Docker - the Linux container runtime - <AUTHOR> http://docker.io/ <comment><USER2> I recently changed our Jenkins CI infrastructure to use something like this: all jobs run in their own LXC container, using BTRFS and its snapshots/clones instead of AUFS. Works like a charm!

The script is available at <https://github.com/Incubaid/jenkins-lxc> (no docs for now, and several improvements are possible). It expects CI job scripts to be contained in the job repository, e.g. <https://github.com/Incubaid/arakoon/tree/1.6/jenkins>

<comment><USER3> That's pretty awesome.

At FrozenRidge.co, we work on our own CI server called Strider and have actually integrated Docker directly:

You can read about it at: [http://blog.frozenridge.co/next-generation- continuous-integr...](http://blog.frozenridge.co/next-generation-continuous- integration-deployment-with-dotclouds-docker-and-strider/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow! Did not expect this to show up on HN before actual release! (I work at dotCloud).

We're still polishing a few rough edges. If you want early access add your github ID to this thread and we'll add you right away!

<comment><USER5> There was a lightning talk about Docker at Pycon; I'd assume that's where OP got the info from :)

<comment><USER6> I've posted a video of the lightning talk here: [https://plus.google.com/photos/115695491015706412558/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/115695491015706412558/albums/5856171619418221505/5856171619150829938)

It should be public so you can view it even without a G+ account (I think)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not familiar with any of the technologies used in this. Anybody care to comment on how strong the isolations would be security wise, compared to normal virtualization?

If the security is almost at par and the isolation is good enough that one bad process can't bring the whole system down, might this be a good alternative to virtualization, since I imagine it would definitely use less resources.

<comment><USER8> The Linux namespace stuff is evolving pretty fast, and I personally wouldn't trust it as the main line of defense for anything important.

With virtualization, a buggy or malicious guest is still limited to its sandbox unless there's a flaw in the hypervisor itself. With containers/namespaces, the host and guest are just different sets of processes that see different "views" of the same kernel, so bugs are much more likely to be exploitable. Plus, if you enable user namespaces, some code paths (like on- demand filesystem module loading) that used to require root are now available to unprivileged users.

There's already been at least one local root exploit that almost made it into 3.9: <https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/3/13/361>

<comment><USER9> > The Linux namespace stuff is evolving pretty fast, and I personally wouldn't > trust it as the main line of defense for anything important.

If I recall, Heroku uses cgroups (EDIT: and namespaces) exclusively for multitenant isolation (and by the looks of this, dotCloud does too), so that's two big votes in the "if it's good enough for them" category.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but cgroups and namespaces are kind-of-orthogonal features that both happen to be useful for making container-like things. cgroups are for limiting resource usage; namespaces are for providing the illusion of root access while actually being in a sandboxed environment.

And as far as I'm aware (speaking as an interested non-expert, so please correct me if I'm wrong) cgroups have no effect on permissions, whereas UID namespaces required a lot of very invasive changes to the kernel.

<comment><USER10> That's correct: cgroups have no effect on permissions. They only enforce resource usage limits.

Shameless plug: I work at dotCloud, and I wrote 4 blog posts explaining namespaces, cgroups, AUFS, GRSEC, and how they are relevant to "lightweight virtualization" and the particular case of PAAS. The articles have been grouped in a PDF that you can get here if you want a good technical read for your next plane/train/whatever travel ;-) <http://blog.dotcloud.com/paas- under-the-hood-ebook>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm interested to see how that standardization works across linux distributions. I mean, different distros use different versions of various libraries (openssl for example). So if your app links with libssl.so.X but the host only provides libssl.so.Y, then your app won't work.

Of course, you could bundle libssl with your app. But then the standardization is at the level of kernel/libc ABI. In which case the container is basically a full LXC guest.

But then why standardize an image format if you can create a small script which builds the image with lxc-create + installs whatever else necessary for your app. That script will be much smaller than the full image, even a barebones ubuntu lxc guest (debootstrap quantal) is ~400MB.

<comment><USER12> Their base layer needs to specify exact versions of libraries.

Deploying from images should be much faster and less fragile (oops, is Github down?) than from scripts.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. Think of a Docker container as a universal build artifact. Your build step can be an arbitrary sequence of unix commands (download dependencies, build libssl, run shell scripts etc.). Docker can freeze the result of that build and guarantee that it will run in a repeatable and self- contained way, no matter where you run it.

So you get clean separation of build and run, which is a hugely important part of reliable deployment.

<comment><USER11> So docker container ABI is basically the kernel? You just create a filesystem image and docker starts that as LXC guest. You could build a statically compiled binary and put that as /bin/init into the container image, right?

<comment><USER4> Yes! Exactly :)

You wouldn't need to save it as /sbin/init. You would just type:

        $ docker run MYIMAGE /path/to/my/static/binary

Here's the smallest image I've personally used to run a docker container: <http://get.docker.io/images/busybox>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are the aufs filesystems easily navigable from the host OS, ala Solaris's zones feature?

<comment><USER14> The aufs mount is (probably) only mounted on the guest's VFS so I'm not sure how you would access it from the host.

<comment><USER4> Docker lets you visualize changes on any container's filesystem live, as they happen. It also lets you snapshot changes from any container into a new image, and immediately start running new containers from that image. No manual post- processing of the image, no configuration files to templatize. The whole thing is 2 commands and maybe half a second.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, i need this! What would be the requirements for docker? I suppose it wouldn't run on linux 2.6.x? (CentOS 5.x)? Any other requirements?

<comment><USER4> The main requirement is a modern kernel with the aufs module. We do most of our testing on Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10. But any modern distro should be fine. There are a few people testing it on CentOS as I write this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Note that LXC DOES NOT PROVIDE SECURITY. It provides resource separation (to a point) and so on.

Breaking out of a filesystem container is as easy as creating a root block device. Breaking out of a network container is as easy as creating a network device

And in all cases, you can just inject memory, load lkms, etc. That's without mentioning the amount of weekly CVEs for Linux namespaces.

<comment><USER17> > LXC DOES NOT PROVIDE SECURITY

This is out of date. As of Linux 3.8, or with out-of-tree patches in older kernels, LXC puts each container in its own _user namespace_ , so that root in the container has no privileges outside. LXC also uses network namespaces, so the user inside the container can only do on the network what the admin allows them to do.

Because root inside a user namespace is unprivileged outside it, it can't scribble on memory or load modules, etc., either.

See <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LxcSecurity> for a decent summary of the situation in Ubuntu's releases. Several Ubuntu contributors are also among the main drivers of LXC upstream.

It's true that user namespaces and other kernel features LXC relies on are beginning to get much more use than they used to, and probably still have flaws, though I think you exaggerate how many CVEs are actually being found. Ubuntu's LXC support also uses apparmor and seccomp to provide further isolation. Conservative users will probably wait a while more to see what bugs get shaken out.

<comment><USER18> Thank for your comment! I've been afflicted by FUD related to security in LXC for over a year. This really helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Will there be any possibility of running dev instances in OS X? Perhaps we'll be able to do _brew install docker-compat_ at some point in the future and get a best-effort emulation layer even though the Linux APIs are missing. I hate messing around with virtualization.

<comment><USER3> I run a Docker host fine on OS X w/ Vagrant. The client runs on OS X but not Linux Containers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> fyi, aufs which is the union mount filesystem required by docker (and cloud foundry warden), is not well supported on rhel, centos, and other linux distros, seems mainly support for ubuntu.

<comment><USER21> More than this, Ubuntu are trying to remove it from their distribution in favour of overlayfs [0]. As mentioned there, the reason is that aufs is not and will not be part of the mainline kernel. Precise 12.04 was going to be without AUFS, but some issues cropped up, keeping it around.

It now looks like overlayfs will make it into the 3.10 mainline kernel [1], so it may be a better choice in the future. I think that the _Under the hood_ stuff on docker's page are implementation details that can change, so a switch to overlayfs when that becomes more suitable could be possible. (Confirmation from the dotClouders present would be apprecaited.)

[0] [https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu- devel/2012-February...](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu- devel/2012-February/034850.html)

[1] <http://lwn.net/Articles/542707/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whats the interaction between systems based on Mesos, which can (and many do) use containers? Is this really designed for more multi-tenancy with lower trust over same-org clouds?

<comment><USER4> Docker solves the problem of running things in a repeatable and infrastructure-agnostic way. Mesos solves the problem of telling many nodes what to run and when.

In other words, Docker + Mesos is a killer combo. There is already experimentation underway to use Docker as an execution engine for Mesos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That sounds like a definitive improvement over LXC specially the isolation properties but I'm not sure what is the added value of Docker compared to OpenVZ ?

Any ideas ?

<comment><USER14> My guess is that the container specification is orthogonal to the sandboxing feature. In fact they're using LXC.

