My first attempt of making web startup - <AUTHOR> http://inspection2.com

<comment><USER2> I don't think I would take the time to input things about my car. (not to say that is a general case, as I'm sure there are people who care about their cars more) But even in my case if the oil change or tune up place i went to gave me a url for my car's history and an email alert for next oil change/maintenance, it would make me more loyal to that place. even better if they shared history like on your site. I dunno, that may be an angle that would work with me in particular.

<comment><USER3> I think this especially helps with older cars. For example my truck has 110K miles on it and I just had some major work done (timing belt and new radiator). As life goes on, I need an easy place to remember what I did so some scammy mechanic doesn't try to lay one on me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Old car owners and car enthusiasts - this is our primary target.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It'd be cool if I could just text in the things that I get done on my car. Example: #OilChange at Jiffy Lube on 3/1/1 at 75,000 Miles; and then I could get a reminder text 3 months down the road about how it's time for me to get another oil change...you could also have a local car company sponsor that reminder. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> You should have a field for adding "where i repaired my car?? which shop and location?"(maybe with map or link).This would be very useful for search. people who wants to do a repair or buy a part at certain budget and at certain location can search for it and find a link to the shop so they can do it for their car. it would be nice if you collect all the list of car service shops so it would be easy for people to add it to their notes.You can build a comprehensive car maintenance service. Good luck!!

<comment><AUTHOR> There are special types of tags with additional information - address, name, rating. We call them "Places". You can attach a "place" to the note. Users can create their own places and share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You just gave me a eureka moment. I really like how simple and clear your homepage is. It instantly made me realise what I am doing wrong with the homepage of <http://www.mightycv.com> which is my first startup. So I just wanted to say thanks.

I had better get to work and start rethinking, redesigning and restructuring things. Great idea by the way, good luck I hope it takes off!

<comment><USER7> I'd recommend not using centered alignment for the text. You might appreciate this article on alignment: [http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/design- basics-alignme...](http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/design-basics- alignment/)

<comment><USER6> Thanks! I've made a few changes now, hoping that they have improved things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty good job at first glance. It's got definite utility, though I do have doubts about it's potential users. Either way though, best of luck. You might want to check it at 1024x768 - the design is thin enough to fit on that resolution, but due to some padding on either side you end up with a horizontal scrollbar before you can actually see the page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just an idea - can you integrate what the recommended changes for vehicles are at various mileages? That would be killer and a heck of a way to plan in advance. I know the info is out there, every time I go to get my oil changed they pull up a program for every car and review the recommended updates...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we will be adding that info gradually and hopefully community will help us. But there is a fun part. Once we get enough amount of actual info, we can show some interesting statistics. For example how much does it cost to own particular model or how often particular problem happens, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just some critical advice - you might want to redo your screencast. Not b/c it wasn't informative, but b/c it had no energy. I felt sort of like I watching a coding screencast and wasn't excited to take any action. Just a thought...

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree, we are planing to change it soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> \- What are the benefits over a service like driver side?

\- I get that everyone wants to add a social element to their site, but why share my notes on my car with my friends?

<comment><AUTHOR> \- Benefits over DriverSide: web2 (i.e. social elements), better UI and mobile apps (soon)

\- Well, maybe "friend" does not sound correct, let's say with interested people. Actually that's the opposite of following the other cars.

<comment><USER9> I don't know, I like driver sides ui. And they have a lot of great features. I wouldn't switch.

RepairPal is another competitor. They have mobile apps.

Just pointing out two competitors that have a lot of features that you need to differentiate from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If your target market is in the USA, I think you should change your tag line.

"Put your car expenses under control."

Should read,

"Get your car expenses under control."

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Logo is confusing especially considering you have a number 2 in your domain name, yet use II in your logo.

Overall page looks very nice!

</comment><comment><USER12> You've got a minor css issue on your frontpage with the 'shdtxt' class positioning for your text shadow effect, where the shadows appear misaligned/flow differently than the callout text. Maybe try using text-shadow instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> What browser is it? I know about a problem on IE6, but didn't get to fixing it yet.

<comment><USER12> I saw it on Chromium/Mac and I just confirmed it (9.0.597.107). Also seeing it on Safari/Mac.

Screenshot: <http://cl.ly/092a1U1Z1i3G2D2x1Z19>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Awesome idea dude. I'm going to buy my first car and was going to record all my repairs, inspections, MOTs etc in an excel spreadsheet. Might use your app instead. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER14> you could have as well said: "please sign up for the beta".

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree, but do you think that would make the signup conversion rate higher?

<comment><USER11> A/B testing is your friend. Try both and see which way works better for you.

<comment><USER14> disagree. It's also a matter of respecting people, if you ask them to "check out your website" and they can't until you invite them...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lulzsec responds - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/yut4P6qN

<comment><USER2> Ugh, please no. I don't think HN really needs drama like this spewed at us.</comment>


Ask HN: Creative Ways You Have Gotten Users? - <AUTHOR> Hey buddies, Just a few minutes ago, I had my first visitor to my first website and I have never been so excited in my life. So I was wondering how do you get more users to fuel this high? XD <comment><USER2> Put your website in your HN profile and I'll take a look.

Other than that do a marketing course. Udacity has one you can do for free. Learn social media marketing and SEO. Create genuinely good and unique and targeted content. Tutorials and help type content is great. Then share that content where your audience hangs out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback Martin! I guess your method does work, I just checkout [https://superjavascript.com](https://superjavascript.com) , seems very meta!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Keep doing what you're doing, and focus on the customer experience. Everything else will follow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Gyarados, I haven't learnt anything about UX before, so I guess now is better than never!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What localhost port do you like? Why? - <AUTHOR>

What port do you like to use when developing software on a local machine? Why?<p>Are you the :8080 type, maybe the :4000 like myself? <comment><USER2> i like 7777 and 4444 as a secondary choice! As for why : Easy to remember across many days of development and has the added the added benefit of obscurity in my work-place!

EDIT: added reason

</comment><comment><USER3> I use 80.

<comment><AUTHOR> why?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Single header robust image resampling in C++ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ramenhut/single-header-image-resampler <comment><USER2> Good stuff, worthy of the front page. Perhaps mail mods, ask to boost it up a bit?

</comment><comment><USER3> Multiple languages could use this ... python, ruby, php, JavaScript... could be better than using imagemagick for resizing uploaded files</comment>


Uber's chief of scooters, bikes to depart - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/uber-executive-scooters-bikes-depart-3e0c6d41-2888-4e36-b0cc-537e28378596.html <comment><USER2> E-scootering around Berlin as a tourist this past fall was incredibly fun. Fast, cheap, and the lack of responsibility to lock up a bike or find a specific bike rental return spot is very freeing. It's such an effective way to explore cities that suit it, that I'll now factor their availability into vacation travel planning.

So I'll be sad if these die off. I just learned how amazing they are!

<comment><USER3> I've only really experienced them in Helsinki so maybe it's a different situation than Berlin, but from a pedestrian's POV I see them pretty negatively. Firstly, people are often just dumping them wherever they like with no real regard, especially in the center you'll get loads of them just scattered close together on the pavement. The city is pretty windy so I'm not sure if that is also contributing though. Second point, and much more serious, is that people ride them like arseholes even in pedestrian areas.

<comment><USER4> Bicyclist complain about how cars drive. Car driver's complain about bicyclist. Same for pedestrians, etc. There should be reasonable rules to reduce frictions and accidents, but "my life would be easier if people taking other forms of transport disappeared" is not novel or constructive.

<comment><USER5> I don't think in general pedestrians care whether or not escooters disappear. They just don't want them on sidewalks by and large. By and large bicycles aren't allowed on sidewalks either and cars certainly aren't so I'm not sure why escooters would be.

<comment><USER6> I'd argue it's just that because scooters are more accessible that more people who wouldn't otherwise bike use them. Some of these people are also likely not biking for reasons like safety. Bike lanes are considered very unsafe to most people, so until we have more protected bike lanes and better culture around non-car traffic, the problem of people using sidewalks will continue.

<comment><USER5> I pretty much agree with that. More casual users in a lot of places who have never ridden bikes in traffic and aren't about to start. (And scooters are arguably even worse because of small wheels and rough roads.) So you get people with an attitude that the scooters are there to use but riding them on the road is a death wish. And they may even be right about the road part.

Add to that _some_ sidewalks are wide and low pedestrian traffic and aren't really a problem given courteous users. But allow that and you get people bombing on narrow sidewalks with more pedestrians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This always felt like a dead-end market to me. Many cities offer bike shares (which often run at a loss) and many of those are starting to offer battery- powered bikes for an additional fee. Anywhere scooters are useful, they quickly become a nuisance and regulations are imposed. It's kind of a no-win situation for commercial operators.

It feels like the market opportunity here isn't on the branding side, but the operations side as a white-label operator for city bike shares. As Uber is largely a brand play, I can see why they might want to go in a different direction.

