Massive CouchDB Brain Dump - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mattwoodward.com/massive-couchdb-brain-dump <comment><USER2> I've never thought about posting one of the many brain dumps I put in txt files because I figured it would only make sense to me in such a rough draft... but after reading this I will have to start. Very helpful overview of all aspects of CouchDB / document based storage.

</comment><comment><USER3> "if you need a change in your schema, it's dead simple to do--just start using the new schema if you don't care that the old documents don't have the new field, you don't have to worry about them"

For me the scary part is that I usually _do_ care. How do you stop caring about this? Doesn't this mean your application code starts to get populated with if/then/else? Is there a best-practice for backfilling data when the (effective) schema changes?

<comment><USER4> I've seen many systems that use relational databases be patched up with if (null)/then/else in the application where fields have been added and the change was not important enough to justify a data migration. I wouldn't say this practice is OK just that it happens quite a bit in my experience.

If I was using couchdb I would assume that all but the most fundamental fields were optional and have the application act accordingly.

<comment><USER3> Sure... I've seen that a ton. I've had to resort to writing a bunch of code like that as well.

As an example of what I mean, there are some places where you can simplify by knowing that a relationship is 1:1 instead of 1:n because based on the current schema it's _impossible_ for it not to be 1:1. You don't need an if/then or any logic in your application when you access that field.

This means if you want to make it 1:n you have to change the schema and deal with all of the code that will break due to that change. Once that is done, then your application can input lists of items into the storage.

In the document oriented approach, is seems like you (or any code touching the document type) just start inputting lists. This makes changing the schema a non-issue. It is up to the code pulling data to always assume the data could be null, single or a list of items.

In the couchDB model it seems the schema is implicitly defined by the behavior of the application. I don't really know what that means for the application. I'm sure the tradeoff is worth it in a lot of cases, I'm just saying that this is one of the parts where my imagination is failing me and the unknown- unknowns are great.

It seems like here the skills of writing a great REST API are more relevant than traditional data modeling skills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found Damien Katz's talk about quitting and risking it on CouchDB to be really great (from resources): <http://www.infoq.com/presentations/katz- couchdb-and-me>

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd be interested to hear a little bit about choosing between CouchDB, MongodB, and others. Couch and Mongo are the two I'm most interested in, but I haven't had the time to really look at either closely.

<comment><USER7> I'd definitely look at Mongo first. Couch is ridiculously simple, too much so. It doesn't do locking because it versions every single record, so if you do updates very frequently you are going to have to clean your DB really often. Their queries are less flexible than Mongo's as well.

Couch is interesting in a way, but I feel like the set of problems that fit it well is far smaller than Mongo's. (and that that set is far smaller than SQL still, but that's another matter)

Mongo is also way way faster, though the API isn't as 'cute' by far. I feel like the great web UI for couch, along with their heavy javascript/json usage is the main reason it gets so much traction.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the helpful info, I do still have one reservation about mongo however.

There is one thing that couch does to better than mongo, and thats single server durability. You can pretty much kill -9 couch and it won't care (that's pretty much how it stops itself).

Now, I understand mongodb's stance on why you should be running multiple servers for your high performance app, but for a lot of apps that don't need HA that's just overkill and a pain to configure (and extra $$$ for more hardware). In fact, I'd go so far as to say thats the case for most apps. If I recall they're working on it at the moment though.

<comment><USER8> They have a syncdelay parameter which you can tweak to flush to disk as often as you want <http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Durability+and+Repair>

<comment><USER6> that's all I needed to hear, I'll likely go with mongodb for my next project now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Natural Language Basics with TextBlob - <AUTHOR> http://rwet.decontextualize.com/book/textblob/ <comment><USER2> TextBlob is just an easy-to-use wrapper for a number of more involved libraries, including NLTK and Pattern.

As with most things like it, if you're looking to shift off extremely unsophisticated NLP work to a junior developer, this is a good thing.

If you're an engineer focused in the NLP space, using this API would be like tying your hand behind your back. It introduces its own performance problems, and obscures a number of configurations that the APIs of the libraries it wraps expose. I also find its attitude towards object-orientation tends to obscure performance bottlenecks by hiding how much just-in-time computation occurs for a given string.

Also, I hate to admit this, but the Java/Scala NLP stack is beating out most Python NLP libraries these days. NLTK _just_ got Stanford CoreNLP's best-in- class dependency parser. It's been available in Java for years.

<comment><USER3> If you're doing NLP in Python, there's no reason to use CoreNLP's parser from the NLTK wrapper. Communicating with the Java process over the file system or a socket introduces a tonne of unnecessary complications, slow-downs, invites encoding problems, etc.

spaCy's native Cython dependency parser is both faster and more accurate than CoreNLP.

The NP chunks example from the post:

        >>> from spacy.en import English
        >>> nlp = English()
        >>> doc = nlp(u'ITP is a two-year graduate program located in the Tisch School of the Arts. Perhaps the best way to describe us is as a Center for the Recently Possible.')
        >>> for np in doc.noun_chunks:
        ...   print(np.text)
        ...
        ITP
        a two-year graduate program
        the Tisch School
        the Arts
        the best way
        us
        a Center

<comment><USER4> spaCy looks like a great product, but it is expensive.

edit: sorry, I just noticed that it is available for free under the AGPL 3 license.

<comment><USER5> Now 100% free under the MIT license. Things change by the hour in spacy world, :-).

<comment><USER4> It looks like a lot of good work went into spacy - I hope that you are sucessful monetizing it with the MIT license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think NLP is really cool, but it seems to be moving so quickly. If I wanted to get a decent overview, are there some review papers or textbooks with good coverage that aren't too out of date?

<comment><USER7> Just learn Deep Learning instead.

I'm a NLP person, and I think the Wit.ai people said it best:

 _Many papers were kind of "the state of the art for X was Y. We replaced the hand-crafted, manually hacked, heavily engineered Z by a RNN. It improved state of the art by 5 points." The poor guys who presented deep learning-free papers invariably got the question: "did you also try with a [insert deep net technique here]?"_ [1]

The only downside with this is that traditional NLP tools are still probably easier to use, and you'll usually need to understand vocabulary to be able to talk to other people about your problems.

[1] [https://wit.ai/blog/2015/09/23/emnlp](https://wit.ai/blog/2015/09/23/emnlp)

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't this require larger datasets? That isn't always an option. I'm imagining that a smaller, more computationally efficient network could learn nearly as well with fewer data points given these heavily engineered features. Is that off base?

<comment><USER7> Basically, no. See [http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn- effectiveness/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/)

He gets pretty amazing results with a corpus size around 10M.

<comment><USER6> But that takes ages to train!