<comment><USER4> Correct, Docker is currently based on lxc, but that is an implementation detail. In theory it could be ported to any process-level isolation tech with similar features: OpenVZ, Solaris Zones - you could also try using BSD jails although I don't know if they have all the required features.

To answer the original question: Docker extends LXC with a higher-level API which operates at the process level. OpenVZ helps you create "mini-servers". Docker lets you forget about servers and manage processes.

<comment><USER14> Nice. Can't way to try it out. I've built a similar tool in Go for PandaStream to isolate or encoding processes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know, or can anyone speculate on exactly how the "heterogenous payloads" are specified?

<comment><USER4> The payload is anything which can be recorded on the filesystem by running a unix command. For example:

         # Run command which adds your payload
         $ docker run base apt-get install curl
         5b4a1ee8

         # Commit the result to a new image
         $ docker commit 5b4a1ee8 nwg/base-with-curl

         # Run a command from the new image. Your payload is available!
         $ docker run nwg/base-with-curl curl http://www.google.com

Docker doesn't care _how_ the payload was added. apt-get, shell script, pip install, gem bundle... All the same. In the end it's just a change to the filesystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This sounds like a reimplementation of virtual machines at the os layer instead of hardware layer.

<comment><USER26> It sounds like they are just building on cgroups etc, which are already part of the Linux kernel.

I would argue that virtual machines at a hypervisor/hardware level were just a hack for OSs not living up to their isolation promises/obligations. Strong OS level isolation implementations (cgroups, namespaces etc) allow people to put isolation back where it belongs, the OS.

The job of the OS is to control the hardware, wrapping the OS is software to emulate hardware is ridiculous and VMs generally have much more performance overhead than isolation containers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How is this different from what you can already do with lxc on, for example, Ubuntu Server?

<comment><USER9> It's not that it's any different, it's that it's _standardized_. The idea is that a Docker container would be portable between different PaaS hosts (and from your own staging environment to those hosts!) without rebuilding, because they'd all be using the "Docker standard for deployment."

A PaaS host saying they supported Docker would imply that they'd be using, for example, SquashFS for container format, AuFS instead of OverlayFS for union- mounts, LXC instead of OpenVZ/Xen/KVM for isolation, and any other set of things your container might subtly rely upon.

The culmination of this, I imagine, would be a PaaS host allowing you to specify the "stuff" you want to run just by the URL of the container-image.

<comment><USER28> Doesn't a standard involve, you know, standards? AFAIK a product name is not a standard.

What if the namespace changes? What if AuFS changes? What if LXC changes? Independently or all together? ABI changes? Version changes? Feature changes? Are all the licenses compatible? Will it ever support platforms other than just certain versions of Linux? Or languages other than Go?

I don't see a standard. I see marketing for a product and a mailing list to collect potential customers. But maybe i'm missing something.

<comment><USER4> Hi Peter, this website was only meant to be seen once Docker is actually open- source, which will be the case very soon.

I do think there is a need for a standard way to package and share software at the filesystem and process level - we don't pretend to define that standard, but hopefully we can contribute to it by open-sourcing a real-world implementation.

<comment><USER28> I guess I read too far into it when I saw the word "standard" everywhere and got excited - sorry about that. Do you plan on adding to your implementation the ability to differentiate between compatible versions/platforms, so one could use this on several cloud instances that aren't built the same?

<comment><USER4> Yes, that is definitely something we would like to add. And we will gladly accept pull requests :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not to be a stick in the mud, but you're using a copyrighted image as your logo without any attribution or acknowledgement of the original owner of the copyright (the Lego Group). You should probably fix that.

<comment><USER4> You're right! We put it up there when it was an internal project, it's probably time to take care of that. Taking it down until we found a correct way to do it.

I'm a copyright noob: would simply acknowledging the copyright owner be enough and fall under fair use, or should we not use it unless we get written permission?

<comment><USER29> I am not a copyright expert, however I am familiar with the Lego Group (the company that produces Lego toys) ... the set is pretty old (1986), which means they're not worried about making money off it. If you just stick a disclaimer after it that it's copyright 1986 the Lego Group, that's probably fine, especially since this looks to be an open source project, so you're not going to be charging people for something with their picture on it.

This page has what is very likely the original image: <http://www.peeron.com/scans/7823-1/> Peeron.com has special permission directly from Lego to display the images, so if you wanted to be extra careful you could email firstname.lastname@example.com and ask for permission to deep link to their picture (they'd probably say yes, the admin is a linux geek too). But honestly, a simple copyright disclaimer is probably fine. Lego won't reach out and swat you even if they do decide they don't like it, they'll just ask you to take it down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why should I use this when systemd offers the same (minus the AUFS root fs)?

<comment><USER4> We get that question a lot... Until people start playing with it. Then they never ask it again :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not entirely sure that I understand what this does. Is it some sort of hybrid between provisioning automation and deployment automation?

<comment><USER9> It's a white-labelling of dotCloud's implementation of Heroku's "slug" concept (<https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/slug-compiler>): basically, a SquashFS image with a known SHA, storing a precompiled runtime+libraries+code artifact that will never change, able to be union-mounted atop a "base image" (a chroot filesystem, possibly also a known-SHA SquashFS image), then spun up as an ephemeral LXC container. I actually use the idea in my own ad-hoc deployment process; they're very convenient for ensuring repeatability.

(As a side-note, this is an example of an interesting bit of game theory: in a niche, the Majority Player will tend to keep their tech proprietary to stay ahead, while the Second String will tend to release everything OSS in order to remove the Majority Player's advantages. This one is dotCloud taking a stab at Heroku, but you can also think of, for example, Atlassian--who runs Github- competitor Bitbucket--poking at Github by releasing a _generic_ Git GUI client, whereas Github released a _Github client_.)

<comment><USER4> This is mostly accurate :)

I will add that our implementation predates Heroku's. Using a generic container layer early on (first OpenVZ-based prototypes in 2009) is what allowed us to launch multi-language support a year before any other paas. It's also how we operate both application servers and databases with the same underlying codebase, and the same ops team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> GitHub: rolandtritsch

</comment><comment><USER33> curl get.docker.io | sudo sh

Has anybody tried this?

</comment><comment><USER34> Looks cool. When is it gonna be open sourced?

<comment><USER35> "Docker will be open source soon"

Soon could be in tomorrow, a week, a month, a year, or longer ...

<comment><USER4> ETA 2 weeks maximum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So what we have here is a presently-closed-source, linux-only implementation of closure copying, which is a tiny part of Nix, which is the platform- agnostic package manager behind the elegant NixOS (nixos.org). Or is there something I'm not getting? If it's more platform-dependent, less well-tested, and (ostensibly temporarily) less open, then why is this on the top of my page?

<comment><USER4> As a fan of Nix, and someone who expected a lot from Conary/rPath back in the day, I can provide at least a partial answer: these distros are great as long as you use their packaging tools for everything. Which is simply not practical. There's a reason Nix and rPath never took off, and it's the same reason developers use virtualenv and rvm instead of system packages. They don't like being forced to use a single packaging tool for everything.

Docker doesn't have an opinion about _how_ you package things. It only cares about the resulting changes on the filesystem. So you are free to use the best tool for each job.

By the way this means you can use Docker and Nix together. I would love to see that :)</comment></comment>


The greatest sales deck I've ever seen (2016) - grey-area https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-ever-seen-4f4ef3391ba0 <comment><USER2> >Zuora came up with the phrase "subscription economy" to name the trend in which buyers increasingly choose recurring service payments over outright purchases.

It's not a trend where buyers choose recurring payments, but where companies only offer services through recurring payments.

<comment><USER3> A trend rarely happens on only one side of the demand-supply axis. There is definitely a trend towards subscriptions, especially for SMBs, but enterprise and individuals as well.

It's so much easier to pay a monthly or yearly fee then up front, especially for companies - both in terms of cashflow , accounting practices and stability.

Some companies has gone that route that have customers on both sides of the aisle - adobe is one of them. Their choice alienated some part of their customers, but be sure that many others were glad for the change - <AUTHOR> big companies with shifting employee roster, or those who upgraded frequently.

<comment><USER4> Sure they do. 3D TVs and bent TVs are two glaring examples of something people never wanted. The only way companies could uphold that view was by ensuring that no manufacturer had sensible alternatives - effectively forcing people that wanted a TV to buy it. And then pretending that the sales were proof that people wanted it.

It is the exact same with the majority of subscription services.

For a company I get that it is easier. But easier for an individual?

I walk twice around the earth before even considering a subscription service. It cannot be simpler than pay once and you are done for life. The reason as to why so few companies offer both is because it then becomes apparent how bad the subscription value is.