<comment><USER8> Also weather. How can you be a viable business if you have no cashflow for 4-5 months in a year?

<comment><USER9> There are many, many seasonal businesses. Ski resorts, for instance.

<comment><USER10> Those basically get run by a skeleton crew during the off season. My dad lived in a town in Alaska that had skiing and hiking tourism as its primary money maker, and he said that during the off season, it becomes a ghost town with only things like grocery/convenience stores and gast stations being the only places that stay running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Food for thought: Just because e-scooters are turning out not to be a unicorn play doesn't mean they are suddenly non-viable as a transportation or venture option. In fact, having the gold rush leave this space could very well open it up to practical -and sustainable- innovation and implementation.

</comment><comment><USER12> It doesn't sound like she's being forced out, but they also didn't mention a replacement. Is that the reason for all the dismal comments?

<comment><USER7> Taken in the context of Uber, Lyft and Lime scaling back their markets due to low demand, it's becoming pretty obvious that the market for this is a lot harder and smaller than originally thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember when Segways came out, and I thought "This is stupid." Outside of airport and mall security, they are nary to be found.

When e-scooter-shares came out, I thought "This is stupid."

In the last several years, I've been to dozens of cities. Never saw anyone taking an e-scooter.

Haven't heard anything about Uber's 'self-driving' cars recently. Another total was of money.

<comment><USER14> I think they make a ton of sense in certain areas. I was at a convention in San Diego a little while back and e-scooters seemed like the official mode of transit. It was a bit annoying since they were hobbled by the convention center to a dangerously slow speed (something like 8mph when you're riding in an unprotected bike lane) but to be able to walk out of your hotel, hop on a scooter and take it 10 or 15 blocks to get to the convention center, then grab another one and take it 5 blocks to lunch, then a different one to go the 20 blocks to the USS Midway all for a few dollars was awesome.

<comment><USER15> San Diego actually passed an ordinance requiring scooters to geofence speed limits of 8MPH in many areas. See [https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jul/01/dockless-scooter- regul...](https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jul/01/dockless-scooter-regulations- take-effect-san-diego/)

It's a great idea and they should absolutely expand this regulation to cars.

<comment><USER14> I think 15mph makes a lot more sense having ridden at 8mph.. the Scooter is barely stable at that speed, but yeah limiting cars to a speed that's more like 2-3x that rather than 5x would make the slow speed much more safe.

<comment><USER16> Many of the areas that were governed to 8mph were very popular boardwalks, _after_ many people were injured and an older guy was hit and died. The convention center is more nuanced, because lots of it is heavy traffic street. But there is no reason a scooter needs to go even 8mph on the boardwalk, imo. Often times people are on them in groups bombing by you, and if you're trying to just go on a walk and enjoy the beach with kids or dogs its kind of lame.

If it's being used to commute, you can go literally 60 feet inland and go as fast as you want.

<comment><USER14> Maybe I was just in an unfortunate spot, but much of my journey from my hotel to the convention center was limited to the low speed. Would require multi- block detours to get to full speed. I agree the boardwalk makes sense at 8mph (or anywhere that there's mixed pedestrian traffic), but whatever that main road is had the restricted speeds too which felt too onerous with the much higher speed traffic along side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Really disappointed to click on the article and see that her official job title was "VP & Head of New Mobility". "Chief of Scooters" sounds way more fun.</comment>


OpenMokos begin shipping in the US - <AUTHOR> http://blog.holdenkarau.com/2008/07/openmokofreerunner.html

<comment><USER2> I think you mean FreeRunner's begin shipping in the US.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, thats what I mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They don't appear to support GSM 1900, which will limit which carries they can be used with in the US.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does, they are tri-band the online store is just poorly laid out (it is either 850/1800/1900 or 900/1800/1900) depending on which model you select.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How much is it? The online store doesn't look too happy right now..

<comment><AUTHOR> So its $399 , but I got a debug board to go along with it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anybody planning on making a MailBox replacement? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Been pondering this the past few days.. I use Mailbox everyday and the alternatives just don't do it for me. Would love to create something that I actually use everyday.

However I question, if dropbox can't make a successful business out of it with their resources, can anyone?</comment>


Ask HN: Review my Startup -- wokhei.com  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wokhei.com/

<comment><USER3> I have advised people to use cheap logo services as a way of getting a decent first draft--something they can use temporarily or take to a more involved designer for improvement.

If I pay for a logo (cheap, sure--but also with no opportunity for feedback) I expect to get (1) ownership, not a license and (2) the source files so some other designer I hire can improve it (or make it suck worse, or just make it black and white--doesn't matter, it's _my_ logo).

Re: ownership, if you want to require me to agree to let you display it in your gallery, that's reasonable. (Even then, if you get pushback, consider an option to buy my way out of that. If someone's that concerned, just take their money and put the next one in the gallery.)

<comment><AUTHOR> spot on, very good points - at current stage we have discussions going on the exact topics you cover. Thanks for sharing your opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _You can access our services only through a Google Account. Why? Because virtually everyone has a Google account and this way you don't have to remember yet another password._

I see the logic in using OpenID for signin. But only google?

Defi9nitely not everyone has a google account (though perhaps your target audience will have). Also what about the people that do not want to use Google's services (there are plenty). And if you dont have a Google account it's a pain to go elsewhere - sign up - then come back.

However.... www.clickpass.com will do exactly the same thing and offers a much wider range of logins :) (HN here uses it). YOu might want to look into that - I doubt it will take much to switch to using Clickpass (as the openid sequence for them is similar to Google I believe)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why the word _virtually_ is there :-)

Anyway being this a beta release that's exactly the kind of feedback we're looking for - definitely something worth looking into - thanks!

<comment><USER4> haha fair enough :)

I do like the idea - have you seen sites like 99designs? How do you stack up next to them - not competing / different market, or are you a better implementation.

I like the "fun" on the site btw :) made me smile to browse around.

<comment><USER5> thanks, we saw that question coming :) We tried to answer in the page about "what is different about wokhei" with the following 4 points:

-BEGIN-

What is different about Wokhei:

Wokhei is not about endless and complicated revision workflows.

Wokhei is about entrusting designers with the power of surpising the customer.

Wokhei is a game of creativity for both the customer who requests the logo and the designer who makes it.

Wokhei is a fresh and experimental approach to logo design!

-END-

maybe it should be more visibile cause there have been already a couple of similar questions. midnightmonster also made a good point above.

<comment><USER6> Run a spell checker on all your content. The results will be surpising. ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> ahah - I believe you're right

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not going to comment on the site itself, but I've read through the comments here and would like to put something forward: You aren't focusing enough on making this a win for your customer.

I'm a potential customer. Right now, I see a process that limits my input to next to nothing, won't allow me to make revisions, and after all that, I don't even own the thing.

As a comparison, for $50 more I can get 4 concepts, two revision rounds and actual ownership at Logoworks. To me, the choice is clear.

I don't want or mean to disparage you but that is the current mindset of your potential customer. All I see are wins for you, but not many for them. I think you need to fix that ratio if you are to be successful.

Good luck to you!

</comment><comment><USER8> I do represent your target audience, looking for a logo designer right now.

Besides login issue, already mentioned here, i think the video is too long, you should fit into 30-40 seconds with real example. I am missing portfolio, so can't estimate quality of the service you are providing.

Anyway I submitted request, will see what will be an outcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> For now (just released the first beta) we only have a slideshow on the home page - we're working on a gallery though as it's definitely needed.

Good luck with your logo! :)

<comment><USER8> Slideshow is better than video, and out of 20-30 logos I might like just one. Comparing to logoworks quite low rate. I wouldn't submit information if I'd saw this portfolio. Keeping in mind that you need iterations and several logos to choose from, I don't expect something valuable for me as a result. Of course we will see, but still ... I wouldn't use this service if found it not on HN.

Have some idea for you. You have two types of services:

1\. Draw it by yourself - which works, for some people 2\. Services where you find designer, who will do it for you. But first you need to find a right designer. This is done or by looking thru portfolio of designers or by contest, where designers might or might not participate.

So the problem is to find a right designer. This could be done by asking me to choose several logos to identify what I am looking for a match to the designer that works in that style. It will save my time to find a right person (since I can't even formulate how the logo should look like) and save designer's time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your point is perfectly understandable and certainly represents a wide slice of the market - which happens not to be the slice of the market we are ideally targeting.

We don't want to steal customers from logoworks, 99designs or other similar (very useful & well thought) services; we are trying something new here, pursuing an experimental approach to logo design, limiting to an extreme the user input in order to force the customer to get creative with tags - <USER2> could open the door to hopefully surprising results from our designers. That's the deed - if you're not quite happy you roll the dice and go again if you want, it's free.

