Netflix now bigger than HBO - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/77067/netflix-now-bigger-than-hbo/ <comment><USER2> I just finished watching the first season of House of Cards and I really enjoyed it. It's up there with original HBO programming as far as quality is concerned. If they can keep that up then traditional outlets should definitely stay worried. I know there was some talk about Netflix's future because of their dependence on content providers, but if they can keep this up then they certainly have a hand to play.

<comment><USER3> That becomes the question. The problem is that their current production slate indicates that they maybe have one -- maybe two -- standout shows to do a year. HBO typically has 4 (right now that would be Game of Thrones, Girls, Boardwalk Empire and True Blood with The Newsroom being an easy slot for #5).

Right now, Netflix's original programming track record is really spotty aside from House of Cards -- which is absolutely HBO quality and would likely have been an HBO show if Netflix hadn't outbid by such an absurd amount (granted it was the right strategy to make but I get why HBO didn't match)).

Aside from Arrested Development, however, nothing on their current slate looks like it will rise above Starz quality. And that's a problem if you expect people to consistently pay $8 a month.

<comment><USER4> Netflix just needs movies, we haven't watched HBO since the 80s'. Their programming was never why we watched anyway. It's all about the movies. If I want original programming, and we do, we watch the education channels, in HD, free OTA.

<comment><USER5> As a counter point, I honestly see 'movies' somewhat dying out. Shows like Game of Thrones, House of Cards and several others now have the same production quality as movies and aren't hamstrung by the same limitations. e.g. how do you tell a deep story in 2 hours?

<comment><USER6> There're plenty of movies that manage to tell deep stories in 1.5 hours. Netflix is a treasure trove when it comes to quality entertainment.

<comment><USER7> Depends on what your definition of "deep" is. Have you watched _Game of Thrones_? The story is _very_ complicated and I can't imagine a 2 hour movie being made out of it without dropping _a lot_ of story on the floor.

<comment><USER8> You couldn't really make it work in 5 or 6 2-hour movies. There is much more material in ASOIAF than there is in Harry Potter or something similar, and they had to split that into almost 10 full length movies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's great that Netflix finally beat HBO's subscriber figures but given that subscriber figures are cyclical (though HBO's have evened out now that HBO Go is out -- which incidentally was largely the impetus behind HBO GO, to curb subscriber churn during period's when new series aren't on), it'll take consistent effort and good programming for Netflix to remain in this position.

The problem is, that strategy takes money. And that $8 a month per household is probably half of what HBO is getting per household for its 29m subscribers (plus what they get from home video, licensing and international).

Netflix has pivoted from trying to be cable to trying to be HBO. That's all well and good but let's not try to spin this as how cord-cutting is "winning." It's not. If cord-cutting was winning, Netflix would have had more subscribers than HBO quarters ago. Instead, Netflix's next big strategy is to get bundled WITH cable providers (which incidentally is a smart approach and could be what really lets Netflix's subscriber base balloon).

HBO, Netflix and Showtime require original content to really push the needle. HBO has an advantage of having spent the last 20 years (since Larry Sanders, really) cultivating the best showrunners and writing talent that have in turn, brought in some of the best programming in the history of the medium.

Moreover, HBO has a financial advantage in that they make most of their original series in-house. Netflix does it two ways. They fund series outright like House of Cards and Arrested Development (but to be clear, 20th Century Fox still produced and owns the video and syndication rights to AD) or they acquire the first-run rights (Lillyhammer, Tom Fontana's Borgia). Even in the cases where they do fund the development, a secondary production company usually still does everything -- it's not in-house. HBO, by virtue of being a subsidiary (and the most profitable subsidiary) of Time Warner, has access to Warner Bros. Television, which cuts down on a lot ancillary costs before it comes time for distribution.

It'll be interesting to see if Netflix can afford to acquire or do full- contracts with certain production companies and creator shingles to get rights to future projects. Alan Ball has a longstanding deal with HBO and David Milch has a semi-exclusive with them too.

TL;DR This is great for Netflix, but all it really does is make them a real contender as a premium content network. It doesn't impact HBO's current economics or have any impact on the realities of running a content business. Which is basically that good shit is expensive.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm really cheering for Netflix. Outside of the US (I'm in the UK) people have complained about a lack of content but I'll pretty much give _all_ my money to the people who bring back Arrested Development.

<comment><USER10> I'm in Uruguay, where we get 1/10th of the US content, and it still blows local cable out of the water :) .

Video on demand (with no ads!) is a killer feature for me.

Not to mention it's way cheaper than local cable - I'm paying for three subscriptions (mine, my parents' and my uncles') for less than one month of basic cable.

The day they can simulate cable's mindless zapping (some sort of preprogrammed channels), and get sports on board (I'm an NBA fan, and I'd like to watch Champions' League football too)

<comment><USER8> The no ads feature is important to me.

I had a subscription to Hulu Plus, and it pissed me off that I paid a subscription fee and had annoying commercials.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One interesting piece of information from this article : During peak periods of internet use in the US, Netflix constitutes 33% of all downstream traffic. Impressive!

</comment><comment><USER11> It would've been nice if that article compared revenue and profit numbers, rather than just how many subscribers each service had ...

<comment><USER3> Well that would have ruined the whole point of the article. HBO accounts for 25% of all of Time Warner's profits. That's significantly more than what Netflix can offer. And it would also be useful if they did the revenue per user figure -- but again, that wouldn't be a tweet-worthy and sexy headline. (It would have also required the author to understand the content business but I digress).

<comment><USER12> the netflix numbers are actually pretty easy. At $8/months, it's ~$96/year ... which is close enough to $100 to make for easy math.

Quick and dirty numbers (on just the domestic streaming).

At 30M subs, run rate revenue is approximately $3B. They had about $2B in content commitments. Delivery costs (i.e. bandwidth) runs about 20% of revenue. So on their $3B, $600M goes to delivery, $2B goes to content, and they have $400M-ish in profits.

NFLX is difficult to value because it's growing so fast and the content cost is a moving target. If NFLX can keep content costs around $2B, then every incremental customer is 80% profit. Every 1M subs they add, is $100M in revenue and $80M in profit (capitalize that at 10x and you're adding $800M in valuation ... keep in mind they added 2M domestic subs in the last 3 months). Some people argue that content providers will demand higher fees as NFLX increases subscribers. I'm not convinced. They walked away from Starz and they cut a deal with Disney that doesn't look any more expensive than what they were paying previously. And they're also building a library of owned content.

It's definitely one of the most interesting stories to watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think that HBO are quietly positioning themselves to prosper when the cable bubble finally bursts, though- HBOGO is great. Compare that to Showtime, for example, whose app offerings are widely panned.

<comment><USER14> I'm not so sure. HBOGO is exclusively an add-on to the cable service. Its present quality is irrelevant to the post-cable world as it is completely incapable of gaining traction outside of the "cable bubble." It is basically a tree falling in a forest where nobody can hear it. In the far-off future when HBO gets with the times, who knows what Showtime and everyone else's offerings will look like?

<comment><USER15> HBO is gaining a lot of traction outside of the US, especially in Scandinavia with HBO Nordic (HBO GO equivalent without a cable subscription). So they have the platform to do it, which means if the cable market starts plummeting they can pivot and start offering it as a seperate package rather than an add-on for cable.

I have hope that they will do this, but looking at the history it's far from certain.

<comment><USER16> My guess is this is exactly what they're planning to do, but that a revenue tipping point hasn't been reached in the US yet: cable subscriptions still provide too much money for them to be willing to flip the switch. Experimenting in Scandinavia lets them lay the groundwork without prematurely giving up the huge US cable revenue stream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The figures don't include pirating. If HBO had been smart enough to launch and promote HBO GO as a stand-alone service, pirating would be lower and streaming/revenue/official viewership would be higher.