<comment><USER3> err... are you implying that there are no alternatives in the market to 3D TVs and bent TVs? As far as I know 3D TVs have basically gone out of market[1] because no one bought them. It is actually the exact opposite of what you suggested - they could not start a trend, even thought they tried to force it on people, because there was no demand for it.

[1]-[https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv- finally-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv-finally- falls-down-dead/)

<comment><USER5> For about 5 years, any tv you found in an electronic store was 3D, and I have yet to find a single person who claims to like them.

Today, every tv is a Smart TV, and yet again, I haven't found anyone who thought they weren't awful

In cars theres the same issue with GPS systems: even luxury cars have awful interfaces. Presumably tesla's is decent (never tried), but otherwise the only interface I've encountered yet that met the minimum requirement of a sensible response time (let alone everything else) is a luxury jeep. Mercedes, priuses, bmws, etc are all horrendous.

In phones, the aux ports and phablets

On the web, heavy js

In games, complex 3D graphics (this is very slowly changing, as indie devs begin to realize games existed between 1980 and 2000)

This type of event, where the producers collectively decide what the consumers want, and only produce it, and miss the mark by a mile, definetely exist (these are just things I'm irrated by recently), though I assume incompetence and babdwaggoning over any kind of real thinking going into this. (They didn't try to force a trend, they just all thought it _was_ the trend, due to whatever terrible research they all do; hell, I'd bet there was one or two marketing firms that were the root cause of most of these messes)

<comment><USER6> >I have yet to find a single person who claims to like them

I like 3D well enough at least for the occasional novelty and film that uses it well, e.g. Gravity. There is just about zero content available however. My impression when I bought my TV was that there were certainly non-3D options available. But I got a pre-Christmas deal and I paid about the same as for an equivalent TV that didn't have 3D.

It's the same with Smart TVs. It doesn't really add to the cost of the TV. I just never use the features.

I guess the latest trend is whatever resolution that's an additional increment beyond the limits of human vision. Or maybe OLED.

I do understand that the TV manufacturers are really desperate to drive TV upgrade cycles. The good news is that the new features are mostly harmless if you need a new TV anyway.

<comment><USER7> And the better news is that if you don't actually care about these silly new features you can get amazingly great TVs for next to nothing. I saw a 46 inch 4K LED smart TV at Costco for around $300. It didn't have HDR (the current trendy hotness in the top of the line TVs), so I guess it's considered substandard, but holy crap that's a great deal.

<comment><USER8> I have one of the Visio ones. Yes, good screen, but never let one of those things on your WiFi. Jeez.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I disagree with two things in the article.

1\. I disagree with the underlying premise of the article - the deck is unimportant.

2\. I disagree with the reasoning given as to why it works.

Firstly the deck is unimportant because - as the ex-employee quoted at the end said: the prospect is already sold thanks to the marketing and branding campaigns run by Zuora. The deck is superfluous.

Secondly, the reasoning that Raskin often gives as to why this works is based on the fact it follows the "storytelling" formula that Hollywood uses. He liberally uses examples of Star Wars and other films in his articles.

But we aren't characters in a movie.

Rather than looking to what motivates characters in a movie to act as a model for persuasive messaging, we are better looking at what persuades people to act in real life.

Arguably religion and politics are the most persuasive forces on the planet.

And the real reason Zuora's message works is that it follows the same formula (and has the same elements) as religious and political ideologies.

1\. There's a heaven and hell (for Zuora, heaven is thriving and getting more customers and hell is losing one's business)

2\. There's a devil which is stopping us getting to heaven and sending us to hell (for Zuora this is the traditional business model of single non-recurring purchases)

3\. There's a doctrine that needs to be followed to get to heaven & avoid hell (for Zuora that's the subscription business model)

4\. There's a leader that provides the tools and solutions necessary to implement the doctrine and get to heaven (for Zuora this is their solution)

Viewing Zuora's success through this model, through this lense, makes more sense than Raskin's model.

There are plenty of other examples. Hubspot is a great example - they used (unconsciously) this model to sell the concept of inbound marketing. Check out this article on the subject - [https://bit.ly/2Ov3NCT](https://bit.ly/2Ov3NCT)

<comment><USER10> Speaking only for myself, when I'm an investor, I wanna know stuff like:

\- cost of customer acquisition

\- gross margins

\- revenue growth

\- size of market

\- yada yada

That being said, a slick pitch deck is nice to see. It makes me feel good, which never hurts.

I only invest on the fundamentals of the business. If a startup had great numbers AND their pitch deck sucked, I'd stikk give them the money. If I had specific thoughts on how their pitch deck sucked, I might offer suggestions on how they could improve.

<comment><USER11> From what I've read, that kind of stuff belongs at the end of the presentation. Get them on board with the vision and the problem, then justify it with figures they can use to justify buying in to your solution.

In short, appeal to emotion, support with reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The actual Zuora sales deck was uploaded to SlideShare after the article was written in 2016.

Here it is [https://www.slideshare.net/ryangum/zuora-sales- deck?qid=f249...](https://www.slideshare.net/ryangum/zuora-sales- deck?qid=f2495ef7-92bd-4d7b-aed1-dbfaadbe0d73&v=&b=&from_search=9)

</comment><comment><USER13> So basically anyone that can understand the basics of a good salesman from Wolf of Wallstreet can land deals better than the "moderate" personality types that have been shown to statistically deliver better sales results for most companies? Am I missing something about how those studies were conducted that this emotionally based rather than fact-based approach is better at conversion rates than a mix of approaches? On the flip side, is this why more successful people have a habit of defaulting to "no"?

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't think this as an "either / or" approach: in my experience, a sales pitch and a deck are very rarely the deciding factor in closing a sale, however they can help tremendously.

The key aspect here is that a pitch like the one described is usually made to very senior people in an organization, who have little time and mental bandwidth to endure through a list of facts and figures and _shudder_ product features: getting them invested in the result that would come from adopting the product/service is the ultimate goal, not closing the sale at that stage. You still need to do all of the good (i.e. fact-based) salesman work, but that is done at a different time: either ahead of the executive presentation (in which if you did things right you may have the buyer on your side in making a case for using your product/service), or as a consequence of it.

To me what's interesting is not the deck itself, but the focus shown by the company on sticking to their marketing points and on enabling their salespeople to do their job more effectively (you have no idea how many times I have had to figure out on my own what to answer to a prospect that was asking "what makes your company/product/service different from any of your competitors?"...).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I learned much of what I know about product marketing from Tien (CEO of Zuora); as this thread demonstrates its hard for a lot of product / developer folks to understand why its such an important part of any non-consumer offering, as so much of customer development culture is focused exclusively on metrics and optimization.

Immodestly I did a presentation on the topic at Heavybit a few years ago for those that are interested in the topic: [https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/platform-marketing- wi...](https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/platform-marketing-with-dropbox- and-salesforce/)

<comment><USER16> Any pointers where to start, if I haven't read/seen anything (nor even heard about) Tien, but I find it interesting to see what he has to say?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      #1. Name a Big, Relevant Change in the World
      #2. Show There'll Be Winners and Losers

Is it common someone will invite a Zuora sales rep to give them a presentation, if they don't _already_ think they want to launch a subscription product?

I would have guessed most people attending sales presentations would be looking to fulfil a need they had already identified.

<comment><USER18> Enterprise sales typically involves some "champions" inside the customer's companies looking for solutions to problems they currently have. They do have the need already and vaguely know what the needs/goals/benefits/challenges/costs are but not in crystal clear terms. They are looking for "experts" i.e. you to come in to spell those out and educate them. They are evaluating a bunch of companies and technologies. You have to make your sales pitch stand out of the pack to get the deal.

Part of the sales process is to identify those internal "champions" and supply whatever materials/ideas/education to them to make their jobs convincing the others inside the organization easier.

A good sales deck like the one in OP makes a huge difference. I remember going in with a sales guy to a big bank customer meeting once to pitch our pre-alpha product (yes, we were still building it). My God, his sales deck was amazing. I was convinced myself after listening to his presentation and wanted to buy our product. We got the multi-million deal at the end, admittedly with lots of help from engineering during the sales. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amusing note, The "what is the common thread" slide literally shows the promised land. It's a picture of Ben Gurion Airport in Israel.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can someone explain why this is so much noteworthy?

All I see is random messages pasted onto random backgrounds. I am not from sales or marketing though.

<comment><USER21> My first freshman physics class consisted of random symbols scribbled onto a random blackboard. I was not from a physics background though.

The learning new stuff you're not familiar with is why it's noteworthy.

<comment><USER20> Understand but the article fails to do that for me. I do want to learn this stuff. Do you have any book/blog suggestions?