<comment><USER7> So something like Jason Weston's state-of-the-art attention-NN based sentence summarizer took ~4 days to train.

You'd easily spend that time doing manual feature engineering just to build a baseline system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Absolutely love TextBlob API. Much easier to get started, than NLTK. We currently use similar design in our nlp toolkit for Estonian: [http://estnltk.github.io/estnltk/1.3/index.html](http://estnltk.github.io/estnltk/1.3/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Also have a look at [http://spacy.io/](http://spacy.io/)

It's better than textblob / nltk in many ways.

<comment><USER10> Can you _(or someone)_ comment on some of the important differences, in your mind? I'm quite new to NLP, so a knowledgable comparison of the two would be appreciated :)

<comment><USER5> Essentially spacy is better and faster at almost everything it supports but is not free for commercial use. I consider spacy a blessing for the Python and the NLP community in general. They have a great comparison with existing libraries at [http://spacy.io/](http://spacy.io/).

EDIT: From today on spacy is free for commercial use! (MIT license).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can't wait for a "batteries included" NLP solution to come to Golang

</comment><comment><USER11> "There is no such thing as a sentence, or a phrase, or a part of speech, or even a "word" — these are all pareidolic fantasies occasioned by glints of sunlight we see on reflected on the surface of the ocean of language; fantasies that we comfort ourselves with when faced with language's infinite and unknowable variability."

This is a particularly beautiful articulation of the complexity of English (and language in general).

</comment><comment><USER12> Can anyone recommend some JS (or compiles-to-JS) NLP libraries that can be used for strictly client-side NLP in a privacy conscious web app?

</comment><comment><USER13> I have't used TextBlob but I found this interesting regardless (I'm very interested in NLP). Thanks for the read! Slightly off topic but I don't see very many NLP libraries for C++ as I do Python; are there any notable ones?

<comment><USER14> There is [http://www.abisource.com/projects/link- grammar/](http://www.abisource.com/projects/link-grammar/) and [https://code.google.com/p/mate-tools/](https://code.google.com/p/mate- tools/). A lot of tools are written in Java.

<comment><USER13> Cool, thanks! I have more reading to do :)</comment></comment></comment>


Wireless network with 42,8Gbit/s with infrared beams [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://static.tue.nl/fileadmin/content/faculteiten/ee/Onderzoek/Onderzoeksprogramma_s/Electro-Optical_Communications__ECO_/BROWSE/MWP2015_Koonen_et_al_-_paper_29_updated.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> I posted a link to the research, which is in english. A google translated version of the news article can be found here:

[https://goo.gl/M1jpas](https://goo.gl/M1jpas) and the original dutch article: [https://tweakers.net/nieuws/122465/tu-e-onderzoekers- realise...](https://tweakers.net/nieuws/122465/tu-e-onderzoekers- realiseren-42-komma-8gbit-s-verbinding-met-infraroodstralen.html)

TL;DR; It could replace wifi als an alternative. Because there is no network congestion and interference. But it will take another 5 years before it can be put to practise, because of "source/location" detection

Multiple licht beams can be added

It isn't dangerous for your retina ( eye)</comment>


Dell XPS 15.6" QHD+ (3200x1800) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9530/pd <comment><USER2> For the love of all that is good in the world, _please_ give us this kind of pixel density in large form-factor desktop displays already. I tweet at Dell periodically pleading this case, but it's always crickets.

Every time I see a high-DPI portable device, I long for my preferred consumption and creation context (desktop) to get some needed love from manufacturers.

(Yes, my wife has a Seiki 4K and I have several 30" 2560x1600 monitors, but I want better. The 30" form-factor is from 2004! These displays are the equivalent of a Motorola RAZR flip-phone.)

Edit: see my spur-of-the-moment review of the Seiki lower in this thread at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6631442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6631442)

<comment><USER3> I couldn't agree more.

1920x1080 is more than enough on mobile phones and I don't use tablets or laptops so I don't care about them.

Where are the 23" (give or take a few inches is fine) 4k displays?

Thats what we really need, a high ppi screen for something I stare into for hours a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I still don't get is how the 30" Cinema Display was released in 2004, and almost 10 years later we still have pretty much the same same resolution screens.

I know 4k is slowly hitting the market, but you think about 10 years ago in the mobile world, we were using 84px monochrome screens on our Nokia 3315's.

And also why is the price difference between a laptop screen and a desktop screen so massive? You can buy a 4k screen complete with a whole computer for $1500, where a 4k desktop screen is going to cost you almost twice that.

<comment><USER5> By the same token, why the hell are $1000 projectors still 800x600?

<comment><USER6> They're not. At all. The Optoma HD-25LV goes for under $1200 and does 1080p natively. I have its big brother, the HD-33 (1080p + 3d), and it's fantastic, especially considering that it was only $1700. Projectors have gotten really good and really cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If only Lenovo would take notice and see what is happening in the market. I really want a better screen on my Thinkpad with a higher resolution.

<comment><USER8> The upcoming generation of ThinkPads generally has better screens (either higher resolutions or IPS instead of TN) than before. In particular, the W540 is supposed to have an IPS screen with a similar (2880x1620) resolution:

[http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1717](http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1717)

[http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/w-series/w540/](http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/w-series/w540/)

<comment><USER7> Awesome. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have any experience using hi-res screens with linux? If so, what are the issues, if any ? Is there a distro that has really good support for these kinds of displays?

I know the laptop comes with Win 8.1 which supposedly has decent hi-res screen support but if you wanted to wipe windows and put a Linux distro, which one would be best?

<comment><USER10> GNOME 3.10 has great support for high-DPI displays. Non-toolkit fixed-size apps will tend to look small, but any modern app will look great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Will there be a manufacture that will make: QHD+ (non touch), Intel everything (graphics, NIC), ultrabook body, I5-I7 with at-least 8GB of memory and hit the price point of 1000USD?

<comment><USER12> [https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/daru4](https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/daru4)

with the exception of the touch screen, which you can pretend isn't a touchscreen.

<comment><USER13> What? 1920x1080 is nowhere near QHD+.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh just give me one in 13" (Project Sputnik!) and I'm IN!

<comment><USER15> It seems the 13" has been discounted. (at least in australia)

Ive always been thinking of buying one in the back of my mind. Do dell support linux well in the XPS line?

<comment><USER16> xps 13 hasn't been discontinued; it was refreshed last month at the same time as the XPS 15 shown here.

Barton George, the project lead, has confirmed that there will be a follow-on Sputnik coming out sometime in the next month. This (long) thread has the information, especially on the last few pages. [http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os- applications/f/46...](http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os- applications/f/4613/t/19494844.aspx?pi22229=14)

<comment><USER15> Sorry I said discounted.

