stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Such an interesting map. You get to see a lot of things I haven't noticed before. Like the fact that the Byzantine empire reconquered rome during the 500s

<comment><USER48> That's true -- for the first time, I learned about a Roman emperor called Trajan during whose time, it seemed from the animation like the Roman empire was the largest it has even been in Europe! How come the history books don't focus on these successful and well-behaved emperors?

<comment><USER49> I come from a Latin country and the history of the Roman Empire is a huge topic in History classes. And I definitely learned about Trajan and knew that the Roman Empire reached its territorial peak under him, plus he has a good reputation as a relatively enlightened (for the time) ruler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is so amazing. What struck me the most is how, of all the hundreds (thousands?) of names displayed, we're only taught a handful in history. Being from the East but raised in the West, other than a couple of the "Eastern" rulers and their massive (land-wise) conquests of Europe were never mentioned in any of my history classes.

</comment><comment><USER51> Funny how big names like Alexander, Caesar, Atilla, Napoleon and Hitler seem to fly by in an instant compared to the vast timespan of almost 2,5 millenea. Most of the other names don't even ring a bell and seem to have ruled longer. Other rulers must have really been so unremarkable.

<comment><USER49> We tend to recognize the names that were involved in large territorial gains or losses (in other words, war).

Probably for the average commoner, living in one of those boring kingdoms with a now-forgotten ruler was a much better deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A history of Europe is a history of constant wars. Also, it is interesting that some countries have had relatively stable borders for a long time (like Spain, France, Germany, Great Britain) and some were reconquered many times (Middle East countries, Easterm Europe).

</comment><comment><USER52> I've been reading Warren Carrol's history of Christendom, and while it's an engaging series, it's hard to keep track of or visualize the sweeping changes. This video is gold. So much of what I've been reading just clicked into place.

</comment><comment><USER53> Why did the Romans do right (and then, not do) that others did not, and ended up with such a large empire? The map does not show all Roman territory in North Africa and the Middle east, which was great.

</comment><comment><USER54> It uses interesting combination of slavic, latin and german spelling of slavic names. Also very interesting choices of when eg. Bohemia is shown as part of HRE and when it's independent.

</comment><comment><USER55> Interesting that Hitler and Napoleon were over in the blink of an eye, relatively speaking.

</comment><comment><USER56> Very cool but it's a shame that bits of North Africa (Egypt) and Asia (Judea / Palestine) are excluded. Not Europe technically but parts of the Mediterranean organically

</comment><comment><USER44> It is interesting as video but would be much more interesting as individiual maps, to look at when reading about a specific episode in history.

</comment><comment><USER57> Did early Rome have a different ruler every year?

<comment><USER58> Two different rulers, the consuls: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_consul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_consul).

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Not sure of the historicity, but would have helped if the empire/kingdom/ethnicity was also mentioned.

<comment><USER60> From the same producer/YouTube channel: The History of Europe: Every Year [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY9P0QSxlnI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY9P0QSxlnI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> That's the problem with Europe - every European country used to be a great empire once and people are nostalgic of those times.

Being able to call this territory "yours" again would mean war. Or a union. And we do have a union which works ok so far, hope we can keep it.

<comment><USER62> > That's the problem with Europe

Really? That's "the" problem of Europe?

> every European country used to be a great empire once and people are > nostalgic of those times

How can people even be nostalgic about times they can't even remember? The last "great empire" in Europe was perhaps Germany in the 1940s. Few people remain alive who can remember it, and I don't think any of them would express a desire to be occupied by Nazis again. What would you say are the great empires that "we" have been a part of? Perhaps the French Empire in the time of Napoleon? Or perhaps the Romans? Seems like a long time ago to be nostalgic about, I doubt most Europeans could even tell you in which centuries those things even happened.

Here in the Netherlands we used to be a naval superpower, with many colonies all over the world. While it's pretty cool to imagine such a little country having an amazing navy, it was also a time of slavery and oppression (and a very lucrative slave trade with North America). Hardly something any decent person would want to be a part of, or return to. In fact we made fun of one of our PMs when he coined the term "VOC-mentaliteit".