<comment><USER21> The topic comes up relatively often on HN. Here's a thread from last month: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18241160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18241160)

You may or may not resonate with this particular article's theory, but I like seeing things like this posted here because you can collect more and more examples. The textbooks will take you only so far though... ultimately you need to go take the in-person exam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sales is a complex art, and a story that resonates is extremely important. People don't remember details, and they don't buy numbers or features. They buy solutions, and sometimes that's an answer to a problem that they didn't know they had.

Marketing to create customers requires that your audience agrees with your premise in the first place, otherwise you'll never get to step 2. However, of course everything is contextual and this approach is more about opening deals, especially at large enterprise organizations. This is not something you would send to a prospect's IT department, and is not meant to compete with a price- features matrix, but rather it forms your company's brand and creates trust and familiarity in your market.

I met the author Andy Raskin a few years back. He's a great guy and definitely understands marketing, and I highly recommend taking his course in SF if you get the chance.

</comment><comment><USER23> This strikes me as similar to a lot of investor pitch decks. It's not a bad approach, but the 'visionary' parts might be difficult for some sales people.

</comment><comment><USER24> They just reinvented Monroe's Motivated Sequence.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for this - the writeups on Monroe's Motivated Sequence help me understand why this deck works, and this deck helps me understand Monroe's sequence (without this deck, it I came across most of the writeups on the the sequence, I would have ignored them because they illustrate it so poorly)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Fantastic post! But can we please, please stop calling power point presentations "decks".

<comment><USER27> Honest question, what's the difference?

<comment><USER28> He is just grumpy and doesn't like the term, for whatever reason.

<comment><USER29> No one knows what the hell you are talking about with the word "deck."

<comment><USER30> It comes from "slide decks", because not too far long ago, presentations were made with actual 35mm transparencies which were _slid_ into a projector, and were carried in decks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Do you have any proof that the subscription economy trend is driven by the consumers?

You totally jump the gun there!

<comment><USER32> It's a narrative flourish irrelevant whose accuracy is irrelevant to the pitch, except that it sounds attractive to say "customers want this" vs "customers are powerless to reject this". For a business, it matters that the trend exists; the cause doesn't matter.

<comment><USER33> Hmm, the cause does matter. If customers want it and you're not giving it the risk is they'll go elsewhere to find it; that's why it is sold in that way, to apply pressure: "if you don't do this you'll lose customers" hits the businesses who are already succeeding.

If it's "other companies are selling the idea to customers that they should move to a subscription model" then the company you're pitching your subscription service assistance to can decide to promote the purchase model instead of going along with convincing customers to buy in a different way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There's a lot of griping about the "subscription economy" here. In light of this, the fact that their sales deck is (apparently) successful indicates that it is indeed highly effective.

That is, it sounds like they have an uphill battle, and apparently this deck has helped them gain ground. I'll give these techniques a try and see if they work for me (even though the clickbait title irks me).

</comment><comment><USER35> [https://medium.com/firm-narrative/want-a-better-pitch- watch-...](https://medium.com/firm-narrative/want-a-better-pitch-watch- this-328b95c2fd0b)

Year earlier, same author, same story, different source claimed. It's like this guy is plagiarizing himself?

</comment><comment><USER36> interesting. but slightly off topic - do sales guys construct their own decks? surely decks need approval / sanctioning before distribution to prospects? don't firms have their own decks for sales people to leverage?

<comment><USER14> It really depends on the organization: the Holy Grail is to have a well developed Sales Support function that prepares decks for sales people from a data source which is pre-approved (some investment banks have that, it's awesome) so that the Sales people can focus 100% on doing their thing.

In smaller, scrappier companies or just in less "sexy" industries, sales people are known to prepare their own decks and whether prior approval is sought is really to the mercy of the individual's integrity and savvy.

<comment><USER37> Even in the biggest companies, Sales people make the choices about which resources to pull into their pitch deck, but yes, there is a corporate template with a typical flow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> neat deck. unrelated but Zuora is a piece of junk. Im glad I dont have to deal with it anymore.

</comment><comment><USER39> The author misses the significant issue that this ultra-simplistic approach works only with the simplest USP businesses: established markets with a single environmental factor driving change and a single paradigm shift in response.

More complex businesses, blue ocean (new market) businesses, businesses combining insights from multiple trends or with multiple layers of innovation will find this approach completely infeasible.

<comment><USER40> Could it be that your description of Zuora as a simple USP/single driving change business is actually a testament to the simple way they tell their story? I'm the author of the post, and every business I consult with is, as you say, "complex...addressing multiple trends or with multiple layers of innovation..." That hasn't stopped any of them from crafting a similarly simple story -- starting with a single change. Usually that means either (a) focusing on the most important one; or (b) naming a change that subsumes many of the others. Getting leadership teams to align around one change isn't easy, but I'm getting better at it :)

<comment><USER39> It could be, but it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Good write-up -- is there a link to the actual deck?

<comment><USER42> The author literally says directly in the article that the person he received the deck from asked him to not publicly share the deck.

<comment><USER43> Irrelevant. If the deck is available and discussed, we might as well take a look.

<comment><USER44> I saw at least five slides from this deck.

<comment><USER45> As it says in the article, those are not slides from THE DECK, but rather similar slides he found publicly available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> LOL this comment thread, what is everyone even talking about? people fighting over different vr headsets and whatever size phone they prefer in the context of a powerpoint presentation hah

</comment><comment><USER47> That this works is evidence that people are stupid and they suck.

<comment><USER48> Everyone likes to think that sales and marketing doesn't work on them. More often than not, I find this attitude in people who have no decision-making authority anyway.

<comment><USER49> I see the point made here though. The actual sales pitch isn't for a moment talking about the actual solution, like in this deck what is being sold here? is it a SaaS product? Consulting services? Business Advice? How long will it take? What's the ROI? Who does the work? Does it work with our current systems? How much does it cost? What does the ongoing model look like?

Of course you will go on to answer all of these in detail, but the deal is practically won by the time those questions are asked. And that's how you end up with poor software or massive enterprise consulting contracts that aren't helpful to anyone. Meanwhile the sales team goes off and hunts down a fresh client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> "Name a big, relevant change in the world".

Example given from Zuora, "We now live in a subscription economy".

Except one problem: Instead of a nice solid color on the background of the slide, or a city skyline...

... it's a full shot of a skinny young blonde girl's legs.

Like, can you sales guys be any more predictable and sexist? I'm sorry, this frat house behavior really needs to stop.

There are so many better ways to make a visual impression without ever relying on sexual themes.

<comment><USER51> In defense of the parent comment:

It's absolutely a deliberate choice to include an attractive woman in that slide's background photo, just as it was a deliberate choice for the doors to be gold.

I'd guess that people looking at the slide most consciously notice the conspicuous gold doors.

But we all also notice that there's some sort of person standing there. That person is greeting us with a smile.

We may not process it consciously, but many viewers of the slide are definitely also attuned to the attractiveness of the person. We might notice the bare legs, the skirt, the shoes, the braid of hair casually laying on the shoulder. The bit of midriff showing.

Many readers will think "sexy" even if we're not aware of the thought.

This choice is intentional, because sex sells.

The majority of the intended audience is straight men, so this is probably an effective sales practice, but at the same time it strikes some of us as cheap. The body of the woman in this photo is being used as an object and simply as a means to an end. And the audience is being appealed to on a basis unrelated to the value of the product for sale.

Try these ideas:

\- Imagine the same photo, but where the woman is dressed in [more modest] business casual attire, holding a binder with notes for an important meeting.

\- Imagine the same photo, but with an attractive sexy man smiling at us. Maybe he's showing some toned biceps or perhaps even a glimpse of abs.

\- Imagine the same photo, but with a middle-aged white man dressed in a suit and tie.

\- Imagine the same photo, but with a large black woman beaming confidence in formal business attire.

In all of these cases (except maybe the abs), you probably wouldn't consciously notice the details, but they would definitely all color your subconscious impression differently.

<comment><USER52> I agree. That particular slide really struck me as being "attention grabbing" in a way that had nothing to do with the actual point they were making on the slide.

It's a cool photo and visually appealing but I cannot think of a single thing about the image that has anything to do with the idea that "we are all living in a subscription economy."

I can think of some slides that _would_ evoke that. Like a slide with an animation of money flowing out of my pocket incessantly as calendar pages are torn off a calendar. :)

I am feeling a bit biased against the "subscription economy" right now after only narrowly avoiding the "router as a subscription" that my internet provider wanted to saddle me with this weekend when I upgraded my plan.</comment></comment></comment>


Suddenly, Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More Social Distance - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-health-protests-301534 <comment><USER2> kek

<comment><USER3> Please don't do this here.</comment></comment>


Lesson: Oracle's driving MySQL to open core; don't sign contributor agreement - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/09/open-core-mysql/index.htm <comment><USER2> Good news! Postgresql scales really well, and will always be open source. Plus, it has more features and great compliance with the SQL standard.

