Show HN: Bootstro.js - intro.js for Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/clu3/bootstro.js <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, I'm so surprised that this made HN front page, even though I thought Bootstro.js would be nice because I had a tough time looking for something like that. I guess I rarely get a chance like this so I'm very excited and therefore would like to share here that I love HN so much. Actually there are two things that have changed my profession quite _dramatically_

1\. HN, before HN, i.e about 3 years ago, I was with webmasterworld.com but somehow I didn't get much out of it. At HN i'm mostly just lurking but I learned so much from it 2\. Coding-wise, Bootstrap made my life a hell lot easier since I'm basically so dumb at CSS. Bootstrap gave me a chance to execute my idea in a timeframe which otherwise would have taken me months, and getting bored of talking to my colleague CSS'er

Those 2 things have changed my career alot, believe it or not. I don't know what's the point of saying that but I'd like to express what I love & really appreciate.

<comment><USER2> Well done. I've been thinking we need something like this for our app, but haven't poked around yet. Thanks for making this available.

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "I can resize my width too", that is really cool of you, but it would be nice if you also didn't go beyond my screen edge. Especially if the Next button is there.

Also consider adding push history support or whatever that's called. I'd like to click back in my browser to go back in the intro.

This is mostly because the back/forth touchpad gesture added in some version of MacOS or another, combined with the back/forth buttons on the mouse I use on the linux machine, have made me big users of the Back functionality. Something I would never click on "manually" and wouldn't even consider exists otherwise[1].

[1] Before those two developments I spent 5+ years convinced that nobody ever clicks Back in a browser.

<comment><USER4> Do you know about : <https://heatmap.mozillalabs.com/> ?

The back button is heavily used, even without gestures/mouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm Afshin, the author of intro.js

As you mentioned in this thread, you just used intro.js idea to show the steps, showing tooltips and more...

Why you didn't mention that in the Github repository also?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Afshin,

I'd love to so had Bootstro.js been a follow-up of intro.js. But it is not.

I already said so in the demo that I had this idea & implementation _before_ intro.js was released , I even asked around #css & #jquery for some help on how to highlight the div and I also expressed my idea there in the channel [1]

Apart from trying to show the authenticity of Bootstro.js so that you & others don't take me wrong, I'd like to thank you for releasing intro.js and triggering HN's love of the idea which made me excited to try modularizing Bootstro.js & release. Being on HN's front page is a lot more "sexy".

Cheers, from Hanoi to Tehran ^^

[1] [http://irc.jquery.org/%23jquery/%23jquery_20130309.log.html#...](http://irc.jquery.org/%23jquery/%23jquery_20130309.log.html#t00:06:34)

Edit: Typo

<comment><USER5> but I really confused that if you have this idea before, why you didn't published it on the Github partially?

You oldest commit is for 1 day ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> I made it as part of SandPHP's JS suite and SandPHP is still a private repo. OTOH, I've just checked your first intro.js commit is Mar 10, 2013 and I asked around IRC on the 9th and you're asking for a DMCA takedown sigh...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good. Only issue I have so far is that in links to modal windows the bootstro- title takes over the title causing: a) the mouse-over tooltip (with original title) disappears and b) the bootstro pop-over title is the original "title".

<comment><AUTHOR> Would be great if you could provide me with a jsfiddle,thanks. i'm kinda not getting it.

<comment><USER6> perhaps this helps: <http://pastebin.com/BkRspQig>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Flicking between steps results in the window scroll animations queueing. You may wish to replace

$('html,body').animate({

in bootstro.go_to, with:

$('html,body').stop(true).animate({

This clears the animation queue and stops the current animation between animating.

</comment><comment><USER8> Arrow keys not working for me - latest version Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for the bug report , it's fixed now. I used keypress event and somehow it doesn't work. Changing it to keydown event now has fixed it, at least in my Ubuntu box. Thanks to [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3417938/binding- keypress-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3417938/binding-keypress- event-using-jquery-not-working-in-chrome)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On iPad Chrome the 5, 6, and 7 popovers are dark (no focus) until the screen is touched again.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was expecting that clicking on the darker areas would exit the intro, consider to do that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. I've added an option stopOnBackdropClick and defaulted to true. Demo updated too ^^

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like this addresses a lot of the problems with intro.js.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER12> I like this a lot, thanks for taking the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, it's been my pleasure. I also learned quite a bit of good JS practices, especially from this post [http://enterprisejquery.com/2010/10/how- good-c-habits-can-en...](http://enterprisejquery.com/2010/10/how-good-c- habits-can-encourage-bad-javascript-habits-part-1/) because basically I'm a PHP guy coming from Linux C programming world so that post is like spot on for me

</comment></comment><comment> johnx123-up Why "bootstro" attributes instead of "data"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since data-title, data-content are pretty kinda popular in bootstrap in many different plugins, I thought I'd use bootstro- to avoid any accidental mistake. TBH, I'm not even sure if it's good or bad practice

<comment><USER13> It should really be data-bootstro-whatever so it validates as a custom data attribute in HTML

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> was just showing bootstrap and intro.js off to a team on saturday - this is a nice combo.

safari 6 - arrow keys didn't work for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your complement. It's fixed now. keypress changed to keydown event handler

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> someone just showed off a clone of this sometime last week I believe.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think probably you're talking about <http://usablica.github.com/intro.js/> which I mentioned in the demo</comment></comment>


What I Learned About Upwork from a Bumbling Scammer - <AUTHOR> https://mtlynch.io/upwork-scammer/ <comment><USER2> I always only place Upwork projects on a result, not hourly base. Exceptions are consulting projects.

Just curious on why you are using the hourly rate system on an outcome specific project?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reading!

Hourly vs. fixed is always a hard decision for me. I feel like there are perverse incentives with both.

For a fixed-cost project, I feel like it incentivizes the freelancer to finish the project as soon as possible, so quality becomes a cost for them. And there's a weird imbalance of power because I, as the client, can keep demanding tweaks/polish past the point where it's reasonable (the client and freelancer likely have a different view of how many tweaks are "reasonable").

The other issue is that not all reports are equal. If I assign the freelancer to write a report that answers the question "Is Propel keto?" They can just look that up and write it in about five minutes. But there are harder questions like, "Is coffee keto?" There are many different types of coffee, so it's difficult to write a single report that covers them all succinctly. Or, "Is erythritol keto?" With any sweeteners, there's often some debate about whether they're keto-friendly, so it requires more work to summarize the debate.

I didn't want to get into a situation where the freelancer is annoyed to get a "hard" report because they only earn the same as an "easy" report. And I didn't want to negotiate each report separately.

Hourly contracts solve those problems, but it brings others. The biggest issue is that it obscures costs. I can't predict in advance how much I'll end up paying for the work. And earning by the hour can incentivize the freelancer to drag their feet to pad the bill. I haven't ever experienced that in practice though.

Overall, I feel like hourly contracts align incentives better between the freelancer and the client. I'll typically do fixed-cost contracts if I only have a few defined tasks I want (e.g., "I'll pay you $250 to add this feature to my site").

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excellent post! Just to get a sense of what percentage of upwork freelancers are scammers, roughly how many freelancers have you hired through UpWork?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reading!

I've hired 55 freelancers through Upwork since 2013.

Keep in mind though that the hires aren't a random sample because I screened who I hired. It's likely that some people who applied for previous jobs were running some kind of similar scam but their profile or cover letter wasn't good enough to get an offer from me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about registering a domain upwrkscammers.com and create a database to highlight fraudulent profiles, F#uck upwork and their ridiculous rules.

Edit - send the link to your post to the CEO of upwork.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Happy to answer any questions about this post and to hear what you think.

<comment><USER5> In my experience with Upwork, I have always hired two candidates for a simple job that would be an indicator of ability to do the actual job I am looking for. This has been the only real way for me to get to quality people who can deliver what is needed and as you noted, rate is not necessarily an indicator. Are there any other tricks / tips you would recommend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hiring for small, narrowly scoped jobs is my biggest tip.

For content writing specifically, I find that I can screen people pretty well before I hire them by asking for writing samples. I haven't been able to do that with programmers because I find it harder to judge ability based on a source file or even repo I know nothing about. But if a writer sends me an article that they think represents their ability well, that tells me most of what I need to know.

Other things I look for in hiring:

* Can they communicate well in writing? If I'm outsourcing something, the best possible outcome is that I find someone who I can just delegate tasks to and they deliver. If they're asking questions that are unclear or that indicate that they haven't read the instructions, those types of miscommunications will likely continue if I hire them. * Did they take a genuine interest in my project or are they just shotgunning out the same application to everyone? Some of my favorite hires are people that spent 30-90 minutes on their application, writing a cover letter saying what interests them specifically about my project. It's not a perfect predictor of success, but it's usually a very good sign.