Along the lines of the stir-fried culinary metaphor, we'd like to offer quality stuff on-the-go. This comes from the need of a category of people (and you can pull myself in) who don't wanna bother going through revisions and all that jazz.

This might not be the right service for you, and we won't try to convince you otherwise. If you're craving for Chinese take-away you won't go to the French restaurant. If you need a twitter account you won't get yourself a blog. And so forth.

Said so, your feedback and ideas are certainly constructive and valuable - thanks!

P.S. The video is known problem (thanks for pointing out). You not liking the logos in the slideshow ... given the subjectivity of the topic it's bound to be a discussion with no end! :-)

<comment><USER8> Got the logo, which had a good concept (idea), but won't fit to mine design because of colors. So it didn't work for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea here is that if you're not happy with it you can re-submit (there's no _official_ limit on the number of times you can request the same logo) and see what happens - Also you can get creative with tags (i.e. #as_previous_design #no_blue #etc) - being free it won't cost you. You might wanna give it a shot :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've used LogoWorks a few times with success. In every case some revision was required...most logos are a committee effort so users want to be able to revise them...it is also nice to get a couple different versions with the understanding that you can choose to have one polished into a final logo.

Some site feedback: the monitor with rotating logos on the homepage is somewhat confusing. It looks like there are buttons but it is just a graphic.

The video is cute but it is a little drawn out.

The site branding is strong but may be too unprofessional for the market of people looking to pay money for a logo. I don't know if focusing it on "web 2.0 logos" or something might help refine and differentiate the site.

Overall it looks cool-- good luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> How is this different then all the other logo creation sites and services out there? How is it better than using 99designs, etc?

<comment><USER3> You put in your info once, you don't get to give feedback and request changes, you get one logo at the end--like it or not, and you get it in 24 hours.

These points all make it different from most logo services. Better is another question.

I didn't find the difference difficult to glean from the site, but it wasn't obvious to at least a couple people here, so maybe OP still has some work to do here as far as positioning.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe you summarize perfectly the main differences.

I may add that as you correctly point out we don't wanna be better than the others or steal their customers, we're just different - since there's no service which does exactly what we do (good or bad, your pick).

We ideally offer a conceptually different service, covering needs (as said in some other comment around) of a category of people who are craving for results and don't wanna bother with revisions and complicated workflows.

Or at least that's the idea :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd be interested in a nice logo for www.hecl.org , but I would need a BSD open source license for it. I would be willing to link to you guys, but probably not shell out the full price for it, since it's an open source project. Let me know if you're interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would the _Wokhei Limited License_ cover your needs? You can use the logo for free _as is_ as long as you credit Wokhei.

<comment><USER11> I read it, and I don't think so, because I want the logo to be redistributable under the same terms as Hecl itself.

If it's a problem... no problem:-) No harm in asking though!

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment this is not possible but you do raise a great point - we were not thinking about licensing in these terms.

It's definitely great feedback and something to seriously think about - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You need need need a portfolio. So far all I can see is one logo (yours) and it's not really the branding I'm looking for.

A portfolio would reassure me that you have a broader range, or that you excel at doing one kind of logo _really_ well.

<comment><USER13> there is an animated screen with logos passing by, I supposed that was somehow their portfolio even if there is no mention of the companies involved. also I read about a gallery, maybe at some stage some of the logos will endup there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Completely Javascript reliant and (for me) painfully slow (the site loads, then the content flickers into view. A good half second I guess) if I enable it. Opera 10 beta on Linux.

edit: Actually it takes 4 seconds for the content to appear. And it borks my navigation-back. I have to press back at least 2 times to actually get back.

Without Javascript, this is your site: [http://s1.image.gd/o/84/84730e851a4074e1040dcbe659d8f929989a...](http://s1.image.gd/o/84/84730e851a4074e1040dcbe659d8f929989a5afe.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> you're right - being developed in GWT the site is completely javascript dependent. The problem seems to be that with javascript disabled you're still getting the content in somewhat of a mangled form --> you shouldn't be getting any content (just a message), this is obviously not working.

On performance - it's laoding up pretty good on all the browser we've tested, then again we didn't test on any of the environment you refer to, which makes your feedback much appreciated. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hate to be a stickler, but: "He will prepare your logo in 24hrs!" should be "They will prepare your logo in 24hrs!"

<comment><USER13> looks like it's only one chosen designer that will prepare the logo

<comment><USER16> But you might want to leave open the possibility that designer could be female (and despite what old-school official grammar books might say, in 2009 I don't think it's acceptable to use "he" for a gender-neutral pronoun, and "they" is much less awkward than "he/she")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Your video is long and boring. Make it quick and simple; to the point.

<comment><AUTHOR> point taken - that is a common pain point. thanks for the honesty</comment></comment>


Who needs an external on/off Wi-Fi button? - <AUTHOR> http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/34956/4679

<comment><AUTHOR> A faar too common problem</comment>


In the digital economy, we'll soon all be working for free – and I refuse - grey-area http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/05/digital-economy-work-for-free

<comment><AUTHOR> Somewhat ironic that a) this section of the paper is called "comment is free" and b) it relies on people trolling so that commenters get all riled up and commment (for free!) and c) while they are busily working (for free) at winding each other up the newspaper shows them ads.

<comment> grey-area Yes I found this a pretty ironic place to make this complaint, also given that this UK newspaper has a lot of content which it gets for free, and pays a pittance for the other work featured on it (which as a result is now of a similar quality to this article).

This section of the online paper (I don't know if they even bother to print this stuff) is a good example of the gradual decline in quality when you don't value good writing and instead value page hits.</comment></comment>


We Won't See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-ar-anytime-soon/ <comment><USER2> I think it's safe to say we won't be seeing truly immersive VR any time soon either. At least any that doesn't make you want to blow chunks, or has a compelling and broad raisondetre.

It's interesting to me since I've followed VR/AR for 40 years myself, and what I can say is if you look at the money and hype that have surrounded HMD's (especially in the last couple of years), the technology is still just not there, and neither are the applications.

That said, a lot of very bright people are doing very cool things with technology in the name of VR/AR. That can only be a good thing.

So keep at it...

Nice article, thanks for resurfacing it.

<comment><USER3> "If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong." \- Arthur C. Clarke

Please, keep this in mind... ;-)

<comment><USER4> " _A witty saying proves nothing._ " \--Voltaire

</comment></comment></comment><comment> simon-am The Magic Leap is rumoured to be able to create pure black: "Such may be used to cancel light from the planar waveguides with respect to light from the background or real world, in some respects similar to noise canceling headphones." [http://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap- will-...](http://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will-work)

<comment><USER5> Realize, that site is pure speculation and nothing has been shown or demonstrated by ML or otherwise that can "display black."

In theory it's possible to build a standing wave on the retina, but to do it with pixel precision with a vrd/fsd is beyond difficult compounded worse by form factor.

I disagree with the article that rendering black is necessary for wide consumer adoption of AR.

<comment><USER6> What makes you disagree with it? I haven't re-read this post from Abrash since it was written (so I don't remember the arguments), but I think telling us more about why you disagree can give valuable input to those of us who are not in the field. :)

<comment><USER5> To be clear his definition of Hard AR is different from consumer adoption. So really my statement should say "I don't think we need 'Hard AR'" for AR to win with consumers.

I disagree with it based on my interactions with naiive (not an epithet) consumers who are playing in AR. They are excited enough about HMD AR when shown that shadow casting and an AR version of "presence" isn't as much of a consideration whether they would adopt or not. It comes down to "does this provide value." Shadows create realism and people are flexible with realism.

That said, "casting shadows" would be a huge benefit and I think it will get there eventually but there isn't a roadmap to it yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since SciFi in relation to AR is mentioned I though a recent episode of Black Mirror I watched was pretty interesting ("Men Against Fire", S3E5). I won't spoil it but the general idea was pretty interesting/food for though with regards to uses of AR.

<comment><USER8> Likewise I believe S02E01 - the Christmas episode - shares the idea a similarly dystopian fate for AR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> But we've seen "soft" AR and it appears to be fairly popular - Pokemon Go and Ingress. If you ask players of either of those games, if they would like a "harder" \- i guess this means more immersive - experience while playing these games, they'll bite your hand off.

There's also father.io, which looks pretty fun, but I haven't tested that out yet.

For me, in my uneducated almost ignorant understanding of the situation, AR has a massive advantage over VR in that it tends to not make you quite as motion sick.

<comment><USER10> But every player of Pokémon Go that really tries to play the game not just for 30 minutes disables the AR camera first to save battery and because it doesn't add value. People using Pokémon Go with the AR cam enabled are young kids (it's funny) and Asian tourists snapping photos with Pokémon in front of landmarks and tourist spots.

I second your remark on motion sickness. And VR cuts the user/player from the real world, which is a social annoyance outside your own living room.