<comment><USER3> You're certainly not alone in hoping that MySQL loses market share to PostgreSQL under Oracle's stewardship. I've always assumed that MySQL has been more prevalent due to some combination of historically earlier user friendliness, an incompatible SQL implementation, and feedback effects related to the previous two factors.

That said, is there something that would be lost if everyone just switched from MySQL to PostgreSQL tomorrow? What benefits does MySQL have over PostgreSQL these days?

<comment><USER4> a) Clustered and covering indexes.

b) Non-transactional tables

Both allow you optimize the memory usage of some particularly problematic cases, specifically very large, simple tables. Postgres cannot return data directly from indexes (covering indexes). It always has to go back to the table itself to fetch the actual data. If the table is large, that can be inefficient for some types of queries.

Non-transactional tables use a lot less memory as well. For instance, if you have a large table that represents a N:M relationship (id1 int, id2 int), the two ints use 8 bytes of memory. A postgres table adds about 24 bytes per record, three times the actual data, plus some overhead per page.

Don't take this to mean that MySQL is faster than Postgres. That's not generally the case. The Postgres query optimizer is vastly better than MySQL's. So for complex queries and data models, Postgres is way superior. The big differences are always related to very specific data model and query combinations, so general benchmarks are utterly useless.

<comment><USER5> Unlogged tables are now in Postgres as of release 9.1: <http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/release-9-1>

<comment><USER4> That's very good news! I have to look at the physical data structures and what it means for memory usage though. "Unlogged" as such only means they don't use WAL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any MySQL hackers can always just leave this Oracle nightmare behind and join MariaDB, it's a promising fork of the MySQL core and they're working hard on a new storage engine for it.

<comment><USER7> ...or Drizzle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oracle has typically been a licensing centric company. The "named user plus" licensing thing can be unwieldy for most small firms. The past few years have been bad for it as a result. SAAS based innovation, unconventional databases, database scaling bottlenecks, parallelization, in-memory computing, mobility and a lot of the low cost innovations around these have emerged as a threat to Oracle. The options it has had are acquiring OpenSource and aggressively defending patents. All the while its marketing teams continue to whitewash offerings like exalogic as "cloud" offerings.

I feel that Oracle tends to explore options to corral innovation. Its OpenSource portfolio is the classic trojan horse. Expect all sorts of lock-in.

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry, you're sorely mistaken. I've worked at Oracle (been acquired) and i've seen numbers. Licensing is not the main source of profits, support is; they might sell it differently, but that's where they make the real dough. The margins are astonishing. And look at the numbers they just posted about Europe: +50%. At these levels, that's huge.

<comment><USER8> I agree. All I wanted to point out was the difficulty in using their stack if you are a small firm or an innovator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess Oracle just don't see MySQL as enough of a threat, or enough of a profit opportunity, to shackle to the mothership with contributor agreements.

Indeed it might even speed up MySQL development, potentially undercutting Oracle's serious open source rivals.

<comment><USER11> Oracle has a problem in that PostgreSQL is somewhat of a threat, in terms of features and similarity. OK, the default stored procedure language is not exactly the same, but it's fairly close to PL/SQL.

Nobody is going to mistake MySQL for Oracle, and I suspect Oracle wants to keep it that way, while dragging MySQL along just enough to prevent an exodus of FOSS developers to PostgreSQL.

I should probably re-evaluate MySQL again, but they scared the Hell out of me back in 2001 when I found it did not support rollback, nor foreign key constraints, nor transaction isolation at the time. I KNOW THEY HAVE FIXED THIS STUFF SINCE THEN, but the mentality that thought it was OK to leave that stuff out??? I did enough xBASE stuff in the 80s to know I did not want to back to that confusion. I would rather use an ISAM interface than debug query planning in SQL, but having to use SQL, and getting none of the data integrity benefits?!? Screw that!

Y'all enjoy your MySQL, and I hope the whole source code license issue works out well for you :-)

<comment><USER10> I use Oracle at work, Postgres at home and MySQL only when I have to.</comment></comment></comment>


The 2013 HTPC Build - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/09/the-2013-htpc-build.html <comment><USER2> The 2.5" drives are quite expensive, and you could get a 4TB WD RED drive for $202.99, though you will need a different case, or an adapter to mount it in the 5.25" bay, if you don't need a Bluray drive.

Also of note is that while this will handle 1080p fine, it will struggle with a video renderer like madVR (depending on the settings), which can offer better video quality.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about an Intel NUC [1], or the upcoming Gigabyte BRIX [2] with Intel's 'best yet' integrated graphics "Iris Pro".

[1] [http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop- motherboards/nuc.html) [2] [http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/12/gigabyte-brix- gaming-pc/](http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/12/gigabyte-brix-gaming-pc/)

<comment><USER4> Intel NUC is a rip-off. BRIX + AMD Kabini should get the work done and prolly save you a $100 or more (unless you need a gaming HTPC).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I understand the author is just trying to make money like everyone else, I think it would be polite to note that the links to computer parts are affiliate links.

<comment><USER6> What difference would that make?

<comment><USER7> Hanging a light on potential bias builds trust with the reader. He may have linked to the best parts, but how do I know that he didn't pick the parts that make him the most in referrals? You have to trust the author or usefulness of the information is compromised.

BTW, I'm not saying the author is taking advantage of his readers nor am I saying he has an obligation to disclose his referral links. I'm just pointing out the difference that it would make and suggesting that all bloggers consider it.

<comment><USER8> I just assume everyone in life has bias and that the links he provides my not make him much money or cover his costs of hosting.

I think that anyone going down the route of building a PC is going to do additional research and would be happy just to use posting as this as guidelines or starting points.

<comment><USER9> Just pointing out that those are two very large assumptions. It's just as likely that people are not as well read and will take things at face value.

<comment><USER10> Like the CODE keyboard which got a lot of attention but is really just another keyboard sold by WASDKeyboards.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks cool, but I increasingly seldom I find myself watching physical media. I'd be more inclined to fore-go an optical drive and buy a case like this:

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003DXI288/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003DXI288/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=O4FRV6DYHPRU&coliid=I3KKCS65W399Q0)

and just rip my physical media ahead of time. Although here in the U.S. I think it may be technically illegal to back up my DVD and Bluray collection onto a hard drive (thanks to the DMCA).

<comment><USER12> The author reused his last HTPC case. If you'd read the article, you'd know that he didn't put an optical drive in, he used the space for another hard drive.

<comment><USER11> Ah, missed that part. Personally I'd still like to have the aesthetics of a case without the 5.25" slot, though if I had a way to hide it away from view it wouldn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My setup probably isn't as energy efficient, but I am proud of the fact that I can control my 'dumb' TV with my phone: [http://csmatt.com/notes/?p=32](http://csmatt.com/notes/?p=32) (also contains comments on different media center applications available.) There's also this post [http://csmatt.com/notes/?p=62](http://csmatt.com/notes/?p=62) about hacking the LG Wireless Media Kit (AN-WL100W) to use the same HTPC to feed a TV in the bedroom.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Dirt 3 on medium detail at 1024x768"

"this 14 watt idle HTPC we just built … is now a credible gaming machine!"

All I can say is LOL. Really.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it just me, or does every time Jeff cuts a loud fart it gets featured on Hacker News?

</comment><comment><USER16> For an HTPC that thing is massive.

</comment><comment><USER17> How do you get movies onto it?

<comment><USER18> Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant, or if those aren't your cup of tea there is always piracy.</comment></comment>


Business Still Needs Sysadmins  - <AUTHOR> http://joerussbowman.tumblr.com/post/11555544940/business-still-needs-sysadmins

<comment><USER2> I think the author misses a lot of what the original article was saying. for example,

> When you look at the pure dollars and cents, if the could was going to knock > out the Sysadmin profession, it would have done it already.

in a lot of business cases, it has. my employer uses google apps, we have no sysadmin for email/phones/etc. my school just migrated all of their undergrad email accounts to google apps. I work with a big company that outsourced all their email/blackberry etc stuff to google apps.

there are some businesses that have the special-case needs that the author describes. but there are a whole lot that don't. yeah, it would be nice having some local IT guys around to kick when email knocks out, but is it $500k/yr nice when I can outsource that for $50k/yr?

the pie isn't gone. but it is shrinking, imo. that cute t-shirt that says "I can replace you with a very small shell script"? yeah well... is it as funny when it's happening to you? ;)

<comment><USER3> But in your example, the sys admin hasn't been replaced by a small shell script. You've just outsourced some of the systems they would have looked after.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but now 1 sysadmin manages between 10 and 100 times more machines than they used to[1].

What is more, each machine supports more people than it used to.