As the client, I try to specify the job up front as clearly. Good freelancers don't want to work with clients with only a vague sense of what I want. I do it in a public Google doc. Any time the freelancer deviates from what I had in mind, I revise the spec to clarify the point of confusion. That way, the freelancer and I both can see it, and if I drop one person and hire someone else, I don't have to re-explain everything.

I also wrote a couple blog posts about what I've learned about hiring cartoonists and editors:

* [https://mtlynch.io/editor/](https://mtlynch.io/editor/) * [https://mtlynch.io/how-to-hire-a-cartoonist/](https://mtlynch.io/how-to-hire-a-cartoonist/)</comment></comment></comment>


Importance of Backups - <AUTHOR> http://michaelkimsal.com/blog/blog/2016/11/24/importance-of-backups/ <comment><USER2> Are there any good resources pointing out the importance of backups, and maybe some advice how to do them, to the average user? I was looking recently after a colleague had his laptop stolen, with no backups.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the simplest/painless service to setup an online software store? - <AUTHOR>

Talking about fees/easy to use/install, etc <comment><USER2> Not the advice you asked for:

You're asking a bunch of similar minimalist questions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631060>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1628036>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631430>

I think you would get better advice if you gave some context about what it is you are trying to do, or why else you are trying to find out. Adjectives like "best", "simplest" and so on really depend on what it is you are trying to achieve, what your skills are and so on.

The short questions are also not really conducive to getting people to respond, or to upvote you so that you can get more traction.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, I am new to this awesome site. Will post tomorrow, basically I need an ecommerce solution(dirt cheap) with payment processing, CRM, so I am looking for the best combo.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.shopify.com/></comment></comment></comment>


The Mistake that Caused 220.127.116.11 to Block LGBTQIA+ Sites Today - sahin-boydas https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-mistake-that-caused-1-1-1-3-to-block-lgbtqia-sites-today/ <comment><USER2> I don't buy their approach here unfortunately. They showed that they pushed the whole product without one person raising this as an issue easier. Even though this is the most common problem with block lists in real world: the LGBT sites and sexual health information sites. "We fixed it, it's ok now" \- let's see how long that lasts / what's the next category to get impacted - <AUTHOR> haven't seen any fixes in the process / validation described in the post. (I mean validation of their sources/approach in the future beyond a spot check on regressions)

<comment><USER3> Did you read the post? They obviously went and reviewed what was going to be included in that list before continuing, then just mixed up the list that was used in the final result. That's an understandable thing to miss when testing...

<comment><USER2> Yes. They still released a product without validating the issue where many other products of this category fail. Maybe it's a stupid mistake. But it really reduces my trust in how much they pay attention to this project.

<comment><USER4> its a free service that they are providing as a social good in a strange time when more parents and more kids are spending more time on the internet than ever before. It wasn't malicious, there was no harm done, and like everyone else their resources are at leas unbalanced if not constrained right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _But, initially, we created two default settings that were the most > requested types of content people wanted to block: Malware (which you can > block by setting 188.8.131.52 and 184.108.40.206 as your DNS resolvers) and Malware + > Adult Content (which you can block by setting 22.214.171.124 and 18.104.22.168 as your > DNS resolvers)._

Not sure more people request to block malware or adult than request to block ads?

Where's the Malware + Ads block like Zscalar, Adblock, and new crowd fave NextDNS.io?

</comment><comment><USER6> > which schools and libraries in the United States are required to follow

Only if they accept federal money. The federal government couldn't lawfully impose their weird censorship rules on the libraries but they were able to make federal funding conditional on it...

<comment><USER7> And that funding comes from taxes raised from the people of the states. It's a complete subversion of the Constitution and the only reason it's considered legal is because the Supreme Court is appointed by the Federal Executive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice writeup. Explains what happened. Shows immediate action. Apologies. 5/5.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know what the data structure is that takes 2 hours to generate. Sounds like some interesting technical content is lurking in there.

<comment><USER10> Maybe some king of succinct trie?

<comment><USER11> Or a very large bloom filter?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm rather disappointed that Cloudflare did not proactively identify the possibility of blocking this sort of content and put tests in place prior to launching to ensure that access to these sites were unaffected. Content blocking has a long history of blocking legitimate sites, especially LGBTQIA+ sites, and ensuring that these sites remain accessible should be a priority, not something that you rely on customers to notify you about after launch.

</comment><comment><USER13> Cloudflare seems like a trustworthy and technically competent company. Kudos.

</comment><comment><USER14> > we've set up a number of checks of known sites that should fall outside the > intended categories, including many that we mistakenly listed today

I'm glad CloudFlare is going to write some basic tests for one of the most obvious failure scenarios (false positives) for their software.

<comment><USER15> It also seems like a job for MTurk.

<comment><USER14> It's a job for a competent engineer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is the best response I've seen to this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER17> What sites in particular were blocked?</comment>


AlphaFold: Using AI for Scientific Discovery - <AUTHOR> https://deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaFold-Using-AI-for-scientific-discovery <comment><USER2> For those interested, it appears as though David Baker (who dedicated his life to protein folding) has also turned to deep learning. His lab recently published [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/846279v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/846279v1), which seems to outperform Alphafold with a very concise architecture. Code and model is at [https://github.com/gjoni/trRosetta](https://github.com/gjoni/trRosetta)

<comment><USER3> Do you know if he turned to deep learning after AlphaFold's stunning performance at CASP13 in 2018? I haven't heard anything from that particular niche since the "AlphaFold @ CASP13: "What just happened?"" blog post: [https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold- casp...](https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold-casp13-what- just-happened/)

<comment><USER2> The author of the article you linked also has this repo, to welcome the public to start training [https://github.com/aqlaboratory/proteinnet](https://github.com/aqlaboratory/proteinnet) , following in the same veins as Imagenet

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A colleague of mine in chemistry gave his thoughts on AI for protein folding recently: "things keep getting better, but they're nowhere close to being good".

I think part of the issue at play here is the cost of confirming success, not simply the cost of generating a plausible solution. In most domains of AI that have shown success, the cost of confirmation is trivial (look at the image and check the label) whereas the cost of generating a plausible solution was high.

Like many AI fields, I believe that the real breakthrough will not be a direct approach, but an approach the solves the most pressing barrier to using AI in the first place.

<comment><USER5> > but an approach the solves the most pressing barrier to using AI in the > first place.

what do you think is the "most pressing barrier to using AI"?

<comment><USER6> From my perspective, in the life-sciences space, it's certainly the lack of high quality data. To be more specific, there's tons of data, but it's sloppy, lossy, and non standardized.

Many of those discussing the promise of near future AI are either academics or new to the field. The real data landscape is so much worse than they would imagine it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The best take on AlphaFold: [https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold- casp...](https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold-casp13-what- just-happened/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Eagerly waiting for CASP14 in 2020. CASP is a biennial competition. AlphaFold participated in CASP13 in 2018.

</comment><comment><USER9> A bit off topic, but what the hell does the word "Alpha" mean in their marketing? Are they just going to call every AI they create from now on "Alpha_"

<comment><USER10> It probably has something to do with the parent company being named Alpha_Bet.

<comment><USER9> Damn you're right

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amazing. The difference between their number one position and the the second is a greater difference than any other two consecutive positions.

Not an especially important metric, but impressive nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hope, it will help other folding research projects too, like Folding@Home[1], Rosetta@Home[2].

[1] [https://foldingathome.org/](https://foldingathome.org/)

[2] [https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/](https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/)</comment>


A Stroke of Genius: Striving for Greatness in All You Do - <AUTHOR> http://www.mccurley.org/advice/hamming_advice.html <comment><USER2> what a great read.</comment>


How much improvement is possible in Rails' ActionCable's performance? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/unanswered/How-much-improvement-is-possible-in-Rails-ActionCables-performance?share=1 <comment><USER2> Nice question, waiting for the answers.</comment>


Valve releases Steam Controller CAD geometry so you can mod it - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-releases-steam-controller-cad-geometry-so-you-can-mod-it/?utm_content=bufferb2303&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer-pcgamer <comment><USER2> They did the same for the Steam VR motion controllers. We call them the doughnut sticks for fun at the office, but they are really incredible to use. It was a huge blessing for us that Valve included the exact model for us to modify and reskin, because having 1-1 mapping of what you're seeing in the simulation and what you're actually feeling is huge. We did the same with the PlaystationVR Move controllers, which you can see in an image here: [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TNDizq2W4eY/VvMWu0mcx_I/AAAAAAAAL...](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TNDizq2W4eY/VvMWu0mcx_I/AAAAAAAALXs/trhSiLitB78s-bHKGkn85m-9KD29NPeIA/s1600/XING%2BMove%2BBeach%2B2.jpg) This is just a simple material change for now, but we plan on doing design modifications to the mesh data eventually. Likely we would only change the geometry of areas the hands don't touch, like the tracking sphere, so as to keep the player visual/haptic continuity.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a link to the location of the CAD files for the Vive controllers, or are you talking about OpenVR render models that are obj format and, afaik, not suitable for 3D printing custom, real world, hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is actually, a pretty big step forward in my opinion. It makes it feel, for the first time (to me at least), that the company is replying to the feedback of the customers. They _know_ that people want to mod it, and rather than force them to use arcane methods to hack the current controller into their desired one, they can simply alter it digitally.