<comment><USER18> Stand by for a deluge of replies explaining exactly how HBO is making more money by refusing to take peoples' money.

I know, I know, I don't get it either.

<comment><USER19> That's because the cable bundling agreements they have make them obscene amounts of money. Those people are overpaying for the service, and that makes them more money than opening up HBO Go would.

It's not hard to understand, they're not idiots at HBO, they crunched the numbers and figured out how to get the most money.

In the future, there will be a tipping point when enough people have tired of "cable teevee" that the numbers will fall the other way, and when that happens, they'll leave the cable companies behind and push as hard as they can on HBO Go globally. They're already testing the waters and rolling out the infrastructure for it.

<comment><USER20> >Those people are overpaying for the service, and that makes them more money than opening up HBO Go would.

You and HBO are assuming that the number of people who would join HBO Go without a cable subscription isn't going to be greater than the number of people who would drop cable to just get HBO Go. It's just a guess.

<comment><USER19> It's not about number of people, it's about how much money they're getting from each.

A cable subscriber is worth a lot more than an HBO Go subscriber, since they get kickbacks from the cable companies, they are cheaper to acquire, since they get a lot of free advertising through the cable companies, and they are less likely to cancel, since it's harder to cancel an entire cable package.

So it's not a 1:1 relationship between cable customers and HBO Go customers. They need to acquire several Go customers to make up for each lost cable customer. But cable is shrinking, and streaming is growing, and at some point the scales will tip. However, they have to be damn sure that it has tipped, and that they can sustain their current revenues, so they will probably be a bit cautious and conservative, and let their cable-only deal stick around a bit longer. This might not be what you want, but such is life.

(Or you could move to any Nordic country and enjoy HBO Nordic, which is HBO Go, but without the cable subscription requirement.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Netflix competing against HBO will be great, especially when HBO separates itself from its current model of being a cable add-on. Lilyhammer (Netflix) and Game of Thrones (HBO) are two of the best shows being produced right now, not to mention all of the other great original content both have provided. Mainstream TV is not at all compelling in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER22> <rant>

Netflix _really_ needs to implement an offline mode for its mobile apps.

The vast majority of the times I'm watching something on my phone, I don't have a WiFi connection or the connection is too slow to stream an HD video (like on a plane, at the gym, in a car, etc.)

I'd love to be able to download something at my home and watch it in offline mode later. Both Rdio and Spotify do this for music. Why doesn't any video services do it? Are you listening Netflix?

</rant>

<comment><USER23> > Why doesn't any video services do it?

Licensing issues.

<comment><USER22> I don't think so. The same issues would be there for music, but those apps all offer it.

As long as you can only watch it from within their app (so they can keep stats), it shouldn't matter whether it's online or offline.

<comment><USER3> It's absolutely licensing.

When content is licensed, there are different licenses that are distributed based on who pays and what the service is:

* First-run -- you get to broadcast it first * Syndication -- you get to broadcast second * Digital -- you can also show the product on a digital platform (this was how Netflix was able to do their loophole with Starz back in the day, Starz sold the digital license and streaming license to Netflix because the content owners hadn't specified that such a license was unable to be resold or relicensed -- that' since changed and now it's an extra fee if you want to do that like EPIX does) * Digital streaming -- can be streamed but not watched offline * Rental -- traditionally DVD/Blu-ray * Digital rental -- iTunes, Vudu, Amazon, etc. -- includes offline

Netflix would have to pay significantly more for its content to offer an offline mode. Even HBO, who owns most of its original content -- doesn't do offline because again, the costs would be exorbitant.

EDIT: To be clear I'm not being all-inclusive, as JFB points out below me, there are even nuttier licensing schemes too. And this is before we even talk about international, where you typically have different agreements with every. single. territory.

<comment><USER24> There are more and crazier ones: exclusive windows for airplanes, hotel PPV, &c.

When you're frustrated by some lacuna in a video service's offering, 99% of the time the feature is missing, the reason is "licensing". Content ownership is going to devolve into small offices of tens of attorneys and support staff, managing these licensing deals. Universal Studios et al will simply be licensees of _Jaws_ properties for their theme parks.

<comment><USER25> Content ownership is _already_ small offices of attorneys and support staff. Most major IPs are actually owned by small production companies. These production companies are in turn generally wholly or partially owned by the major movie studios.

It's done this way for financial bookkeeping, legal liability, and tax structuring reasons. This type of setup is more popularly known as "Hollywood Accounting" and is the reason why a movie can make hundreds of millions but still yield a "loss." (The studio acts as a distributor and is payed a distribution fee; the IP owning company receives royalties; the production company that actually writes the checks for expenses gets its cut "last" after the income has been redirected to various other entities.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've battled with Netflix many times. Its Canadian content is a joke, compared to what's available in the US I can't imagine why anyone would stay with Netflix Canada for more than a month.

Yes I've tried various VPNs and it's far better but I don't like the layout they changed it since I had used it the first time.

The biggest problem is the bizarre customer service which seems to be very amateurish. I was billed twice per month somehow they got approval to bill my credit card again, same address same person - me, without me giving approval. And it was a battle to get the representative to understand that was a problem.

The representative said she couldn't refund multiple months but I asked how they could take multiple months but not refund it! After some arguing (very unprofessional) she agreed to refund two months.

I asked her to cancel my account and she asked me why! Jesus Christ why do you think! You bill me twice, no approval, you drag your feet to refund my money you took and then are surprised when I want to cancel my account.

The concept is great better than MythTV, torrent or anything I could get working but their billing and customer service absolutely sucks!

<comment><USER27> Isn't part of the problem the Canadian content laws?

<comment><USER28> I don't think that's as large a problem as preexisting exclusive content contracts with incumbent networks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My wish is NetBO = NetFlix + HBO - then I can forget about cable provider. But as others are pointing out - it would be bad for competition.

<comment><USER18> HBO has a bullheaded insistence on distribution through cable operators, though. I can watch Netflix without a cable connection but HBO actively refuses to even think about an Internet-only subscriber model.

It's reminiscent of Sony's attempt to keep their content studios and product groups under the same tent. Any company whose business model is based on running unstoppable forces into immovable objects is always going to be at a competitive disadvantage in the long term. HBO just hasn't figured that out yet.

<comment><USER30> > HBO actively refuses to even think about an Internet-only subscriber model.

And you know this how? I'm pretty sure the execs at HBO have run the numbers.

Why HBO Can't Afford To Offer A Stand-Alone Streaming Service [http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/05/11/why-hbo- cant...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/05/11/why-hbo-cant-afford- to-offer-a-stand-alone-streaming-service/)

<comment><USER18> I know it because I actually read the article you linked to.

Funny, Netflix seems to 'afford' it just fine.

<comment><USER31> If HBO were to go internet-only, it'd lose the major cable operators heavily promoting them for free. They only market premium channels so hard because it helps sell expensive cable TV service. HBO would lose subscribers immediately as operators no longer actively replace subscribers for them as others churn out.

To make up for the lost stream of customer acquisition, they'd have to:

a) Cut prices by more than 50% to become competitive with Netflix/Hulu. This will cost them billions a year.

b) Increase their catalog size significantly, which would cost billions a year.

To give you an idea of the costs of licensing, HBO's last major deal was with Universal studios and cost them over $2 billion for access to their future movie catalog.

It's hard to come up with a scenario where cutting their exclusive tie with cable makes sense financially _right now_. It's not "bullheaded" to say "no, we shouldn't throw away $10+bn/year to give Bob his internet subscription while we're in the midst of a death battle for the future of digital entertainment distribution".