[1] [http://blog.rapleaf.com/dev/2008/12/10/rent-or-own-amazon- ec...](http://blog.rapleaf.com/dev/2008/12/10/rent-or-own-amazon-ec2-vs- colocation-comparison-for-hadoop-clusters/)

[2] [http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/12/30/how-m...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/12/30/how- many-servers-can-one-admin-manage/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The number of machines a sysadmin can support depends on what's running on those machines. This is a case where raw averages can be extremely misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Depends on the size and activity of the business.

Maybe there is no need for a 100% time sysadmin, maybe there is need for 30 sysadmins across different time zones.

But that's not now, that has been always like that.

[http://poisonbit.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/opensource- clouds-...](http://poisonbit.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/opensource-clouds-and- liar-paradoxes/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Amazon may be the 8000 pound gorilla, but up here in Canada people are still concerned about the patriot and other similar legalities in terms of storing our data in US companies or in the US. I hear this all the time, and not just public organizations, but also startups.

Or maybe group clouds, like Universities banding together to create IaaS.

So, to conclude, don't forget about private clouds. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been writing a bit about this in my blog recently. Devs and sysadmins serious about their careers need to move out of the back office and into the front office. <http://gaiustech.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/scrum/></comment>


As Disasters Worsen, Cities and Researchers Eye Social Resilience - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/environment/2019/11/mental-health-support-natural-disaster-trauma-ptsd-anxiety/601522/ <comment><USER2> It's a pity they decided to put anything about climate change in the story, and especially in the sub-heading - this story has good information in it that could be beneficial to tons of people - and it's going to make many discount the accuracy of the information as a whole, right from the beginning.

If this story had taken out 3 of the 5 mentions of climate, it would have had the same info: there are steps that can be taken before and during a disaster to help people survive and thrive a disaster.

these bits are not needed in the article at all, they add nothing, taking them away takes away nothing (other than making people question legitimacy): "As climate change makes disasters more severe" "As climate change makes natural disasters more common" "As the climate continues to change"

Good info that could have many benefits for many people that almost seems packaged into a "submarine article" for pushing the climate change agenda with 'think of the children' \- pity indeed.

</comment><comment><USER3> "As climate change makes disasters more severe, researchers say we can prepare by being informed, volunteering, and staying socially connected."

If that was the case, we wouldn't be in this situation. Why are we expecting things to change?

</comment><comment><USER4> Why are we attributing weather to climate? I hear this many times during a discussion when someone mentions cold weather and global warming, yet so many of these articles do exactly this.

You can't have it both ways.

<comment><USER5> Yes you can, reality is complex.

What you think of a paradox is actually not a paradox but a chain of events so complex that we as the humans struggle to describe it.

<comment><USER4> Ah ok. It's been really cold this month where I live. I guess global warming isn't happening after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Careful about the assumption that disasters are worsening due to global warming. This is arguable.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/11/07/everythi...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/11/07/everything- you-hear-about-billion-dollar-disasters-is-wrong/#67b62c442fea)

<comment><USER7> Choice quote, " climate change resulting from the emission of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels poses significant risks to our collective futures, including influences on extreme events. As a consequence, it makes sense to focus policy on the mitigation of emissions and adaptation to reduce vulnerability and exposure to weather and climate."</comment></comment>


Linus Torvalds Doesn't Understand User Space Storage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gluster.com/2011/06/linus-torvalds-doesnt-understand-user-space-storage/

<comment><USER2> I agree to a point but gluster (glusterfs) stating this makes me cringe. Glusterfs is bad for small file performance from what I've personally benchmarked. Userspace multiplexing of resources is a good idea, even better would be to multiplex raw resources with filesystems as 'libraries' in my opinion anyways.</comment>


Do startups invest in stocks of public companies? - <AUTHOR> do tech startups invest in stocks of public companies to help generate funds for their core activities? is it legal? <comment><USER2> Generally not. It's "legal" but the boards of most small companies would probably not approve that sort of use...

</comment><comment><USER3> Companies have to park unused money somewhere, but in general you should be an investor or entrepreneur not try to be both.</comment>


1900 Edition of Ladies Home Journal Predictions for 2000 - <AUTHOR> https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7010/6635615985_633d660428_o.jpg <comment><USER2> Some of these predictions are hilariously incorrect, like the extermination of mosquitoes and flies, but several of them combine to pretty accurately predict the internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised at how true some of them are, at least in very general terms - they got a lot of the broad trends correct, while the actual implementation was unimaginable.</comment></comment>


FreeBSD Is No Longer Building GCC By Default - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQ1ODc <comment><USER2> I could be wrong, but it really seems to me that this is a very good, but somewhat indirect example of Apple's positive influence in the software world. By relying so heavily on LLVM it seems that they helped push LLVM to more robust maturity. Not something a lot of people talk about when they talk about LLVM ;p.

<comment><USER3> This is a very interesting perspective on LLVM. I don't believe Apple has the most contributors (IE compared to the community as a whole), and i don't think they ever did.

They also haven't pushed it as much as you'd think. For example, Apple had precisely nothing to do with Linux or FreeBSD support for LLVM.

Now, you could definitely make your statement about _clang_ , but not LLVM itself. Apple deserves a lot of credit for pushing clang forward.

On the LLVM side, however, since about 2 years ago, Google has probably has as much impact on LLVM as Apple, and you hear _nothing_ about this, because they don't hold external developer conferences talking about it.

(You can count the number of Google presos at recent developer meetings if you want a good indication of how involved they are).

Now, of course, in reality, the credit should go to the people doing the work, regardless of where they work, but HN and other places always like to set up these things up as if they are really corporate projects.

<comment><USER4> Uh, quite false in your statements and assumptions.

Do you know that Chris Lattner has worked for Apple since 2005?

Chris Lattner being the "primary author of the LLVM project".

<comment><USER3> You are going to have to do better than that.

I've known Chris Lattner a very very long time (since before he worked at Apple), and have counseled the LLVM project on various issues since then. I was also involved in mediating the proposals to merge LLVM and GCC that came up, and I watched Chris sell Apple folks on LLVM and get hired.

Chris is not a primary author any more, he is a director at Apple. Most of LLVM was not written at Apple, it was written at UIUC (LLVM was started in 2000). While large parts have been rewritten since then, it would be absolutely positively incorrect to say it was Apple's project. I don't even think Apple was the first company to hire people to work on it!

Note that Chris doesn't really code much anymore (and hasn't for at least 2 years), given that he has too many people to manage.

So, now, if you'd like to point out what statements you think i made are incorrect and your supporting data, i'd love to hear it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a much better source:

[http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- current/2013-Sept...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- current/2013-September/044313.html)

<comment><USER6> Thank you.

The mouse-over popup spam was too much to fight with.

<comment><USER7> May I respectfully mention Firefox and the noscript plugin at this point.

Back on topic: I really want to try out a non-linux kernel OS at some point, but I have nvida hardware...

<comment><USER6> The FreeBSD kernel is cool, but what really sells me on it is the concept of a 'core system' as a design feature, and the nifty things like ZFS that you get.

There's a new things that aren't quite like Linux, for instance, the 'watch' command does something entirely different.

<comment><USER8> sysutils/gnu-watch and sysutils/coreutils and other ports may be used to give you a more linux like environment. I have most of them installed, but I use them only when the native, BSD implementation lacks a certain option I need - and it's really rare.

And I support your opinion on a "core system" being a feature - it makes things consistent, which is a good thing. For example, I tried to setup a wifi network on Arch and I needed at least three different commands for this, each with it's own options syntax. In FreeBSD there is 'ifconfig' command which does everything related to networking and that's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Re: OpenMP

Intel is working on OpenMP support for LLVM/Clang. Runtime part [http://www.openmprtl.org/](http://www.openmprtl.org/) is BSD. Compiler part [http://clang-omp.github.io/](http://clang-omp.github.io/) is the same license as LLVM/Clang.

OpenMP is a large feature, so it will take quite some time to be integrated.

</comment><comment><USER10> Related topic, LLVM vs GCC performance: [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=llvm_clan...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=llvm_clang33_3way&num=1)

I guess if it's a big deal you can always compile gcc. Honestly I'd rather have it compiled for me but that's probably no surprise.

<comment><USER11> I always had the notion that LLVM is faster than GCC. I don't feel qualified to interpret this benchmark comparison, but they appear to have roughly the same performance?

<comment><USER12> LLVM compiles faster than GCC (although the gap has narrowed in the last couple of years). GCC produces faster code than LLVM (although that gap has also narrowed)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how they're getting around the issue of LLVM's lack of OpenMP support. I'm sure there are atleast a few modules in FreeBSD that utilize OpenMP. I too want to switch from GCC to LLVM/Clang but can't right now since LLVM doesn't support OpenMP yet.