As an aside, I'd love to see a full-metal case for it, only using plastic when needed (the buttons and touchpads?)

<comment><USER5> Valve actually said they would open the design right when they disclosed the controller project so it was kind of expected.

<comment><USER6> $Companies have a tendency to say what will get them the sale, or even include features initially... and then fail to come through with their promises.

So it is a breath of fresh air to see this happen.

<comment><USER7> Call me crazy but I can't help but think that the large majority of Valve's customers don't care whether the design is open or not.

<comment><USER8> They probably don't, but they probably had some people internally pushing for this, and seeing how it likely wouldn't cost them much but had the potential to generate a lot of good will and potentially increase demand for their product. Why would they not do it?

<comment><USER9> Not that it's much of hinderance these days but it will make the knock-offs easier and quicker to produce, and of a higher quality. I know the controllers are assembled in the US[1], don't know if the injection molding is too.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCgnWqoP4MM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCgnWqoP4MM)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those who haven't gotten their hands on a Steam controller yet, I was very impressed. The software is still quite immature (par for Valve), but the haptic feedback in the hardware is immensely cool and the potential configurability is insane. It really is a great middle-ground between mouse+keyboard and traditional gamepads.

<comment><USER11> It is a pretty excellent controller. It's kind of amazing how many keyboard/mouse only games you can comfortably with a little tweaking of the keybindings.

I haven't tried using it directly with my computer, just for couch gaming with my TV and Steam Link. The Steam Link is also pretty cool, but has some serious issues with crashing Steam on my PC - not sure whether it is the Link itself, or Big Picture mode, but it is super irritating to have to get up and go restart Steam in the other room when it craps out in the middle of a game. The Wake-On-LAN feature has never worked for me...

<comment><USER12> Its hard to convince people of the utility though. It also has a pretty large ramp-up time.

A friend of mine keeps trying mine out on stuff like cities skylines and determining it's no good. Its somewhat unsurprising, skylines is a very work- table feeling game; replacing a mouse would feel really weird (and take a while to really feel decent).

For me it clicked demoing DOOM mods; it felt great on the controller and I could throw it up on my TV.

Stardew Valley feels pretty good too and while you can play RTS games with it (control groups on the left pad), it won't compare with a mouse anytime soon.

<comment><USER13> Stardew Valley might not the best example as it was designed to work also with a gamepad. You control the mouse cursor with the right analog stick and the player with the left stick.

<comment><USER12> Ah, well. I've been playing a lot of it lately. Its the same with the steam controller except the touchpad is a really nice mouse.

The steam controller probably should still work well in scenerioes where a controller is intended. Admittedly, I don't think it's as good for third person games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is actually really awesome- one of my biggest complaints with the steam controller was how the build quality of it felt a little "cheap" (i.e. light & plastic-y when compared to an xbox controller). The technology inside the controller is superb, and I think they had to sacrifice a little on build quality to bring it down to that ~50$ price range.

Very interested to see what kind of crazy improvements the community develops.

<comment><USER15> Same designer made the Xbox controller as the Steam one.

Lightness was a design goal not a shortfall for the team.

Reasoning was that VR is the future, the less fatigue the better.

<comment><USER16> The Steam Controller isn't for VR. You're thinking of the Vive controllers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting. What about firmware and the protocol? Will they open source / document it too?

<comment><USER18> The valve controller seriously needs this, the driver/steam integration is badly broken. I'm pretty sure the open source community can do better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this a first when consumer product company releases CAD geometry for their parts?

Suppose I would like to produce a modified replacement plastic part for my phone; how much would that cost? For starters, a different color interchangeable panel for a phone with interchangeable panel, such as Lumia 435 or Xperia U [http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_u-4437.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_u-4437.php) but, eventually, an extended size battery and a cover for it.

<comment><USER20> A handful of companies have done this, including Dyson.

Everyone is pretty concerns about the IP of their physical designs... it's their main asset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be pretty rad if you could get controller cases custom printed to fit your hands.

<comment><USER22> Sounds like my dream industry where a fully automated tailoring machine was combined with body scanning. So you could, once a year or whenever, get a scan and have your body in the system, and from there, be able to a) shop online seeing clothes rendered on your body type b) with enough maturity for the system, have the ability to have your favorite styles created in your favorite fabrics on-demand, ready to pick up at a local store which keeps the tailor machine and spools of material handy (with more a delivery away).

<comment><USER23> If you really want to dream, throw 3d-weaving into that process to make things actually fit your form instead of flat, sewn-together patches stretching over you.

<comment><USER8> We're getting there: [http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/24028-the-art-of- engi...](http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/24028-the-art-of- engineering-a-3d-printed-petal-dress-by-nervous-system.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> direct source: [http://steamcommunity.com/games/353370/announcements](http://steamcommunity.com/games/353370/announcements)

article doesn't really add anything

</comment><comment><USER25> So now someone can make a back panel that has a slot for the USB dongle ?

<comment><USER26> YES thank you. Or at least some kind of magnetic connection that's reliable, even if a partial indentation and that would support a fairly strong magnet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Half-Life 3 confirmed

... No wait</comment>


Gmail developer says Google Chrome OS will fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/gmail-developer-says-google-chrome-os-will-fail-915745 <comment><USER2> This title is horribly misleading ( it is from the original article ) and has little to do with what was actually said. Saying you think something will be merged w/ another product isn't saying you think it will fail.</comment>


The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/ <comment><USER2> Previously:

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11608100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11608100)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11588698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11588698)

</comment><comment><USER3> If someone wants to hear some counter arguments: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26452374](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26452374)

<comment><USER4> That's a pretty straightforward slaughterfest :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does Tasty Wheat taste like?

<comment><USER4> chicken, obviously.</comment></comment>


Survey: 1 in 4 Japanese has wanted to take own lives in the past - <AUTHOR> http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201609080054.html <comment><AUTHOR> "24,025 cases of suicide were still reported in 2015, meaning that an average of 65 people killed themselves every day in Japan last year."

How can you address a problem of this scale in a society where talking to others about person issues is taboo?</comment>


Microsoft still paying people to search - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10053855-75.html

<comment><USER2> Just for note google used to pay 1-3 cents per a search sent its way from any site (I used a homestead page) to get me $300-500 checks /mo during highschool.

(from the new 2001 index) [http://www.google.com/search2001/search?hl=en&q=google+a...](http://www.google.com/search2001/search?hl=en&q=google+affiliate&btnG=Google+Search)

<comment><USER3> No chance that google is still paying is there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surely paying your users isn't the answer - for starters it's almost an admission it doens't stack up to the competition on it's own! It's also only going to insentivise a small group of users that are very likely to dump the product as soon as the payments stop. They've got to stop looking for gimicks and compete on product.</comment>


NUMA Siloing in the FreeBSD Network Stack [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.freebsd.org/~gallatin/talks/euro2019.pdf <comment><USER2> Isn't it great that we work in an industry where a company like Netflix, which has increasing competition lately, just shares potential competitive advantages like this?

I get that, in part, this is a way to get people excited to work for Netflix, however, the people working on this are, probably, pretty proud of what they achieved and thus like to share it with us, their colleagues at other places of work and they have the freedom to do so because of our industry's great track record of knowledge sharing.

<comment><USER3> Realistically, Disney, or whomever competition, is not going to have enough technical expertise to deploy FreeBSD.

<comment> o-__-o I trained the entire Disney offshore replacement team. They understand FreeBSD very well.

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, does this mean that they're using (or have used) FreeBSD in their infrastructure or for some other purpose, or just a high level of Unix competence in that team? Any interesting details that you're able to share?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Author here: The talk will be on Youtube eventually, and a lot of points are explained in more detail in the actual talk. I was just going to bed in advance of traveling back to the states tomorrow, but I'll try to answer any question in the morning.

