Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad Targeting - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/facebook-will-cut-off-access-to-third-party-data-for-ad-targeting/ <comment><USER2> I think the last paragraph is the most important one:

>"Facebook clarified that it will still work with companies like Experian and Acxiom in order to measure ad performance and provide metrics, although it will also be conducting a review of those ongoing relationships."

These FB announcements the last couple of days seem little more than grooming for possible upcoming appearances in front of legislators. They can point to this and the surface-level app redesign and say they've "already" taken efforts to shore up concerns.

I think most people have no idea that FB and Experian - a consumer credit reporting agency have been sharing data at all. Where was that explained in the app redesign that was trotted out yesterday?

It's worth reading how Acxion who facing similar pressures recently handled their own superficial offering of "transparency":

[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/technology/acxiom-lets- co...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/technology/acxiom-lets-consumers- see-data-it-collects.html)

<comment><USER3> I would really like to know what data they are sharing with Experian.

If its just helping them target ads then they should explain why Experian is allowed to continue, but I am more concerned with Experian being "creative" with Facebook's tools and incorporating some of that into their credit scoring models.

<comment><USER4> I am guessing it is something even worse. Like, Experian uses Facebook data to adjust credit scores. And some time in the near future your credit score will suck if you don't have a social media footprint.

<comment><USER5> > And some time in the near future your credit score will suck if you don't > have a social media footprint.

People will just create fake accounts that "like" things like "saving money" and "paying off debt."

<comment><USER6> Sure but anyone judging your credit score isn't looking for that. "Paying off debt but not too quickly" or "Carrying enough debt to accrue interest without defaulting" are more likely what they would want to see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still don't see anyone addressing the elephant in the room: corporate, extensive personal data harvesting must stop.

If this is Facebook's business model, Facebook must go.

No one would allow the kind of pervasive intrusion put in practice by Facebook (and others) by the part of governing bodies, the police or the military. So why are we still allowing marketing companies to do it? Why are willing to let credit, insurance and health companies access our data in order to know us better than ourselves? When is this the price of a "better user experience"? It is disingenuous to say that people simply "agreed to this". No one can expect the average user to fully comprehend the inner workings of the modern web, and to what extent their data is being used, or even to keep up with changing terms of use for every single service.

Some, like Tim Cook, are starting to address the issue but not as directly as one would expect.

<comment><USER8> If a credit company doesn't know who you are they will not loan you even one dollar. If an insurance company doesn't know who you are they will charge you the maximum to account for the risk. If a health company doesn't know your data they can't accurately diagnose trends in your health. Still want to play this game?

<comment><USER9> If a credit card company or health company relies on a social media entity to decide whether to give you credit or to be able to accurately diagnose your health then they have other problems.

None of that needs Facebook.

Still want to play this game?

Credit card companies were extending people credit and doctors were making accurate diagnoses long before the internet came along, they are definitely not a necessity for the functioning of society in ways that really matter.

<comment><USER8> Can you say that with any certainty? You don't know what you can do with data really until you have it all available at your disposal.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I can say that with certainty. Anything a credit card company will do when they have access to aggregate data is done to benefit the credit card company, not the customers. And anything healthcare providers can do when it comes to making diagnoses is either on an individual basis, in which case access to my social media data would not matter _or_ it is part of a study in which case there should be proper controls.

If you wish to argue that there are direct benefits to consumers from either giving credit card companies or health care providers access to your social media data then the the onus is on you to prove this.

<comment><USER8> The onus isn't on me to prove anything. The OP was against harvesting of data in all forms, not just social media.

That means no credit, insurance, or health related data collection of any kind at all.

What do you think of _that_?

<comment><USER9> Your thesis is that without credit, insurance or health data collection those entities will not be able to function.

The world is a lot larger than just the United States and in other places banks, insurance companies and healthcare providers function just fine even if they do not have the data gathering capabilities that are considered 'normal' in the United States.

So there's what I think of 'that', data collection is not a pre-requisite for any of this.

<comment><USER10> Easy access to credit the way it runs in the US isn't universal, and most places it is are currently dealing with the same data collection issues.

Partitioning the data and more heavily regulating the credit industry may be part of a solution.

Where do healthcare providers function well with less data than those in the US? I'm not experienced enough with the healthcare industry and nationalization of healthcare data to know, so if you have examples I'd really appreciate it.

<comment><USER9> The US is about as bad as it gets when it comes to healthcare. Good examples for healthcare run in a way that it does not break the bank and provides a high level of care are Canada and France, other Western European countries to greater or lesser degree depending on how much privatization has been going on.

<comment><USER10> Sure, as far as money is concerned - what about data collection and management, though? Isn't that what we were talking about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I might catch some flak for saying this, but as a marketer this is a pretty significant change and will make running campaigns more difficult.

Also, I don't really see how this does much to protect anyone's privacy, this mostly just makes running effective campaigns more complicated and expensive. The data is still being collected and sold, now you can't just get it directly through Facebook anymore.

<comment><USER9> > I might catch some flak for saying this, but as a marketer this is a pretty > significant change and will make running campaigns more difficult.

Excellent.

> Also, I don't really see how this does much to protect anyone's privacy, > this mostly just makes running effective campaigns more complicated and > expensive.

If you don't have access to data you shouldn't have access to that improves privacy. Exchanges leaking data which then gets cached is a huge privacy issue, allowing third parties to link up this data with data they already have is absolutely terrible. Data files in isolation are bad enough, allowing the joining of disjoint datasets is about as bad as it gets when it comes do de- anonymizing people.

> The data is still being collected and sold, now you can't just get it > directly through Facebook anymore.

Good. Not _all_ data will still be available, and hopefully some more of these holes will be closed soon to make it even harder to make running highly targeted campaigns more difficult.

From where I'm sitting the sooner marketeers lose the capability to run targeted campaigns the better, and every little bit helps.

On the plus side: your budgets will go up to reach the same effect so why complain?

<comment><USER12> No, no and no.

I've worked on every single vertical and 3rd party data / Partner Categories is rarely used by big or small advertisers a like.

The cost of the advertising increases i.e. higher CPMs for using this data. I've spent north of $40ml across all digital ads with a large chunk being on $FB and it isn't the main kind of targeting that is used and its the most expensive kind as well.

I am not hugely convinced this will dramatically affect $FB given there are so many other targeting options out there it isn't much of a concern in my eyes just a shame this is one avenue that will now be closed but its one of so many marketers can use.

<comment><USER9> So, your point is it should be allowed to continue because it doesn't matter anyway? Then there is no loss. On to the next until it starts to hurt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> LinkedIn offers a similar product, which they call "Contact Targeting" with data integration. From [https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/85809?lang=en](https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/85809?lang=en):

> Contact targeting is a LinkedIn Marketing Solutions feature that allows > advertisers to upload lists of contacts to include as part of their target > audience for ad campaigns. If you have already interacted with a company and > provided them with your contact information (e.g. to sign-up for a > newsletter or webinar), they may include you in a target audience for a > LinkedIn ad campaign using contact targeting.

It's part of "Matched Audiences": [https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/81195](https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/81195)

Twitter's rough equivalent is called "Tailored Audiences," though as far as I know, it relies only on hashed email addresses and device IDs uploaded directly by the advertiser, not data appending companies: [https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/ads/audiences/overview](https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/ads/audiences/overview)

TechCrunch doesn't say exactly what part of Facebook's product will be rolled back - uploading any hashed user lists? hashed user targeting only when done by third-party data appenders? only when based on offline events? - so it's hard to tell how far Facebook is going.

<comment><USER14> Facebook is still keeping this. If the advertiser provides your info to Facebook they can target you. They are getting rid of the ability to target you based on data Facebook purchases from third parties - e.g. you buy something in a Sephora store, Facebook buys transaction info from your bank/visa/"brokers" and then tags you as "bought beauty in last 30 days", then a brand targets that tag and you see an ad you wouldn't have seen otherwise.

And yes, there's a specific Facebook targeting category for "bought beauty last 30 days", or was before this change.

<comment><USER13> Thanks. I just updated my comment to make it clear that TechCrunch doesn't say exactly what part is being removed.

If you're correct, the part they're rolling back is relatively small.

<comment><USER15> It is actually not that small. Facebook has a lot of info on what you like but relatively few info on _what you buy_ offline. A lot of that data is kept by credit card/reward card companies, which then sell them to Acxiom and others (how nice of them!)

<comment><USER16> There's a huge market for grocery store purchase history from those loyalty cards everyone uses.

<comment><USER9> Which is why I don't have one of those but I make myself no illusions about the grocery company being able to track me anyway based on the bank card used to pay for the groceries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One possible conspiracy... Facebook stock has dropped a bunch, site usage is down 24% and advertisers are leaving left and right... anounce these audience segments will be gone in 6 months but advertisers can A, reach them now and B, build first party audiences off this data by advertising to specific segments just to cookie folks... and the next two earnings calls show a big increase in ad spend!