<comment><USER14> > I'm sure there are atleast a few modules in FreeBSD that utilize OpenMP.

Nothing in the base system uses OpenMP. I find your assumption extremely bizarre (and scary). The kernel and the base system is the kind of software OpenMP would not be of any use. In fact, the base system is not even written in C++, but C; the only C++ components are groff and llvm (go figure).

      $ lsr /usr/src/ | egrep '\.(c|cpp|h|hpp)$' | xargs egrep '^[[:space:]]*#[[:space:]]*pragma[[:space:]]+omp' | grep -v gcc | wc -l
             0

Non-base software from the ports systems uses its own compiler. The system compiler is used for compiling FreeBSD.

<comment> X-Istence Do note that .cc is also a valid C++ extension.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> LLVM's license ([http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#copyright- license-...](http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#copyright-license-and- patents)) is much more like BSD than the GNU one ever was.

<comment><USER16> Indeed. Though who cares? A GPLv2 toolchain worked to build FreeBSD for well over a decade and no one died of viral copyleft pollution. And the similar platform that was far more polluted with this stuff ended up being the one that "won" in the market anyway.

Of all the good reasons behind switching to Clang (or behind having a two- compiler ecosystem in general), "license purity" is IMHO the dumbest.

<comment><USER17> I watched a presentation from a FreeBSD developer discussing the switch, and one of the reasons cited was that corporate users would be limited by the GPLv3.

<comment><USER18> This. As a corporate user of FreeBSD (with conservative lawyers), we're stuck with the last GPLv2 GCC release -- 4.2.2, which is now over 5 years old.

Believe me, recent GCC (4.7, 4.8) is worlds better than 4.2. We pine for something better.

<comment><USER16> Considering that every unit sold of the most popular consumer smartphone/tablet OS is built with a GPLv3 toolchain, I think you need to talk to your lawyers.

Like I said, this argument is dumb. The fact that Very Important People With Decision Power are making dumb decisions doesn't make it less dumb. FreeBSD isn't really doing this to support their business customers (again, things like Android are existence proofs to the contrary), they're doing it to stick it to the FSF (c.f. some of the comments in this very thread. That's dumb.

(Which is not to argue that clang is a bad choice -- it isn't!)

<comment><USER19> > Considering that every unit sold of the most popular consumer > smartphone/tablet OS is built with a GPLv3 toolchain, I think you need to > talk to your lawyers.

However, note that it doesn't _bundle_ it. And Google has gone to some lengths to produce their own non-[L]GPL libc (Bionic). As far as I know, the Android userland is pretty much a no-GPL zone these days.

<comment><USER20> Can we assume that this is because smartphone manufacturers do not want to allow customers to install modified version of the compiler on devices that the customers has bought?

We can discuss if one should be allowed to modify ones own property, but lets at least be clear if that is the discussion we have.

<comment><USER19> Er, no, it's just because there's no reason to ship a compiler. However, if they were shipping a compiler, I suspect it would not be a GPLv3 GCC; Google have pretty systematically purged GPL from the Android userspace, and I don't think it has any GPLv3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Honor to Apple for pushing this clang forward, together with WebKit clang is probably one of the most significant contribution to the open source community to date.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd disagree and say in terms of significant contributions, Firefox has made the biggest impact, not just on the computing world but in general social terms.

<comment><USER22> More so than android?

<comment><USER23> Android has gotten more people running open source software, but it hasn't done much to improve the ecosystem. There's not much coming back upstream other than some kernel updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was excited about PCC when the project was revived a couple years ago, hoping it would become the default compiler for the C++ and GPL phobic OpenBSD. The compiler does not appear to have made much progress in the last couple years, unfortunately.

Perhaps clang will carry over to OpenBSD so the project can ditch their custom version of GCC. PCC, with its few moving parts, does seem to embody the OpenBSD philosophy more than LLVM, though.

<comment><USER25> Just as soon as someone adds vax, sh4, m88k and hppa backends...

<comment><USER26> I guess you were thinking about NetBSD ;)

<comment><USER25> I'm pretty sure OpenBSD runs on all of those architectures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Great news! Always good to have some compiler diversity amongst products.

I wonder what this will do to the ports tree though!

<comment><USER28> Clang has been the default compiler for a while now, and many ports either work just fine or have been patched to work properly with clang. Ports that really need to use gcc (those depending on OpenMP perhaps) can still depend one of the gcc ports.

<comment><USER29> Some Debian developers are also working since 2012 to bring clang as a better alternative than GCC: [http://clang.debian.net/](http://clang.debian.net/)

<comment><USER30> "Better" in what respect though? Debian obviously doesn't have the licensing issues FreeBSD, Apple, etc., have (whether or not actually justified) with gcc, and technically, clang/llvm is at best a mixed bag, better in some ways, but worse in others.

In general, clang compiles somewhat faster than gcc (though the gap has been narrowing) and gcc produces better code than clang (though the gap has been narrowing). Gcc in general supports more architectures. Clang supports some specialized uses (e.g. embedding in an IDE) that gcc (being more of a traditional compiler) doesn't do well. The oft-repeated "error message" argument is fairly specious. Both are changing _very_ quickly, but the trend seems more towards convergence (in capability) rather than divergence.

Clang's more modern source-base is arguably an advantage to those wishing to extend it, but that represents a vanishingly small fraction of users—and is not always the advantage that's typically suggested: I've hacked on both, and while gcc's internals can be "elderly", clang's "modern" structure is often far from simple to understand.

So, good? Absolutely. "Better"? Er, well. It's a great thing to have two excellent compilers available...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> since it looks that linux won now, with big players maintaining it and a great ecosystem, i think the hackers love should all go towards FreeBSD now..

its a great OS, with a great background that should advance forward as another good open source option to linux and also against the closed source OS´s all around..

after all the heroic efforts from the FreeBSD community, to make the project going on even without the same support and attention that linux got, i wander if its not the time right now that this wonderfull OS start to get more traction and love from the hacker community?

</comment><comment><USER32> This was well known to be coming.</comment>


IPOs Just Aren't What They Used To Be - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/06/ipos-just-arent-what-they-used-to-be.html

<comment><USER2> I think the current state of IPOs are a direct result of the over-egging of the pudding in the late 90s. The success of the Netscape IPO paved the way for later IPOs like Yahoo and Amazon, and then the floodgates opened and a lot of poor quality issues happened, and a lot of people lost of lot of money.

The hangover from this period is evident in several areas: the Sarbanes-Oxley act - which is the response of politicians to 'do something', shareholder lawsuits, which is the response of lawyers to try and get a slice of the action, and a general aura of fraud and shiftiness around the word 'IPO'. One of the reasons the Google IPO was handled in such a different way was a measured response to try and distance themselves from these connotations.

Time will tell whether the IPO can be restored as both a valid liquidity event, and a valid way of getting investment in a company. I don't want to have a world in which the only way to get liquidity for a company is to sell to a larger company. Otherwise we see the like of Microsoft and Apple get bought up by the IBMs and Xeroxes of the day, and while the founders still get rich, truly new and different companies are starved of the oxygen to grow into their unique way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Two words: Sarbanes–Oxley

</comment><comment><USER4> When the perceived worth of a piece of some 'internet action' was much higher, along with the 'barriers to entry' being perceived as much higher, of course IPOs did a lot better.

Now, it's easier to grab a tiny slice of pie, either through web-ads, or through selling a service based on cheap hardware, open software and sweat- equity, no IPO needed.</comment>


Volkswagen Investing $70.5 Billion in new technology  - <AUTHOR> http://www.motorauthority.com/blog/1051772_volkswagen-investing-70-5-billion-new-technology-should-ensue

<comment><USER2> This kind of reporting is pretty irrelevant unless we know if this a decrease or increase over the prior 5 years worth of investment. Note that this amount includes new platform development as well as new factories and other infrastructure.

It sounds like a lot of money but VW is a seriously large company. For all we know, from 2005-2010 they spent 100b on new investments. The information is out of context and thus, not much use.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully it'll be spent on making cars that don't need constant servicing.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is irrelevant. It's PR. Short as well. I don't understand why it got to the feed. Unless some users are voting after an order.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hey Car Industry, how about just making the iPod connectors a default with the cars you ship? You'd think after a decade of iPods it'd be a given.

<comment><USER6> Having never owned an iPod but always having handheld gadgets around, I'd have to kindly hope that the default external audio/media connection is NOT to a an Apple product.

<comment><USER7> all they really need is a little 5mm jack on the front panel.</comment></comment></comment>


A 23andMe Patent - <AUTHOR> http://blog.23andme.com/news/a-23andme-patent/ <comment><USER2> The headline is quite misleading. From the post, the patent appears to be about calculating and showing the traits children are likely to inherit from their parents, not a way to "design" them.