<comment><USER6> Why is the hw.model on EPYC redacted, when the chips are listed in the slides? Secret engineering sample? :)

<comment><USER7> He said in the talk that yes, the chips used in these measurements were not publicly released. IIRC he said that they were slightly lower clock speed than the publicly available chips.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice to see AMD replacing Intel, they've gone with EPYC 7551 & 7502P, from 2x Intel "Skylake" / "Cascade Lake" Xeon

edit: it looks like they hit 200GB/s with both Intel and AMD

<comment><USER9> It's disappointing to hear that AMD has not provided adequate performance monitoring tools though. I would have thought by the second generation of Zen that this would be an area that AMD had given attention to.

<comment><USER10> AMD's engineering team is much smaller, and they've always been behind on performance tools. HPC people have been complaining ever since Opteron. It's probably not going to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how this would compare with Receive Side Scaling (RSS), which you can use to pin NIC queues to cpus, and then pin the rest of the handling to the same cpu, avoiding a significant amount of interprocess communication. NUMA concerns may be more important than CPU pining within a domain though.

<comment><USER12> RSS is more about spreading a workload over multiple cores to not overwhelm any single core, particularly in high PPS situations.

This is about PCI-E devices being hooked up to a NUMA node to avoid saturating the link between nodes. There's a limited amount of bandwidth, and crossing nodes saturates this and increases latency, both of which will have limiting effects on your total possible throughput.

RSS configuration doesn't need you to set up your hardware in any specific way, with this you need to ensure that the set of disks and nic are hooked up to coupled domains - e.g. if you place the two NICs on the same NUMA node, then no software configuration is going to fix that, and you'd have to go and physically rearrange things to fix it.

You might still use RSS to distributed the workload across multiple cores within that NUMA domain when using this setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If they are just serving/streaming static data from a single server, wouldn't an entirely different architecture make more sense? For example, why even use a CPU? They have the financial resources to build their own hardware, e.g. encryption ASICs, and they can do interesting things like bundle the pipeline for multiple viewers watching the same movie at the same timepoint.

<comment><USER14> Commodity server gear is really cheap, and is more or less "fast enough". The wins from serving say, >1Tbps from a 1U box with an ASIC or FPGA is negated by the downsides of having such a large failure domain, and the cost of development for what would be a pretty low volume part.

We talk about this stuff every once in a while, but it doesn't really make sense to do right now. (Disclaimer: I work at Netflix)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it still accurate that for network bound servers that FreeBSD still outperforms Linux?

<comment><USER16> I think once you get to a certain traffic level you are forced to do kernel- bypass stuff like DPDK. Regardless of Linux or FreeBSD being the kernel.

<comment><USER17> If it's just serving files you don't necessarily need DPDK/XDP. For server- grade hardware there now is P2P-DMA and TLS accelerators which can offload everything to peripherials while still using normal socket APIs. You get NVMe -(PCIe)-> crypto accelerator -(PCIe)-> ethernet for the bulk of the data.

Neither CPU nor main memory see any of the network packets as long as they stay on the happy path. Only connection setup, DMA orchestration and occasional TLS renegotiation have to be handled.

<comment><USER6> I know Chelsio has crypto directly on the NIC, but are dedicated crypto accelerator cards a thing and are they ever worth it? Why leave the CPU idle when the CPU itself is a good crypto accelerator (AES-NI, ARMv8 crypto)?

AMD Ryzen has a built-in crypto "decelerator" — a FreeBSD driver was written for the crypto engine, but it's disabled by default because it made everything slower than AES-NI. (Though I guess it would be funny to use it to mine bitcoin, since it supports SHA256. AMD — Advanced Mining Devices!)

<comment><USER18> Intel has a product line called QAT ("QuickAssisT"?) that does crypto acceleration, as well as compression. I don't know how performant it is. There are definitely several older crypto accelerators that were faster than CPUs of the time; I don't know if any of them (outside of QAT) is still relevant.

The AMD Zen1 Crypto Co-Processor is indeed slower than AESNI; I think it's mostly used by stuff like SecureBoot, TPM, etc, and also used internally by the CPU to generate RDRAND/RDSEED data. It was probably never intended to be used by OS drivers and certainly not intended to be any kind of accelerator.

<comment><USER19> Supposedly QAT is built into the chipsets of Skylake and above now. I've never seen anyone try it, though.

<comment><USER18> By chipset, you mean northbridge? Or the CPU?

The part I know of that is built into the CPU is a DMA engine called I/OAT; it just does DMA and maybe basic checksum and RAID transformations. It is sometimes confused with QAT (I've personally confused the two...):

[https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless- network/acc...](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless- network/accel-technology.html)

<comment><USER19> The northbridge. my understanding is that they no longer sell the discrete cards to perform these tasks, and instead offload it to chips that come on the boards.

<comment><USER18> That might be true, but you can still buy the cards from 3rd party resellers, e.g., [https://www.newegg.com/p/2AS-006R-00046](https://www.newegg.com/p/2AS-006R-00046) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Linux network stack has been the bane of my existence trying to squeeze more performance out of KeyDB. I really hope it gets this kind of love in the future.

On Linux there's a spinlock in do soft_irq that blocks even in non-blocking IO.

<comment><USER19> Why not use DPDK? All of these problems go away, and people have reported hitting 1Tbps on a single node.

<comment><USER20> We have!

[https://docs.keydb.dev/blog/2019/06/17/blog- post/](https://docs.keydb.dev/blog/2019/06/17/blog-post/)

Still though I hate seeing needless waste. There's no reason the active thread needs to block on a soft_irq when there are unused cores to process them.

<comment><USER19> Can you move all softirqs into different cores? That's usually one of the dpdk tuning steps.

<comment><USER20> My reading of the source code is there is no way to prevent this. The spinlock is guarding the check which determines if there is work to do.

Its been a few months and I had intended to go back and try using a try_lock(). But I'm not normally a kernel dev.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This may be a dumb question, but why would streaming video need to be encrypted? Is this just part of the "encrypt everything" best practice these days? Is there metadata accompanying the video data that shouldn't be unencrypted? Is it just so it's not possible to eavesdrop on the fact that I'm watching "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"?

<comment><USER22> The main reason is probably DRM.

<comment><USER6> This is about TLS. DRM would probably be another layer of encryption inside?

<comment> o-__-o TLS can be used as a DRM, preventing MITM caching attempts. However that also requires a client that cares

<comment><USER18> That isn't what's going on here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So why is it important to have a multisocket NUMA machine? Why not just save yourself a lot of hassle by having one socket? I know that the previous generation AMD machine had unavoidable NUMA but the new one doesn't.

<comment><USER18> This talk is about Zen+ Epyc, not Zen2 (which is where the non-cache memory gets uniform). I don't know if they have release quality Epyc 7003 (Zen2) samples available yet, and if they do, NFLX probably isn't allowed to publish benchmarks about them. There's almost certainly still some value in their existing NUMA work even on Zen2, as things like L1/L2/L3 cache have locality even if memory and PCIe does not.

Pretty sure Intel single socket of this generation is totally non-viable for this workload due to lack of PCIe lanes. Maybe viable when Intel gets gen4 PCIe.

<comment><USER23> Skylake-X has 44 PCI 3.0 lanes, that's 352GT/s or about 345gbps application bandwidth. It's certainly more than enough to push 100gbps from disk to net. These guys are pushing 200gbps, but they're doing it with two CPUs, two sets of NVMe devices, and two NICs, and a bunch of hacks to make the operating system pretend all this stuff is not in the same box. It seems way more straight-forward to me if they had made it all be actually NOT in the same box!

<comment><USER18> > Skylake-X has 44 PCI 3.0 lanes, that's 352GT/s or about 345gbps application > bandwidth. It's certainly more than enough to push 100gbps from disk to net. > These guys are pushing 200gbps

We're in total agreement :-). Their dataflow model requires something like 2x that in PCIe bandwidth and 4x in memory in the optimal case, as covered in the slides. 2x200 gbps = 400 gbps, which is a bit more than 345 gbps.

Maybe they could push 345/2 = 172 Gbps out of a single Skylake-X, best case. For some workloads, that might be the right local optima! They must have decided that the marginal cost of a 2P system was worth the extra ~25 Gbps to saturate the 200 Gbps pipe fully.

> they're doing it with two CPUs, two sets of NVMe devices, and two NICs, and > a bunch of hacks to make the operating system pretend all this stuff is not > in the same box. It seems way more straight-forward to me if they had made > it all be actually NOT in the same box!

I've spoken with NFLX engineers in the past and my recollection is that in many installations, NFLX only get to install one box. (Or something like that. Might just be a cost thing.) So they need to make that one box fast.