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if this just means they know so much about people from first-party data they've collected (including their share buttons on other sites) that the additional performance gains from third-party data weren't worth much.

<comment><USER19> Maybe they used the partner data as ML training data and now they don't need it anymore :)

<comment><USER20> Maybe they will be slightly better than the emails in my spam folder

For the amount of data Facebook collects, the quality of advertising they provide is pretty much garbage. Late night tv infomercial quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Honestly, I think this is a fallout of third party data being too expensive relative to the increase in performance more than anything else... middleware ad tech and data sellers are a failed experiment that has been a net negative for advertisers, users and publishers..all it did was just enrich some bloated ad tech startups to steal a piece of the pie...its a scam that floated on smoke and mirror attribution models...and advertisers who actually control their budgets have smartened up finally...its artificially propped up by agencies incentivized to spend more and make their clients look good in a powerpoint and colorful excel sheet...without true accountability to REALITY! I think we will see many more hits to the third party data world and ad tech that promises richer targeting without really serving the users or advertisers by enabling them to deliver better value...versus just paying twice for customers they would have anyways short of the third party selling your customers to your competitors...its a shell game and its finally coming crashing down!!! GOOD RIDDANCE!

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a fairly major change, and will have some fairly significant impacts on the AdTech industry. I'd go as far as saying this was the first really meaningful fallout from the CA scandal.

I'd hazard a guess that not many ordinary users are even aware that retailers can upload their email addresses into Facebook and create targeting segments from them.

As to what these changes do to the AdTech industry is anyone's guess. 'Onboarding' email addresses is basically LiveRamp's business model.

<comment><USER17> I highly doubt this had anything to do with CA, outside of some PR timing... third party data is stale and expensive and advertisers were already complaining of costs on FB... this will make it cheaper for mom and pop advertisers and scare away the affiliate marketers mostly.. facebooks owm data and first party audience data is still open season and where the ad dollar shift has been happening anyways...

This was a smart biz decision and CA was just a convenient opportunity to roll out without too much backlash IMHO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Facebook is to me a clear case, where missing company values created a huge mess. What are the core values/core beliefs of Facebook? I firmly believe that other than anything else a set of core values determines the long term fate of companies. Of course, it's not enough to merely have a set of beliefs that you've put up nicely on the wall, but, rather, top management must speak and act according to these principles.

<comment><USER23> The very core principle of any public corporation is to show positive metrics to its shareholders during board meetings.

<comment><USER22> That is a goal, not a principle to operate by. An no, this is not just semantics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Facebook policies are very sneaky. Rather than defaulting them to something restrictive, their defaults are very permissive.

I would not be surprised if this thing is undone later.

</comment><comment><USER25> I believe this is related to GDPR, which isn't clear in the article.

This is the information from Facebook (via Dennis Yu from Blitz Metrics):

// from Facebook:

Although I have spoken with many of you just today and yesterday, I wanted to make you immediately aware of an update we received to third-party targeting, late this afternoon.

We have a responsibility for the use of data on our platform - and we want to ensure that people have transparency and control over how their information is used. Over the past week, we announced important changes to reduce the amount of data that apps can request from users and ensure that people have more control over their information on Facebook. Now, to build on these efforts, we are going to be more restrictive in the way that we use data for advertising on our platform, particularly as it relates to information from third-party data providers.

Specifically, over the next six months, we will remove the ability to use Partner Categories, a targeting solution that enables third-party data providers to offer their targeting directly on Facebook. While leveraging third-party data is a common industry practice and we've put good protections in place, we believe this step will help improve people's privacy on Facebook.

We understand this may impact your advertising efforts on our platform, and we will work with you through this transition. In an attempt to minimize disruption, we will allow time for you to update your targeting. In light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, we have created a timeline to comply with the regulation:

· May 10: After this date, you will no longer be able to create or edit campaign using Partner Categories built on audiences from the UK, Germany, and France; however, they will be allowed to continue running until May 24.

· May 25: We will no longer deliver to Partner Categories built on audiences from the UK, Germany, and France, and these targeting options will no longer be available for use on our platform. You will notified to update any targeting containing impacted Partner Categories before this date.

· June 30: Last day for creating new or editing existing campaigns using non- EU Partner Categories; they will be allowed to run until September 30.

· October 1: All other Partner Categories will no longer be available as targeting options on our platform and we will stop delivering against these audiences. You will be notified to update your targeting by this date.

Protecting people's information is the most important thing we do. You can expect to hear more from us in the coming weeks as we continue to work to make our platform safer.

<comment><USER9> What's so special about the UK, Germany and France that doesn't hold for the other 25 member states of the EU?

<comment><USER26> They are unwilling to pull out of those three? They have actual corporate presences there making it easier to penalize? They have actual assets there?

All of those things are being asked by adtech lawyers right now in planning for the future EU data regimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not sure what this really means, but it's impressive how many measures FB is publicly taking that seem to improve the privacy of users. Again, not sure if it really does, but it sure makes it seem like it does.

Great tactical game by Facebook.

<comment><USER28> It feels a lot more like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's a step in the right direction, but still I don't trust Facebook making a decision like that. In the end they'll just replace it with something else which might turn out even worse than before. You cannot make money selling user data by cutting off data channels to your third party customer base. So, I'm waiting. Off Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER30> I know it's been tried many times unsuccessfully, but with the benefit of hindsight now would you have preferred to pay a nominal annual fee for the handful of currently free services that you really like?

I realize we're likely too far gone now, but it's fundamentally an issue that we aren't paying for these ad-supported services, so the companies gravitate toward serving the interests of the entities that are paying them.

That's not a justification or reflection of my opinion about privacy and ethics around the use of data, just a thought around removing the problem from the equation all together.

I guess my real question is, if you remove the profit seeking component of the data discussion does the bad behavior completely go away? Definitely interested in other opinions.

</comment><comment><USER31> But Facebook themselves still gather and keep the data? If so this is mere window dressing

</comment><comment><USER32> Pfff, so? These companies have the data already, and if not, they have long 6 months to get them. This only tells me that Facebook is trying to act as we wish to yet acting as it always did.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would assume the issue was that they had to give these companies data in order to match up a facebook user with an ID in the third party systems. See, for example, BlueKai's integration documentation: [https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/data- cloud/dsmkt/integ...](https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/data- cloud/dsmkt/integrating-oracle-bluekai-platform.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, as a Dumb fuck[0], I completely believe in Facebook will take all the necessary steps to protect my privacy.

[0] [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg)

And of course you can down vote, but we will meet again in the next Facebook scandal :)

</comment><comment><USER35> So does the mean you can no longer import a list of emails / Facebook IDs for lookalike audience creation?

</comment><comment><USER36> Thanks to functional analphabets ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy)) the advertising world is becoming much less interesting.

</comment><comment> oh-kumudo I think this is a welcome gesture, someone has to draw the line. Data shouldn't be a bargain.

</comment><comment><USER37> This won't stop the regulations coming their way. Facebook had the chance to prove they could be trusted but squandered it and may have ruined it for the tech industry. They know this and it's why they hired Washington lobbyists.

</comment><comment><USER17> This will actually make facebook ads cheaper...many people dont realize that facebook charges you a markup for some of these targeting audiences.

</comment><comment><USER38> What are the odds they've already managed to extract and associate all the Partner Categories data for their own use?

</comment><comment><USER39> Zuck has to go.

</comment><comment><USER40> The ads on Instagram are pretty amazing. I find myself wanting to buy 80% of the products they try to sell me.

<comment><USER41> Get an adblocker

<comment><USER42> Most instagram usage is mobile, where you don't get that flexibility (especially on iOS)

<comment><USER41> This fact is at the heart of what is wrong with non-FLO software and the whole trend of technology today.

I left Apple (previously only a Mac user) several years ago over this. It's not merely the issue of ads (which is not to be understated, ads are ruinous, at the heart of tons of problems). The way power structures work in these non- FLO walled-gardens amount to an effective sabotage of the entire potential for FLO software overall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I believe there is a saying about horses and gates which would be apposite.

</comment><comment><USER44> Before I went to read the article, I wondered if they would define first and second party here. And they do:

Quote from the article: "In order to leverage the deep pool of data Facebook collects on users, the company mixes information that it obtains from users themselves (Pages a user liked, for instance) with information from advertisers (membership status in a loyalty program, for example) and with data obtained from third party providers."

It is super interesting that they have _no terminology at all_ for data collected via shadow profiles. I propose "zeroth party" data - they are shadow profiles after all. :-)

</comment><comment><USER45> You know how Facebook keeps saying "we never sell your data"? It was _bartering_ it with data brokers all this time.

The only reason they're even taking this step is because they _know_ there are many other companies that could get just as much if not more data about its users as Cambridge Analytica did _from the data brokers_ that partnered with Facebook.

This would be true especially now that the "cat is out of the bag" so potentially many other malicious groups/rival states could be trying to do the same thing as CA did.

Facebook simply saw the inevitable: Cambridge Analytica multiplied by 100 in its future.