<comment><USER11> The camera isn't the AR part. It's the real world map with game data overlaid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The requirements for "Hard AR" are the same as those for "good VR" becasue it needs to use video so we need e.g. exact eye-driven focusing and super low latency.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm still having a hard time understanding why adding a black pixel doesn't work. I understand 0x008000 + 0x000000 = 0x008000. But if I were to add a drop of black paint to a drop of green paint it would surely change the color. So not sure where that analogy breaks down.

<comment><USER14> The problem is, adding a drop of black paint isn't mathematical addition. When you add two different kinds of paint together, you mix them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know what the status is of CastAR? Haven't seen any updates for a while now...

<comment><USER16> Last I saw from Jeri they were working on getting dev units out to people. That was pretty recently

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> make it small enough, process fast enough, and know every light source in the frame are engineering problems... ok so why is drawing black not? seems like a total engineering problem to me, one very easily solved by having lcd embedded in the display, or e-ink, or well the host of things we've already done to solve this problem. [https://www.amazon.com/Hanslin-LCD-Transparent-Alarm- Clock/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Hanslin-LCD-Transparent-Alarm- Clock/dp/B00BTTDQ6G)

</comment><comment><USER18> It seems that black pixels could be achieved using LCD technology. Even of just to augment the display.

<comment><USER19> Not really. At least not in the simple way of having an LCD screen somewhere near the eye blocking out light from an object in a certain direction by interposing a black pixel. It seems like it should work, but it would be exactly like putting some paint on a camera lens and expecting it to block out that exact part of the picture; it won't - the lens will simply get dimmer, or if the area of paint is large, there would be darkening - vignetting - of a part of the image, with a diffuse boundary; but nothing like a sharp mask.

You can easily convince yourself that this won't work for an eye. Of course, you can use your finger to block out any object - as long as you hold your finger well away from your eye. Now take a match, and try to block out objects by holding it a centimeter in front of your eye; it doesn't work - you will see a diffuse slightly darkened area, but all objects will be visible.

<comment><USER18> Thank you for the explanation. I now see why this won't work.

It seems then that the best option would be a device which affects your neural cortex more directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ignoring the refresh rate, you could draw black using e-ink screens.

</comment><comment><USER21> Article should be labeled (2012).

<comment><USER22> Which is when they were still actively developing an AR system, before deciding against it: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/18/4343382/technical- illusion...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/18/4343382/technical-illusions- valve-augmented-reality-glasses-jeri-ellsworth-rick-johnson)</comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs could wind up paying twice for 1MDB - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-1mdb-breakingviews/breakingviews-goldman-sachs-could-wind-up-paying-twice-for-1mdb-idUSKCN1NX0WB <comment><USER2> Is it me or anyone read this "1MDB" as IMDB?</comment>


Side Project for Sale – Laravel Collections - <AUTHOR> https://1kprojects.com/project/laravelcollectionscom <comment><USER3> Don't know about this particular project, but the 1k Projects website is cool. Is there something like this but for a little higher price range - <USER2> $20k-200k?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for your reply. Yes there's TransferSlot and even 1kproject allows projects above projects that are worth more than 1k</comment></comment>


Michelle Phan Was YouTube's Biggest Beauty Star. Then She Vanished - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecut.com/2019/09/michelle-phan-youtube-beauty-star-on-why-she-left.html <comment><USER2>
         "I am a lover of decentralization," Phan says.
         "YouTube is decentralized, in the sense that anyone
         can have a channel, have their own network, and
         make their own content."

o_O You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

<comment><USER3> Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN.</comment></comment>


A new video marketplace makes video ads available for all kinds of businesses - <AUTHOR> http://www.veed.me

<comment><USER2> Interesting! Can I suggest some other kinds of videos to offer? You have Creative Commercial, Tutorial, Music video, Crowd funding, Testimonial and Micro Ads. You could also have:

* Retail commercial -- for larger retailers

* Local Shop -- for local brick & mortar shops

* Product ad -- product ad by a manufacturer

* B2B -- videos aimed at corporate and business buyers

* Investors -- a video aimed at wooing investors

Excellent idea! I hope you see a lot of success.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like the idea. We have used similar sites for web and graphic design (i.e. 99designs) with great results. I wonder what the average 30 second ad would cost using this model? My experience with other "competition" sites is that they will become heavily dominated by people in low wage countries such as India, Philippines, eastern Europe etc. as the prices are driven down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! thanks for the kind words. It's true what you say about "competition" sites (Elance, oDesk etc..) but don't forget that these are countries where programming is very popular. We are trying to hand pick and curate our creators by their level of execution (portfolios) and not only by price. As a client you name your maximum budget and then work with whoever is interested, based on his proposal and portfolio. We're in an Alpha stage and will appreciate any sort of feedback, that's why we're here aren't we? :) cheers. p.s would love to learn more about your company, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would love to see the option to make an account as a Company rather than a lonesome videographer. I own a production company and almost never do anything on my own. Would love to showcase my companies work rather than put it down as my own.

This is a great concept though, it looks pretty intuitive keep up the good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there! thanks for the feedback! We actually have quite a lot of production companies that signed up too and they showcase their work as a company. I hope that we'll be able to help you find some work!

Let me know if you have any other questions/comments..

Cheers, Yoav at veedme

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks promising. I liked the design of the home page with the vintage black and white picture. I thought it was a nice touch (and just to be clear I don't know anyone behind this project).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words! I'm one of the co-founders and I'm happy to see that you appreciate the design..

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excellent timing, it's really hard to find film-makers around here.

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome platform. its about time producing a video becomes simpler.</comment>


Office 2013 retail licensing change ties suite to specific PC forever - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9236818/Office_2013_retail_licensing_change_ties_suite_to_specific_PC_forever

<comment><AUTHOR> > Our software license is permanently assigned to the licensed computer

I wonder how they define "computer" - what if you buy an identical hard drive and restore a backup to it? Or what if you move the hard drive to a new unit?</comment>


Guide to the App Galaxy, by Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.guidetotheappgalaxy.com/

<comment><USER2> Strange that a site by google and for mobile app developers hardly works at all in android's browser...

</comment><comment><USER3> Is that the restaurant at the end of the universe?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> dunno how I missed this one earlier, but nice design work....and G finds yet another way to present their ad/promotion scheme

<comment><AUTHOR> and on that note, I'm not that impressed by this because it's mostly about what to do once you've got an app developed. It's pure marketing/ad/promotion stuff. Covered in slimy Google AdX goo.</comment></comment>


Show HN: HNCute, a pretty pink Hacker News theme - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hncute/efcgbnccnagdhbdhnghlldlolfppcfia <comment><USER2> I upvoted this like I try to do for most good effort/well-intentioned Show HN's, but I wasn't planning on installing it since I had customized my HN settings to make my HN usage as discrete as possible, with `topcolor` set to #f6f6ef (wish bodycolor was also a setting so I could just make the header and the HN body #eeeeee!).

But after reading some of the other comments I decided to add the plugin and am feeling that I won't regret it :) Not only do I love the use of pink in general, I love this theme's particular choices, such as the blue accent for the headline links and the muted pink for visited links for even better minimalist readability. The minimized header is a also nice touch (though maybe `new`, `threads`, and `submit` deserve emphasis -- at least based on my habits). And I guess if I want my web browser not to scream "HACKER NEWS READER" to anyone looking over my shoulder, a theme that hides the "Hacker News" header in addition to adding a pink explosion will do the trick. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much! I'm glad you decided to install it, feel free to let me know if you see anything that could be improved. I was inspired by the color scheme from Bubblesort's "Git it Gurl" shirts ([https://shop.bubblesort.io/products/git-it-gurl- shirt?varian...](https://shop.bubblesort.io/products/git-it-gurl- shirt?variant=37201321537)), with the nice splash of blue-purple on the pink background.

<comment><USER2> So my biggest immediate complaint is that the up/down hearts are misleading. I was a little excited that the uphearts/downhearts appeared to be slightly offset, which would deal with one of HN's most annoying design flaws -- accidentally hitting the wrong vote button. As it is, your hearts have the same horizontal hitbox even though they appear visually skewed. Having the hitbox match the appearance of the hearts would be welcome!

The other fix I would make is in the font-color of a few elements that are now more emphasized than they need to be. e.g. The "unvote" label seems to be in the darkest shade of font color.

As someone who doesn't mind that it is a Chrome plugin, since Chrome is the browser I use for HN and because I don't mind that the plugin has access to that page -- I say keep it as a plugin rather than make it a CSS sheet. With a plugin, you could provide a polished config panel experience that makes it easy for a user to disable/enable features. For example, I could see myself liking the "Hacker News" masthed back in the header and in a hot pink shade -- but other users may want it gone like it is now.