I guess the other factor is the IP management overhead discussed in the slides. Two boxes necessitates the costly 2nd IP, as far as I know. It's hard to imagine the cost of an IP address dominating the marginal cost of a 2P socket system and 2nd Xeon, but I guess AWS is friggin expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I assumed these were cache servers that went into ISPs, does anyone know what they mean by "Increases AWS cloud management overhead" on a couple of the slides?

<comment><USER25> Guessing that they have managed services in aws for maintaining all the nodes and where they are. If each box has 2x the ips, they would need more mgmt resources to keep track of what is on that box, if it's online, stats, etc.

<comment><USER5> Yes, exactly. When we first started the project, I was told that multiple IPs were not an option for that reason.

<comment><USER8> Was that a technical or administrative restriction? I'm interested in how an organization makes a decision like that, and then what channels are used to reverse it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What a progress! In 2015 they were serving only ~9gb/sec https per server: [https://people.freebsd.org/~rrs/asiabsd_2015_tls.pdf](https://people.freebsd.org/~rrs/asiabsd_2015_tls.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER27> Are those changes in 12.1? If not, what would be a time frame?

<comment><USER18> Not all of them are landed in CURRENT yet, much less stable/12\. They'll be in 13.0; I can't speak to any future stable 12.2. On the other hand, CURRENT is pretty solid. A lot of folks, Netflix included, just run CURRENT.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Wait, they run CURRENT _in production?_ Is that... safe?

<comment><USER9> There's at least one video online [1] that talks about Netflix's process for internal FreeBSD releases. They do 5 weeks of development and then 5 weeks of testing.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcyQBup- Gto](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcyQBup-Gto) (about the 12 minute mark)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's my understanding that many organizations prefer *BSDs over Linux not because BSD is more performant ... but because you're way more likely to get your organizations patch accepted into the upstream than Linux.

<comment><USER29> I doubt that is the case. The FreeBSD guys can be just as hardass about submissions as the Linux folks. However, there are considerations:

1) GPL vs BSD licenses. Companies like BSD licenses much more than GPL licenses. GPL adherents can whine all they want, but this is simply true.

2) __BSD has a long history of having very good networking stacks--albeit on specific hardware. Linux supported _everything_ initially--including really cheap crap--and consequently its networking stack was a lot more ad hoc. FreeBSD chose specific hardware for stability--but then supported that much more completely.

3) FreeBSD has a long history of being the servers in Internet infrastructure. There are specific architectural choices in the kernel because of this. There is probably still some inertia, too, in that the kind of old guard people who _REALLY_ grok networking are still more comfortable on FreeBSD machines.

Consequently, it is hardly surprising that an advanced networking development would take place on FreeBSD.

<comment><USER30> Re: 1 and 2.

Given that there are vendors that use FreeBSD for their appliances, they really don't want to have to send out techs to customers sites to fix things. So when the appliance makers choose hardware, they talk to component vendors about quality.

It's no surprise that you see commits from Intel and Chelsio employees in the FreeBSD logs: companies like Netflix, Isilon, NetApp, and Juniper partner with them to make sure things aren't buggy.

These collaborations lead to point 3.</comment></comment></comment>


Awesomeness Of Data Interpretation by Manu Sharma, Data Scientist, LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://lurnq.com/lesson/the-awesomeness-of-data-interpretation-manu-sharma-principal-data-scientist-linkedin/

<comment><USER2> "Today there are two new registrations with the site every second..." makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. It's so contradictory to the very claim that data is awesome.

Here's a statistic....people do things, and they do them every few seconds. And this will blow your mind......as the population grows, more people will be doing more things. Sorry to blow your mind so early in the day.

<comment><USER3> I mostly agree. The form "x events every minute" is useless when you need a ratio to make sense of things. Current fave: the US borrows $2B every day, which sounds impressive, but is 0.01% of the $15,800,000M US GDP. So, in most cases, the formulation is a way of impressing rubes (who don't have a sense of the denominator) with how big some quantity is, when the quantity may not be big in a meaningful way.

But for someone who has a sense of the denominator, it may be useful. E.g. if you're provisioning servers for LinkedIn, you could probably estimate how many you've got to stand up every day/week/month/year based on 2 registrations/second.</comment></comment>


Californians love to recycle, but it's no longer doing any good - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-recycling-problems-california-20180709-story.html <comment><USER2> > _There's a stick in a bill by Sen. Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont). It would > require all beverage containers sold in California to contain a minimum > amount of recycled material. CalRecycle would establish the minimum._

This would appear to disadvantage biodegradable beverage containers. Why not just tax the non-recycled portions instead of establishing a minimum, using the tax proceeds to buy recycling scrap?

</comment><comment><USER3> Reduce, reuse, recycle.

We are still at stage three.

</comment><comment><USER4> That site is region locked. Mirror please.

<comment><USER5> In these cases, try archive.is

That article was previously archived: [http://archive.is/rzzhg](http://archive.is/rzzhg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't read it. Is this the same that what has been happening since 2016?

Snipped from Bloomberg: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-06/californi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-06/california- s-recycling-crisis-sends-billions-of-bottles-and-cans-into-landfills)

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like the same story as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17368168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17368168).

<comment><USER8> A few additional details from an interview with a local recycler ...

> One big problem, he says, is mixed paper — newsprint, magazines, junk mail. > China no longer wants it. So it's being sold to smaller markets in India, > Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries. The issue is compounded > because, unlike with Chinese vessels, there are fewer ships making round > trips from Southeast Asia to California.

> "A year ago," Potashner says, "we were getting $100 a ton for newsprint. Now > we're getting an average $5…. Revenue has fallen off the cliff."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European > countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options > that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We > continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all > readers with our award-winning journalism.

Bye.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure how much legal protection such silliness buys them. I'm sitting in an airport lounge in Frankfurt and just flipped on a VPN to access the article. I can't imagine that whether or not I access the website via the IP the airport lounge gave me or via my VPN IP in the US makes much difference in the real world as to whether or not they would have obligations under the GDPR.

<comment><USER11> _I can 't imagine that whether or not I access the website via the IP the airport lounge gave me or via my VPN IP in the US makes much difference in the real world as to whether or not they would have obligations under the GDPR._

The GDPR only applies to foreign companies if "it is apparent that the controller or processor envisages offering services to data subjects in one or more Member States in the Union." (Recital 23). Blocking the whole EU makes it hard to argue that they do so.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What open source projects have had mass consumer adoption? - <AUTHOR>

I constantly see developers on HN talking about open-source consumer projects they've worked on, or open-source alternatives of popular start-ups. I appreciate open-source as much as the next developer, and I often use Apache projects, GNU's Not Unix tools, or open-source repositories in my projects. I struggle to think, however, of consumer-oriented open-source projects that have been successful. I know that open-source tools are the foundation for many start-ups, but I'm wondering about software that was actually developed for consumer end-users. The only ones I can think of are Firefox (but Mozilla is really run like a corporation that just so happens to be nonprofit) and 2048. <comment><USER2> A bit over-reaching, but wouldn't Android fit the bill here?

Last I recall, it is open-source and exists on like 200 million consumer phones (definitely more by now).

</comment><comment><USER3> LaTeX definitely fits to your question.

</comment><comment><USER4> LibreOffice is fairly popular</comment>


China Busts a $3B Underground Bank - random-username https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/business/china-underground-bank-3-billion.html <comment><AUTHOR> The Chinese art of selectively enforcing their laws to the detriment of those that won't play ball with the government really makes it hard to believe Xi's press-tornado of successful anti-corruption measures.

The government has been actively extorting international companies into "joint" ventures. These ventures essentially require "treats" (as an insider told me) every several months. These treats would be manufacturing processes, engineering drawings of proprietary IP, or technical training for their engineering staff. Boards of Directors can't ignore the scale of the Chinese market, but it comes at the cost of essentially giving away your business prospects within the country inside of 15 year window.

China's current long-term strategy seems to be:

1) Spend an egregious amount to woo top talent [1], [2]

2) Learn from them over the next 5-10 year period [2]

3) Transcend the need for foreigners in China

It's a pretty terrifying environment and many Chinese investors are desperate to get their money into foreign investments [3]. Instead of laundering illegally earned money, they are laundering legally earned money that they can't get out of China. At least that is the hearsay that I've heard from several different sources (VC events, friends of friends etc).

[1]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/world/asia/china- soccer-x...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/world/asia/china-soccer-xi- jinping.html)

[2] Qi Lu, Baidu's COO YC interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSydk0XzxEE&t=351s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSydk0XzxEE&t=351s)

[3]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/china- dri...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/china-drills-down- into-forex-transactions-as-money-exits-abroad)

<comment><USER2> I have no idea about China or Chinese economy but your whole comment consists of serious-looking references accompanied by "behind the doors" gossips. All your comment makes me doubt regular Economist/NY doom-saying about Chinese economy. Do you have trustable independent references for the below claims?