But one question remains: has Facebook made sure that the data brokers _deleted all of the FB data_ , and did they just ask them to "certify" this, as they did with CA in 2015, or did FB audit these companies? (as Zuckerberg committed to do recently with all the companies they suspect of abusing its policies?) Did FB audit Palantir, too, and its use of Cambridge Analytica's data?

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/palantir-worked-with- cambrid...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/palantir-worked-with-cambridge- analytica-on-the-facebook-data-whistleblower.html)

<comment><USER46> they did not sell data to brokers. they bought data from brokers.</comment></comment>


How Not to Negotiate a $6.1B Deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-24/how-not-to-negotiate-a-6-1-billion-deal <comment><USER2> It seems like it would be an all around benefit to the economy to disrupt the model that hedge funds use to invest in companies. Obviously access to capital is important. Obviously there are companies that benefit from more efficient operations (e.g., the Olive Garden drama of years past...BREADSTICKS). However, I cannot seem to find any benefit in allowing a hedge fund to charge for services to a company it has taken over. To buy a company with the pure goal of extracting any short term value with the intent of destroying it seems to be a long term societal ill that should be regulated out of existence.

<comment><USER3> > Olive Garden drama of years past

Ahh, Olive Garden. I hope you won't mind a slight tangent involving Olive Garden, one of Paul Graham's essays, and a sneaky business deal:

In one of his essays[1], Paul Graham wrote, "I think most businesses that fail do it because they don't give customers what they want. Look at restaurants. A large percentage fail, about a quarter in the first year. But can you think of one restaurant that had really good food and went out of business?"

Yes, I can name a restaurant that had really good food and went out of business -- it was all of the Olive Garden locations in Ontario, Canada, about 15 years ago. They were always busy, _always_ had a line-up to get in, and pretty much everyone I knew liked the food a lot. Then suddenly, without explanation, all of the Olive Gardens in Ontario shut down.

Much later I learned that Olive Garden USA had shifted some large debts to its Olive Garden Canada subsidiary, and allowed the Canadian subsidiary to go bankrupt, freeing the parent corporation of the debts. (So businesses fail for odd reasons even when they have excellent products and masses of loyal customers.)

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html)

<comment><USER4> > I learned that Olive Garden USA had shifted some large debts to its Olive > Garden Canada subsidiary, and allowed the Canadian subsidiary to go > bankrupt, freeing the parent corporation of the debts.

How does shit like that even work? It seems like it would clearly qualify under fraud. Even if it doesn't, how does it not send every potential future creditor running away as fast as possible?

<comment><USER5> Doesn't sound like fraud. If you rack up a bunch of debt, but take out a mortgage on your already paid off house to get rid of the debt, is it fraud?

You had a perfectly good house, but sometimes decisions have to be made.

Your creditor point is valid, but only if the creditors are paying deep attention because if they're not, these actions could give the appearance of profitability and stability.

<comment><USER4> > If you rack up a bunch of debt, but take out a mortgage on your already paid > off house to get rid of the debt, is it fraud?

That isn't what was described, to my understanding. What was described seems sort of like transferring all your unsecured debt to your spouse, and letting her go through some individual bankruptcy that doesn't affect you.

> You had a perfectly good house, but sometimes decisions have to be made.

If you're allowed to transfer debt around to related entities where negative repercussions don't affect you, the normal checks and balances of the system have failed.

I imagine a similar situation (even if not purposefully attempted) is why student loans are actually protected from bankruptcy. Parents used to pay for college, because students couldn't really afford it. Parents don't necessarily want to go into bankruptcy because they may have other assets affected. If the students take out the loan, if they go into bankruptcy in the few years after graduating, the parents aren't affected. Students are a risky bet because bankruptcy has fairly little cost for them that early in life, so the loans would be very hard to get. To incentivize lenders to give the loans, you have to protect them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Matt Levine touched on this earlier in the week:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-29/xerox- ceo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-29/xerox-ceo-showed- some-strategic-thinking)

> Helping a merger along by offering the target CEO a good job at the combined > company is … a fairly standard move, really; it's the sort of thing that > people grouse about in merger lawsuits but that happens a lot. Helping it > along by offering the target CEO a good job at the combined company after > he'd already been fired

<comment><USER7> Are you missing part of your quote?

<comment><USER8> "Helping it along by offering the target CEO a good job at the combined company _after he'd already been fired_ is much weirder, though. It's more or less okay for a CEO to try to preserve his job in a merger; it's awkward for him to try to rescue his job that way."

<comment><USER9> I find it hard to believe a F500 CEO cares that much about keeping their job after an acquisition. Presumably he has a bunch of options/grants that will be worth a fuckton due to the 30% premium Fuji would pay. Plus it's good for the resume. Look at Monsanto's Hugh Grant. He'll be loaded so he doesn't need to take a title-cut to be CEO of a subsidiary to keep some piddly 7-figure salary, and he can find another job without too much trouble if he does decide to keep working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Almost no matter the size or nature of the company, sales is treated as this mysterious black box.

If your top salesperson commits improprieties, well then.. you still have to keep him. Clients! Contacts! Secret Sauce!

If your CEO is AWFUL, then the board can tell him he's fired. But if he's in process to sell the company? Well... sales is tough, might as well let him stay to finish it out.

One success can also change everything for a salesperson. John Thain received a ton of criticism... but he was able to sell Merrill Lynch for $50bn during the crisis.

<comment><USER11> Other than extreme cases like selling an entire company, sales is a case where it's trivial to measure results and align incentives, which makes top-down interference a lot less tempting.

<comment><USER12> > sales is a case where it's trivial to measure results and align incentives

It's anything but. Good sales usually are driven by how much they make, and if there's any misalignment between your commission plan and what's good for the company they'll optimize their own revenue in a heart beat. It can be _very_ hard to align your commission plan with what the company actually needs if the business you're into is non-trivial. (Think optimizing the use of existing work capacity, selling high profit products rather than easier to sell low profits ones, keeping sales more or less aligned with the company's capacity to hire staff that can deliver, etc. Selling too much too fast is not always a good thing.)

<comment><USER13> > It can be very hard to align your commission plan with what the company > actually needs if the business you're into is non-trivial.

But...it usually is trivial. Businesses sell widgets: a ream of paper, a car, a CRM.

Is there anyone whose instrinsic goals are _more_ aligned with the company's than a commissioned salesman? (Alignment with the customer's goals...that's a whole other story.)

<comment><USER14> Haha. Anything but. If you have one product, sure it's easy. But if you have a diverse product offering things quickly spin out of control.

I see this a lot in my current company.

Low margin hard to maintain product being pushed over high margin easy to maintain because the pricing (and margin) calculations don't take into account the tech support burden.

Having proper understanding of this the cost to support different product lines is difficult for large companies and the comp structure is usually just straight up gross revenue. For those higher up margin begins to play a factor, but they usually doesn't account for where the "overhead" gets spent.

<comment><USER15> I can, with almost 100% confidence, assure you that upper management understands this. There is some value that those high-dollar, low-margin transactions provide that isn't realized on the company balance sheet. It could be that your company's board or investors are asleep at the wheel, or haven't looked too closely at the books, or there aren't adequate company controls.

They could be positioning for some sort of exit, or are just trying to juggle the company afloat until they solve what seems to be an unsolvable problem.

If what your saying is really true though, that would be enough to motivate me to look for another job.

It would be much worse if they were just clueless about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, this is a story where Icahn is the sympathy figure? Rare space indeed.</comment>


Buffer: A minimalist web app for people who like to tweet a lot - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/02/17/buffer-collect-your-tweets-send-them-out-when-you-want-free-premium-memberships/ <comment><USER2> This does look useful - I'm pretty sure we'll start using in the next week as we're launching our own site (<http://www.solvingtrafficcongestion.com>) and will be needing to tweet on a regular basis. Buffer looks like it will become one of our marketing tools.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like it. Although the login process failed on me several times.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I really need to improve the sign up process. Can you let me know what went wrong? It'd be very helpful.

<comment><USER3> There were some problems with the authorization process with twitter and I had to refresh the page several times before it took me back to the application's main page. Also, it's a little confusing when you ask for email and password before sending the user to twitter to be authenticated. Usually people do it the other way around by authenticating the user first and then asking for other credentials once the user is already on the application's main page.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback, that's very useful. I think I will try and tweak it so that you're sent to Twitter first before I ask for an email and password. The reason I do that is that you can have multiple accounts, and each Twitter account can have multiple collaborators, so I need to keep Twitter accounts distinct from user accounts. I can, however, reverse the setup and as you say I think that would be less confusing. You're not the first to mention problems with the authorisation process - I will look into that. Thanks again.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Poll: Americans Turn On Snowden, Majority Supports Criminal Charges - <AUTHOR> http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/poll-americans-turn-on-snowden-majority-supports-criminal

<comment><USER2> I've thought about Snowden that he did more of a service for people in other countries. I mean people should assume that big US internet companies are sharing data, but to have it that obvious is useful information and not healthy for those companies.