Netflix can do it because (a) they have a big catalog and low prices to entice subscribers with, (b) they got much of their catalog on the cheap before studios fully understood its value; this perk is going away as licenses renew, (c) it has no choice. Whether Netflix can grow its original content business within the constraints of its low subscription price faster than its licensing costs get out of hand is still up in the air.

<comment><USER18> _HBO would lose subscribers immediately as operators no longer actively replace subscribers for them as others churn out._

But that's going to happen -- and is happening -- anyway.

 _"no, we shouldn't throw away $10+bn/year to give Bob his internet subscription while we're in the midst of a death battle for the future of digital entertainment distribution"._

"What? A _phone_ that plays music?! Are you crazy? Do you realize how much money iPods brought to this company last year?"

<comment><USER32> This is a poor analogy. The net profit on an iPhone is higher than the net profit on an iPod.

<comment><USER18> And the net profit on a diamond necklace is higher than either. I'm not sure what point you're making.

Apple didn't build the iPhone because it was profitable. They built it because they knew that a race was about to begin, in which second place was really going to suck. HBO is faced with the same reality, whether they believe it or not.

<comment><USER32> The point I'm making is that by introducing the iPhone, Apple didn't lose out by cannibalising iPod sales.

Whereas if HBO changes models, it will cannibalise the existing business model at a net loss to the business overall.

So the analogy with Apple's introduction of the iPhone is not relevant.

<comment><USER18> And the point _I'm_ making is that the choice wasn't really theirs. Either they were going to sell the most profitable smartphones, or somebody else was going to.

Let's take a look at subscriber growth on Netflix versus HBO over the next few years, and resume the discussion then. As RIM learned, the first few derivatives of that number are _important_.

<comment><USER32> Perhaps you've forgotten how perfectly awful smart phones were before the iPhone.

The original pitch was never "check out these amazing apps". There _were_ no apps. People's minds were blown by the fact that you could get a non-hideous phone with a UI not assembled by two troupes of rival chimpanzees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is not so much constructive, but more a comment on my Netflix viewing habits and opinions on three shows which they've created:

I really enjoyed House of Cards. Lilyhammer was pleasantly surprising and I'm looking forward to future seasons. I recently tried watching Hemlock Grove and that was awful. I'm sceptical of Arrested Development: I loved the original, but it's been a long time and I feel like it's time to move on.

Otherwise, I find Netflix to be attractive in cycles. Every now and then, I will discover a bunch of new things (be it movies or TV shows) and binge watch them, and then I feel like there nothing left on Netflix. I keep paying on "down periods" because I like there is a sense of security because I have a high quality / stable streaming service available to me. Then, after a few weeks, I eventually return to Netflix for more binge viewing.

</comment><comment><USER34> "HBO's figure dates to the end of 2012, but it's unlikely to have grown much in the first three months of 2013, owing as much to the cable TV industry's stagnation as its own trouble signing up new subscribers."

How the hell do they know this? Girls and Game of Thrones have been huge hits and an equally strong argument could be made that thanks to these two shows alone HBO is well over 30 million subscribers, hence having a larger viewership than Netflix. Pretty irresponsible imo to base an entire article and make a factual statement in the headline based on a hunch.

</comment><comment><USER35> I keep seeing qz.com linked here: Is there a bloody reason that the page doesn't go completely to the right side, so I can use my bloody mousewheel without my mouse being over the content?

<comment><USER36> Browser & OS plz

<comment><USER37> OS X and Safari. I have the same problem. Annoying.

<comment><USER38> May be a more, er, modern browser may do the trick?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The number of subscribers seems to be a total apples to oranges comparison, given the extremely different channels Netflix and HBO get customers.

If I could pay Netflix prices for HBO Go, I would do it in a heartbeat. But there's no way I'm going to buy a TV and pay +$100/month for cable to become an HBO subscriber.

Because of their different business models, you'd think that the only metric they should be measured on is revenue vs. revenue. To compare subscribers seems like sensationalism and poor logic.

</comment><comment><USER40> I just bought a Netflix plan and am using it in France (through a plugin). I don't know if it's illegal but it is really really good. I actually really hope this is going to keep working and that Netflix is not going to fix this.

If I had the people and the skill I would try to launch such a startup in France. I have no idea why there is no equivalent, it's a promised success.

<comment><USER41> I think it would be really hard to start something like Netflix as a startup in Europe. The content licensing structure is quite a mess (which is probably one of the reasons why Netflix isn't available yet (with some exceptions in Scandinavia)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I feel like comparing these two is sort of like comparing Android vs iOS, am I wrong?

Netflix has more subscribers because it's cheaper. HBO on the other hand has less subscribers, but I'm guessing that they make more profit than Netflix. At the end of the day, it depends on which one you think is more important. More profits or more subscribers?

</comment><comment><USER43> _"HBO's figure dates to the end of 2012, but it's unlikely to have grown much in the first three months of 2013, owing as much to the cable TV industry's stagnation as its own trouble signing up new subscribers."_

I wonder how many people are like me and only pay for the months in which Game of Thrones is on (Q2 so far)?

<comment><USER3> LOTS. That's why they typically try to program hits like GoT and True Blood back to back so they can get you for six months.

HBO hovers between 27 and 33m depending on the quarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Apple has $100b+ cash on hand. From a strategic perspective, Apple really needs to give a hard look at Netflix.

<comment><USER45> How long would Netflix's contracts last if it was Apple (huge threat to media companies) who owned them?

Netflix has already lost some of it's content because they were deemed too big of threat to the content provider's main business (e.g.: Starz [1])... I only imagine this problem would magnify 100x if Netflix were owned by Apple.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/29/technology/netflix_starz/ind...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/29/technology/netflix_starz/index.htm)

<comment><USER46> Could the studios really afford to cut out Apple and the iTunes store? They probably control most of the digital market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Netflix deserves it. With them for movies and free HT OTA TV we are 100% cable free. If only they ran in my Chrome browser on Ubuntu like Crackle does.

</comment><comment><USER47> Is it good or bad? Both are strong DRM proponents. Where are DRM free alternatives?

</comment><comment><USER48> There is currently a massive short squeeze occurring with Netflix stock.</comment>


Regulators Bring a Strange Spoofing Case - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-21/regulators-bring-a-strange-spoofing-case <comment><USER3> maybe the knee jerk reaction on HN is to think 'HFT' but this really isn't.

although i have to say 400ms to place an order, cancel it, and place a new order in the opposite direction (or 2 actions using the cancel-if-cross - <USER2> manually as it appears - is pretty fast. high frequency finger clicking, maybe, but definitely not high frequency.

the cftc is going after this guy for the behaviour that resulted from the avoid-orders-that-cross feature that was available on that guy's commercial trading platform (the application is TT and it's used everywhere), and in the sarao case they went after his cancel-if-close behaviour too (that too is sort-of available direct from some exchanges - pegged order). i hope they know that the industry has plenty of available tools to help the average joe do things like these because they have their own meaningful (but specific) purpose in day to day trading. in this particular case- cme and a lot of other exchanges really really don't like it if you cross your own orders. it reeks of wash trading. this is just a tool to make it really simple, because sometimes a firm has multiple traders that have different trades they want to put on and you can't always be sure they won't cross each other.

sometimes i wonder if the tools proliferate these malicious behaviour or if the malicious behaviour proliferate these tools. i suspect a lot of market participants are engaging in very "aggressively defensive" behaviour to counter things like these. in any case the microstructure has changed quite a bit in as quickly as the last 10 months and it looks like that is going to be the new normal rate of change.

</comment><comment><USER4> I realise the guy isn't a HFT, but that seems to be how he is being treated.