Thank you for the link. Sadly Australia never saw the edition which shipped with Ubuntu, but I'm fine with that as long as i know the hardware supports it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I appreciate the DPI wars coming to laptops, next up is monitors. I'm friends with the owner of a local computer store chain and he says he sells 100 "low dpi" (aka 1080p) screens for every higher dpi screen. It doesn't make sense for him to stock them at those rates, and the cost difference is quite high because the 1080p screens are basically cheap TV glass rather than non-volume computer glass. (same issue with getting a 1920 x 1200 screen).

I've ordered a couple of the Asus 4K screens from him to try out but man $3500 (4K) vs $350 (1920 x 1200) vs $150 (1920 x 1080). That doesn't sound like a sustainable market to me.

</comment><comment><USER18> Meanwhile, I still can't buy a 2560x1440 monitor at less than 27". Rediculous.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yeah, but its a Dell laptop.

Do they still come covered in Windows stickers and with all sorts of bloatware installed?

<comment><USER20> Do people similar to you in audience type really run the copy of Windows that comes with their laptops?

Or, perhaps, does the ordinary folk/gamer care about bloatware on a laptop _this_ fast, with i5/i7 and 16GB of RAM?

<comment><USER21> My MacBook is littered with source code, and I run the copy of OS X that came on the machine. Futzing with OSes is for kids and a product that requires you to do so is a bad product.

<comment><USER22> There is exactly one vendor with an OS worth using which builds hardware worth using. The rest of us who are not so lucky to get an integrated offering have to futz around and make do with what we have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This looks like a good guy! Anyone know about linux support?

<comment><USER24> its an lintel processor with integrated graphics (for base model), shouldn't be a problem

<comment><USER25> Has the secure-boot stuff been fully sorted yet?

<comment><USER10> UEFI "Secure Boot" is not an issue; you can always turn it off on any x86 system, by design requirement, and several current Linux distributions support booting even with it turned on.

On the other hand, "fastboot" can be an issue: many current Windows systems skip the BIOS screen and don't support USB boot, on the assumption that you'll use the Windows option to shut down and boot into BIOS setup. That option doesn't exist in the Windows setup UI those same systems boot up into when you first get them, thus forcing prospective Linux users to disassemble the system and disconnect the disk to trigger BIOS setup.

See [http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/24869.html](http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/24869.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> ever try windows with hi-dpi? I did about a year ago, surprisingly flakey. has the situation improved?

<comment><USER27> At what resolution does hi-dpi start?

<comment><USER28> Whatever you want to call it, I suppose. I don't think the Windows 8+ features are resolution-dependent. There's a new slider in the display control panel that lets you set the scaling factor. Windows 8.1's main change was adding a checkbox that lets you set a different scaling factor for each screen, and you can choose a custom scale, not just 1x/1.5x/2x.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm really excited to ser Dell pursue this new direction instead of lowest- common-denominator.

</comment><comment><USER30> Hope they got the touchpad right. None of the win8 laptops/ultrabooks so far match macbooks.

<comment><USER31> I have the previous generation aluminum XPS 15 and its trackpad is the best I have used on any PC laptop so far.

The laptop is basically a Macbook Pro clone and the trackpad holds its own. It's the solid build of a Macbook Pro minus the (unwanted) Mac experience. The only place it really falls short is battery life.

The trick is to disable the gestures in the Synaptic driver and install TwoFingerScroll. Once you do that, the trackpad feels just as smooth as a Macbook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I really wish some of these high resolution laptops came with equivalent high end video cards to drive that resolution ... shipping with a 750m rather than the 780m seems nuts, it is 2 to 3 times slower and when you got 5.5+ million pixels to drive...

<comment><USER33> The 780m is a huge power draw. It's basically a minorly downclocked GTX 680, with all of the performance (and heat) that implies. It's estimated to draw 122W at maximum, for crying out loud! It probably won't be fitting in a .7" laptop anytime soon.

Aside from that... This laptop isn't intended for gaming. Honestly, I'd think that if Intel HD graphics can drive an rMBP display, then the 750m will suffice for this. Though I would love to see QHD+ come to some of the gaming laptop lines...

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Never an XPS, again. Ever. XPS is the short name of Dell misunderstanding gaming laptop.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is an otherwise good choice that I'd consider for my next laptop if it wasn't for no dedicated Home/End and Page Up/Down buttons.

</comment><comment><USER25> Would be nice if this became their Linux dev box, and they had an external monitor to match.

</comment><comment><USER36> Nice. Finally some decent Windows notebook screens.

Being touch, I guess it is glossy and not matt?

</comment><comment><USER37> Dell XPS 15.6" QHD+ (Late 2013): 235 dpi

13" rMBP (Late 2012): 226 dpi

<comment><USER38> I don't see why you're comparing it to last year's 13" MacBook Pro.

The new 15" MacBook Pro has specs that are very much like this DELL laptop. Same screen size, same resolution. Same SSD, RAM, and GPU. The MBP has a slightly faster CPU, i7 2.3Ghz instead of DELL's i7 2.2Ghz. The DELL is 10% cheaper.

<comment><USER37> The 15" is slightly less DPI. I was only comparing DPI because, to be honest, every laptop I've ever used that wasn't a Thinkpad or a Macbook has left me wondering whether I should just use pen and paper instead.

<comment><USER38> > The 15" is slightly less DPI.

The DELL has a 15.6" screen, the MBP has a 15.4" screen. The screens both have the same resolution and aspect ratio. That means the MBP's screen has a slightly higher DPI (221 versus 218).

<comment><USER39> They don't have the same aspect ratio. The Dell is 16:9 while the rMBP is 16:10. They don't have the same resolution either. The rMBP is 2880x1800 while the Dell is 3200x1800.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why is the M6800 not more awesome? 17" 1080p, only.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yes but does it run OS X?

<comment><USER38> I'm pretty sure it runs Crysis. With a pitcher big enough, I bet it will blend. Also, it has wireless and more space than a Nomad.</comment></comment>


Apple as the new M$: getting away with stuff - <AUTHOR> i have OSX 10.7.5 and Apple, Homebrew, and Chrome have all announced to me that have stopped supporting this version, as it's "old"
Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP over 10 years after releasing it and people were still panicking and M$ even had to backtrack.
The new King in town (Apple) is behaving worse than the previous one, and getting away with it!
what can I do? I have a late 2011 13" MBP and specific software that cannot run on Mavericks or newer. Why are they pushing us so hard to upgrade software (and by extension, hardware)? And what can we, as consumers, do about it?
Dear Apple, knock it off! <comment><USER2> > _The new King in town (Apple) is behaving worse than the previous one, and > getting away with it!_

The "old King" was a monopoly (95% of the market then). And even that wasn't illegal.