<comment><USER3> People had plenty of prior evidence to fear mass surveillance, but even with these new leaks, most Americans still do not really care. "Nobody can look over my shoulder, the mullet blocks their view."</comment></comment>


New Hope for Cancer Patients Comes in Form of 150-Year-Old Drug - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/new-hope-for-cancer-patients-comes-in-form-of-150-year-old-drug <comment><USER2> Are doctors using this yet? If so, what percentage of them?</comment>


Justice, Mercy, Data, Evidence, BLM and QAnon - <AUTHOR> https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/08/26/justice-mercy-data-evidence-blm-and-qanon/ <comment><USER2> This is an interesting article, well researched and well written and well argued. But it absolutely misses the entire point of Qanon, as have most or all mainstream reports.

Qanon, at its core, is servile Trump worship. I'm not using "worship" sarcastically or hyperbolicly, but rather more-or-less literally. The core of the Qanon belief system is that Trump is basically correct about everything, can do almost no wrong, and is close to all-powerful.

The fact remains that even a generous evaluation of Trump has him looking weak, ineffectual, self-dealing, corrupt, poor at leadership, bad at picking underlings, and for those of us who listened to the House Impeachment Inquiry back in February, almost certainly a traitor. It's very hard to escape the conclusion that Trump is corrupt and not good at being a President.

Since Qanon worships Trump, they have to find someone worse than him to revile, to blame for Trump's problems, to scapegoat for Trump's failures. It's tough to do for someone who looks as corrupt and divisive as Trump. So Qanon fantasizes about "elite pedovores", or Luciferian Banking Cabals or Our Pleidian Friends so that there's somebody out there actually worse than Trump for Trump to fight.

<comment><USER3> Have you talked to anyone who is familiar with Qanon (e.g. investigative reporter, member, etc.)? They believe they are exposing wicked people in high places behind human trafficking rings. I don't think anyone would admit to being a 'servile Trump worshipper', neither a 'servile <insert political figure> worshipper'. Whether they are on to something is another issue. I am not part of Qanon, but I know characterizations such as yours are just wrong.

You really believe Trump is a traitor? Can you name 1 or more specific pieces of evidence? I do not think Trump is a traitor, in fact I think he has been a great president by his merits (in 2016 I was neutral). I love how he talks about specific issues and solutions rather than vague platitudes. He is a breath of fresh air, and that is why he was voted for (though I did not see this in 2016). If he is a traitor, I would love to be enlightened of this and obviously I would not support him. I think most people (such as yourself) don't spend time looking into the claims by his political opponents that he is a traitor. Also, if you support Trump you risk being fired.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I have engaged Qultists several times via Twitter. Every single time I got defletion, phrases like "Do your own research", "Not.My.Job." in response to requests for sources of information. I did my own research and decided Qanon beliefs are essentially 99.5% false. The "elite pedovore" stuff is falsifiable with only a few clicks and some simple geometry and arithmetic.

As far as Trump being a traitor: I cite the House Impeachment Inquiry - Hill, Vindman and Sonderland all testified under oath to Trump doing things that are a direct betrayal of the USA. The Mueller report and the Senate Intelligence community reports all indicate that the Trump campaign, and Trump himself, not only knew about and welcomed Russian election interference, but actually coordinated with the Russians about it. If you need a sword statement from Donald J. Trump that he did it, I can't provide that, but between House Inquiry, Mueller report and SSCI reports, everyone that's not a judge or a jury member knows Trump did some treason. So read all that and change your mind.

I personally listened to the House Impeachment Inquiry back in February, and read parts of the Mueller report and the Senate reports. I'm insulted that you think I'm just mindlessly repeating some anonymous source's vague assertions. How dare you?!?

Also, please cite someone merely supporting Trump and getting fired. Sources I can look up and examine myself or it didn't happen.</comment></comment></comment>


Open Source Private Cloud Software Startup Eucalyptus Raises $30M - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/18/open-source-private-cloud-software-startup-eucalyptus-raises-30m-from-ivp-benchmark-to-take-on-vmware/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm really thrilled that open source business software start-ups can raise that amount of money.</comment>


Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm Drew, founder of Saratoga Energy (https://www.saratoga-energy.com). We make better carbon nanotubes at one-fifth the price. Carbon nanotubes are a form of nano-scale carbon fibers (5,000X thinner than human hair) with remarkably high strength, electrical conductivity, and thermal conductivity properties. This makes them useful in a variety of commercial applications.
Lithium-ion batteries designed for electric cars already use carbon nanotubes to reduce heat generation during charging and to improve electrical conductivity. This results in faster charging and improved battery life. However, the cost is so high ($300/kg) that battery manufacturers are forced to use the minimal amount, rather the optimal amount.
Our breakthrough in manufacturing cost enables battery manufacturers to use the optimal amount, allowing electric cars to safely recharge in 10 minutes or less. This could give electric cars the boost they need to replace gasoline engines.
The idea to start the company grew from an idea posed to me by my Dad back in 2012 - is there a way to transform carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into something valuable? I thought this would be an exciting challenge because most carbon dioxide technologies at the time were focused on storing it in underground caverns or converting it into commodity chemicals where it would be difficult to profit without substantial government subsidies.
After reading an article about Tesla's intentions to only source raw materials that were sustainably produced in North America, we settled on developing a low-cost electrochemical process to convert carbon dioxide into graphite. Graphite is an essential energy storage material used in lithium-ion batteries. After deciding on the product, my Dad and I put together a small team of chemical engineers to help with the patents and applications for grants from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
When we received our funding, we began work with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to construct small batteries to test the material we had made. We noticed that some cells would charge three, or sometimes five times faster than commercial reference materials. So we pulled the cells apart to have a look at the graphite with a high-powered microscope. All of the fast-charging graphite was matted with tiny hairs (I later learned that it sounds cooler if you call them "carbon nanotubes").
We thought about it for a few days and did some research. We eventually figured out that certain metals we had tested in our production process were likely responsible for the growth of carbon nanotubes. So we isolated those metals to test the theory. It worked!
Now we had a process that could either grow carbon nanotubes or graphite  - both at an estimated cost under $5/kg. The difference being that the market price for battery-grade graphite is $10/kg and the market price for battery-grade carbon nanotubes is $300/kg.
If the price of graphite is reduced from $10/kg to $5/kg, electric cars get a bit less expensive and the market expands a bit more. If the price of carbon nanotubes is reduced from $300/kg to $5/kg, electric cars cold potentially charge in about the same amount of time it takes to refill a tank of gas, which could create exponential growth in the electric car market. We discussed this with our grant manager and agreed that it made sense to pivot and scale up the carbon nanotube process - which leaves us here today in W19.
What's different about our technology is that we produce carbon nanotubes through the electrolysis of molten carbonate salts. The electrochemical reaction produces carbon (nanotubes), oxygen gas, and metal oxides, which are further reacted with carbon dioxide to re-generate the carbonate salt starting material. So the net reaction is the input of energy to drive the conversion of carbon dioxide to carbon nanotubes and oxygen.
Industry has been using chemical vapor deposition to make carbon nanotubes since they were first discovered in 1991. We believe that our platform is better for a few reasons: 1) electrochemistry is tunable and this gives us control over the size and shape of the nanotubes, so they can be custom-tailored for specific battery chemistries and applications outside of energy storage as well; 2) the energy requirement for our manufacturing process is estimated to be 27 kWh/kg, five times less energy intensive than chemical vapor deposition; and 3) our technology represents a value-added use for carbon dioxide, and if powered by electricity from renewable sources, would have a negative carbon footprint.
I think the reason nobody has commercialized this production method yet, or come up with some other high-efficiency process, is because chemical vapor deposition is relatively simple to operate and relatively simple to scale. Billions of dollars worth of chemical vapor deposition infrastructure are already established, and historically, there haven't been many new market opportunities that would justify investing in new technologies to drive down cost.
Only recently have researchers demonstrated the potential for carbon nanotubes to improve the performance of new applications like advanced energy storage, high-strength carbon fibers and composites, lightweight electrical wiring, and concrete composites for roads that don't crack. If carbon nanotubes were less expensive, these new applications could be worth billions while also creating sizable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It is our mission to bring new markets like these to life and to develop new products that best take advantage of what our carbon nanotubes have to offer.
I believe that we are best positioned to break this cost-curve and bring this technology to market because molten carbonate electrochemistry is not a well-known science. What we've learned since our foundation in 2012 is not commonly taught in universities. Our knowledge was acquired through hands-on experience and in-house development of intellectual property.
Hopefully some of you folks are also interested in carbon nanotubes, or at least share a mutual dislike for carbon dioxide. I'm looking forward to sharing some ideas with everyone!
-Drew <comment><USER2> So how are you guys and the rest of the industry going to manage the possible toxicity of carbon nanotubes?[1] It seems they get into people's lungs and then they never leave and cause mechanical damage much like asbestos presumably leading to difficult to treat cancers. Are you going to wait for these things to be in just about everything and then spend the next 50 years getting sued?