What EXACTLY does high frequency trading contribute to society? Genuine question.

<comment><USER5> > What EXACTLY does high frequency trading contribute to society? Genuine > question.

Liquidity.

Buy and hold traders are wonderful--until you want to sell your stock. Too many buy and holders and the liquidity disappears.

Several of the big companies found this out the hard way when opened special trading desks for their privileged clients to avoid those "dirty HFT traders". Everybody wanted to buy; nobody wanted to sell; there was no liquidity. They had to let some HFT folks in to make the markets.

Now, we can argue that HFT below some threshold of delay (10 minutes? 1 minute? 1 second? 1 millisecond?) is useless and counterproductive. However, the people trading quickly make the liquidity that the buy and hold folks rely on.</comment></comment>


Technicopedia: 8880 – Super Car - <AUTHOR> http://www.technicopedia.com/8880.html <comment><USER2> Amazing internal mechanisms, but the body is very bare.

My favorite is the 4x4 crawler sets.

[https://shop.lego.com/en-CA/4X4-Crawler-9398](https://shop.lego.com/en- CA/4X4-Crawler-9398)

[https://shop.lego.com/en-CA/4x4-Crawler-Exclusive- Edition-41...](https://shop.lego.com/en-CA/4x4-Crawler-Exclusive- Edition-41999)

BTW if you really want an 8880 you can order a used one here: [https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=8880...](https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=8880-1#T=S&O={%22iconly%22:0})

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Click the image to download the LDraw file of this model._

> _Model by Koyan_

Cool! Just test this MPD-model[0] using latest nightly build of LeoCAD[1,2] - structure of submodels not clear, so need redesign this model a bit (will do it later).

      The Super Car, set 8880, was first released in 1994.

Now we need to oil[3] those mechanisms ;-)

[0] [http://bricksafe.com/files/blakbird/Technicopedia/LDraw/8880...](http://bricksafe.com/files/blakbird/Technicopedia/LDraw/8880.mpd)

[1] [http://github.com/leozide/leocad](http://github.com/leozide/leocad)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14801612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14801612)

[3] [http://i.imgur.com/hQ5Yxox.png](http://i.imgur.com/hQ5Yxox.png)

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for the link! Brings back memories. I recognize this car and I can swear I played with it somewhere as a kid - maybe at friend's, maybe at some science or LEGO festival in town.

That said, I found the one model I dreamed about as a kid. I still remember its picture in the worn LEGO catalog I had. The Space Shuttle:

[http://www.technicopedia.com/8480.html](http://www.technicopedia.com/8480.html)

(Also, now I understand why it was so absurdly expensive, way beyond the financial reach of my parents. I didn't imagine it was _that_ complex inside. Still, I'm going to get one.)

<comment><USER3> > _The Space Shuttle_

Dude, I'm working on own SpaceX's rockets hangar MOC[0] now ;-)

> _Also, now I understand why it was so absurdly expensive, way beyond the > financial reach of my parents._

Thanks to such open-source software as LeoCAD & LDraw everyone could design any size Lego models on own PC for free.

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/dDkSXXK.png](http://i.imgur.com/dDkSXXK.png)

<comment><USER4> Holy shit, that's a thing of beauty!

If you finish it and are willing to share the design, please let me know (e-mail in the profile, or Keybase).

<comment><USER3> OK ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not as complex, but I got this for Christmas [https://shop.lego.com/en- CA/BMW-R-1200-GS-Adventure-42063](https://shop.lego.com/en-CA/BMW-R-1200-GS- Adventure-42063) . My friend gave me this gift because I have the real version too. My name is Greg, I am 48, and I still love LEGO

</comment><comment><USER6> Saw that when I was a kit. Got the third-gen 8070, doesn't really compare to that.

I bet if they make a reproduction version of that it'll still sell today.

</comment><comment><USER7> Terrific instant throwback to my then beloved 8865 that I got for Christmas as a kid. Very crude in comparison, but arguably the precursor to 8880.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a page for that too! [http://www.technicopedia.com/8865.html](http://www.technicopedia.com/8865.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had that car! It was my most prized possession growing up</comment>


Musk invites users to test Starlink space internet - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/33080/elon-musk-invites-users-to-test-starlink-space-internet <comment><USER2> I'm getting "Failed to sign up for updates" when I try to sign up.</comment>


Docker 1.10.0 is out - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/docker/docker/releases/tag/v1.10.0 <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I work for Docker

For the security enthusiasts out there, Docker 1.10 comes with some really cool Security focused additions. In particular:

\- Seccomp filtering: you can now use bpf to filter exactly what system calls the processes inside of your containers can use.

\- Default Seccomp Profile: Using the newly added Seccomp filtering capabilities we added a default Seccomp profile that will help keep reduce the surface exposed by your kernel. For example, last month's use-after-free vuln in join_session_keyring was blocked by our current default profile.

\- User Namespaces: root inside of the container isn't root outside of the container (opt-in, for now).

\- Authorization Plugins: you can now write plugins for allowing or denying API requests to the daemon. For example, you could block anyone from using --privileged.

\- Content Addressed Images: The new manifest format in Docker 1.10 is a full Merkle DAG, and all the downloaded content is finally content addressable.

\- Support for TUF Delegations: Docker now has support for read/write TUF delegations, and as soon as notary 0.2 comes out, you will be able to use delegations to provide signing capabilities to a team of developers with no shared keys.

These are just a few of the things we've been working on, and we think these are super cool.

Checkout more details here: [http://blog.docker.com/2016/02/docker- engine-1-10-security/](http://blog.docker.com/2016/02/docker- engine-1-10-security/) or me know if you have any questions.

<comment><USER3> > The new manifest format in Docker 1.10 is a full Merkle DAG, and all the > downloaded content is finally content addressable.

Can someone elaborate on this a bit more? From a CS point-of-view, sounds like a problem where a data structure came in handy but I'm not sure what it solves. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> A simple immutable data structure can be implemented with a Merkle DAG. Merkle tree leaves store hashes of previous nodes and DAGs are directed graphs that don't loop around. Examples include simple blockchains. These structure provides immutable, versioned control of information. Containers are immutable, or like to think they are at least, so blockchains are an obvious thing to use in conjunction with deployments of said containers. At least that's what I keep telling everyone.

<comment><USER5> Do you literally mean a proof-of-work backed blockchain (like Bitcoin), or something more like git, which has a similar structure to a blockchain without the consensus mechanism?

I don't see how the former would be useful to someone deploying containers, but interested to hear your thoughts in either case.

<comment><USER6> From the blogpost:

> Image IDs now represent the content that is inside an image, in a similar > way to how Git commit hashes represent the content inside commits.

<comment><USER5> I was referring to the second part of the comment:

 _" Containers are immutable, or like to think they are at least, so blockchains are an obvious thing to use in conjunction with deployments of said containers. At least that's what I keep telling everyone."_

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure they mean that they are using Merkle DAGs. A blockchain is a Merkle DAG. The proof-of-work algorithm in Bitcoin is an algorithm for deciding how a node gets added to the blockchain. Depending on how you look at it, that algorithm is not part of what makes it a "blockchain".

Admittedly people are sloppy about how they use the term "blockchain". I would prefer that people use the term Merkle DAG and forget the term "blockchain" altogether, but I think we are stuck with "blockchain" ;-)

<comment><USER4> "People" are also sloppy about how they use the term "cloud", yet the world goes on with that concept in hand applying it to everything in site, often times in irritating ways. "Blockchain" is now a thing people can hold in their hand as a way to visualize the concept of a nearly immutable data store. That _idea_ of storing something in an immutable way represents a shift in the way we can think about system's design. Calling it a "Merkle DAG" isn't going to kick off that insight any better than using "blockchain", but remembering what it really is and drawing the distinction with the right people can be immensely useful when trying to implement the insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Docker 1.10 uses a new content-addressable storage for images and layers.