They only had trouble because they used their monopoly position to threaten OEM vendors (PC makers) into certain deals.

Apple is far from a monopoly (like 15-20% of the laptop market and something like 30-40% of mobile), and stopping support for a product is not illegal.

And Microsoft supporting old OSes and browsers (IE6 etc) for ages held back the Windows ecosystem and the web for almost a decade. 10 years in IT are an eternity, and we had XP for almost as long.

> _what can I do? I have a late 2011 13 " MBP and specific software that > cannot run on Mavericks or newer._

Is that software that critical? No alternatives available?

Its the software's vendors fault for not keeping their software up to date with OS releases (and, heck, 10.7 is 5+ years behind). Why should one software prevent you from updating your OS to the latest version? What if you wanted to buy a new computer (that would need to run the latest OS to have support for its latest generation hardware, GPU, USB3/C etc)?

</comment><comment><USER3> Buy or switch to an open source solution: [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromMacO...](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromMacOSX)

[https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple](https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of- life_%28product%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-life_%28product%29)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29)

</comment><comment><USER4> You have the right choose not to use Apple, usually a major version of OS X is supported for 3years. what software you are using? built for powerpc cpu?

Apple is a hardware company yet, they are earning money by selling their products, so it is not hard to see why they keep pushing people to buy new product.

You should stated your software name, and let us see whether there is a solution for it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Old hardware was my introduction to Linux. A 2011 Apple computer can run the latest version of Ubuntu or many other distros. Homebrew won't matter, Chrome will run. The latest development tools -- other than those required for iOS/OSX development will be available.

Eventually, I switched from Windows completely, but it's the same thing...I removed a dependency.

Good luck.</comment>


The Next Black Swan Event: Adam Baratta - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEnuWv38urI <comment><USER2> I'm totally ideologically primed to love this guy and yet I find him intolerable

What is this guy trying to say again? We are in a credit bubble and we have wealth disparity. So, the two of the most repeated ideas in all of political economic commentary right now and seemingly nothing new on top of it.

If you want people making much more interesting observstions on similar themes check out real vision finance on youtube.</comment>


Darpa set to develop super-secure "cognitive fingerprint" - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/darpa-set-develop-super-secure-cognitive-fingerprint

<comment><USER2> This is stupid. High quality, memorable passwords are easy once you throw away the conventional wisdom that they ought to look like 10 characters of line noise and move to a non-obvious phrase. Also, I suspect technology of this sort would be problematic if the user was distracted, for example.</comment>


Man who claims to have found Apple iPhone prototype in bar to face charges - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18653245?nclick_check=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Nota bene: I made two changes to the headline. The original read "Man who found Apple iPhone prototype in bar, sold it to Gizmodo, to face charges."

First, the "found iPhone in bar" is part of his defence. It has not been established as fact that it was lost or misplaced in the bar. Second, Gizmodo's defence at the time was that they did not purchase stolen property, they paid him a fee for the scoop and merely took temporary posession of the phone.</comment>


Why are whitehouse.gov web pages disappearing? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/20/why-are-whitehouse-gov-web-pages-disappearing/gd0HEAAU49hrLZMCiOQwuN/story.html <comment><USER2> TLDR: The content has not been deleted. Rather, it has been moved. And it was expected, as it has been standard procedure for when a new president has taken over in the digital age.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is this surprising? Of course a new administration is not going to leave policy oriented web pages from a previous one online.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. This seems to be true for many pages besides civil rights and climate change, such as education. [0]

0:[https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education](https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The ones that seem to be flipping out about this have been the typical anti- Trump sources. Vox Media sites were some of the first I saw this on, and it spread from there.

</comment><comment><USER6> This isn't really news, all of the old content was migrated to obamawhitehouse.gov, since that was the Obama administration's website.

</comment><comment><USER7> Clickbait. Sad from Boston Globe to stoop to this level.

<comment><USER8> Get ready for more, it may be that the only way to neuter national discontent with Trump is with outrage fatigue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Because the entire website was taken down and replaced with a new Trump White House website. This happens every time a new President takes over.

</comment><comment><USER10> How is this news? This would have occurred even if Hillary Clinton or anyone else was elected president.

<comment><USER9> Because it makes for a good, sensationalist headline to pick a random page that used to be up and say "Trump removes page about <key topic>!" and all the people who just read headlines freak out and spread it around, everyone conveniently ignoring that the entire website was replaced, so of course old pages will be gone.</comment></comment>


Pope Francis announces Scholas.Labs, a Vatican startup accelerator - <AUTHOR> http://www.unlockpwd.com/pope-francis-announces-scholas-labs-a-vatican-startup-accelerator

<comment><USER2> I am Italian and somehow this made me laugh! 10 projects per year, nonprofit, and the goal seems to be improving education in the world. It really looks like a nice plan, but how do you think religion is involved in this?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> That's it. It seems we've reached peak startup accelerator.</comment>


Ask HN: What audio resources can improve my technical skills during my commute? - <AUTHOR> I want to become a better developer and ideally get more into artificial neural networks also. Looking for audiobooks mainly, as I've found most podcasts quite light on substance. Any recommendations from the HN crowd? <comment><USER3> Just sit. Silently. Give your brain a break -- that might be more helpful than keeping yourself busy.

<comment><USER4> These replies are unhelpful and off topic. Author asked for technical resources, not a bunch of opinions about why they are wrong to want this and what they should do instead.

<comment><USER5> Inevitably other people besides OP will be curious about things to do during their commute and might stumble in here with less specific criteria.

<comment><USER6> Inevitably other people and OP will not care about off-topic things

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to commute in silence or listening to the radio for my daily Silicon Valley drive (237 Milpitas to Mountain View), and by the time I got to work, I'd be angry, frustrated, and cognitively spent.

Listening to audio books has allowed me to relax, enjoy the reading, and get to work excited about the day.

I treat the time as a chance to "read" those books which I wouldn't normally spend either my work hours nor my free time hours on. It's a chance to get informed on topics that are only slightly related to work, but expand your mind in ways that will make you a better thinker, and thus a better programmer.

The books I've found particularly good on audio are:

* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

* Thinking, Fast and Slow

* How Not to be Wrong

* Ready Player One

* Neuromancer

<comment><USER8> Do you mind sharing where you have found an audiobook of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Doesn't look like it's available on Audible or Scribd.

<comment><USER7> I got mine from Audible at the link below. If you do use it, please _SKIP THE INTRODUCTION_. If you haven't read or listened to the book before, it gives away some major plot points as part of the author's update.