[1][https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon- nanotube-d...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-nanotube- danger/)

<comment><AUTHOR> only certain types of carbon nanotubes that have a thick and rigid structure have asbestos-like qualities. These are no longer used outside of Asia. The thinner, flexible variety similar to the ones we make do not share these qualities an do not penetrate cell tissue. Similar to carbon black, which is a widely used nano-material in car tires. Carbon nanotubes are also sold in solution and in dispersion so they cannot easily become air born.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Amazing story, very inspirational to those of us just working on CRUD apps.

Who is your father and what is his career background? I see he was instrumental in putting you on this path. This was the quote that stuck out to me:

> " _After deciding on the product, my Dad and I put together a small team of > chemical engineers to help with the patents and applications for grants from > the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation._ "

How much capital did you two have to risk at this stage to pay your team before receiving the grants?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! My father is an awesome guy with a unique perspective on the future! I'd rather not get specific, but having an initial angel investor was crucial for us to be able to generate the amount of data we needed to win our first grant an keep things moving forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I felt your idea so interesting and after searched a bit I found similar idea as below. Could you explain the difference? [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019689041...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196890416304861)

</comment><comment><USER5> > Our breakthrough in manufacturing cost enables battery manufacturers to use > the optimal amount, allowing electric cars to safely recharge in 10 minutes > or less.

Well that's half the battle. The other half of the problem is delivering that amount of energy in 10 minutes, particularly in areas that are already maxing out their capacity on hot summer days.

<comment><USER6> My math may be a bit off but if you have a 230Ah battery (Telsa Model 3) and you want to charge it in 10 minutes you need something on the order of 1380A charging current even ignoring losses. At 350V, the voltage of the Tesla Model 3 battery pack, this is 483,000 Watts! There are major problems with this type of charging happening at scale at every level of the energy grid.

<comment><USER7> Most systems like this would be changed to go battery to battery with larger stationary storage on-site being essentially refilled from the net at the average use rate of all cars combined per day. This would delay this problem a little

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi Drew! What you're doing sounds awesome -- more power to you, both figuratively and literally! Hey, I'd love to see an "About Us" web page on your website with team bio's, list of VC's, etc. (Hey, you've already written half of that page in what you've posted here!). Also, please ignore the naysayers here. Everyone in history who has tried to advance science has always had naysayers, it's just the nature of what you're trying to do! Good luck, and I hope you succeed wildly!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, thank you! Our site definitely needs an update. We have a more detailed website in the works! I'll keep you posted!

<comment><USER9> Hi Drew! You are Doing Ground Breaking work here,I wish you all the Success. If you need any help in developing website,It would be my pleasure to do so,you can find my email in bio.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There seems to be a growing concern wrt HSE aspects of CNTs. Is that an issue you're worried about (as in - worried about a possible regulatory shift)

<comment><USER5> HSE?

<comment><AUTHOR> HSE is health and Safety. I'm not sure what the 'E' stands for :)

<comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment,_health_and_safety](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment,_health_and_safety)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Have you heard of Molecular Rebar? [http://www.molecularrebar.com/](http://www.molecularrebar.com/)

Their CNT patent portfolio is being licensed by a company called Black Diamond Structures, which is a joint venture with SABIC. They're looking at battery applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! I've heard that Molecular Rebar and Black Diamond Structures have a great process to untangle and purify CNTs. I believe their business model is to buy low cost CNTs from other producers and upgrade them with their process. Maybe there's an opportunity for collaboration.

<comment><USER12> Happy to make an intro. My email is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> that would be awesome. thank you! ill send you an email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can you selectively grow semiconducting tubes, or metallic tubes, or do you only get a mixture of semiconducting and metallic?

<comment><AUTHOR> We grow conductive multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Some of the layers may be semi-conductive. But in bulk they are a conductive material. We haven't refined the process to the point where we can select for conductivity type yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I believe there is a competition to develop a method to collect carbon dioxide and turn it into something useful. Did you won that competition? This seems really promising and better than collecting CO2 and just dumping it underground.

<comment><USER15> There is the Carbon XPrize but I think they are a year out from announcing winners.

There is a team using Molten Carbonate Electrolysis to create Carbon Nano- tubes in the competition. It sounds like the are not related based on the 2012 starting date in the post. The team lead has been working on this for 30 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> We weren't ready to apply to the carbon xprize when it was announced. But we're ready to scale quickly with Y Combinator!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who are the main suppliers now at the higher price points?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main suppliers are Showa Denko, Nanocyl, Arkema, and Cnano. Their prices range from $75/kg to $300/kg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good luck!

How big do you see this carbon nanotube market being, and thus how much net CO2 do you see yourself removing from the environment?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! in the case of the cement market, carbon nanotubes have been used in 1% concentration to improve the lifespan of cement. 4 billion tons of cement are produced every year. If carbon nanotubes where used in all new cement mixtures, that would be 40 million tons of carbon nanotubes per year, which would consume 148 million tons of CO2 per year. But perhaps more importantly, carbon nanotubes would reduce the replacement frequency of cement structures. cement production is one of the largest industrial sources of carbon dioxide emissions.

<comment><USER18> I love this area of technology and the scale of your vision. For the battery application, do you need to use only electrically conducting nanotubes? Is your 27kWh per kg number for single-walled electrically conducting nanotubes? Do you need to filter out semi-conducting nano-tubes?

I think that the improvements to batteries will have a better value proposition than strengthening concrete, though perhaps you can get away with less filtering requirements for non-electrical applications. How much does this strengthening increase the life-time-value of the concrete? Concrete is under $100 per ton (poured cost, 50% of which is dry materials), and it seems like you're talking about 50% - 150% increased cost.

At scale, you are talking about ((40 billion kg) * 27 * (kWh per kg)) / (1 year) = 123.205917 gigawatts -- to makes 1267 kg of nanotubes per second for 40 million tons of carbon nanotubes per year. 123 GW almost certainly means hundreds of billions of dollars invested in power infrastructure for the purposes of carbon nanotube production for concrete. If you expect to scale with sustainability in mind, you should consider designing your entire reaction around the renewable energy source. Perhaps you can employ similar catalytic processes to the Co-Mo-S photo-hydrogenation from sunlight to achieve higher efficiency per area by using sunlight more directly.

<comment><AUTHOR> We like the battery idea the best as well. We've chosen that as our first product to market. Me make multi-walled carbon nanotubes which are conductive in bulk. Its possible that there are non-conductive layers, but they are encased by conductive layers that counter act them. For concrete i've sen research showing 50% improvement in strength with 1% carbon nanotube concentration. We haven't confirmed this ourselves yet, but we are starting up a testing program soon. We are also planning on scaling with renewables like hydroelectric. If in the future carbon nanotubes can be used to replace aluminum as a structural material, there may be an opportunity to use they hydroelectric they were once operating on to power the process. But I agree, to reach a massive scale, we will need massive renewable energy. But I think we need that anyway!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chroem- How long are the continuous fibers? CNTs can do some truly insane things if you make them long enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> The CNTs we are making right now are about 10-20 microns long. Making them longer is a focus area for us. However, the nano-materials department at Rice has created a wet-spinning process the can bundle CNTs into continuous fiber. They aren't quite a strong as a continuous CNT from what i've heard, but still stronger than carbon fiber. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDJC64tDR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDJC64tDR0)

<comment> chroem- Have you characterized the anisotropy of the fibers yet? Mechanical, electrical, or otherwise?

Also thank you for the response!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why CO2 instead of CH4? If someone else tries a similar process with CH4, will their cost be smaller?

<comment><AUTHOR> we use CO2 because it easily absorbs into our electrolyte and ch4 does not. ch4 is also flammable at the temperatures we operate at and this would be more difficult to design around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are you hiring mechanical engineers?

<comment><AUTHOR> If all goes well at demo day we'll be looking for mechanical engineers! Please send your info!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can randoms purchase a Kg of CNTs from you to experiment with?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes they can. Always looking for new applications!

<comment><USER21> I live in The bay area, can i pickup? And what is the cost for a Kg of CNTs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> super cool! are yall hiring materials scientists? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> YES</comment></comment>


Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=815006 <comment><USER2> People,

This is great news for few of us.

But it has been hard to read trough this comments and realize how much ignorance about what Debian is, how it works, what the Debian bug tracker is, what a voluntary-based project is, and to read some assertions and prepotency around in HN

If you see ANYTHING wrong with Debian, go fix it, or shut up and go to sell your stuff to another one.

Debian is not a startup. Debian is not an elastic architecture in the cloud to support/pay-for traffic peaks. Debian may benefit from your solutions and resources, if you're so good. Debian isn't perfect.

The Debian bugtracker maybe not the web application I could write in 2016, but I'm conscious on how much work has been around it, and it's ecosystem, how much I'm in debt with the Debian bug tracker as opensource user, and how much should I THANK to the people who did work on it, who works on it and who uses it, and even translates it

Depressing to sometimes find great threads, and sometimes loose the time with subjective views, inexperienced reviews, false and incomplete assertions, haters, and mass style thinking.