This is _really_ interesting.

Sounds like the up/download manager has improved too. I did some early work adding parallel stuff to that (which was then very helpfully refactored into actually decent go code :), thanks docker team) and it's great to see it improved. I remember some people looking at adding torrenting for shunting around layers, I guess this should help along that path too.

<comment><USER9> IIRC, Docker has used content-addressable storage for layers for a very long time (in the form of filesystem directories whose names looked like md5 hashes). I'm not sure what's changed. Maybe just the hash function?

<comment><USER10> Layer IDs were random UUIDs before.

<comment><USER11> Correct, layers were hashed for verification at upload and download, then stored on a "regular" uuid-addressed storage. Now they are stored in a true content-addressed store end-to-end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Network-scoped aliases are really handy when dealing with a multi-container setup, so I'm really happy that they implemented this!

In previous versions, only the name of a container would be aliased to its IP address, which can make it hard to deploy a setup with multiple containers in a given network group that should address each other using their names (e.g. "api" host connects to "postgres") and then have multiple instances of those groups on the same server (as container names need to be unique).

</comment><comment><USER13> For those interested in the user namespace support, the best post I found was [https://integratedcode.us/2015/10/13/user-namespaces-have- ar...](https://integratedcode.us/2015/10/13/user-namespaces-have-arrived-in- docker/) (there are also some docs here [https://github.com/HewlettPackard/docker-machine- oneview/blo...](https://github.com/HewlettPackard/docker-machine- oneview/blob/master/Godeps/_workspace/src/github.com/docker/docker/experimental/userns.md))

<comment><USER14> I had with an issue with files in a volume being created by users in the container that don't exist on the host. I was trying to figure out if this fixes that issue, and if so how? I played around with it for an afternoon but left confused.

Use case:

Using compass within a container for development

Compass creates sass files with whatever user it run under within the container (likely root)

Host must chmod them to do stuff with them

As a work around, I've been building images and creating a user:group that matches my host. Obviously this destroys portability for other developers.

<comment><USER15> Don't run compass as root.

Don't run _anything_ as root unnecessarily.

(Your problem is likely because you refer to the root namespace as a "host". It is common practice, but leads people to bad conclusions.)

<comment><USER14> I think I might have caused a misunderstanding of the issue (I was trying to be brief). It really doesn't matter who I'm running compass as (root or otherwise), the issue is that the container is writing files to my host with a different UID:GID then the one I'm using on my host machine.

I wouldn't normally run compass as root, it was incidental to the actual issue.

<comment><USER15> It's not clear why that should be an issue.

Are there applications communicating through the file system? You would need to take care of that in more ways than standardize uid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, user namespaces! That was quick!

EDIT: And a default seccomp profile! Did I miss the memo about containerisation suddenly becoming a competative industry?

<comment><USER17> From what I can see on an upgrade anyway, they don't seem to be enabled by default, but not hard to setup (I did a quick note for ubuntu [https://raesene.github.io/blog/2016/02/04/Docker-User- Namesp...](https://raesene.github.io/blog/2016/02/04/Docker-User-Namespaces/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Items of particular interest to monitoring and diagnostics:

1\. docker stats --all

Built-in alternative over 'docker ps -q | xargs docker stats' which takes care of dynamic additions to the list.

For consistency, it would be nice to have a similar option in the API stats call to fetch statistics for all running containers.

2\. 'docker update' command, although I would have preferred 'docker limit'.

Ability to change container limits at runtime:

\- CPUQuota \- CpusetCpus \- CpusetMems \- Memory \- MemorySwap \- MemoryReservation \- KernelMemory

With this feature in place, there is no reason to run containers without limits, at least memory limits.

3\. Logging driver for Splunk

Better approach is to enhance generic drivers to be flexible enough to send logs to any logging consumer.

<comment><USER19> > 2\. 'docker update' command, although I would have preferred 'docker limit'. > Ability to change container limits at runtime: \- CPUQuota - CpusetCpus - > CpusetMems - Memory - MemorySwap - MemoryReservation - __KernelMemory __

This is not correct. You __cannot __change kernel memory limits on Linux after processes have been started (disclaimer: I 've done a bunch of work with the runC code that deals with this in order to add support for the pids cgroup). You can update everything else though.

<comment><USER18> Thanks. Indeed, an attempt to set kernel memory on a running container will return an error.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love the ability of specifying IPs but, I just want to give static IPs to my containers from my private network, and attaching to my already existing bridge does not work, I started daemon as following but no help

> ./docker-1.10.0 daemon -b br0 --default-gateway 172.16.0.1

> ./docker-1.10.0 run --ip 172.16.0.130 -ti ubuntu bash docker: Error response > from daemon: User specified IP address is supported on user defined networks > only.

But my KVM vms work fine with that bridged network. I know I could just port forward but I don't want to, yes It seems I am treating my containers as VMs, but it worked so fine in default LXC, we could even use Open vSwitch bridge for advanced topologies.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can create a bridge user-defined network and take advantage of this awesome new feature. [https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/networking/dockerne...](https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/networking/dockernetworks/)

<comment><USER20> But doesn't user-defined networks create new bridges? I want use my already existing network. Over SSH, I executed the following and my connection is lost, because my eth1 and probably newly created bridge is in conflict over routing table.

> docker network create --gateway 172.16.0.1 --subnet 172.16.0.0/21 mynet

<comment><USER21> Yes. `--ip` is supported only on user-defined networks. That is because, the subnet for the default bridge (docker0) can be changed (via --bip) or user can change the user-specified default bridge (via -b) on daemon restarts. If the subnet backed by these default bridge's change, then the container with a assigned `--ip` will fail as well.

Having said that, with Docker 1.9 & above, IP address management and Network plumbing are separate concerns and both are pluggable. One could implement a network plugin with any logic and continue to enjoy all the built-in IPAM features (including --ip). Hence, if you have a specific network plumbing requirement, you could easily spin up a plugin (or use one of the many network plugins that are available out there).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sadly, [https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/3043](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/3043) is still open, so no multicast support since 1.6...

<comment><USER23> [http://github.com/weaveworks/weave](http://github.com/weaveworks/weave) enables multicast between containers (and many other things besides).

<comment><USER22> Yeah, but I needed this for scenarios where I managed the Docker bridge directly - i.e., running a set of streaming servers that are an insane hassle to set up and required frequent upgrades. Docker was perfect for building, upgrading and deploying them.

Weave would just get in the way in this scenario (and has a tendency to over- complicate simple stuff like running an ElasticSearch cluster with auto discovery)

<comment><USER24> Weaveworker here:

I'd love to know what you mean by "over-complicate". It can be as simple as `docker run --net=weave ...`.

We have a PR open that would let you connect Docker's bridge to Weave Net - [https://github.com/weaveworks/weave/pull/1955](https://github.com/weaveworks/weave/pull/1955)

<comment><USER22> Thanks for letting me know, but it's still open, right?

Besides, can't we all just get along and accept that I might want to do things in a specific way because I don't need the extra overhead? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For an overview of what's new in this release, check out the blog post: [https://blog.docker.com/2016/02/docker-1-10/](https://blog.docker.com/2016/02/docker-1-10/)

The highlights are networks/volumes in Compose files, a bunch of security updates, and lots of new networking features.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's the danger of running against "latest" all the time...But it's been a day of chasing my own tail when creating a new cluster (Mesos, but that really isn't an issue) and using some tools built against the prior version (volume manager plugin, etc.) that break with updates to Docker.