[https://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/Zen-and-the-Art- of-M...](https://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/Zen-and-the-Art-of- Motorcycle-Maintenance-Audiobook/B002VA8G6M)

<comment><USER8> Thanks. Not available in Australia unfortunately:

"We're sorry. Due to publishing rights restrictions, we are not authorized to sell this item in the country where you live."

<comment><USER9> Mullvad VPN

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I listen to python podcasts: [https://talkpython.fm/](https://talkpython.fm/) and [https://www.podcastinit.com/](https://www.podcastinit.com/) . Outside of purely technical subjects, I also like "talking machines" about ML: [http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/](http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/) . Maybe they won't improve your "core" skills, but it's good with keeping up to date with cool recent libraries or new language developments. I use an app on android that pre-downloads podcasts on wifi and allow me to listen to them at 1.5X speed.

I wouldn't recommend audiobooks, as they require more focus and context than podcasts and it's harder to find during the commute.

<comment><USER11> The idea of technical podcasts intrigues me.

But, I just clicked to see the content of 'Talk Python' podcasts, and it seems that a lot of it is _meta_ -talk... smart people talking about the fact that they're going to teach someone, _not_ teaching the postcast-listener stuff (besides perhaps the knowledge that some X and Y module exists?).

I think I'm just asking too much here... because creating instructional content takes _time_... to organize, think about, record, review, etc. Hm, maybe instead of complaining, I'll have a go at it...

<comment><USER12> the Talk Python series is actually a great way for Python programmers to _discover_ authors and libraries you wouldn't organically come across on HN or GitHub browsing. I highly recommend it to intermediate python programmers to expand their knowledge scope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here is a technical podcast I listen to on my commute home: [https://softwareengineeringdaily.com](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com)

I don't listen to every episode, however I feel it's technical breadth and depth is fairly decent.

<comment><USER14> I second the recommendation - not too deep to make your commute mentally tiring, but still useful enough that you learn new things (even as starting points). Covers a wide range of topics, from machine learning to infrastructure, which may also help you open your views.

A similar one would be: [http://www.se-radio.net/](http://www.se-radio.net/)

There are also some more tech-specific ones, such as Talk Python to Me, Under the Radar (iOS dev), etc.

<comment><USER15> I find SE Radio (IEEE) to be less captivating than Software Engineering Daily.

I think it's partly because the latter has better production values, better pacing and attracts more prominent guests in the field(for instance, Martin Kleppmann, Neha Narkhede, etc.)

I find myself not being able to get through an episode of SE Radio.

<comment><USER16> I also listen to SE Radio (mainly back episodes as they don't release often). This other one look great!

My contribution would be FLOSS Weekly with Randal Schwartz (most of the time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> (This may be someone OT with respect to the specific OP question/circumstance, but...)

You are probably developing to/for a domain. (Healthcare, hardware, finance, etc...)

Part of being successful is having good domain knowledge and understanding.

If the technical aspects of your work don't translate well to an audio presentation, understanding of the domain(s) you are concentrating on might.

Then, when you're doing something, or in a meeting about it, you have a better understanding of the "why". And of whether the tactics and strategy under consideration make good sense, or of how they might be improved.

This is also a means of going past "pushing buttons" to becoming responsible for design decisions and the like.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you're like me, nothing. I need to sit down and find ways to break something to understand how it works.

What I do find useful is listening to books on practice or management. Something like The Pragmatic Programmer, The Practice of Programming, and Clean Code. These are high on substance but (relatively) low on examples, so I feel I can still benefit from their insights without having to be in front of a screen.

<comment><USER19> That's cool. I didn't know there were audio versions of those books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Classical music. Learn it. Learn how to listen it, learn to feel it. It is really fun, when you able to understand it. And it helps to move away from current problems to return back from other side afterwards.

Oh... And it will greatly increase interconnectivity of your brains, especially if you would not just listen, but play it too.

It may be not just classical music, but modern styles a way simplier, they lack centuries of development by hundreds of musicians.

<comment><USER21> > Learn it. Learn how to listen it, learn to feel it.

As someone willing to give this a try, where would you suggest one starts?

<comment><USER22> Go to the symphony. Ideally, go with a friend who enjoys classical music.

Also, spend some time trying different classical music from different periods / parts of the world. You might find you prefer Steve Reich (Music For 18 Musicians) more than you like Bach (Well-Tempered Clavier) or Shostakovich (10th Symphony) more than you like Schoenberg (... good luck).

Spend some time finding a favourite composer. Start with a composer you like, and then try other composers who were alive in the same time and place.

Also, beware of orchestral renditions of pop music. Some of it is good (Alarm Will Sound's album of Aphex Twin), but most of it is awful (Vitamin quartet).

Hope that helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is not really audio, but when it comes to programming, I don't think any sort of listening material (by itself) is ever going to top visual material. In that department, I recommend this app:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=wiki.algorithm...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=wiki.algorithm.algorithms)

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/algorithms-explained-and- ani...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/algorithms-explained-and- animated/id1047532631)

</comment><comment><USER24> Have you checked out itunes u? There you can find actual lectures from too universities recorded. Mostly they require video to get the most of them but i find that just hearing the sound can still be very informative.

Specifically, stanford has some great cs material, and you could also look into andrew ng's machine learning course (i think that one was on coursera).

</comment><comment><USER25> Sometimes the O'Reilly Data Show [https://www.oreilly.com/topics/oreilly-data- show-podcast](https://www.oreilly.com/topics/oreilly-data-show-podcast) get a bit deep. Try a few epsiodes.

<comment><USER15> This. Ben Lorica is not the best interviewer--he interrupts his guests way too often and way too abruptly--but he has a reputation of being one of the best networkers in Silicon Valley, so his guest list is usually comprised of the best people in the field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I quite enjoy [https://softskills.audio](https://softskills.audio)

It's not in any way technical, but I think it might help with the "become a better developer" goal. It's also a good bit of light relief.

</comment><comment><USER27> Blinkist is worth checking out. I like using it to determine which books I am going to actually read.

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

<comment><USER28> Reminds me of [http://www.2000books.com/](http://www.2000books.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Linear Digressions is a great podcast to add to your list. It is not as regular as some of the others but the subjects are great. The hosts are also good.

</comment><comment><USER30> I find Siri reading company wiki pages helps a lot. I only get about 50% but enough that I know what to revisit at work

</comment><comment><USER31> My commute I grab a paper off sci-hub from a journal, print it out at a corner store and read it to and from work. If it must be a podcast one I enjoy is the Type Theory podcast [http://typetheorypodcast.com/](http://typetheorypodcast.com/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I listen to non-technical audiobooks during my walking part of my commuting - psychology, self-help, history and science fiction.