* Selectively enforcing their laws to the detriment

* Extorting international companies into "joint" ventures

* "Treats" (as an insider told me) every several months.

* Hearsay that I've heard from several different sources

<comment><USER3> > Selectively enforcing their laws to the detriment

Excerpt relating the Weiquan movement[0]:

"Recently, some judges have started to believe that to be a judge you just have to strictly apply the law in a case. In fact, this kind of concept is erroneous [...] all the legal formulations have a clear political background and direction [...] We must stamp out the kind of narrow viewpoint that thinks that you can also do court work by having judicial independence."

* Extorting international companies into "joint" ventures

Look at some of these articles on starting a China JV[1]. Man are the caveats. So many ways to shoot yourself in the foot. Then look at a list of sectors WFOE (Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprises) are allowed in. Then check what licenses are required to operate, and whether this precludes entities with majority foreign control, any amount of foreign investment (e.g. Internet Cultural Media License 网络文化证), etc. Then look at the costs of acquiring such a license. Remember that your Chinese competitors will likely just ignore that until they're large enough to be fined for it. Remember that they'll get a slap on the wrist as long as they play ball, and you'll get deported.

* "Treats" (as an insider told me) every several months.

Look at how China ate up high-speed rail in a couple of years. All 国产 now.

[0] Huang Jiayou, "Considerations on some issues related to the education in socialist rule of law viewpoints," China Laws ([http://www.lawbase.com.cn](http://www.lawbase.com.cn) ), 13 June 2006. [1] [https://www.chinalawblog.com/tag/jv/](https://www.chinalawblog.com/tag/jv/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> China is absolutely doing the right thing in cracking the power of the private banking system. Having a powerful private banking system is the recipe for disaster, since the predatory (rentier) nature of banking suffocates the development of industry and even the long term survival of a consumer base. It is funny that this was very well understood by economists an politicians as far back as the 19th century but it has been largely ignored throughout the 20th and 21st century. Now we see the US and the EU largely controlled by banking interests, with very little if any taxes applied to financial gains and little support for industrial development. It is not a surprise that practically the entire industrial complex has moved to China, with the exception of highly subsidized industries such as weapons production.

<comment><USER5> This is pretty fine high level grade bullshit. (Or Poe's law strikes again!)

The not-too-representationally selected/elected leaders of China want to keep the power of pegging their currency, which is very essential in a centrally planned economy, at the cost of personal freedoms. (And the yearly 50 000 USD limit is more than enough for poor people to send all of their savings away to a fraudster though, so it's not absolutely the right thing.)

A powerful private banking system is very different from a shadow bank that uses identity theft/fraud to store and gambling to exchange currencies. A healthy banking system helps allocate credit (which is risk), but since the barriers to entry to the finance sector is high (cost of regulatory compliance, IT security risks), margins are low (products are fungible, a mortgage is a mortgage, a savings/checking account is a savings/checking account, it doesn't matter which bank you chose, so you'll use the cheapest) and network effects are also high, we don't really see a healthy banking sector. (Thus risks are largely concentrated in too big to fail banks, and that's why the new big bank requirements include systemic exposure stress test regulations: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_III) \- of course, it's easy to argue that this just moves bubbles somewhere else.)

As to the other claims ("Now we see the US and the EU largely controlled by banking interests" \- no, we don't, we see populism/nationalism/chauvinism, we see good old regulatory capture [the FCC Chairman is an ex-Verizon lawyer currently playing dumb for a lot of money, or just out of spite, the EPA lead is a proud climate change denier, the current UK leaders are typical isolationists, and so on], "very little if any taxes applied to financial gains" \- cca average of 15% is not very little [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax) and "the entire industrial complex has moved to China" \- no, only the labor and raw materials intensive things [which is of course an enormous slice of the pie], but nowadays the problem is with lack of effective retraining in the advanced economies.)

<comment><USER4> This is just a bunch of BS to try to explain away the fact that the US economy is geared towards advancing the interests of banks and other financial institutions. It is amazing that you think that a 15% tax rate is a lot when even under the proposed tax breaks all other comercial activities will pay more than that in taxes. As a result, the US in fact subsidizes an activity which is not the primary producer of ANYTHING other than interests and fees, that is, a drag in the economy.

Later you claim that is just fine to support big banks because said banks exist to "spread risks". But of course the biggest risk for a country is in the existence of banks that are too big to fail, since they need to be saved by the government. Therefore, banks in fact perform ZERO risk reduction. They CLAIM to take risks away from the system, but when a crisis occur the whole tab of bad betts will be paid by the citizens of a particular country, not by bankers.

As for control of the US and EU, just look at who is responsible for economic policy in these places and tell me if they're not from the same half dozen banks that are already deemed to be too big to fail! What a coincidence...

<comment><USER6> I don't get the revulsion towards bailouts. It isn't as if the money is handed freely without it being expected back. How are taxpayers hurt in the process? In fact, "the government and taxpayers made a $23 billion profit from the AIG bailout." [1]

[1]: [https://www.thebalance.com/aig-bailout-cost-timeline- bonuses...](https://www.thebalance.com/aig-bailout-cost-timeline-bonuses- causes-effects-3305693)

<comment><USER7> >> In fact, "the government and taxpayers made a $23 billion profit from the AIG bailout."

The results do not justify the process. Would small business owners be offered the same loans that were unjustifiable based on assets:liabilities? I can answer that for you right now as someone who has cash in the bank to cover a six figure loan but can't get one due to a 690ish credit score: No, they won't.

That we made a profit on (some of the) bailouts doesn't matter. The same process would never be offered to 99.999% of the other citizens of this country.

<comment><USER8> You don't remember the 99.999% being offered unjustifiable mortgages? That was a big part of the financial crisis.

<comment><USER7> Er, the banks were bailed out of those terrible decisions. Individual homeowners were left to hold the bag.

<comment><USER8> If you wanted to bail out the home speculators individually, the analogous approach would be to buy their houses at below the prices the speculators had paid, essentially a short sale.

Remember TARP bought the assets for close to their realized value, so the loss was already priced in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This country is an enigma to me, I hear conflicting and convincing arguments as to its economic strength and weakness, that it is on the precipice of collapse or overtaking the United States. I tend to believe that they are weaker than they are strong, but this is based in bias rather than sound evidence.

The party leadership appears to be tightening their control over the party and the very wealthy. To me this feels like they are preparing for upheaval by eliminating their likely competitors before a catalytic event.

<comment><USER10> Does it have to be one thing or the other? Like the United States, China is a large and complex country. Pollution is horrible, there is a serious shortage of professional skills, and a looming demographic issue. However, at the same time, growth is strong and the country is still very much a developing economy, which means that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit that can be modernized for economic gains.

I don't think it needs to be an issue of China either taking over the world or collapsing. In all likelihood, China will continue to develop along its current track, with China becoming the largest economy sometime in the next 20 years, and presumably the largest military power sometime thereafter.

It feels like the real issue is in the US. The United States needs to come to terms with the fact that, for the next generation, it will have a geopolitical and strategic rival of roughly equal strength and influence, and needs to start building a coherent industrial policy to match that reality.

<comment><USER11> Pollution is probably a price that a country needs to pay in its early stages of modernization.

Militarily, China is checked by Vietnam, South Korea, Japan....and drum roll...INDIA. No large country like India wants a military monster next door, so India will have to get strong. Plus the counties in the South China sea have beef with China. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea#Territorial_cl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea#Territorial_claims)

On the other hand, India _might_ have to deal with Pakistan and South Korea with North Korea. Russia is also not a fan of China, Siberia once was Chinese and it's virtually free of people. [https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/03/where-do- bo...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/03/where-do-borders-need- to-be-redrawn/why-china-will-reclaim-siberia)

<comment><USER12> You make it sound like all these countries are eternal enemies, unlikely to ever cooperate when the future could actually look quite different.

Because I don't think it's an accident that the BRISC New Development Bank is located in China, it's also no accident that Putin has been very vocal about removing the US$ as the world reserve currency and establishing a "bipolar world order" to replace current de-facto US hegemony.

<comment><USER11> _You make it sound like all these countries are eternal enemies, unlikely to ever cooperate when the future could actually look quite different._

When your large neighbor in that area, increases military spending every year why do think that is? To fight Belgium? They are ETERNAL neighbors and have eternal (well in our timescale) interests. See what Russia did in Ukraine? The same could happen to Mongolia, happened to Tibet and is happening in the South Sea where China is essentially planting their flag.