Of course as a plugin it could add all sorts of features to the HN page, at risk of breaking the minimalist experience. All I think I would want in extra features is maybe he ability to switch between a few different variants of pink styling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting feedback, I will definitely take all of this under consideration for if and when I release a second version. It would be great to include more customizability, especially since it being a chrome plugin opens the door for all sorts of possibilities. Thanks so much!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Personally I find HackerNew [1] to be quite a sensible addition to the HN theme.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd?hl=en)

<comment><USER4> Anyone know of a similar extension for Firefox?

<comment><USER5> If you're running FF 57, you could try [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-foxified/) to install chrome extensions on FF. Some work. Some don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I unironically find this much easier to read HN with. Especially with dead or downvoted comments. The hearts are just a bonus.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is it a Chrome extension instead of just a bit of CSS in one of the many custom CSS extensions that already abound?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly because I'm familiar with developing Chrome extensions, and appreciate the freedom and ease of distribution. I also used a bit of Javascript to rework some of the text areas, like the bar at the top. And injecting the favicon is done in JS as well.

I'll look into custom CSS extensions though! I'm not familiar with them. The repo is at [https://github.com/carolinehermans/HNcute](https://github.com/carolinehermans/HNcute) – it could definitely be organized better, I didn't expect to be sharing!

<comment><USER8> I reaaalllyy like this theme! As others have said, it would be great to have it in the UserStyles library.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look into it, thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Instant upvote to anyone who forks it to append cat and giggle emojis to any post that references the chrome extension.

"Why is HNCutePlus on Hacker news?" _giggles_ _kittens_

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the best comment

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice work, and thanks for sharing! I think your repo serves as a great example of how simple a Chrome extension can be, so it has value as reference material.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much! I'm planning to clean up the repo later tonight so it's better organized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just an idea, but maybe at a high karma threshold, logged in users can reference a cross-origin style sheet, via linked URL?

User profile page would need to be a safe page, so users don't lock themselves out with wonky styles.

Also, stern warnings about privacy surrounding referrer headers and basic ad tech concepts like tracking pixels. Although browser extensions are just as deadly or worse.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like it, there are some colors that are still present like the comments view still has the orange and red colors here and there. I will keep it installed and look for updates :)

One request would be to make the font sizes a bit bigger, maybe different font families as well!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look for remaining orange/red areas and push an update later tonight. Good call on the font sizes! I used Open Sans because I wanted things to stay simple and easy to read, but it might be nice to look into something else in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've updated my Greasemonkey plugin that makes some minor changes to HN's text layout. It unfades faded comments, highlights inline quotes (prefaced with '>') and improves readability.

It's very small and uses calls to HN's own javascript. Too small to be worth its own post but .. this seemed like a good thread to post it as a comment.

[https://openuserjs.org/scripts/kennethrapp/Hacker_News_Text_...](https://openuserjs.org/scripts/kennethrapp/Hacker_News_Text_Tweaks)

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the color theme but dislike how everything seems more spaced out.

Also as a female, maybe not very professionnal after all. Rather have people recognize HN on my browser than wonder what girly stuff I might do.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ah, this is something I didn't know I needed. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER16> THIS IS SO GOOD. And readable! But mostly adorable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> At first I thought I wasn't going to like this but I was pleasantly surprised :D The hearts are a nice touch :D Nice work :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It'd probably be simpler to do this as a userstyle, since there are many extensions supporting userstyles. Still, if you prefer the WebExtension format that Chrome provides, it's worth noting you could trivially release the same extension for Firefox and Edge, since I'm sure all of the APIs this uses are compatible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet, will definitely look into this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have my hn bar set as pink with the Karma-unlocked feature. This is tempting though...

<comment><AUTHOR> I originally was going to just do this but didn't realize you needed a certain amount of Karma

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great job, looks cute! HN should make this the default style for Valentine's day :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there a dark HN theme anyone recommends? On Stylish or outside?

<comment><USER22> I read HN using [http://hn.premii.com](http://hn.premii.com). You can set a darker theme in the menu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Enjoying this theme. Thanks for sharing. Makes HN more fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Neat. I'll show this to my wife. She will love the colors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> how on firefox?

<comment> King-Aaron install chrome

/s

<comment><USER25> too shiny :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> love it

<comment><USER26> also I appreciate the favicon to match

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How long will I have to wait for the Firefox port? This extension is yet another way that free software is being shut out of the browser market. And worse, women are being targeted to be locked into proprietary software.

Cmon y'all, this is super important. Let's get started on GNU/HNCute!

<comment><USER28> I know you're joking, but Chrome extensions are Firefox extensions now too: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome- store-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store- foxified/)

<comment><USER29> Thanks for the heads up, I didn't know that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> why is this even on the top? no offense but it is a css stylesheet.

<comment><USER31> You should install it and then try reading your own grumpy comment again. See?

<comment><USER8> It takes the grumps out of HN and replaces them with cuties!

[https://i.imgur.com/GNpBKlj.png](https://i.imgur.com/GNpBKlj.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> this is my favorite observation :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > make HN cute again

Can we stop using "make X Y again"? The phrase it references is a racist dogwhistle. Let's not normalize it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought about this and wound up changing the wording, the changes should be live with the next update within the next hour

<comment><USER2> Thanks, implying that HN had lost its cuteness was also extremely rude</comment></comment></comment>


Human Workers, Managed by an Algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428440/human-workers-managed-by-an-algorithm/

<comment><USER2> Discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4318725></comment>


Anatomy of Ransomware - <AUTHOR> http://blog.watchpointdata.com/anatomy-of-ransomware <comment><USER2> Very informative article. Use of the block chain is genius and shows how the cyber criminals continue to evolve their techniques stay a step ahead of law enforcement trying to shut them down.</comment>


Show HN: 100% AppleScript to remind you to drink water - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alexpapworth/drink-water <comment><USER2> Peoples looks their urine colour to identify water consume suffiency. Peoples dont need script to remind them to drink.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought human beings had that integrated in the OS, it's a non-maskable signal called "thirst".

<comment><USER4> One that's easy to ignore until it reaches fairly critical levels, or to confuse with the hunger signal.

<comment><USER5> As evidenced by thousands of deaths per year attributed to dehydration in US alone.. right?

<comment><USER4> Maybe not deaths. But dehydration is a common contributor to urinary tract infections, which are rampant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hydration!

Message brought to you by Coca-Cola and ABA (American Beverage Association), totally not a marketing campaign you guys, and we arent getting sued for it or anything, drink up!

</comment><comment><USER6> Technically it's 8 glasses of fluid a day, not just water.

</comment><comment><USER7> My mom would love this app</comment>


Root cause analysis: significantly elevated error rates on 2019‑07‑10 - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/rcas/2019-07-10 <comment><USER2> In the face of so many outages from big companies, I wonder how Visa/MasterCard is so resilient.

Is it because they are over the curve and don't make "any" changes to their system. As opposed to other companies, we are still maturing?

<comment><USER3> Mainframes.

> Visa, for example, uses the mainframe to process billions of credit and > debit card payments every year.

> According to some estimates, up to $3 trillion in daily commerce flows > through mainframes.

[https://www.share.org/blog/mainframe-matters-how- mainframes-...](https://www.share.org/blog/mainframe-matters-how-mainframes- keep-the-financial-industry-up-and-running)

[https://blog.syncsort.com/2018/06/mainframe/9-mainframe- stat...](https://blog.syncsort.com/2018/06/mainframe/9-mainframe-statistics/)

[https://www.ibm.com/it- infrastructure/servers/mainframes](https://www.ibm.com/it- infrastructure/servers/mainframes)

<comment><USER4> Specifically they run IBM zTPF on their mainframes, which is also used by airlines. Some installations have uptimes measured in decades.

[https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/transaction- processi...](https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/transaction-processing- facility)

<comment><USER5> It's rarely the hardware that fails, it's more often due to software. So I wonder what the software that's running on mainframes does differently than the software that's written for ordinary computers.

<comment><USER6> > _So I wonder what the software that 's running on mainframes does > differently than the software that's written for ordinary computers._

Not change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [2019-07-10 20:13 UTC] During our investigation into the root cause of the first event, we identified a code path likely causing the bug in a new minor version of the database's election protocol. [2019-07-10 20:42 UTC] We rolled back to a previous minor version of the election protocol and monitored the rollout.

There's a 20 minute gap between investigation and "rollback". Why did they rollback if the service was back to normal? How can they decide, and document the change within 20 minutes? Are they using CMs to document changes in production? Were there enough engineers involved in the decision? Clearly all variables were not considered.

To me, this demonstrates poor Operational Excellence values. Your first goal is to mitigate the problem. Then, you need to analyze, understand, and document the root cause. Rolling-back was a poor decision, imo.

<comment><USER8> (Stripe CTO here)

Thanks for the questions. We have testing procedures and deploy mechanisms that enable us to ship hundreds of deploys a week safely, including many which touch our infrastructure. For example, we do a fleetwide version rollout in stages with a blue/green deploy for typical changes.