I'm scared to imagine on hands of what kind of people there are technological choices... or to think that people gets influenced by content creators of this level... maybe I'm lucky and most of those opinions I dislike, are not from real engineers/hackers, but from lost re-users, and people without humility repeating what they find shocking, like a child of 3 years.

Feel free to downvote without reasoning why.

<comment><USER3> > If you see ANYTHING wrong with Debian, go fix it, or shut up and go to sell > your stuff to another one.

Ok, so Debian is a developers-only distribution?

> Feel free to downvote without reasoning why.

I didn't bother, but "Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted." [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER4> > Ok, so Debian is a developers-only distribution?

This might not be a bad characterization of where it sits now.

If you want a hand-holding "user-friendly" (and I use the term advisedly, based on the common, flawed conception of what a "user" is), create one _based on_ Debian, leveraging the Debian tools and packages and processes to make an Ubuntu or Mint or something else.

Debian isn't a meta-distribution. It is a distribution in its own right. However, it is commonly used as the foundation for a different distribution, with different goals and different ways of relating to the world. Debian itself remains unchanged, ready to base another distribution off of, and another, and another...

<comment><USER5> For a plug of my friend Thanatermesis' great Debian-based distribution, which recognizes the distro and free-software ethos is not always fully conducive to a positive user experience at the forefront...

[http://www.elivecd.org/](http://www.elivecd.org/) \- The latest release is always based on Debian Stable and is currently under active development. The whole system is changed in (mostly subtle) ways to make it more attractive to a new Linux user. This is Debian, with some additions. I push this to any friends who say they are interested in Linux, but maybe just want to try it first.

I would not recommend Ubuntu to a new user (unless they were my employee, we use it at work) or Mint for that matter. I would not recommend Debian in spite of using it myself at home, because I don't always want to be the Debian support guy, or have to be the one to say RTFM. Elive tries to be as self- explanatory as possible, even in its somewhat Tarzanic way.

<comment><USER6> Hmm, the website says "Elive is not made for newbies".

<comment><USER5> The website says a lot of things, he's probably right, but as a newbie IMHO your first task is to compile enlightenment, and in elive that's already done for you...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Mozilla releases new Firefox releases every 6 to 8 weeks. In parallel of > these rapid releases [...]

One of the fun differences between the various organizations I've worked for is the differing ideas of how frequently releases should happen and what is considered "fast" and "slow" in different places. I've seen release cycles measured in weeks and those measured in years. I'm sure there are places that release every N days. How people get used to some particular cadence and start believing that it's the only proper (or possible) way! One of the achievements I'm most proud of is helping a group make a difficult transition from a long, irregular cadence to a fast, predictable one. Going from a release process of "Release when company leadership subjectively thinks it's ready" to "Release every 4 weeks on the day" can at first rattle some people who are attached to The Way We've Always Done It, and it requires more discipline in terms of development practices, testing, feature creep, etc. But it can be done!

Not saying a faster or slower cycle is needed for Debian or Mozilla (it would depend on a huge number of factors), but your release cadence shouldn't be considered some immovable law of nature.

<comment><USER8> I find it very interesting that they are adopting a different release schedule for Firefox than the rest of Debian stable. People that care about fast release cycles probably really just care about few minor things being up to date, while administrators don't care about which programs/libraries make problems when updating as long as the total amount of breakages in a certain time isn't too high.

<comment><USER9> This is probably due to the specific nature of browser upgrades, which is the reason why firefox and chrome went to 6-week autoupgrade schedules for clients: people expect a hell of a lot from their browsers; troubleshooting a fractured version environment in such a complex field is next to impossible; important security updates need to be pushed.

So you end up with two main releases for the browser, one is the standard one that updates every six weeks, and the other has a more stable 'extended support' environment that just gets bugfixes, for places that can't easily deal with changes very often (like a business or education SOE). Debian stable usually lasts for about two years, and modern browser releases would find that impossible to support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Funny, I've been running Debian since 2007. I mainly got hooked on their 'testing' branch since it is just "always up to date".

But I always get people looking over my shoulder and asking "what the heck is 'iceweasel'. To which I explain the whole issue of Debian was distributing a patched version of Firefox with their OS back in ~2007 era and Mozilla, for trademark reasons, said you can't modify the browser and still distribute it with the official logos and name. Which lead to Iceweasel... but then a few years later Mozilla changed the license terms so now I guess here we are....

<comment><USER11> _> I mainly got hooked on their 'testing' branch since it is just "always up to date"._

Note that _testing_ doesn't get the same level of security support as _stable_ : _" Compared to stable and unstable, next-stable testing has the worst security update speed. Don't prefer testing if security is a concern."_ [1]; more details: [2], [3], [4].

[1] [https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting#Considerations](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting#Considerations)

[2] [https://wiki.debian.org/Status/Testing](https://wiki.debian.org/Status/Testing)

[3] [https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing](https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing)

[4] [http://secure-testing-master.debian.net/](http://secure-testing- master.debian.net/)

<comment><USER6> You can slightly speed it up by using apt pinning to get security updates from Debian unstable (but other packages from testing) when available.

[https://bugs.debian.org/725934](https://bugs.debian.org/725934)

To speed it up even more you would need to follow the unstable/testing pages on the security tracker and file bugs to get maintainers to do fixes and do NMUs when maintainers are on vacation or missing.

[https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/u...](https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/unstable) [https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/t...](https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/testing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting that the Paul brings up the trademark license clause regarding for-pay distribution.

        If you are using the Mozilla Mark(s) for the unaltered binaries you
        are distributing, you may not charge for that product.

While it restricts a freedom that Debian is unlikely to exercise, it's still a restriction. Presumably, that makes the trademark license indigestible to the Debian foundation?

<comment><USER13> Ahhhhhh, I've always wondered about clauses like that with the distribution of software compilations. For example, I can buy a Debian boxed set from here: [http://www.jbox.ca/product-category/computers- tablets/softwa...](http://www.jbox.ca/product-category/computers- tablets/software/linux-cds-dvds/debian-cds-dvds/) or any of the other distributors: [https://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/](https://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/). I _think_ a clause like that would prevent them from selling those.

<comment><USER14> I'm fairly sure when you are buying physical copies of Linux distributions you are buying the service of compiling and copying it and providing physical media, the box, any manuals, etc. The source code at a minimum must be made freely available to others. That is, they aren't charging for the code delivered, but the delivery itself and the physical media.

<comment><USER15> You're permitted (under both the GPL and the DFSG) to restrict who you make the code available to, and to charge them for it. The only requirement is that the _recipient_ have the right to _further redistribute_ the sources, without being compelled to restrict who they distribute it to, or being compelled to charge for it.

That is, it is entirely legitimate and legal for me to make a Debian derivative where the only means of distribution is that I charge you $30/month for a CD of my distribution (including source to any patches I apply), and I don't distribute it otherwise. I just have to give you the right to rip the CD and put it online for free, if you so choose.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure if this is meant to imply they don't have to offer the source in some form or just a clarification of my prior comment, but I think it's pretty clear from GPL 3.0 section 6[1] that it is required, and the most recompense you can get from this is "for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source", as if it's network accessible it must be free. So, at least part of my prior comment was incorrect, you do not need to provide it free of charge, but the only charge you can require, and then only for providing it on a durable physical medium, is the reasonable cost of doing so.

1: [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html)

<comment><USER15> Well, you can charge for the software as a whole, which I read your comment to claim you can't. I can absolutely say, hey, here's AwesomeDebianFork 1.0 with some custom patches on GPL code, you can get a CD set of binaries + source for $99. I don't have to resort to circumlocutions about service, and I don't have to make the source available to anyone else. ( _You_ are free to copy that source CD, though.)

The only thing I can't do is to say, the CD for AwesomeDebianFork 1.0 binaries is $9 and the CD for AwesomeDebianFork 1.0 sources is $90. (The GPL would reject this as not being "reasonable"; the DFSG would reject this outright for violating #2, "The program must include source code".)

<comment><USER14> > Well, you can charge for the software as a whole, which I read your comment > to claim you can't.

Ah, yeah, that was an aspect of my original comment I wasn't thinking of, but was implying, and I had glossed over that in your reply. Thanks for correcting me and clarifying. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Related: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=555935](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=555935)

Also, Debian is really lacking some more modern bug management / issue tracking system.

It might be useful to provide e-mail interface for it, but I fail to see why it also can't be managed from some site at the same time instead of limiting it to read only view.

<comment><USER17> Although GitHub Issues has a lot of issues, for the singular reason that you can opt-in and opt-out of notifications on particular subjects I find it _vastly_ more useful than most bug trackers.

Is there a good open-source GitHub alternative that implements this feature?

<comment><USER18> > you can opt-in and opt-out of notifications on particular subjects

What do you mean by that? Doesn't every bug tracker implement that feature?