I've also installed mobile apps for pluralsight(paid by my employer), udemy, udacity -- which allow me to download content and watch it in the subway; but I stil have to re-visit the course material and type things on my computer if I actually want to learn anything, otherwise its just more junk food for the brain.

I don't think there are many text-only technical audiobooks, so if you actively drive that kind of sucks, because you can't watch videos, but then again, you're not missing much, I don't think there's anybody who aquired any technical skill by just listening to an audiobook.

</comment><comment><USER33> Here's the list of great technical podcasts I've been listening during commute to my previous work:

* Software Engineering Daily

* Software Engineering Radio

* The Changelog

* DevZen (in Russian)

* Reversim Platforma (in Hebrew)

Look for previous shows, most of the great content is there!

PS: It takes about 5 minutes to drive to my new work, and I really miss them now.

<comment><USER34> Off topic: You can speak Russian and Hebrew?

<comment><USER33> Most of Israeli "repatriants" from USSR can

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Learning Machines 101 is nice and technical

If you're feeling spent and want something less taxing to listen to try Partially Derivative it's more of a chilled out conversation on AI. It's more of a guilty pleasure for me it does feel pretty stupid at times.

</comment><comment><USER36> Not technical, but Money/Finance [http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet- money](http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money)

</comment><comment><USER37> Surprised not to have seen this aleady - [https://twimlai.com/](https://twimlai.com/) keeps me sane when the metal- boxes stop moving.

</comment><comment><USER38> Listen to Bach! Improve the overall wealth of your mind.

</comment><comment><USER39> Looks like I'm a little late to the party on this one, but I'd like to recommend my This Week in Machine Learning and AI podcast here: [https://twimlai.com](https://twimlai.com)

I try to maintain a good mix of topics and viewpoints (industry/application vs researcher), and to keep the conversation technically interesting.

Happy to answer any questions here.

</comment><comment><USER40> Perhaps rather than audiobooks, you might look into CS lecture videos.. many of these are probably fairly 'listening friendly' and don't require too much visual focus, assuming your preference for audio is due to a driving commute..

other than that, I can only recommend more podcasts; on the systems side, bsdtalk or bsdnow are quite good (obviously bsd focused)

</comment><comment><USER41> Are you actively driving? That limits what you can learn technically, because technical requires at least visual learning, if not actually hands on.

Stick with audiobooks about technical _concepts_ or managerial topics. I'd suggest start with either The Phoenix Project or The Ideal Team Player. From there, follow audible recommendations.

</comment><comment><USER5> Safari Books is great. Despite the name it's a mix of books and videos, either talks from conferences or dedicated video series. A lot of it you can grok just by listening.

[https://www.safaribooksonline.com/home/](https://www.safaribooksonline.com/home/)

</comment><comment><USER42> I feel for technical subjects, you need to sit down with a pen and paper, concentrate, understand and absorb the material. You can try listen to Coursera or Edx lectures. But to be honest, if you are learning well with that, you are probably not driving safely/likely to miss your stop.

<comment><USER15> I used to feel that way, but having listened to a few technical podcasts, I find they are a good way to get a quick but nuanced introduction to topics outside of my day-to-day. They are also a good way to learn about things that are very new and are not part of a canonical body of knowledge yet.

For instance, I've read a lot of about containerization and microservices, but actually listening to interviews with prominent people who work on building these types of things helped me learn much faster about the nuances, tricks and downsides that people don't normally talk about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's probably not that relevant anymore but we did try creating a more educational podcast where we focused on a specific topic each episode, about the Meteor JS framework:

[http://discovermeteor.com/podcast](http://discovermeteor.com/podcast)

</comment><comment><USER44> [http://bikeshed.fm/](http://bikeshed.fm/)

</comment><comment><USER45> I commute about 1h each way via train. I have realized that music with lyrics distracts my brain quite a bit because it keeps trying to parse the text. Since I like to read on the train (or just do nothing and let my brain rest) I have created a playlist with no audio. It's pretty much everything from XMeetsMetal (you'll have to weed out some of the stuff that has text. It's basically a guy covering all sorts of songs/theme songs in a metal interpretation. Awesome stuff:

His playlist: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL864F807C0B279111](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL864F807C0B279111)

His channel: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtJVZjY6xsZUV- sYdcIFpZw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtJVZjY6xsZUV-sYdcIFpZw)

That + noise canceling headphones (I use Bose QuietComfort 20) = good commute.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd also like to say that meditation during a commute can be really great for setting your day.

My current favorite apps for that are Simple Habit and Kevin Rose's up and coming Oak which is in public beta now.

</comment><comment><USER46> Martin Shkreli's This Week In Investing [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0dKDJeQAds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0dKDJeQAds)

<comment><USER5> Never listened to him talk but he's surprisingly down to earth, interesting, and levelheaded.

<comment><USER47> i must be thinking of a different Martin Shkreli...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Find a way to live closer to work or the other way around, then bike or walk? A bit of exercise gets my brain going way more than half listening to something while driving.

</comment><comment><USER49> How about the audio book of Deep Work by Cal Newport?

<comment><USER50> Seconded. I've only just started it, but it really resonates with me so far. It is about how to better use time / avoid distraction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Not audio or even technical, but I recommend logic problems. The only downside is that they are so engrossing you might miss your stop.

</comment><comment><USER52> Relax, listen to music, let your mind wander.

Passive learning is a overrated. You need deliberate practice to get truly better.

</comment><comment><USER53> Podcasts that have helped improve my technical skills:

      - Talking Machines
      - The O'Reilly Data Show
      - Software Engineering Radio
      - Software Engineering Daily
      - AWS Re: Invent series

Podcasts that have helped improve my general thinking:

      - <USER2>
      - Conversations with Tyler
      - Waking Up with Sam Harris

</comment><comment><USER54> White noise... But the brown note should be avoided. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER55> [https://www.google.ca/search?q=instructional+podcasts&oq=ins...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=instructional+podcasts&oq=instructional+podcasts&aqs=chrome..69i57.10958j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

<comment><USER56> I'm not sure Google is good at surfacing quality recommendations as HN users.