<comment><USER3> If a couple produces 50 zygotes togather, and the mother and father test all of them, and pick the one that sounds like it has the most appealing traits that a couple might envision together, and discard the rest, would that count as "design"?

This process sounds like it's half a step away from that. The half-step being that they only mention testing the parents, and then the process permits a degree of hypothesizing about possible children. Meanwhile, how hard would it be to test an embryo in utero, and then make a shallow, superficial decision about the pregnancy?

The process is practical and ethical, when considering it's utility for assessing the risk of inherited, incurable diseases tied to varying combinations of dominant or recessive genes, but it's a flimsy assumption that it will solely be used for only those scenarios.

There will be couples with known risk factors, who will want to roll the dice and try anyway, because they love eachother and want a family, and then they check their pregnancy in utero for things like downs syndrome. But then, if you have the options in front of you, why not check out other characteristics too?

And then, if couple A was allowed to do that, and this is a business, after all... Why not couple B? This couple who has no life threatening conditions or genetic combinations, but has the money, and the confidentialitiy of protected health information laws shrouding their decisions in secrecy.

In 20 years, don't be surprised when a certain cross-section of humanity suddenly looks strikingly different, but without any obvious explanation.

<comment> Digit-Al I'm not sure I see this happening to any great degree. We have had the ability to know the sex of babies in advance for decades, and there are still many parents who prefer to leave it as a surprise. If there are still so many people who don't even want to know the gender of their baby before it is born, how many are going to want to make any kind of changes to it.

Also, there are still a great many people who are very suspicious of any new medical technology and would not want to take any risks when it comes to a child.

<comment><USER4> "Many" is meaningless. There will also be "many" who will do exactly this as soon as possible. It's already possible to run certain tests during pregnancy, and it's legal to have an abortion based on the test results. One of my friends in high school was pre-nataly diagnosed with spina bifida and the doctor _recommended_ an abortion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" You want to give your child the very best start...Keep in mind this child is still you, simply the best of you."_ \- Gattaca

<comment><USER6> Yep. And what's so bad about that?

<comment><USER7> You should probably watch Gattaca - the answer to your question is pretty much the whole point of that film. Or if you don't want to watch, at least to read the first two paragraphs of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca).

<comment><USER8> Watching Gattaca is very recommended to everyone.

It raises many important questions on how to properly and ethically handle genetic improvements in society, but in my opinion it doesn't at all say that the genetic improvements shouldn't be done, it simply warns about the social, political and legal issues that the society should discuss and solve alongside with the actual biological/engineering challenges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The company never pursued the concepts discussed in the patent beyond our > Family Traits Inheritance Calculator, nor do we have any plans to do so.

Isn't this a direct violation of the principles of patents? A patent gives you protection to work on an invention, so that you have a monopoly to sell that invention and thus cover the costs of developing it. But here they have the patent, thus preventing anyone else selling the invention, but they are not selling the invention themselves.

I'm interested about law. (Not saying this is relevant to 23&me.) Can you patent a process for an illegal action? So, a business process that enables tax evasion (not avoidance)?

<comment><USER10> ...nor do we have any plans to do so.

Until such time as there's a new owner or we're bought by Evil Co., etc.

Every time I read a best intentions phrase like that it reminds me of the company that promised, "Never to share your email with anyone. Ever."

Until they went bankrupt and one of the assets sold off was their customer database.

<comment><USER11>
      reminds me of the company that promised, "Never to share your email with anyone. Ever."

Well, as it turns out there is not even a need to go bankrupt in order to share all your emails with impunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the future the opposite sex will not only judge us on look and wealth but also on genetic material. We're leaving DNA traces everywhere. Once the DNA samplers become small enough it's just a matter of time before an "app" that does that exists. Welcome to the future :)

<comment><USER13> I think there was some anime where that actually happened :P cliques were based on genes! The coolest girl had the best DNA! Oh and another girl was showing off her speed, so the popular girl remarked "Speed is a dominant trait of lower mammals." imagine being judged for having common genetic traits...

<comment><USER14> I believe it was `Geneshaft' [0], by Bandai. It mixes mecha with social dynamics of genetics and gender disparity.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneshaft](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneshaft)

<comment><USER13> yep that's the one!! we had an anime channel (animax) on our cable briefly. So saw the first episode of this show back then. (Got introduced to ranma 1/2 and inuyasha as well!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like the little image that seems to say: "Looking to start a family? Beware, your child might be a redhead! Calculate your risk now!"

(Please, if someone with red hair reads this, no offense :-))

</comment><comment><USER16> Has anyone used the 23andMe service? I'd like to know how accurate the results are.

Can they say you definitely carry a gene for diabetes or lactose intolerance, for example, or do they just say you're at a higher chance of developing this? The website example given for carrier diseases looks so vague it's not worth bothering with ("You are a carrier of one or more infected conditions"... great, which ones!)

If they can give me a list of things I need to be mindful of in the future and, more importantly, why, I'd happily pay $99 for that. I.e; you've got this and that gene which leaves you susceptible to this condition which may lead to heart disease, etc. and we're %xx certain.

Does anyone have any experience of this kind of thing?

<comment><USER17> No personal experience but someone blogged (in German, unfortunately) recently about a bug in 23andMe's analysis algorithm that resulted in him being told that he was terminally ill. He spent a lot of time learning everything about the purported gene malfunction, found the bug in 23andMe's assumptions and got it fixed upstream. Certainly not a nice experience.

[1] [http://www.ctrl-verlust.net/23andme-wie-ich-fur-todkrank- erk...](http://www.ctrl-verlust.net/23andme-wie-ich-fur-todkrank-erklart- wurde-und-mich-wieder-gesund-debuggte/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So they applied statistics to information about genes and received patent on it? I can get someone else than 23andMe analyze my genes, and he can do similar analysis.

I really like 23andMe's product, although I dont like the idea of my genetic information being stored outside my country (different than US).

I hope the patent itself isn't as broad as they are painting it, statistical methods (algorithms) should never be a part of patent - they are too generic and based on mathematics.

</comment><comment><USER19> What exactly did they patent? Surely calculating the odds of inherited traits was not invented by 23andMe?

</comment><comment><USER13> Btw why is everyone going on about genetic engineered kids? This company only lets you get your genetic data and the potential genetic make up of your offspring. It doesn't exactly let you HAVE a baby with those genetic traits. Or am i missing something?

<comment><USER20> The patent includes more than that. It also includes using the process against a pool of potential donors to choose the highest likelihood of a 'desirable' outcome in terms of the child's genetics. It's not quite Gattaca-style selection, but it is a way to 'design' your child with a high margin of error.

<comment><USER13> Isn't that just the process of finding the best mate based on genetic info? that is so not designing your child :/ So basically if it is worded as you say it is, then if a company figures out the actual designing part, they can't be sued by these guys. Because the selection they patent is between different donors... they cant do anything with a pre-selected donor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is the "Don't be evil" motto still valid at all?</comment>


Scientists have found a way to rapidly thaw cryopreserved tissue without damage - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-found-a-way-to-rapidly-thaw-cryopreserved-tissue-without-damage <comment><USER2> > _The team admits that larger tissue - and even whole organs - will need to > have the nanoparticles injected into them, rather than just sitting around > them, to achieve the same uniform heating, but it 's something they want to > try next._

Bad news for the already-frozen heads and bodies, but likely good news for future cryo-preservation enthusiasts. Although, I have no idea how you'd get these nanoparticles into someone's brain.

<comment><USER3> According to this article, "The effect of nanoparticle size on the probability to cross the blood-brain barrier: an in-vitro endothelial cell model"[1]:

"GNPs[gold nanoparticles] of various sizes (20, 50, 70 and 110 nm) were synthesized and coated with barbiturate, which is a molecule that can easily penetrate the BBB [34]. Therefore, coating GNPs with barbiturate molecules will facilitate their penetration through the BBB, both for therapy and imaging applications. ... The results show that GNPs of size 70 nm are optimal for the maximum amount of gold within the brain cells, and that 20 nm GNPs are the optimal size for maximum free surface area."

The nanowarming article reports using iron oxide nanoparticles with a final average diameter of 50 nm (after some chemical prep & coating operations).

So getting a bunch of iron nanoparticles into a brain isn't out of the question.

Bigger challenge is probably getting them back out!

[1]: [http://jnanobiotechnology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186...](http://jnanobiotechnology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12951-015-0075-7)

<comment><USER4> Is there any problem with them remaining?

<comment><USER2> There might be if you want a post-thaw MRI to make sure your noggin is all in one piece.

<comment><USER4> How much metal in total would be in our cranium? more than the total amount in your fillings?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if you could do this with a very precise microwave array, something with thousands of microwave emitters controlled by temperature monitoring feedback loop - no particles.</comment>