In this case, we identified a specific code path that we believed had a high potential to cause a follow-up incident soon. The course of action was reviewed by several engineers; however we lacked an efficient way to fully validate this change on the order of minutes. We're investing in building tooling to increase robustness in rapid response mechanisms and to help responding engineers understand the potential impact of configuration changes or other remediation efforts they're pushing through an accelerated process.

I think our engineers' approach was strong here, but our processes could have been better. Our continuing remediation efforts are focused there.

<comment><USER9> > ship hundreds of deploys a week safely

That seems like a lot of change in a week, or does deploys mean something else like customer websites being deployed?

<comment><USER10> They very likely have continuous deployment. So each change could potentially be released as a separate deploy. If the changes have changed to the data model, they gotta run a migration. So hundreds seems reasonable to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "[Four days prior to the incident] Two nodes became stalled for yet-to-be- determined reasons."

How did they not catch this? It's super surprising to me that they wouldn't have monitors for this.

<comment><USER12> (Stripe infra lead here)

This was a focus in our after-action review. The nodes responded as healthy to active checks, while silently dropping updates on their replication lag, together this created the impression of a healthy node. The missing bit was verifying the absence of lag updates. (Which we have now.)

<comment><USER13> I am a curious and very amateur person, but do you think that if "100%" uptime were your goal, this:

"[Three months prior to the incident] We upgraded our databases to a new minor version that introduced a subtle, undetected fault in the database's failover system."

could have been prevented if you had stopped upgrading minor versions, i.e. froze on one specific version and not even applied security fixes, instead relying on containing it as a "known" vulnerable database?

The reason I ask is that I heard of ATM's still running windows XP or stuff like that. but if it's not networked could it be that that actually has a bigger uptime than anything you can do on windows 7 or 10?

what I mean is even though it is hilariously out of date to be using windows xp, still, by any measure it's had a billion device-days to expose its failure modes.

when you upgrade to the latest minor version of databases, don't you sacrifice the known bad for an unknown good?

excuse my ignorance on this subject.

<comment><USER14> How do you have a ATM thats not networked?

<comment><USER15> Same user (sorry I guess I didn't enter my password carefully as I can't log in.)

Well I mean they're not exactly on the Internet with an IP address and no firewall, are they? (Or they would have been compromised already.)

Whatever it is, it must be separated off as an "insecure enclave".

So that's why I'm wondering about this technique. You don't just miss out on security updates, you miss performance and architecture improvements, too, if you stop upgrading.

But can that be the path toward 100% uptime? Known bad and out of date configurations, carefully maintained in a brittle known state?

<comment><USER16> Secure .. enclave? I'm sorry but I think you're throwing buzzwords around hoping to hit a homerun here.

<comment><USER17> No, it's a fair question. The word "enclave" has a general meaning in English as a state surrounded entirely by another, or metaphorically a zone with some degree of isolation from its surroundings.

So the legit question is, can insecure systems (e.g. ancient mainframes) be wrapped by a security layer (WAF, etc.) to get better uptime than patching an exposed system?

<comment><USER15> yes, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So the article identifies a software bug and a software/config bug as the root cause. That sounds a bit shallow for such a high visibility case - I was expecting something like the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys) method with subplots on why the bugs where not caught in testing. By the way I only clicked on it because I was hoping it would be an occasion to use the methods from [http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/WHY/](http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/WHY/) \- alas no - it was too shallow for that.

<comment><USER19> It is likely that this RCA was shallow because it was intended for everyone-- including non-technical users, who (at least in my experience) tend to misinterpret or get confused by deep technical or systemic failure analysis.

It would be excellent if Stripe published a truly technical RCA, perhaps for distribution via their tech blog, so that folks like us could get a more complete understanding and what-not-to-do lesson (if the failing systems were based on non-proprietary technologies, that is).

<comment><USER20> From reading the RCA, this should be the trinity of mysql + orchestrator + vitess. If stripe can't get it right, there is no chance for the others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anybody know what database they're using?

<comment><USER21> MongoDB is the primary data store used at Stripe.

<comment><USER22> Really speaks volumes about how mature MongoDB has become considering how solid Stripe's reliability is.

<comment><USER23> MongoDB is a really scary database to use at scale.

It doesn't shard nicely. Failovers have rather nasty semantics that can cause nasty bugs in client side code. Performance cliffs abound.

If your datastore is anything over 1TB, I'd be using postgres, or if you can manage it something bigtable-like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As I mentioned early, " human error often, configuration changes often, new changes often. " [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20406116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20406116)

</comment><comment><USER25> This reads like the marketing/PR teams wrote much of it. Compare to the Cloudflare post-mortem from today: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/details-of- the-cloudflare-outage...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/details-of-the- cloudflare-outage-on-july-2-2019/)

<comment><USER8> I'm Stripe's CTO and wrote a good deal of the RCA (with the help of others, including a lot of the engineers who responded to the incident). If you've any specific feedback on how to make this more useful, I'd love to hear it.

<comment><USER26> I work at Stripe, on the marketing team, and assisted a bit here. My last major engineering work was writing the backend to a stock exchange.

If anyone on HN knows anyone who has the sort of interesting life story where they both know what can cause a cluster election to fail and like writing about that sort of thing, we would eagerly like to make their acquaintance.

<comment><USER27> Maybe Kyle Kingsbury (aka @aphyr) is the person you are looking for?

[https://jepsen.io/services#consulting](https://jepsen.io/services#consulting)

<comment><USER28> Kyle used to work at Stripe and left. I don't think he would come back unfortunately. That guy is absolutely amazing, especially with regards to distributes DBs and writing about them

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is this Stripe's first public RCA? Looking through their tweets, there do not appear to be other RCAs for the same "elevated error rates". It seems hard to conclude much from one RCA.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why don't they call 'significantly elevated error rates' an 'outage' instead?

<comment><USER31> Because "A substantial majority of API requests during these windows failed. " implying that there was not a complete outage.

I don't understand why people demand the usage of incorrect language.

<comment><USER32> In my mind, a "degradation" would be if some fraction of requests were randomly failing, but they would be likely to eventually succeed if retried. Or if the service itself was essentially accessible, but some non-essential functionality was not working correctly.

On the other hand, if for a significant number of users the site was completely unusable for some period of time, then I think it's fair to use the word "outage". (Even if it's not a _complete_ outage affecting all users.)

I don't know whether other people would interpret these terms the same way I do, nor do I think there's enough information in this blog post to determine for sure which label is more accurate for this particular incident. So personally, I'm not going to be too picky about the wording.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Since both companies' root cause analysis are currently trending on HN, it's pretty apparent that Stripe's engineering culture has a long ways to go catch up with Cloudflare's.

</comment><comment><USER34> "We identified that our rolled-back election protocol interacted poorly with a recently-introduced configuration setting to trigger the second period of degradation."

Damn what a mess. Sounds like y'all are rolling out way to many changes too quickly with little to no time for integration testing.

It's a somewhat amateur move to assume you can just arbitrarily rollback without consequence, without testing etc.

One solution I don't see mentioned, don't upgrade to minor versions ever. And create a dependency matrix so if you do rollback, you rollback all the other things that depend on the thing you're rolling back as well.

<comment><USER35> Yes this was very surprising. The system was working fine after the cluster restart. There was no need for an emergency rollback.

Doing a large rollback based on a hunch seems like an overreaction.

It's totally normal for engineers to commit these errors. That's fine. The detail that's missing in this PM is what kind of operational culture, procedures and automation is in place to reduce operator errors.

Did the engineer making this decision have access to other team members to review their plan of action? I believe that a group (2-3) of experienced engineers sharing information in real-time and coordinating the response could have reacted better.

Of course, I wasn't there so I could be completely off.

<comment><USER34> "That's fine."

idk the suits have a very different viewpoint; 30 minutes of downtime for a large financial system isn't fine. it can be very costly.

<comment><USER36> I think the GP means that as far as incidents occurring, so far as care is (or was) taken to prevent them and learn from them, then that's all one can really reasonably ask for. The first incident falls under that heading and 'is fine' in a 'life happens' sense.

The following incident comes across as reckless and avoidable as there should have been procedures to safely test the rollback (and perhaps there were, but a perfect storm allowed it fail in prod). Lacking details about how the second incident came to be or how they will be prevented going forward places the second incident as 'not fine'.

This information is what the GP comment is asking for.

Compare this PM with Cloudflare's PM, where they detail how they tested rules, what safeguards were in place, how the incident came to be, and how they intend to prevent similar incidents; the impression given here is that they will put up more fire alarms and fire extinguishers but do little fire prevention.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does Elon Musk innovate in disparate fields? - <AUTHOR> Is it that he reads constantly and eclectically?
My theory is that his physics and economics degree helps him to think technically and with a business mindset. Added that he reads widely and is talented.
In my opinion, the world will be a more interesting place if people learn to think like him. <comment><USER2> > _Is it that he reads constantly and eclectically?_

No, it's mostly that

(a) he has the will to ventures in various fields

(b) he has the money (from his early ventures) to venture in various fields

(c) he hires people who know their stuff in those fields

He doesn't have to come up with anything resembling real innovation (a new technique or process) himself. He just have to give his stuff the general direction and push them towards it.