Trade with them, but ...

<comment><USER12> > When your large neighbor in that area, increases military spending every > year why do think that is?

I wonder how often Canada or Mexico asked themselves that very same question?

> They are ETERNAL neighbors and have eternal (well in our timescale) > interests.

These can still end up aligning, case in point: Not too long ago nobody would have thought it possible for the British and their former colonial settlers to exist in peace. These days they don't only just exist in peace, they are pretty much partners in crime.

The same applies to Europe: Nations that formerly despised each other for decades and centuries are now working for their common interests. I don't see why similar couldn't be possible in Asia/Eastern Europe/Africa.

> See what Russia did in Ukraine?

Protect their interests from an, very obviously, staged "Western coup"? I really hate how that whole Ukraine situation is reduced to this narrative of "Look what Russia did to Ukraine!" like that whole situation just started with the "green men" appearing. The green men had been a reaction, not the action which started events.

<comment><USER13> invading sovereign country and annexing part of it IS NOT protecting their interests. Also "obviously staged western coup" IS NOT obvious.

<comment><USER12> > invading sovereign country and annexing part of it IS NOT protecting their > interests.

Unless that sovereign country happens to be Iraq and you skip that whole "annexation" part in favor of just leveling the whole place. Why is the US allowed to "protect their interests" on the other side of the world, but if Russia does the same, in a place that's literally their backyard, it's suddenly a crime?

Eastern Ukraine was of immense military relevance to Russia, it's where parts of their rockets used to be built, parts of their military hardware [0]. Crimea has been the home to the Black Sea Fleet for centuries, it's the most important port for the Russian marine.

Those are all facts people rather ignore in favor of this naive "Russia just goes around annexing countries for no reason whatsoever" narrative.

> Also "obviously staged western coup" IS NOT obvious.

I guess "Fuck the EU Nuland" handing out cookies was just some emotional gesture with no relevance, same with all those other US/EU officials showing up on Euromaidan and pumping up the crowd. Just like pumping billions of $ in the country and sponsoring "Yats our man" trough NATO/NED and even the DoT [1], feel free to look up the other organizations on that list, there's a certain "theme" to them.

It's also not like this has never happened before, it actually has [2] but this time the result did stick, that's why Russia was pressured into acting.

[0] [https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-military- equipment/25...](https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-military- equipment/25312911.html)

[1] [http://openukraine.org/en/about/partners](http://openukraine.org/en/about/partners)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa)

<comment><USER13> where I defended US actions in Iraq? I did not. All this whataboutism distracts from main point - Russia invaded Ukraine, sovereign country, and that's a fact, regardless of how you turn that event for your convenience.

I understand benefits for Russia to annex Crimea and so on, but still it's a crime and legitimacy of this action is not questionable.

<comment><USER12> You can replace Iraq with any other sovereign country the US meddled in to "protect their national interests", there's a long list of those from which you can choose.

I don't consider it "whataboutism" to point out double standards. If it's legit for the US to meddle in other sovereign countries, to protect their "national interests" on the other end of the world, then the same behavior should be legit for everybody else because I do not subscribe to the concept of "American exceptionalism".

> I understand benefits for Russia to annex Crimea and so on, but still it's a > crime and legitimacy of this action is not questionable.

I guess then it's a good thing nothing was annexed but people rather voted for independence, just like the people of Ukraine voted in "free and open elections" and everything went according to the Ukrainian constitution. A narrative can be such a handy device, good thing it ain't reserved for exceptionalists, just like using unmarked PMC's for tasks where official soldiers would lead to international legal troubles with the ICC, which the US doesn't even acknowledge (so much about international "crimes" and "legitimacy of actions").

Let's leave it at that, it's obvious we won't be agreeing on much and at this point, the discussion has become rather OT, have a nice evening.

<comment><USER13> name one country which was annexed by USA in last decade

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> $3b would be chump-change in the worldwide black economy. I'm guessing that this extra-legal money is quite happily parked in legal low-tax economies earning interest. So.. if we're taking the moral high ground, isn't there room for some _whataboutism_ or _tu coque_ here?

<comment><USER15> This is just signal to the remaining 1-2 trillion Underground banking sector to get out of it. If China goes after all of it at once it will crash it economy or at least stall it. These Busts and other signals have been coming out of the Chinese government in the last few weeks after the twice a decade party conference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So is this one mechanism of how Chinese nations get their money out to afford million dollar properties in Australia?

> Australia's money laundering watchdog investigated more than $3 billion in > suspicious transfers by Chinese investors last year, including $1 billion in > property transactions. [1]

Considering they can only take out 50k USD per year [2]

I'm sure many can agree it's disgraceful that the Australian government is turning a blind eye to an incredible amount of money laundering... which some may argue is contributing to the incredibly high housing prices in Melbourne and Sydney. There are no median house prices left in Sydney under half a million dollars. [3].

A friend witnessed a Chinese national at an auction try to pay their deposit with a suitcase of cash. The real estate agent had to explain (through a translator) that they can't accept that amount of cash in a suitcase. Sorry can't give a reference here, but other HN'ers who have witnessed the auction frenzy in Australia may attest that this scenario is plausible.

Note, I'm not implying the Chinese are the direct contributor to the current situation, I am simply suggesting there is contributory related forces at play...

Australian Financial Review - "Of China's $47.3 billion (investments in Australia in 2016), $31.9 billion will go into real estate mostly in residential development assets." [4]

[1] [http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian- economy/ch...](http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian- economy/chinese-investors-pumping-billions-of-dodgy-cash-into-australian- property/news-story/cdab9af854d70d805a5b51cf881e40c9)

[2] [http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/china/article/how-to-get- your-...](http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/china/article/how-to-get-your-money- out-of-china)

[3] [https://www.domain.com.au/news/there-are-now-no-suburbs- left...](https://www.domain.com.au/news/there-are-now-no-suburbs-left-in- sydney-with-a-median-house-price-under-500000-20171016-gz1sxj/)

[4] [http://www.afr.com/real-estate/chinese-investment-in-real- es...](http://www.afr.com/real-estate/chinese-investment-in-real-estate-grows- to-32bn-firb-20170509-gw0sla)

<comment><USER17> I feel like you may have a bit of an axe to grind about local real estate prices. Yes, they are money laundering in the sense that they are avoiding regulations from their home country. But they aren't trying to avoid Australian regulations right? These investors generally have legal businesses in China, as much as that is possible in a state like that.

"I'm sure many can agree it's disgraceful" is a particularly choice piece of rhetoric that I am still trying to unpack. Also I like how you over attributed your comment as an appeal to authority.

There is a whole ball of string that you find when you start pulling the thread of your argument. That ball of string can be called globalization. Many people around the world are just coming to terms with the trade offs involved in the the way we have structured the world today. You can see some of this in the nationalism of Trump and Brexit. It is a complicated problem with complicated answers. I just want people to watch out for situations like this and not think that "whoah, this is clearly disgracefully wrong".

<comment><USER18> Completely agree. As someone who lives in a developing country, it always seems funny to me how there is frequently a distorted view in developed countries of how globalization should work, where they get all the upsides but none of the competition.

Everybody loves the idea of selling in a global market, but few realize that with globalization there are more opportunities, but also that they will have to work harder, study more and be more creative to compete for businesses, jobs and assets, with billions of people who previously had little to no opportunities, but who are willing to put in a lot of effort to compete for a share of the global marketplace. The trickiest part is that with technology and education, globalization is inevitable in the long term, no matter what politicians do or think.

From my view, sometimes it looks hypocritical when people from developed countries criticize the local 1% and the rigged system and unfair privilege that keep rich people rich, but then demand and expect that they get those same advantages on a country wide level, without realizing that they are simply defending the global 1% because it benefits/affects them directly.

<comment><USER19> Global globalization may be inevitable, but I don't really see why individual countries must accept it entirely. Why can't you pick and choose which parts to engage in, knowingly accepting the positive or negative consequences that come with that? I see very little reason why large advanced countries like the US can't decide to restrict some free trade and take the 10% or whatever hit to GDP, in exchange for greater control and less uncertainty. This may be a naive belief, but specifically why?

<comment><USER18> What I would see as problematic is that picking and choosing parts of globalization would probably involve limiting the development of technology, commerce, and in some cases limiting free speech. And depending on the restrictions put in place to limit it, it could end up becoming sort of a global discrimination program which leads up to social conflict or even a war. There is also a conflicting part in your statement, where if for example the US took a 10% hit in GDP, it would in real terms mean that unemployment would double or triple, education, health and the base of society in general would take a huge hit, besides loosing global military and economic leadership, probably leading to huge political instability which lead to less control and more uncertainty (which could give space for a dictatorship, an internal war or a slew of other social problems). Economic growth is sort of like a drug, because once you have a society hooked up and dependent on it, if you take it away cold turkey, everything else that society has built will come crashing.