I think the desire for a union is mostly a desire to have some influence on the world. Compared to the countries such as the US, China, and India, most individual European countries are tiny, and unable to make much of a difference in the world. If the GDPR was introduced in only a single country (e.g. Italy) but not the rest of Europe, nobody would even care. I strongly doubt this desire has anything to do with nostalgia.

<comment><USER63> 'The last "great empire" in Europe was perhaps Germany in the 1940s.'

Not the Eastern/Soviet Bloc?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I was really expecting a series of yardsticks

</comment><comment><USER65> startup idea: make a real-globe-shaped screen showing these - or any other geography-in-time uploaded to it..

</comment><comment><USER66> Came hoping it was going to be a history of measuring length over the last few millennia.

</comment><comment><USER67> Absolutely beautiful!

</comment><comment><USER68> Putin's Russia should be absolutely RED, not yellow. Putin is a communist and slowly returning every aspect of the Soviets style of living.

</comment><comment><USER69> It's crazy how little the borders change after WW2 compared to all the rest of history.

Makes me wonder how long this period of peace will last.

<comment><USER70> Just after nuclear bombs were invented.

Coincidence? I say not.

<comment><USER49> True, but other things came about around that time as well, like the United Nations, or the rise of secularism/atheism/laicism, or the fact that the power game changed away from the national-state level (the map does not show the territorial gains and losses of the Communist block, or the European Union), or that a combination of the US rising and European countries losing basically all their colonies meant that the power game shifted away from Europe.

<comment> Const-me > the United Nations

They are useless. They did nothing to stop Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, or the war that followed and is stil ongoing. They did nothing to stop Yugoslav wars here, earlier in 1990-s.

IMO the 2nd most significant thing after the nukes is global economy. Most countries are ruled by reasonable people who understand you can't simultaneously bomb people and trade with the same people. Economic activities like trading and investments are far more profitable than fighting wars, even if you win these wars.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Understanding exit signals in Erlang/Elixir - <AUTHOR> http://crypt.codemancers.com/posts/2016-01-24-understanding-exit-signals-in-erlang-slash-elixir/ <comment><USER2> Good post. Too bad that the cheatsheet at the end uses some bs 3d effect instead of being a plain, useable, table.</comment>


Mark Cuban's terrible idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.projectidealism.com/2011/08/mark-cubans-terrible-idea.html

<comment><USER2> I have to agree with this post. Mark is a really smart guy, but I'm not sure his idea is practical from an implementation point of view nor would it have the desired effect.

I would say, given the value of LinkedIn shares right now (P/E over 300), there is more capital available than there are good people and businesses worth funding.

Honestly, I think we're being crushed by regulation or in some cases paralyzed the fear of it. We've gone from a nation of do-ers to a nation of let me check with my lawyer first.

There are laws preventing regular people from investing in non-public companies, laws preventing competition in markets, laws making it difficult to hire/fire employees, etc...

</comment><comment><USER3> Propping up the old guard is rarely good for the common man. It can hold off chaos for a short while, but the longer you do it, the worse things get. It should be a means to an end, not an end in itself.

I think our country has forgotten how to think long-term. Our constitution was obviously written by long-thinkers. It's remarkably sound. Unfortunately, they expected people would continue to think long-term, and that hasn't happened. They even put in a ton of checks and balances to make sure things got done, and we've systematically overridden them for short-term gains and 'emergencies' that never go away.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand. It's better to save jobs than to create them. It's better to dig a hole with 100 shovels than with 10000 spoons. It's better to dig a hole with 1 excavator than with 100 shovels.</comment>


LivingSocial: We're set to overtake Groupon - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20029860-52.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "We think it might have actually been the largest single day sales of a product in the history of the Web." - LivingSocial CEO on the Amazon Gift Card deal</comment>