<comment><USER17> The ones I've used in the past relentlessly spam you about every little thing for every issue or tell you nothing about anything. There's very little in the way of fine-grained control.

I understand some people prefer email for following up on these things, but destroying my inbox by following a busy project is not something I'll ever do. GitHub's default is to notify project owners, issues you've participated in or actively followed, or those you're mentioned in. I think that's fair.

You can also "one click unsubscribe" to them at any time, which is great.

Others I've been subjected to are things that are barely more than mailing lists. I have no idea how people deal with these.

<comment><USER18> I see. I have used trac and bugzilla and both work similar to GitHub (you only subscribe to issues you participate in)

<comment><USER17> If that's the case, I bet the projects I've had the displeasure of working with were using wildly out of date versions of those tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > On the contrary, Debian having a longer release cycle (about every two > years), release cycles don't align.

Then change your release cycle. Seriously, it's not that hard. Say that browsers are different and get released frequently. Create a firefox-lts package that is updated at the beginning of your Debian release cycle -- and never again. Let the firefox package be the firefox package, updated as frequently as upstream wants.

<comment><USER20> If you don't like the 2 year release cycle, use Ubuntu, which is Debian-based. Debian maintains such long release cycles because the tolerance for bugs and incompatibilities are smaller than other linux distros. For long-lived applications or applications that have long planning periods Debian is ideal. NASA uses Debian, because their projects are measured in years, have low tolerances for bugs, and are developed to last 5+ years. Simply put, Debian's release model is for a different use-case than your typical web development project

<comment><USER19> What does this have to do with Firefox? Is NASA writing rovers as Web apps? If not what does it matter which version of Firefox is installed?

<comment><USER21> User experience stability is often a real problem in the corporate or institutional world. Keeping a maximally stable version of Firefox will help corporate users a lot - it's not even necessarily about stability as much as it's about user retraining, in-house extensions, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I keep finding it puzzling that Debian would opt to maintain a fork of Firefox, while at the same time go all in with systemd because it would be too much effort to maintain something else.

</comment><comment><USER23> Congratulations HN, OP, we DDoSed the debian bug tracker.

Please be considerate when linking to webapps. If there's a static or cached version available, please post that.

In this case Debian's tracker mirrors everything to publicly mirrored mail servers (which are static), ie: [https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs- firstname.lastname@example.com...](https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs- email@example.com/msg1397739.html)

<comment><USER24> Or write faster apps? Caching pages for logged-out users is part of web site performance 101.

<comment><USER25> Debbugs works great for being last updated 12 years ago. It's main interface is email, after all, so the web interface is read-only. I think the real issue here is the hardware it's running on.

<comment><USER26> Forking a new process to run a Perl CGI script for every request is going to be far from optimal on any hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Doesn't look to be responding. Mirror:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PtAvYw...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PtAvYwWqUBMJ:https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi%3Fbug%3D815006&num=1&hl=en&gl=gr&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

</comment><comment><USER28> That's disappointing; the article mentions that Mozilla is happy with Debian's patch set, but I don't think they'd be happy with a patch that disabled mandatory extension signing. I was looking forward to Iceweasel sparing us from that anti-user nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand why Debian has anything to do with Firefox. Why does the operating system have any say on what applications get released and how often? Isn't this the whole point of using free, open source software? To be able to choose your own components? Why do we need Debian bundling Firefox?

<comment><USER30> Debian user and Mozilla employee who uses Iceweasel here. I work on Rust, not Firefox though.

      > Why does the operating system have any say on what applications get released
      > and how often?

This has to do with the interaction between the original authors and the distribution itself. Let's go through an example:

1\. I, Steve, write some bit of software, libfoo, and host it on my GitHub page.

2\. Debian users would like to use libfoo. They have two options at this point: download and build libfoo from me, or get it from Debian's package repository.

3\. In order to be put into Debian's repository, a suitable package needs to be created. What exactly that means depends on the package itself, but sometimes it's about things like "which paths are searched by default". Anything that integrates with the overall system. So someone, probably not even me, would need to say "I'm going to maintain a package for libfoo in Debian." They are responsible for taking from "upstream", my GitHub page, and producing a .deb for inclusion in Debian's repositories. This may involve modifying libfoo in some ways. It depends.

At any time, a user of Debian can choose: Do I get libfoo from Steve's GitHub, or do I get libfoo from apt? The reason that you might choose the latter is because Debian knows Debian better than I do. (Well, I said I use Debian above, but this works across distros, basically. I have no clue what Fedora's norms are, for example.) The package from Debian's repositories will be better integrated into the system, and will be tested for compatibility with other packages. Part of this is due to the release cycle of Debian itself; and this is what's being discussed here. It's not about when Firefox is released, it's about when the Debian package for Firefox is released. And what version of that package corresponds to which upstream version?

So! Back to this bug. Due to some... history between Mozilla and Debian, Debian's package for Firefox couldn't be called "Firefox." So it was rebranded to "Iceweasel." This bug is about re-synching the names, and having the Debian-provided package produce "Firefox" again.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER29> I understand what you are saying, but it doesn't make sense. It sounds like a really bad way to do software development.

<comment><USER16> What's the alternative? If you will try installing random stuff you'll get dependencies hell. Another extreme is self contained software, when each application bundles its own dependencies. Android does that more or less. But such approach causes major bloat and also increases security risks because you need to patch each application and its dependencies (which are duplicated in the multiple variants) once vulnerabilities are discovered.

Any better ideas than these two?

<comment><USER31> The bloat from self-contained software really isn't that much. It doesn't cause a space problem even on the small amount of space on an Android device.

<comment><USER16> It depends on how many dependencies we are talking about. And more than bloat, security issues are critical.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AWS Copilot - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/introducing-aws-copilot/ <comment><USER2> Not directly related to copilot but in context of ever increasing yml/json configurations for cloud apps, am I the only one who feels overwhelmed with the configuration options? I see tons of articles with just drop this json here and that yml there and run this cli command - where is the reference for these json/ymls? Does everyone fully know/understands the structure/options? How do people keep track of the changes to that between upgrades? I feel increasingly dumb the more I see these configs.

<comment><USER3> I feel like trying to use a "dumb" declarative config language for everything is part of the problem.

The domain is not simple enough for that, so you end up with all kinds of weird scripts around it all, or other templating/codegen solutions, plus all kinds of ad-hoc conventions that are extremely easy to break and very annoying to navigate.

Having a full blown statically typed language like TypeScript - where things can reference each other strongly (not just by names and other strings), naming conventions can be encoded in functions (or even enforced by types), and structures on _every_ level (even your project-specific ones) have a well- defined and checked schema - would help a lot in my opinion.

Maybe deno could find a use in this niche.

<comment><USER4> You're (accidentally, I think?) describing Pulumi in striking detail.

[https://www.pulumi.com/](https://www.pulumi.com/)

<comment><USER3> Kind of. From a brief look, it looks very framework-y and all-or-nothing (though I could be wrong, they do have a page about gradual adoption at least [https://www.pulumi.com/docs/guides/adopting/](https://www.pulumi.com/docs/guides/adopting/)).

I was picturing something more low level and less opinionated, though I can only guess how such a thing would perform in practice.

Not even necessarily a specific product, just the adoption of workflows that use already existing tools (e.g. the various API client libraries - for AWS, Kubernetes, git, docker registry, etc.) to achieve this. I realize that that could lead to reinventing the wheel, and eventually an in-house framework anyway, but it feels a lot more comfortable to start there, as you can design things closer to your exact needs.

Pulumi definitely looks interesting though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note also that the Docker integration into Fargate was released at the same time, see [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/aws-docker- collabora...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/aws-docker-collaborate- simplify-developer-experience/) and [https://www.docker.com/blog/from-docker- straight-to-aws/](https://www.docker.com/blog/from-docker-straight-to-aws/) \- this provides a simpler way of using Fargate, especially if you are already using Docker Compose. You can output cloudformation from this as well, but you don't have to understand the internals of ECS to use it. This is in beta and would love more feedback (here [https://github.com/docker/ecs- plugin);](https://github.com/docker/ecs-plugin\);) I worked on this at Docker with Amazon.

<comment><USER6> My goodness, Docker Compose file to production stack?! My dreams have come true.

The arguments for k8s I have is that the local and production setups are identical.

It's a PITA to run k8s locally, but the alternative is that you use Docker Compose local, and then deploy to k8s, which means two sets of configs. And that's terrible.

Or, you use Docker Compose locally, and fragment all of the containers into individual ECS/Fargate services which you write the deploy pipeline for individually.

These were your best options, for one glaring reason: You can't use a docker- compose.yaml in production. (I know, I know, Kompose, but it doesn't always work quite right and you now have a k8s cluster).

Really excited to try this out, thanks for the work on it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I happened to catch this on the Github daily trending list a week or so back, really cool.