It seems like if one piece gets an upgrade, every moving component relying on some APIs may need to be looked at as well.

Did a PR on one issue.

Currently chasing my tail to see if a third party lib is out of whack with the new version or it's something I did.

The whole area is evolving and the cross pollination of frameworks, solutions (weave, etc), make for a complicated ecosystem. Most people don't stay "Docker only". I'm curious to see the warts that pop up.

<comment><USER27> I'm also running Mesos and Docker as a containerizer, and experienced the same problems (i.e. API change on the Docker volumes leads to broken volume driver implementations).

Even within the Mesos environment, there are so many nuts and bolts which have to fit together that sometimes I'm just fed up with the complexity. Furthermore, releases of Mesos and Marathon are not necessarily synched... Stateful apps? No go... Persistent volumes in Marathon? Maybe in v0.16... Graceful shutdown of Docker containers? No go...

<comment><USER28> Which volume driver? Wasn't aware mesos was providing one.

<comment><USER27> Sorry for the misunderstanding... I was talking about third-party Docker volume drivers, for example for Ceph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The --tmpfs flag is a huge win for applications that use containers as unit of work processors.

In these use cases, I want to start a container, have it process a unit of work, clear any state, and start over again. Previously, you could orchestrate this by (as an example, there are other ways) mounting a tmpfs file system into any runtime necessary directories, starting the container, stopping it once the work is done, clean up the tmpfs, and then start the container again.

Now, you can create everything once with the --tmpfs flag and simply use "restart" to clear any state. Super simple. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd really-really need DNS for non-running containers, somehow. Nginx can't start if an upstream container is down, as its name won't be resolved.

<comment><USER31> I've had that problem too, and found that you can implement a "wait" command.

If you're using Docker Compose, add this to your environment: environment: \- WAIT_COMMAND=[ $(curl --write-out %{http_code} --silent --output /dev/null [http://elastic:9200/_cat/health?h=st](http://elastic:9200/_cat/health?h=st)) = 200 ] \- WAIT_START_CMD=python /code/lytten/main.py \- WAIT_SLEEP=2 \- WAIT_LOOPS=10

Then, create a 'wait' bash script in your app's source code that looks like this: !/bin/bash echo $WAIT_COMMAND echo $WAIT_START_CMD

        is_ready() {
            eval "$WAIT_COMMAND"
        }

        # wait until is ready
        i=0
        while ! is_ready; do
            i=`expr $i + 1`
            if [ $i -ge $WAIT_LOOPS ]; then
                echo "$(date) - still not ready, giving up"
                exit 1
            fi
            echo "$(date) - waiting to be ready"
            sleep 10
        done

        #start the script
        exec $WAIT_START_CMD

Then, finally, for your nginx container, add: command: sh /code/wait_to_start.sh

to its specification

<comment><USER32> Just in case a shorter version appeals to you, I think you could rewrite it like this:

      timeout 60 bash -c 'until is_ready; do sleep 10; done'

You'll need to `export -f is_ready` if it's a shell function. That's assuming you can use a timeout instead of number-of-retries.

[http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man1/timeout.1.html](http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man1/timeout.1.html)

<comment><USER31> I was trying to find the source of where I got that bash script from, but couldn't, and then forgot about it within the editing window.

I'll try to find it and provide that feedback. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> please, I just want fewer bugs after creating/destroying a few hundred containers on a host.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice to see building from stdin working again.

[https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/15785](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/15785)

</comment><comment><USER35> If you're on OS X and using docker-machine, the command to upgrade is `docker- machine upgrade default` where default is the name of your VM.

</comment><comment><USER36> ossreality 5 hours ago [dead]

Apparently no one else has been paying an ounce of attention... And you get downvoted for it. The HN way! [https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/19474](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/19474) Least of all you're forced to go through their DNS server which doesn't support TCP. Boy, this is absolutely going to fuck people. Because I bet a bunch of people are going to run Go containers in 1.10 engine. And guess what happens when you send a Go app a DNS response, in UDP format, that is larger than 4096 bytes? You get a panic and crash! Woohoo! And yes, there are DNS servers that incorrectly throw out UDP DNS responses larger than 4096 bytes. Can't wait for my containers to fail because of fucking Docker putting a DNS service in Engine. Unacceptable. Docker should've realized they needed to think about this stuff all-the-why shykes was too busy picking fights with people as Kubernetes encroached on what he saw as "his" territory. There's a reason that everyone is very excited about the rkt announcement today. Particularly amongst some Kubernetes users... (In the interest of not tainting the waters, I do NOT work for Google)

<comment><USER21> FYI. TCP support for the embedded DNS was added via [https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/19680](https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/19680).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> How's the reliability story going, nowadays? Especially around layed filesystems.

</comment><comment><USER38> >Use DNS-based discovery instead of /etc/hosts #19198

This will end well...

<comment><USER20> It uses DNS for only discovering the other containers within the same custom network, if query is not found the DNS redirects the queries to your own DNS server, I don't see how it can be worse than /etc/hosts solution.

<comment><USER39> Exactly, obviously /etc/hosts will still take precedence, but instead of munging your /etc/hosts when starting a container you can just use their DNS server. I don't see a problem with this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py What does it mean that the LXC backend has been deprecated?

<comment><USER19> It's not deprecated anymore. It's been removed. People have been using the native driver (libcontainer) for 2 years. LXC was deprecated in 1.8 and the code was completely removed in 1.10.

<comment><USER40> how does that work in terms of semver? Removing something means having a new major release number.

<comment><USER19> Well ... it's an alternate backend which has been known to be "a bad idea to use" since 0.11. LXC stopped being the default a long time ago, and anybody using it right now _REALLY_ shouldn't be.

Not to mention that I'm not really sure that Docker Inc has strong feelings about semantic versioning (I don't work for Docker).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Instant PHP and CSS search - <AUTHOR> http://voke.fm/is_array

<comment><USER2> I like this, but I feel that a list of all the potential completions instead of snapping to the nearest one would be very useful. Sometimes you remember part of the function you're after but not the enough of it to get the autocomplete to snap to the right thing. It could still snap to the nearest, but seeing a list of potential completions would be nice as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I see where you are coming from. I'll look into a way to do that. Detecting when a user types something that is contained in the name of many functions/properties/etc. probably would be pretty easy. Then that could just be displayed below the text field or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work, I've been wanting to do something like this as well,at least for my own reference. I'd really love to be able to search for parts of the functions' name, for example, searching 'arr' would give all the functions containing the word 'arr', be it in the middle or anywhere in the name.

And please add jquery documentation. It is getting huge and difficult to reference. I myself sometimes just can't be sure if I should use .before() or .insertBefore(). This kind of interface would be great for quick referencing like that

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems very limited compared to the PHP.net documentation. For instance I like to see return values.

Also, PHP being PHP certain sections are a bit of a mess, such as str* function, and having the 'see also' section along with the function list on the left often helps me find what I'm looking for when I can't remember what it's called.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. This is not meant to be a full replacement for documentation. I always find myself just looking for an example of how to use some code or how to do something with code. This is designed to help solve that problem as quickly as possible. I do think, though, that there is room to add that feature you describe. It would be easy to detect when some characters are entered that are present in a lot of functions, then display a list of relevant functions etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really like this. Simpler than searching PHP documentation if only needing to know something quickly. Nice idea :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

<comment><USER5> I like how it underlines whether it's CSS or PHP too :P, and the link to the source at the bottom. Very handy little tool. Did it take long to make?

<comment><AUTHOR> It took a bit to extract all the necessary data the right way, and some little things like getting the back button to work correctly held me up.

<comment><USER5> I assume by the "back button" you are referring to the text saying "Voke" on each page?