<comment><USER19> Well, if just one simple action such as one country even partially opting out of globalization could lead to a world war, then I'd prefer to cancel the whole undertaking asap. Countries and civilizations have existed largely independently for centuries, if we've build ourselves a house of cards that can come down that easily, getting self sufficient and extracting yourself seems like pretty simple common sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So when I was a kid I noticed that countries that name "People's" or "Democratic" in their full names tended to be brutal dictatorships (eg GDR (East Germany), PRC (China)). Those that had both were brutal dictatorships on steroids (ie DPRK aka North Korea).

I found this interesting because it was an early lesson in how people will coopt words to hide the true nature of things, something that happens all the time. For example, if the US government enacts a new piece of legislation and it has the name "patriot" or "freedom" in it, you can bet your last dollar it's going to take away your rights.

Another version of this is the now conflated term of "free trade". Free trade in its purest form is freedom of goods and services to cross borders without quotas, tariffs or other artificial barriers to entry. We largely have that now yet countries like the US want to impose a legislative agenda on the rest of the world through large multilateral treaties like the TPP and TIPP all under the guise of "free trade".

Now either economists and politicians have forgotten what free trade actually means or they're wailfully ignoring it for their own idealogical agendas. I find this [1] a good account of the conflation of "free trade" and the "free movement of capital". Back in high school economics I learned about the foreign debt trap where instead of trade outflows from your trading partner, the money came back as capital to buy assets and the means of production. Have such basic principles really fallen out of favour in the blind devotion to the free movement of capital?

So the developed world clamored for China to join the WTO, probably sensing a giant opportunity to sell goods to a new market of a billion Chinese.

Thing is, despite claims to play fair, China has basically cheated at every step along the way. For example:

\- Not opening their markets to foreign companies;

\- Blatant IP infringement;

\- Theft of military and scientific knowledge;

\- Pegging their currency to the US dollar rather than letting it float so they could accumulate giant hard currency reserves; and (more recently)

\- Restricting capital outflows.

I'm really surprised (even concerned) that the West (in particular) doesn't demand the same access to China that China gets to the rest of the world.

And we could go further into China's many other transgressions: no freedom of the press, the annexation of Tibet, Tiannemen Square, human rights violations, labour camps, material support to North Korea and so on.

[1] [http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/](http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/)

<comment><USER21> > For example, if the US government enacts a new piece of legislation and it > has the name "patriot" or "freedom" in it, you can bet your last dollar it's > going to take away your rights.

First thing that comes to my mind for "freedom" is the Freedom of Information Act, which fails that test?

<comment><USER22> Patriot Act.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act)

<comment><USER21> Yes I'm aware of that one. Just saying the name doesn't imply what is claimed from what I can tell; it can go either way.

<comment><USER7> I agree with your acute victory, but if you listed all the Patriot/Freedom acts I don't think it'd be close at all.

<comment><USER21> I don't know of that many so I really have no idea if this is true. FOIA and Patriot Act were the only ones that jumped to my mind, and the Internet Freedom Act which was just mentioned by someone else is another one I'm aware of right now. Would be awesome if you or someone else could list 5-10 more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think its [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala) not a Bank

</comment><comment><USER24> $3B. OK. So how much did HSBC launder for druglords? The fine alone was $1.9B. Yet another NYT/Washington Post China hitpiece.</comment>


Manhattan DA calls for backdoors in all mobile operating systems - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2015/11/18/manhattan-da-calls-for-backdoo.html <comment><USER2> I've read the source document, and it makes a good attempt at explaining the issue in a mostly balanced way to a less-technical audience, even if it does gloss over some things. Its recommendations, though, are mostly familiar ones with familiar refutations. Here's what they're asking for:

"The federal legislation would provide in substance that any smartphone manufactured, leased, or sold in the U.S. must be able to be unlocked, or its data accessed, by the operating system designer. Compliance with such a statute would not require new technology or costly adjustments. It would require, simply, that designers and makers of operating systems not design or build them to be impregnable to lawful governmental searches."

And this is the main thing that they find frustrating:

"Case law holds almost universally that a defendant cannot be compelled (by, e.g., a grand jury subpoena or order of the court) to provide the government with her or his passcode, because such compulsion would violate the defendant's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination."

I was under the impression that they already have a tool to deal with this called "hold someone indefinitely until they give the password up."</comment>


U.S. to Seek $16.4 Million Fine Against Toyota - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/business/06toyota.html

<comment><USER2> I would love to see this. And then I'd like to see Ray La Hood cross-examined by Toyota's lawyers, asking why he made so many inflammatory and stupid statements, recommending for example that Toyota drivers not drive their cars, and which destroyed so much value for Toyota shareholders. What would also be hilarious is seeing Mr. LaHood explain to a court how he and the Federal government, and the UAW, do not have a serious conflict of interest, considering they own Toyota's competition, and stand to gain financially from every piece of dirt, fair or unfair, that gets flung.

If I was Toyota, I'd be doing the happy dance over all of this.

\-- Fred

<comment><USER3> Right indeed, a $16 million fine is ironically small considering the uproar cut $10 or $20 billion from Toyota's market valuation.</comment></comment>


TellHN: Google Search is tracking you much more than they did before - <AUTHOR>

Up until a couple of months ago, Google links used to direct me to the search results immediately, except that for a few hours every week or so, I'd notice that the links redirect through Google; I guess that was some kind of A/B testing group I found myself in.
About a month ago for me, every single google result link consistently went through Google before redirecting to the real site, and they weren't even trying to hide it.
As of this morning, the Google search links look like regular links - but they have a javascript event attached that changes them upon clicking to go through google after all.
Test this: Do a google search; hover your mouse over a link; see that it points where you expect; push button down, move the mouse away, release button ("drag the link away") so that you produce a button-down event, but not a follow-link action. Now go back to hover over the link, and you'll notice that it redirects through google.
Sneaky, isn't?
And a shout out to Firefox's amazing "Request Policy" plugin which clued me in on it, and actually lets you manage permissions on this kind of information disclosure.
edit: You do not have to be signed in to google for this to happen, and I couldn't find any setting to deactivate it. <comment><AUTHOR> Everything is still happening, but someone fixed it in the last few hours so that it doesn't trigger RequestPolicy. If this post triggered this change - touche, anonymous Google employee. But I'm still going to rewrite my URLs so you don't see my choices.

<comment><USER2> "But I'm still going to rewrite my URLs so you don't see my choices."

What do you mean by this? How do you rewrite your URLs? Greasemonkey script?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My google has been this way for at least a year, probably two.

It's not a surprise that they want to know what links people are clicking based on what they're searching.

It's just another factor they can use to help improve search results.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why don't you close the p tags?

Also i think everyone is aware of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Why don't you close the p tags?

I didn't even put any
 tag there - (you're not supposed and shouldn't be able to put HTML in submissions). It might be a glitch in the matrix :) (pg is modifying the code right now? or something weird like that). But I edited to fix the uninvited tags.

> Also i think everyone is aware of this.

I was aware that they do it intermittently. But now they are doing it full time for everyone. And a lot of people I mentioned this to where not aware even of the intermittent thing.

Note: this happens even if you're not logged in, and have NO web history enabled.

<comment><USER5> i think you got lucky in not seeing it daily.. It's been that way here for 2 months or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is not true.

Since https strips referer strings from headers the links are redirected through http so that destination websites know the traffic is coming from Google (sans the contents of the query). It is more noticeable now because Google is directing more users to encrypted search.

You can test that by searching through the non-encrypted site and see that the is no redirection.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was referring to the non-encrypted, non-login search. There seems to be no way to opt out of it.

And it's been happening for a while in this setting; The new thing that started in the last day or two is that they are being sneaky about it - replacing the HREF in the link as soon as you click.

Other posters on this thread have also noticed this behaviour.

<comment><USER7> This has been happening for at least a few months.</comment></comment></comment>


Heroku cops to poor tech performance for last three years - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/16/heroku_admits_degraded_bamboo_performance/

<comment><USER2> So will they return the extra money that this has cost customers?

<comment><USER3> Doubtful. Where would they even start to calculate the so-called refunds?

Actually, I'm more than a little worried that their parent company (SalesForce) will see this episode as the showstopper for Heroku and just yank the plug.

Heroku's got some smart people over there and they really screwed the pooch but they're smart enough to come up with a better solution than 'we will rewrite our docs.'</comment></comment>