<comment><USER55> wrong for general inquiries, I agree for specific ones. I responded to him as a general wish to learn, not a special one like coding or math</comment></comment></comment>


Khan Academy Statistics videos are not good - mck- http://learnandteachstatistics.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/khan-not-good/

<comment><AUTHOR> All I got out of this was "Don't watch Khan videos, watch mine instead." If well-qualified people, like this blogger, really have issues with Khan's videos, they should man-up and directly contact Khan Academy. Is it really that far of a jump?</comment>


Netflix Billing Migration to AWS - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2016/06/netflix-billing-migration-to-aws.html <comment><USER2> I find it to be a peculiar business decision to completely (as much as you can) migrate to one of your largest competitors' cloud service. It seems like Microsoft is the only, of the larger cloud providers, that doesn't -really- compete with Netflix. (Google has YouTube, and I guess even Microsoft has a much smaller Windows Store presence.) Even if Amazon can't access the raw data, they could see how you're utilizing it to improve their own video service, and they get the benefit of billing you and potentially using their pricing leverage to squeeze your margins.

I feel like Apple's approach of utilizing multiple providers makes more sense (though they do this for uptime and redundancy.) Maybe I'm being a pessimist.

<comment><USER3> > Even if Amazon can't access the raw data, they could see how you're > utilizing it to improve their own video service, and they get the benefit of > billing you and potentially using their pricing leverage to squeeze your > margins.

So you're saying Amazon is going to risk millions of dollars so they can make a few more bucks on video streaming, which is like 3 levels down from their primary business?

Prove it. I had an argument with my last company about this very issue. If Amazon's primary business was video delivery, then that would make a lot of sense. But where does Amazon's primary revenue stream _actually_ come from? That's right, it's AWS. Amazon may be an excellent retailer, but they spend just as much money as they make on the shipping and fulfillment side to get shit on your doorstep faster and cheaper than anyone else out there. Each person that spends money on Amazon can only really spend a few hundred dollars per year. But even a small company that's entirely hosted on AWS, like 70% of the companies I've worked for, pays Amazon thousands of dollars per month for hosting. There's definitely more people than companies, but shipping stuff to people costs a lot more money than Amazon needs to pay in order to have your stuff hosted by them. Plus they do a lot of R&D into making their own systems faster and more efficient, eventually passing savings down when they re-work their pricing tiers.

Basically, my argument is/was that the whole idea of Amazon stealing your IP to make a few extra bucks on whatever they happen to be doing is totally bunk. Amazon is really in the infrastructure business, and if you're a video startup...you're NOT. And take it from someone who watched a company try and fail to build a competing private cloud with no budget and a skeleton crew...it's stressful and not fun at all.

The main reason to use multiple providers is, as you said, uptime and redundancy...and "not putting all your eggs in one basket", so to speak. It's an engineering, not political, decision. My last company could have probably saved themselves by moving everything to AWS and shutting down their Level3 internet-backbone connectivity and direct fiber from the office to the datacenter (which is the same technology AWS is using anyway, except they have an actual cloud API and not just a pile of servers), but they were too busy conflating this engineering/performance decision with one that must be made for political reasons.

<comment><USER4> >>Prove it. I had an argument with my last company about this very issue. If Amazon's primary business was video delivery, then that would make a lot of sense. But where does Amazon's primary revenue stream actually come from? That's right, it's AWS.

Let me try. Earlier Amazon's _primary_ business was selling books, then it "became" selling almost every object that can be legally sold, and now you are saying that it "is" AWS. What about tomorrow? Tomorrow, it easily may "become" selling videos too. With Amazon it's very much possible.

So, it's not just technical issue, it's a political/business issue too. Of course, as you have said, they must take into consideration the trade-off. If the trade-off is more like "killing yourself under the technical burden of setting up a good network" vs "potentially allowing/helping Amazon to take advantage of your hosted service on their AWS and thus to become a future competitor" then they may go to AWS and/or other cloud provider(s).

edit: allowing/helping

<comment><USER5> Microsoft's business shifted too. Long gone are the days they were a software vendor for end user. Nowadays they produce services and hardware products for enterprise customer. And end user are the product, their new subscription based Office and Win10 collects a lot of private data like key presses (keylogger), audio from microphone, scans documents and uploads unspecified tracking data in many encrypted TLS (phone home). And Microsoft is known to suddently compete with you. There is a rule, never compete with Microsoft, they have more money than you, they will make their competiting product/service/hardware available for less money than you could offer.

<comment><USER6> Oh come off it. You're going to have to back that one with sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for writing this up, I'm just at the tail end of having re-architected the CloudFlare billing system, also a subscription system written in Java with a MySQL back-end, but fronted by a Go API that insulates the rest of the business from the internals of the billing system.

The blog post covers a lot of the high level stuff really well, but I'm interested to learn whether you experienced any issues along the way, what they were, how you dealt with them.

In CloudFlare's case our migration was made more complex by also adding PayPal, and changing our processing gateway. Both of which created risk that we've had to work hard to understand and mitigate, i.e. how different gateways may, with the same card, return different results, etc.

<comment><USER8> We do a lot of migrations from custom systems or SaaS integrations to Kill Bill (open-source subscription billing and payments platform) [0] and we've summarized our strategy and usual pain points in our migration guide [1]. You might find it useful.

Happy to chat offline too if you want to go into specifics.

[0] [http://killbill.io/](http://killbill.io/) [1] [http://docs.killbill.io/0.16/migration_guide.html](http://docs.killbill.io/0.16/migration_guide.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How many times is Netflix going to finalize its transition to AWS?

<comment><USER10> They won't 100% be on AWS, but probably close to 95%. Netflix owns its own media CDN.

<comment><USER11> So almost all of their bandwidth is handled outside of AWS. I would wager a guess that bandwidth is quite a bit more than 5% of their ops bill.

<comment><USER10> I think that's where you have to draw line between owning your own infrastructure and using a public cloud in the architecture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> DRBD works very well for high availability, especially good to provide failover for master database, since that usually requires fast failover like under 10 seconds. Five or six years ago, did couple HA setup with DRBD along with Linux HA and virtual IP. The failover work great.

<comment><USER13> I was under the impression the accepted way to fail-over with mysql and DRBD was to fail out the old server, and then start repairing tables, because you couldn't be sure they were in a valid state. That's about a decade old info though.

I always just set up master/master replication with mysql. You can get free distributed reads that way if you architect your application right.

<comment><USER12> DRBD produces two mirror copies of data. When the primary failed, the standby has whatever data the primary has just before the crash. When the standby starts up, the RDBMS goes through the normal recovery and bootup. It's same as the primary crashed and being started up again.

MySQL's master/master has a number of complication and problems: 1. data loss due to async nature of replication, 2. update conflict on same data on multiple masters, 3. two masters mean two IP so all the clients need to know how to fail over to different IP, 4. complication in adding or removing master.

With DRBD, the disks are mirrored so that's no chance of data loss once a transaction is committed. There's only one master so no complicate conflict resolution. Linux HA's virtual IP means the standby will take over the primary IP so the clients don't need to know there's a server failover. Adding or removing standby is easy. DRBD will sync the disks automatically, no downtime on the primary.