For similar tools (though this one is ECS + Fargate), also see:

[https://somanymachines.com/fargate](https://somanymachines.com/fargate)

[https://github.com/awslabs/fargatecli](https://github.com/awslabs/fargatecli)

I'm pretty particular to Pulumi, and defining infra in typed programming languages with full IDE tooling. AWS CDK is the AWS-centric equivalent, and that's a great and under-represented tool as well IMO.

[https://www.pulumi.com/containers/](https://www.pulumi.com/containers/)

[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/latest/guide/home.html](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/latest/guide/home.html)

My issue with ECS/Fargate is that on the surface, it seems amazing. And so you deploy your container, and that's relatively easy.

But now you have just a container on HTTP, on a bare IP. You probably want HTTPS and a domain name attached.

So then you learn that you need to:

\- Create a Route53 hosted zone for the domain

\- Use AWS Cert Manager to provision certificates for the domain

\- Create a load balancer, and figure out how to attach it to the ECS/Fargate service

\- Wire up the LB address to the record set and configure the termination for HTTPS

And to do something like change an environment variable, you have to create an entirely new "task definition", deploy the task revision, and then spin up the new service and stop the old one. This takes about 5 not-particularly-easy to find or navigate screens in the AWS console.

This is what it ended up looking like, for me to deploy a Fargate service:

[https://gist.github.com/GavinRay97/fbedfb18fe852bf625451a417...](https://gist.github.com/GavinRay97/fbedfb18fe852bf625451a4175695ad4#file- hasura-fargate-https-alb-route53-cert-pulumi-ts)

It's great that these tools can help reduce the burden of doing this but man is it a painful experience if you're not a wizard at DevOps.

Google Cloud Run is 1-2 bash commands to deploy a containerized app on HTTPS.

<comment><USER7> Copilot can also help set up HTTPS/ACM Certs/Subdomains:

[https://github.com/aws/copilot- cli/wiki/Applications#additio...](https://github.com/aws/copilot- cli/wiki/Applications#additional-app-configurations)

I love the cloudrun style service too - but one thing I think is cool about running on ECS/Fargate is that once you outgrow the constraints of CloudRun style services - you can drop down to the more granular infrastructure to make tweaks and adjustments. Just my 2c :)

<comment><USER6> > Copilot can also help set up HTTPS/ACM Certs/Subdomains

Oh yeah for sure! I was really excited about this for that reason when I found it because of recent Fargate pains.

The irrational part of me just wishes that the "magic" from tools that AWS publishes like Copilot, Cloud Development Kit, Fargate CLI, etc could abstract it away in more of my interactions with AWS ;^)

> once you outgrow the constraints of CloudRun style services - you can drop > down to the more granular infrastructure to make tweaks and adjustments.

Definitely, you're trading convenience for flexibility with Cloud Run vs Fargate. Cloud Run also doesn't support websocket traffic yet ( RIP =/ ).

I'm a massive fanboy of Serverless Containers and think they're the best thing since sliced bread. I run services on both AWS and GCP, and think Cloud Run and Fargate are both solid.

My takeaway with AWS I guess is: Don't interact with provisioning/managing infra raw, use the CDK or other tooling you publish haha.

<comment><USER8> > Don't interact with provisioning/managing infra raw, use the CDK or other > tooling you publish haha.

I've moved pretty much all my sandbox exploration to CDK. A one-shot destroy when I'm done to clean everything up is great. I also appreciate the documented types in Typescript. But beyond that, I've found that there's really no easy way to manage permissions manually. Doing ` bucket.grantRead(service.taskDefinition.taskRole);` is so much simpler than any of the policy generators in the aws console.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hi!! I'm a developer on AWS Copilot! We'd love your feedback!

Homebrew: brew install aws/tap/copilot-cli

Docs: [https://aws.github.io/copilot-cli/](https://aws.github.io/copilot-cli/)

Feedback & Requests: [https://github.com/aws/copilot- cli/issues/new](https://github.com/aws/copilot-cli/issues/new)

<comment><USER9> Remove the emojis please

<comment><USER10> This. I almost stopped reading the docs after the first screenshot. Really, it gives a childish feel to the tool. I don't want my tools to have rocket or bear emojis. It makes me feel like the tool was written by teenagers. Of course that's is not the case, but that is the feeling that I have when I see this.

<comment><USER7> I understand. It's only on the help page :)

It's written by some of the brightest people I'm AWS - so Don't worry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I probably missed it in the blogpost and github readme, but is there a good way to "export" this into a CloudFormation/Terraform template? After all, this seems to spawn a few things (networking, mostly), so I want to make sure I can automate any further deployments.

Thanks!

<comment><USER12> Copilot generates CloudFormation templates based on the Copilot-specific config files. There's a place where you can add your own additional resources in CloudFormation syntax IIRC. It also has the ability to create a CodePipeline for app deployment. That creation is also done by generating a CloudFormation template and deploying it for the user. I'm not sure why it's not clearly documented that this is happening, but it is a selling point to me because if I want to, I can "eject" from Copilot and just maintain/enhance the CloudFormation templates.

<comment><USER13> I have a hard time believing anyone would consider ejecting to CloudFormation a selling point.

<comment><USER14> Could be nice to version control them. Some CLI stuff looks cool on a blog, but do you want to remember what commands you typed, and in what order, to bring up what production looked like two weeks ago manually?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What are the advantages of this over CDK? It's trivially easy to spin up a loadbalanced service [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/latest/docs/@aws- cdk_aws...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/latest/docs/@aws-cdk_aws-ecs- patterns.ApplicationLoadBalancedFargateService.html)

<comment><USER16> CDK is terrible on so many levels, it's possible that this is less so.

<comment><USER16> Expanding failures of CDK due to popular demand:

\- It introduces an edit-test-debug cycle from hell, it doesn't do what you think from the mental model of a user-friendly CF template generator library (doesn't statically ensure stuff it emits actually works even superficially)

\- It builds upon an already difficult and leaky abstraction (CloudFormation) so you just get additional failure modes and cognitive burden

\- Glacially slow iteration, can easily take 10-30 mins to teardown/setup your app due to CloudFormation.

\- fails to provide upsides from the costly tradeoff it makes to jump into turing complete programming languages, like 3rd party cdk components or iterating expressions at a repl

\- don't even get me started on the npm dependency hell (you'll randomly be debugging mystic npm warnings already on the next day when installing a new submodule of cdk deps, when version mismatches appear), the other-languages- to-npm bridges, the "you can't use this without an IntelliSense style IDE" API design, buggy cli tools, etc

To summarize it doesn't manage complexity or give you a good abstraction. Probably because it tries to take on all of AWS functionality at once.

(Also the GP linked Fargate example is far from the functionality from the copilot example, like enabling you to actually dev and deploy the app - ecr, codebuild, codepipeline etc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of Convox. Very simple to get started and runs on ECS. Copilot has less features as of now but looks like it's going in a good direction.

(Happy convox customer)

</comment><comment><USER18> This really seems like it could be a future replacement for Elastic Beanstalk. Especially when they finalize the ability to provision storage infrastructure.

<comment><USER19> Hopefully. Elastic Beanstalk is a product that "works" and is "maintained", but when it fails it crashes hard. At least for the PHP environment, updating the environment variable configuration can take 2+ minutes, and non-immutable app deployments with 2 hosts can take over 10 minutes to pass health checks. And finally, if it fails to do something (eg. a deploy command fails on the instance), it will be stuck in the "error" state for 5-15 minutes where you can't do anything to the environment and must wait for it to clear to fix your bad deploy.

<comment><USER20> Amen I thought I was just doing something wrong! What is the best alternative to Elastic Beanstalk on AWS? Is Kubernetes overkill?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wrote a blog post about this that did the rounds last year about the topic I believe Copilot is trying to solve:

[https://leebriggs.co.uk/blog/2019/04/13/the-fargate- illusion...](https://leebriggs.co.uk/blog/2019/04/13/the-fargate- illusion.html)

Summary: the marketing spiel about how easy fargate is to use and get up and running isn't actually how the experience is. I'm hoping Copilot improves that experience.

<comment><USER22> Really great article. I've walked the same path and thought the same thoughts, and always felt somehow that it was just me. Here's hoping that Copilot lowers the barrier for all developers - especially ones who just have a small site or hobby project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> having tried everything from convox to fargatecli, deployfish ,etc. in the end i just ended up using pulumi to set up the basic infrastructure components and writing my own bash scripts to deploy tasks and services to ECS using the AWS cli.

there was way too much magic going on and i wasn't confident i could easily roll back or do modifications if the CLI didn't like something in particular. deployments based on terraform or cloudformation were particular susceptible to this.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is pretty cool - very close to [https://shipula.userbugreport.com/](https://shipula.userbugreport.com/) that I've been cooking up to make my own life easier.

</comment><comment><USER25> The example yaml file contains cpu: 1024, but the text says deploy on 1 cpu?

<comment><USER26> In ECS land, a single vCPU is described as 1024 "CPU units" that can then be distributed more granularly. This would allow you, for example, to evenly distribute a single CPU across 4 processes.</comment></comment>