Having a technical and business background helps, but don't imagine any Tony Stark like lab research on the technical level done by him personally.</comment>


More whistleblower complaints emerge in 737 MAX inquiries - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/more-whistleblower-complaints-emerge-in-boeing-737-max-safety-inquiries-11556418721 <comment><USER2> Not much of substance in this short article. Perhaps it was a slow news day at the WSJ? The basic message: more twists and turns coming as the 737 MAX story unfolds.</comment>


Honeycomb source code released -- by Asus, not Google - <AUTHOR> http://slashdot.org/submission/1527156/Honeycomb-Source-Code-Released-By-Asus

<comment><USER2> This is bogus, the kernel bits are GPL so they were already released by Google...

Edit: additionally, why link to slashdot instead of a source? Is it submitted by a bot?

<comment><USER3> Article link: [http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/155149/google- holds-b...](http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/155149/google-holds-back- android-honeycomb-asus-releases-source-code) Alleged download link: [http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Pad_Transformer_TF101/#d...](http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Pad_Transformer_TF101/#download)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't that the way it should work? Asus is distributing GPL code they release it per GPL. Google released it to their customers (obviously or Asus wouldn't have been able to release it.) This whole tempest in a tea kettle is getting annoying.</comment>


Science is broken. Being open could fix it - <AUTHOR> https://thewinnower.com/papers/science-is-broken-being-open-could-fix-it

<comment><USER2> > It was broken because it had evolved into an unrecognizable system that was > incompatible with what science, in an ideal world, could have been.

We don't live in an ideal world. The existing first-to-publish system went into place precisely because it is a solution for a world of people, not angels. This essay presumes we are angels, or perhaps living in a world where we've fallen from scientific grace.

> Science seemed to be more about prestige and personal gain, rather than a > noble collective effort to expand knowledge.

Herr Leibniz? A Mr. Newton wants to have few words with you.

Sanatorium warden? Could you tell Cantor that Kronecker apologizes for calling him a "scientific charlatan", a "renegade" and a "corrupter of youth?

In other words, when has it ever been 'a noble collective effort to expand knowledge' more than 'about prestige and personal gain' in the way that the author thinks is right?

(That we can improve things is a given, but the author's premise is that it evolved to the current system from a better one.)

> there is no immediately clear reason as to why researchers should be > apprehensive about sharing their dataset alongside their results — unless > they have something to hide, of course

There's a clear, strong, and well-known reason. Sharing data means that others might publish new papers from your data before you've done so.

There are also practical matters. The data set may contain personal information covered under various privacy laws.

> Research findings should be open access - freely and immediately available > online to read and reuse.

While I mostly agree, there's a certain constrained view here on what "research findings" means. Does this include corporate for-profit research papers?

For example, Laurent Bossavit wrote and sells "The Leprechauns of Software Engineering". This is historical research. Why should it be open access with no cost?

I've been researching a topic where some of the foundational papers were written as white papers from a small consulting firm. They were never published in academic journals, but were cited by them. Another reference was in an IBM Technical Report. Do we prevent this sort of research publication?

> Science should be universal. Science should be disinterested. Scientists > should be asking themselves how they can move collective knowledge — not > their careers — forward.

Utter bollocks. Science research is guided by morals. Here's a topic that can be addressed scientifically: "what is the percentage of people who die if dropped head-first from 50 meters vs. feet-first?" Are we ever going to pursue it? I sure hope not! We absolutely must not pursue some fields of the universe of science.

What if a scientist decides "I can do better science by moving my career forward so I have a larger research group and budget in order to explore the ideas I think are interesting"? How does science (or how do we) judge if this is correct or not?</comment>


Hey Synaptics, Can You Please Stop Polling - <AUTHOR> https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/hey-synaptics-can-you-please-stop-polling/ <comment><USER2> Pah that's nothing. My wife's old HP laptop had a driver dedicated to controlling the LED on the speaker mute key that used an entire core. Permanently disabling the service fixed the issue with no loss in functionality… except the LED light!

</comment><comment><USER3> Synaptics drivers are horrendous. In addition to the terrible performance, mine has given me 10+ bluescreens on Win10. I'd love to remove them, but they're needed for some of the basic functionality. And they also seem to randomly make my mouse laggy (when I'm at a desk and plugged in).

Honestly, a generic trackpad driver that suppliers 2-finger scrolling, 2/3 finger mouse button emulation, and _maybe_ pinch-to-zoom would be all I want. If someone put in some plugin interface with an API so everyone could add the additional magic, it would help people with more complex needs. I'd love to kick synaptics to the curb. They've had decades to write a driver for the only thing they're known for, and yet still can't seem to handle it.

<comment><USER4> Do you have some kind of other hotkey software installed?

I had SynTP.sys bluescreens with a Clevo laptop, turns out Clevo hook the driver with their Control Centre software and Windows reports that the touchpad driver is causing the problem, rather than the hotkey filter from Clevo [1].

[1] [http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/synaptics-causes- bso...](http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/synaptics-causes-bsod- on-p650se.770938/page-16#post-10235938)

<comment><USER3> I've got something that listens to _other_ devices (ACPI buttons, etc), but nothing that touches the touchpad. It's also a driver that's specific to the model (the main driver won't handle 3 button devices), so it's not like it shouldn't have undergone testing on the laptop.

I'd still suspect synaptics, as it's probably not checking its input properly. As no other device has problems with this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previously I had a Thinkpad T60p as laptop, when tickless Linux kernels (iirc 2.6.21) and powertop were all new.

I made a ultra-idle setup which generated only 10-20 interrupts per second. That was, until you even dared to touch the synaptics touchpad, then it shot up to ~500 rendering all the other efforts useless.

<comment><USER6> That's because it's reporting input events at high resolution. The alternative is jerky input. And if you're moving a pointer around the screen then you're going to be keeping the CPU and GPU powered up _anyway_ which means the interrupts from the trackpad really aren't the problem.

<comment><USER7> Honest question: is there any need to poll the touchpad more often than the screen's refresh rate (usually 144Hz or below as of this post)?

<comment><USER8> I think there might be. If your polling is not frequent enough, then if you observed a finger touch disappear from one spot and appear at another spot, you have no way to know whether the finger moved there in the span of one polling period or if the finger was lifted and a second finger placed at the new location during that polling period. So a high polling rate might be essential to disambiguate cases like this, especially for many-finger multi- touch situations.

<comment><USER9> Couldn't this be processed directly in the touchpad controller, which probably contains a microcontroller nowadays anyway?

<comment><USER10> Can you clarify which part you think could be handled by the touchpad's microcontroller? In order to implement modern gestures and interactions you need full access to all input events, otherwise you'd lose the ability to customize or adequately handle changes to context.

<comment><USER11> A finger touching and leaving would be a high-priority event for the controller to output, and it should probably internally monitor events at a high resolution.

For position, as reported to the OS: what use would actually need a report every 2 milliseconds? Intuitively, I'd think that motions that matter wouldn't need that many datapoints to reliably differentiate.

<comment><USER6> Remember that 500 interrupts per second isn't the same as a report every 2 milliseconds - reading status from a device may involve more than one interrupt.

<comment><USER11> True. And for some kinds of work, input latency probably becomes noticeable on a subconscious level quicker than one would guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish drivers were open source so we could fix these issues ourselves instead of helplessly waiting for updates from manufacturers.

<comment><USER13> Well, there are open source synaptics touchpad drivers which are license- compatible with Windows. In this sense, Microsoft is to blame.

<comment><USER14> License-compatible does not remotely mean Windows-compatible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is absurd and is why people prefer Apple computers, where one company controls the whole software and hardware stack (that includes touchpad drivers) and can ensure that this shit doesn't happen.

<comment><USER16> Given that Windows owns 90% of the desktop market the "people prefer Apple computers" statement would qualify as a slight exaggeration. Also the reason this lovely %-age exists in the first place is exactly the fact that IBM let others build for their platform.

<comment><USER15> Most people don't care about computers. Most people spend maybe a couple hours a day in front of a computer and so they will buy the cheapest option they have available. That option will be Windows every time, because they cut corners and end up with shoddy products like this.

For the small minority of the population that spends a large amount of time in front of computers and makes their income from computers (programmers, digital artists) they almost all use Macs.

<comment><USER17> Almost always? I don't know any programmers that use Macs.

<comment><USER18> Hardly scientific, but try an image search for "developers conference" or "developers working" or some such phrase: [https://www.google.com/search?q=developers%20working](https://www.google.com/search?q=developers%20working)

Lots of Macs. Lots and lots of Macs.