I wouldn't have clicked it until looking for a back button. Might be worth leaving it as text, and maybe placing a back button to the left of it? Personally I think something similar to the back button in Windows Phone would look nice. Something like the button here: <http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC505392.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> I was referring to just the standard browser back button, ha. I'm using the HTML5 history API for this, and the back button was causing recursion problems. That said, I know what you mean, and that could be a good idea.

<comment><USER5> Ah, so I see. It's good to know you got it working though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got an unexpected result for "back" as per the following screenshot:

[http://screen.capture.mindcast.com/clips/1362419850gn9hxd2j9...](http://screen.capture.mindcast.com/clips/1362419850gn9hxd2j93.png)

</comment><comment><USER7> So good! This made me realise how many times I go to "php.net" and do a search. Bookmarked it and will be using it from now on! Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the easy design.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can't thank you enough. Maybe i can help you dev though?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I'd be glad to have some help and hear someone else's ideas. If you're interested you can email me (address is in my profile).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The site looks great and I'm curious how your indexing all those docs to be searched so quickly. However I also feel obliged to tell you to stop encouraging people to use PHP =p

<comment><USER11> whatever man , php is not going anywhere soon , you can hate it all you want doesnt make a difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great idea ! Can't wait for the javascript :p !

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice! Can't wait for a Python/Ruby version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, I definitely want to make this work for more languages if people find it useful. However, with Python for example, I thought it would be more difficult due to the mass amount of modules, so I went with PHP first.</comment></comment>


Show HN: 3 Day Coder - For Bootstrappers - <AUTHOR> http://www.3daycoder.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I built this to bridge the gap between full time development and getting your startup funded or ramen profitable. If you are a developer starting your own project, please sign up and create your profile. There are a lot of companies who would love to hire you part time for their projects.

<comment><USER2> This is cool, I just signed up.

When did this go live?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I just launched it officially yesterday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really like this idea, and can see myself using it, but I do have one concern: What happens after the product is built? I will need maintenance and will want to add things later on. It doesn't seem like I can rely on a 3-day coder to stick with me long-term.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm leaving that up to the coder and you to decide how to handle long term work/maintenance. Ideally, there will be other coders who can pick up where the other left off. That's why we are having people add skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> cool initiative for teams who can build product to get hired together to build prototypes of ideas for other people (that's what we're doing right now to bootstrap)</comment>


The Kid's Walker: 1.6 metre bi-pedal exoskeleton for children - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmag.com/the-kids-walker-16-metre-bi-pedal-exoskeleton-for-children/16521/

<comment><USER2> That robot is not bi-pedal.

<comment><USER3> How so? Looks like two legs to me.

<comment><USER2> Have a look at the video. It rolls on wheels that are obscured from view by the oscillating feet that are floating above the ground. Bipedalism is more than just having the appearance of two legs. It requires pivotal motion around the point of contact with the ground. Otherwise a bicycle could be considered bi-pedal.</comment></comment></comment>


Finnish startup has a solution to provide internet anywhere - <AUTHOR> http://nordic.businessinsider.com/this-finnish-startup-has-a-solution-to-internet-get-anywhere-and-just-raised-more-than-$10-million-in-series-a-funding-2016-10 <comment><USER2> Given the nature of shortwave propagation, I would suspect the delivered service will be less than promised. According to this document it utilizes a form of peer-to-peer cell networking over shortwave. I would suspect that with the increase of base stations there would be lots of contention for usable bandwidth. As someone once put it, you canna change the laws of physics.

"While connected to the existing infrastructure, the radio switches to base station mode for offering INDEPENDENT communication to other users in GLOBAL network as well"

[http://hfindustry.com/meetings_presentations/presentation_ma...](http://hfindustry.com/meetings_presentations/presentation_materials/2015_sept_hfia/presentations/8-KNL_HFIA-2015SEPT.pdf)

btw: Whatever happened to that low earth orbit satellite system that was going to provide Internet anywhere on the planet.

<comment><USER3> After reading that, it seems like it is going to be a low-throughput network. There's only so much space you can occupy with a signal between those band markers without conflicting with other spectrum users. Even if you multiplexed a couple conventional signals you'll still wind up below EDGE-type throughput.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The science of this had better be a phenomenal breakthrough. By most conventional means, a 300 baud modem is the most you can manage over an HF link consistently. The shortwave spectrum isn't that big so there will be throughput bottlenecks.

</comment><comment><USER4> The info is lacking of tech details, but anyway such idea is always great</comment>


Canuck, an Infamous Crow (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.audubon.org/news/the-misadventures-canuck-worlds-most-infamous-crow <comment><USER2> I grew up in Chennai and Mumbai. Chennai is for crows and Mumbai is for pigeons.

My grandma used to tell me that the crows are super smart. After she cooked food she used to keep a ball of rice for the crows. Within a minute crows used watch and descend to eat it.

Once I got attacked by a crow. It used to attack only me and nobody else. It is fly down and scratch my head. I was terrified like hell. My mom told me befriend it by feeding it a biscuit which is a rectangular cookie. lol and behold he stopped attacking me. So the crow can distinguish between humans! Super smart creatures!

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but what if he then tells all his crow buddies that there's a certain human who'll give a biscuit and all you have to do is attack! [edit : didn't see below comment already referring to 'protection racket']

<comment><USER4> My niece (pre-K age) had to deal with that. She went golfing with my brother and Dad three times a week at the same course. She would always get a bag of beef jerky. On the first hole one day a crow came down and stole the bag from the cart while they were on the green. It proceeded to follow them around the course all the while eating from the bag. My niece did not take it well, and yelled a lot at the crow (all anger no crying, she does have the family temper).

Next time they went golfing, the crow brought friends, but my niece didn't set the bag down and yelled at the crows multiple times (crows need to be taught morals too). The crows did keep trying getting some skittles off my brother once except for a day an eagle was camped out in the trees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In Marijn Haverbeke's "Eloquent Javascript," there's a compelling discussion of how crows build resilient telecommunications networks using termite mounds.

Crows are smart as hell -- as a gardener, I've seen their devious intelligence all too often -- example : I had a pretty successful [commercially-produced] scarecrow in place for several weeks, which I'd move every night to prevent the birds getting inured to its presence and / or aware that it was a fake. I forgot to move it one night and then went out just before dawn next morning to move it; I seen an early crow peering at me from the mulberry tree.

When I came home that afternoon, every single corn seedling in the place had been snapped!

</comment><comment><USER5> haha, Canuck is pretty famous in Vancouver! I haven't seen him myself, yet, though.

Also in the area is a massive crow roosting area where thousands of crows converge every evening! Check out a video[0] ... I'm not exaggerating! Also a couple news articles[1][2]

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmOju6X17Tc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmOju6X17Tc)

[1] [http://www.theprovince.com/Murder+mystery+reason+crows+flock...](http://www.theprovince.com/Murder+mystery+reason+crows+flock+Burnaby+every+night/9085538/story.html)

[2] [http://www.nationalpost.com/m/Burnaby+home+6000+crows+every+...](http://www.nationalpost.com/m/Burnaby+home+6000+crows+every+night/9085538/story.html)</comment>


Pexels – Free stock photos - <AUTHOR> https://www.pexels.com/ <comment><USER2> The more variety, the better! Apparently a lot of people love Unsplash, but how many...

(1) mountainscapes

(2) cityscapes

(3) fields

(4) pretty girls standing in fields, and

(5) coffeshop patrons typing away on _powered-off_ MacBooks

... does the world really need?

Especially when they all come with washed-out Instagram filters pre-applied.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting to watch how what was considered good taste a short time ago is gradually becoming tired, cliché, phoney -- and in 10 years will look as outdated as 2003's web designs look now.

The software industry and startup scene is enormously fashion-driven. A lot of people like to pretend it's the opposite though: a group of ideal meritocracies building highly needed products based on rational data-driven decisions...

<comment><USER4> Staying fashionable for a given context is a fantastic means of signaling that you're well connected. Even more so if you kick off a new trend.

Fashion based signals then inevitable degrade as they become more mainstream and are replaced by whatever hot new thing that's different enough to avoid confusion with other trends.

Even an ideal meritocracy requires abstractions for efficient communication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice project! I used to find free stock photos browsing Flickr filtering by license: [https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=&license=4%2C5%2C9%2C10](https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=&license=4%2C5%2C9%2C10)

</comment><comment><USER6> I got sick of seeing 100 different websites with stock photos so I built a web crawler to crawl all of them and put the links into a database

Thats how [http://librestock.com](http://librestock.com) was born. enjoy :)

</comment><comment><USER7> How does their business model work? Are they a not-for-profit or non-profit? Do they really get enough money from shutterstock click-throughs and donations to fund the site and image curation process?

<comment><USER8> They also have ads and an app and/or PS plugin they're selling for $19.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks good!

Another public domain collection I use: [https://pixabay.com/](https://pixabay.com/)

<comment><USER10> I just got a $2 donation on Pixabay for one of my photos :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This site looks great. But think, Unsplash is unbeatable.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me, or do quite a few of the photos look like they are from Unsplash?

<comment><USER13> Yup

> Photo Sources

> Only Creative Commons images from our community of photographers and sources > like Unsplash, Gratisography, Little Visuals and many more are added to our > photo database. We constantly try to deliver as many high quality free stock > photos as possible to the creatives who use our website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, can I use the ones with faces of people in them if they don't have a Model Release Form... ?

<comment><USER8> "The only restriction is that identifiable people may not appear in a bad light or in a way that they may find offensive, unless they give their consent."

<comment><USER15> > in a way that they may find offensive

IANAL but isn't that too vague?

<comment><USER16> this is one area you'd want it to be vague (from the image curator/host's perspective)

<comment><USER15> ...so if the model happens to be Muslim and someone uses it in a website which sells pork meat, there is a potential case here? (I chose the example because I'm coming from a country in which this kind of stuff usually happened to be a problem - nothing meant against any religion or group).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The website I used was - [http://librestock.com/](http://librestock.com/)

Which is a large search engine for public domain images. Too bad the search sucks compared to this.

<comment><USER6> Hey! I'm the creator of librestock, could you please clarify as to what sucks and how I can improve it? I'm very much a beginner.

<comment><USER18> I think he means Pexels search sucks, not yours. Although he/she is not clear.

Your site does not look like it was made by a beginner. Seriously, is this what beginners can do?

I just did a side by side comparison searching for "ashtray", and your Librestock search actually finds ashtray photos from Pexels that not even Pexels search returns. So I'm quite confident that Pexels search sucks and yours does not suck.

<comment><USER6> Oh man thats a relief!

The reason I can find stuff from pexels that they cant find is actually because I have duplicate image detection that sources the tags from multiple sources. So a different source must have tagged it as ashtray!

I've been building websites for a year. I still consider myself very much a beginner. (I worked in design before that). thanks for the compliment!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can be useful. Thanks for sharing!

I usually used sxc.hu so far, which became FreeImages.com some time ago.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can these stock photos be used commercially? Can they be resold?

<comment><USER21> Yes, CC0 License.[0]

[0] - [https://www.pexels.com/photo-license/](https://www.pexels.com/photo- license/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I personally prefer the UI design on pexels over unsplash

</comment><comment><USER23> free? Does nobody ever learn?

<comment><USER18> Your comment lacks all the things needed for discussion to go anywhere. Was that your intention?

You take issue with "free" and in addition there's some valuable lesson we should be remembering, but that's where you've stumped me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's no Unsplash... sorry.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you decide science or pseudo science? - <AUTHOR> A bunch of friends were debating about Allopathy vs. Homeopathy. There were for and against each. In the end I was left with these questions. 1. How do you decide something is scientific? 2. Who should decide it ? Are there guardians of Science ? 3. if every theory is wrong until proven right and vice-versa then how can science be in any way effective for theories that are not currently worked on to prove them ?
4. Who and How is it decided that something is science or pseudo science? <comment><USER2> > 1\. How do you decide something is scientific?

Is it a body of knowledge arrived at by means of the scientific method? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method)

> 2\. Who should decide it?

Each person for themselves. The whole point of _empirical_ knowledge is that it does not matter _who_ performs the experiment.

> Are there guardians of Science?

Yes, but they will tell you that the true authority is the real world: the results of experiments.

> 3\. if every theory is wrong until proven right...

 _No_ scientific theory is _right_. Science _does not and cannot_ prove anything. This is also something that the guardians of Science will insist on. Even the Standard Model (which has no known violations) has only _failed to be disproved so far_.

I don't understand the rest of Q #3.

> 4\. Who and How is it decided that something is science or pseudo science?

There's a lot of hemming and hawing but it comes down to empirical experiment as the source of confidence in knowledge. (Also, math.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The rest of Q#3 is actually questioning how one makes a choice to go after theory X to prove vis-a-vis theory Y. Does it have a grounding on the impact (positive) on humanity, funds, personal likes and dislikes etc.?

<comment><USER2> Ah, how the scientific sausage is made, eh? You'd have to ask a real scientist, sorry. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > How do you decide something is scientific?

Science is a method of making a claim, testing it with vivid experiments, testing it more, recording observations, wait for other people to test the claim with their own experiments, and if the tests happen to agree with the claims, it becomes a consensus.

You can participate in the scientific verification of a claim by

1) By testing it yourself using proper scientific method and proper lab equipment. President requisite is education.

2) If you can't afford that, then wait for scientific community to test that. If there is a consensus of statistical certainty from the various scientific institutions you trust, then you can choose to form your facts around those.

<comment><AUTHOR> So how does the scientific community decide which are the theories that is worth spending time on to prove them and which are not ? Are there personal biases ? How do we know choosing theory X over theory Y to prove will advance Science and humanity ? Is it just the budget available to prove theory X over theory Y the criterion?

<comment><USER3> >So how does the scientific community decide which are the theories that is worth spending time on to prove them and which are not?

Four primary variables: 1) Collective interest of the researchers in the topic of attack 2) Collective interest of the financiers of research on some application of the topic of attack 3) Funding for research 4) The effective tools for experiments are already invented and available (example, a microscope)

<comment><AUTHOR> So it is possible that we could have pursued(time and money) on things that do not turn out to be impactful or left out working on those that could have had a major impact.

<comment><USER3> Yes. But it does not matter.

We do not do science for some high level goal of "Benefit for humanity". I love stars, I like astronomy, and when I study the stars, I do not think about how my study would impact humanity. I just study them because I find them interesting. (Studying star systems do not actually have much impact on humanity in general, mostly).

Attempting to qualify science only limits it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That probably explains why we didn't put money in an anti viral drug which would have saved lives during a pandemic. Our goals if you look from a humanity or global perspective are misplaced

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Evidence. Replication of results by multiple unrelated investigators.

Those two points alone remove a lot of gibberish. Even an appeal to authority is suspect if those first two aren't addressed.</comment>


Mac like Dock for KDE - <AUTHOR> http://psifidotos.blogspot.com/2017/04/latte-dock-v06-fresh-air.html <comment><USER2> I'm _really_ put off this simply by the fact that the author chose to promote it on, of all things, Blogspot. The code is hosted on Github! As are the binaries! How hard would it have been to put together a clean promo page, or even just a clearly-written README with screenshots?</comment>