I'm sure it varies by industry obviously. I'm sure there are industries where you won't see a lot of Macs in developers' hands.

<comment><USER17> "People who give talks at conferences" have almost zero intersection with "people who program for a living" and "laptop I use to give presentations" isn't the same as "computer I use to do everyday work." It's like trying to figure out what the most popular commuting car is by watching NASCAR racing.

I'm taking issue with "almost always," that's absurd. If you look at actual surveys [1] Windows wins by a large margin.

But hey, stock photos, soooooo.... Yeah!

LAMP wouldn't be a well know acronym and .NET wouldn't be a robust and widely used dev environment if everyone was using Macs. I've been programming professionally for two decades and I've (happily) either used Linux or Windows for the entire time, never touched a Mac in my life. Of course, I am in enterprise software, because it pays the bills, not because it's cool. I'm _much_ too old to try to be cool.

(People giving talks at conferences are trying to impress an audience. Same with stock images. Flashy laptops, of course, are impressive and noticeable and give the image of "professional.")

[1] [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016)

<comment><USER18> Thanks!

When you get a chance, check out the page you linked to. It definitely backs up my anecdotal observation with solid numbers. Looks like about 26% of developers (or at least Stack Overflow users) use macOS.

Given a rough estimate of ~18mil software developers in the world[1] this gives use a rough estimate of nearly ~5mil developers using Macs.

So that's why I found it interesting to hear a developer say, "I don't know any programmers that use Macs." There are... a lot of them.

But, as you said, you've sequestered yourself in a fairly narrow niche throughout your career so it's not surprising. I'm sure there are web developers out there who literally don't know anybody that uses Windows because they've stuck to their own niches as well. Although, _I_ work in enterprise software and my whole team is on Macs, so it's not even like you need to look outside your niche.

        LAMP wouldn't be a well know acronym and .NET wouldn't be
        a robust and widely used dev environment if everyone was
        using Macs.

LAMP is a bit of a nightmare on Windows. Been ages since I did it, but the PHP ecosystem made a lot of non-Windows assumptions and things like Imagemagick and file upload handling in general were always kind of a pain. For this reason Macs are popular with the LAMP crowd as well. If I was doing LAMP on Windows I'd use a Linux VM or perhaps the Ubuntu compatability layer that's been added to Win10.

        "People who give talks at conferences" have almost zero
        intersection with "people who program for a living" and
        "laptop I use to give presentations"

Not the conferences I follow. All working engineers giving talks. Not TED- style vague pop-sci motivational stuff. Though I'm sure there are conferences like that. Get out of your niche, hit up a conference, meet other developers maybe? Or just check out some presentations online in your field of interest via ConFreaks etc?

        People giving talks at conferences are trying to impress
        an audience. Same with stock images. Flashy laptops, of
        course, are impressive and noticeable and give the image
        of "professional."

I think I'm being trolled.

__________________

[1] [https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it- careers/ind...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it- careers/india-to-overtake-u-s--on-number-of-developers-by-2017.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Over the past ~5-10 years, multitouch touchpads have been much more painful in Windows than in any other modern OS. Why? These awful Synaptics drivers. There have been free drivers in Linux that have worked painlessly for _years_ , yet in Windows, nothing has changed.

I see this as a poignant example that closed-source drivers are just a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Enhancements"

Eff those enhancements, kill that process and remove it from startup. This is not the drive per se, it's just some stupid "helper app"

Shimming: [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd837644(v=ws.10...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd837644\(v=ws.10\).aspx) (most likely making the offending function being called repeatedly return a mock value)

<comment><USER20> It makes the settings actually work though. Most people need the app for a usable touchpad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> this problem has been introduced in a driver update around march. but it has been fixed for me (lenovo x1 yoga) in the latest synaptics touchpad driver update v22.214.171.124 [0]:

       [Problem fixes]
        - Fixed an issue where Touchpad Driver might cause high cpu usage of
       "WmiPrvSE.exe".

[0] [https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/ch/en/products/LAPTOPS-AND- NETB...](https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/ch/en/products/LAPTOPS-AND- NETBOOKS/THINKPAD-X-SERIES-LAPTOPS/THINKPAD-X1-YOGA- TYPE-20FQ-20FR/20FR/S2M600/downloads/DS118386)

</comment><comment><USER22> I appreciate the author took time to write about this but I am skeptic about this because all Lenovo community knew about this issue. This is when you need a hero to reverse engineering and deploy a better driver if possible.

</comment><comment><USER23> Am I the only one who's a bit disappointed by MS's response? I get that shimming would fix it but wouldn't it be more productive if they'd put some pressure on Synaptics to fix it? They might take notice if Microsoft comes knocking. There's a bajimillion Windows devices potentially going through life with this bug as Synaptics trackpads are pretty pervasive. Not saying they shouldn't do the shim, but I'd hope they would go further than that.

<comment><USER24> At Microsoft's scale, probably not. Their inability to successfully pressure third-party software vendors to do the right thing is why they developed the shimming infrastructure in the first place.

<comment><USER25> If they removed the drivers from the installation image so people had to manually install software for Synaptics devices to work, I think Synaptics would notice rather quickly. They are not some obscure vendor that has gone out of business.

It's just another excuse for shoddy quality.

<comment><USER26> "Installing Windows (10 + 1) broke my touchpad, it was working perfectly fine before! Microsoft can't do anything right!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is a big gap between the hardware, the drivers, and the operating system and "nobody" to blame or who can take responsibility for the whole system. This happens in Windows mainly, you can buy the last notebook and replace it before this stuff is solved. I had the synaptic issue and many others with the X220 and Windows and now suffer other new issues with the latest XPS 13.

<comment><USER27> I also have both an x220 and an XPS 13, both running Arch. x220 has always worked/felt great with synaptics driver, XPS 13 still has issues which I somewhat suspect are due to using libinput. Also might be a hardware issue :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand, isn't polling orthogonal to a memory leak? How would fixing one fix the other?

<comment><USER28> It does seem to be orthogonal in this case, so the title is a bit misleading.

<comment><USER29> The analysis suggests that the driver is polling for 'process created' events and then leaking something every time such an event occurs, so the two issues are somewhat related (likely the same bit of code implementing whatever feature this is).

<comment><USER20> It's not like a notification or callback mechanism would make it any better though? It might even be worse since it wouldn't miss quick startups and shutdowns that polling could miss...

<comment><USER30> While the memory leak and the polling are in the same code it is likely that they require two different fixes - unless the notification of process creation is totally unnecessary.

<comment><USER20> AFAIK there's no way to get arbitrary process creation notifications without either registering for ETW (which only allows one real-time consumer, hence crippling the system, and which has a very long delay) or using kernel mode code (which I guess could work here since the already have a driver, but might present obstacles I'm not aware of). Another way is to use AppInit_DLLs which might be appropriate since anything that needs the mouse should probably load user32.dll, but otherwise it would miss something. Polling seems like the most foolproof way to do it purely in user mode.

<comment><USER30> I'm no WMI expert but I was told (and said in the post):

A polling query is particularly tragic in the case of Win32_Process, since Win32_ProcessStartTrace does the same thing without polling.

So yeah, I think you can get process creation notifications without polling. Reference:

[https://twitter.com/kobyk/status/901561105570570242](https://twitter.com/kobyk/status/901561105570570242)

<comment><USER20> This seems to have the same built-in delay as ETW. But thanks for sharing, I wasn't aware of this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I had to "Update Driver" after BSoDs in aps2kb2hid.sys. I never updated it though.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wait what's shimming?

<comment><USER33> Redefining a thing to do a different thing to achieve the same result. You'll see it a lot in older systems where you have a billion deprecated functions, and instead of changing each instance to use the new version, you trick the system by appropriating the old version to point to custom code that runs the new version and passes back whatever the old version is expected to return.

<comment><USER34> So like monkey-patching?

<comment><USER33> Similar, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> disabled it in the bios and physically disconnected it, the day i got it.

</comment><comment><USER36> And _some_ Fedora developers want to bring this kind of shit to linux.

</comment><comment><USER37> Firefox, just sitting there on a page with zero activity, manages to burn about 5% of a CPU doing garbage-collection related tasks within Gecko. Maybe this will get better with the Rust version.

<comment><USER38> GC is due to Javascript not C++.

<comment><USER37> Firefox has an internal GC for C++ objects managed by its XPCOM system.[1] It's called the "cycle collector".

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XPCOM/...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XPCOM/Interfacing_with_the_XPCOM_cycle_collector)

<comment><USER38> And Servo uses a GC deeply within its Rust code too (the JS one, in fact). I think the benefits in Servo with respect to GC would mainly be because the code is new/learnt from the mistakes of the old (and avoided historical baggage), rather than because it is in Rust.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Updates and SERP Changes -Google Evil again - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4532950.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone else seen what is going on in Google SERPS, I am detecting a lot of movement.</comment>