<comment><USER13> > 1\. data loss due to async nature of replication

That depends on what you mean by async. The replication itself is synchronous (statements cannot happen out of order), it's just not lockstep with disk writes and commits. I think it's more illustrative to say it's delayed.

> 2\. update conflict on same data on multiple masters, 3. two masters mean > two IP so all the clients need to know how to fail over to different IP

I'm not referring to multiple live masters, I'm referring to a set of servers where each is both master and slave to the other, and one live master server which gets the HA IP address. In that respect, there is no difference to a DRBD replicated setup. Clients just use the HA IP.

> 4\. complication in adding or removing master.

I never found it that complicated, and I deployed it at least 5-6 times for multiple companies, and even with slightly different topologies (master/master where each master had an additional dedicated slave reserved for intensive read-only queries). What did you find complicated about it?

<comment><USER12> 1\. MySQL replication is async by default; see [1]. That means commit returns before replication to peer is complete. Committed data can be lost if master's disk is destroyed before a slave replicates it. NDB has synchronous replication but it has other limitation. 5.7 seems to have a semi-sync mode now.

[1] [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/replication.html](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/replication.html)

4\. For complication, you need to find out and configure the binary log position. Also because replication is on the binary log, if you ever truncate the log, you can't simply add a brand new master. You have to do a backup on the primary and restore to the new master, and then set up the log position to just prior to backup. Just lots of extra complication.

<comment><USER13> > That means commit returns before replication to peer is complete.

That's what I was talking about. It's just a matter of what aspect of it you are talking about, but I'll give you that it's in their official documentation, so there's no point in me pressing the issue.

> Committed data can be lost if master's disk is destroyed before a slave > replicates it.

That is true. It's a trade-off you can make for slightly different CAP assurances, or nuances in the failure states at least (mostly in what you might expect to do in a split brain scenario).

> For complication, you need to find out and configure the binary log > position.

Your backups should be logging the binary log position as well (--dump-slave or --maser-data). If they aren't, you aren't doing yourself any favors.

> Also because replication is on the binary log, if you ever truncate the log, > you can't simply add a brand new master. You have to do a backup on the > primary and restore to the new master, and then set up the log position to > just prior to backup. Just lots of extra complication.

If you have to do another backup because it was truncated recently, you aren't much worse off than doing backups with DRBD replication (which even if you have a slave configured and do backups off that, you can truncate logs and need to backup from the master then as well). The downside is that you may not want to immediately do a backup of the master due to reasons of load, which will leave you without a failover for a short while. Whether an extra queryable resource available is worth that is up the the architect.

I remember a Percona training I was at a few years back there were a few more clustering options available I hadn't played with (and still haven't). Percona XtraDB Cluster was one, and it's supposed to support synchronous master/master replication. That might be the best of both worlds, if it lives up to its billing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They used a DRBD replicated MySQL. Wonder why they used MySQL over PostgresSQL then.. Would be great to know if they looked that up aswell.

<comment><USER15> What does DRBD have to do with MySQL vs PostgresSQL ? DRBD is just block device replication

<comment><USER16> I think it's just a reflex for (ex-MySQL) Postgres users to ask that anytime they see someone using MySQL. If you have significant experience with both you know the quality of life is different between the two.

<comment><USER14> Actually I never used MySQL really. But sometimes it's great to know _why_ decisions are made. Actually I don't think they said, "well lets use MySQL over Oracle" especially since MySQL is a Oracle product, too. There would've been a way to use MariaDB aswell. And I guess anything with license costs fall out already (they explained why in the article).

Edit: My guess would be that they still keep galera in mind, but since they didn't shared they why, one could only guess. And Transaction Wraparound maybe.

<comment><USER17> MySQL had useable replication years beofre PG. Maybe that's why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I got really excited because I read the heading as Netflix migration costs paid for by AWS. I thought they worked out deal to get a free tier during migration. Wow...oh...nevermind... :-)

<comment><USER19> I work for AWS. I believe we do offer some migration assistance for bigger startups. Hit me up if you want to learn more: email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dropped Oracle, using MySQL. Why not use PostgreSQL instead?

<comment><USER21> I work on the Netflix Billing Team.

PostgreSQL was indeed a very attractive option, but we wanted to keep a path to Aurora open. When we were working on the migration, Aurora was still in beta, so instead of going to Aurora directly, we decided run our own MySQL instances on EC2.

<comment><USER22> Why would you go to RDS with such large amounts of data when AWS do not provide ability to get data out easily. If you moved away from AWS in the future for what ever reason your data is more or less stuck in AWS.

<comment> jon-wood Amazon released their data migration service a while back, which allows you to transfer data in just about anyway you might want to, they'll migrate data between different RDS engines (MySQL to Postgres for example), and to databases outside AWS. They even support near real-time replication to database servers outside AWS, so you could hypothetically replicate your RDS instances to a fail over environment with another provider. There's very little risk of your data being locked in now.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/dms/?nc2=h_mo](https://aws.amazon.com/dms/?nc2=h_mo)

<comment><USER22> Unless you use SQL Server. The dms service is basically useless with sqlserver. We can't get our 200gb do out of AWS. And any method that works without dms takes about 40 hours.

<comment><USER23> Can you replicate to a slave outside of RDS and then perform a replica promotion during scheduled maintenance?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> At least they ditched Oracle (licensed)...

<comment><USER25> I worked at a Fortune-5 that was heavily invested in Oracle.

Oracle has a nasty licensing model where they charge you per core regardless of if that core is a physical one or not (hyper-threading). While I was there, it suites told all the engineering managers that Oracle was out and the going forward solution was Microsoft SQL which, as I understand, has more relaxed licensing model.

Another thing I'm wondering about is I would figure Netflix to be big enough to have SAN storage. Just about every large company I worked at always used SAN replication technologies instead of open source stuff. And it's not a debate about open source solution vs. commercial. It's more about support. Large companies want a throat to grab when things break bad.

<comment><USER26> MS SQL used to be per socket pricing. With 2012 they switched to per core.

That was a sad day.

<comment><USER27> Does anyone happen to know how MS actually charges per core these days? I found: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Licensing/learn- more/brief-l...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Licensing/learn-more/brief- licensing-by-cores.aspx) which points to [http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=229882](http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=229882) \-- taken together, it looks like AMD hex-core+cpus count at .75 cores, single-core cpus count as 4, and dual-cores count as 2. Given that you need to buy 2-packs, it appears you can get a single 2-pack for a single dual-core (hyper-treading appears to be ignored), 2 packs for a single single-core cpu, or 3 two-packs for 8 AMD cpus?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What if the Netflix side on AWS was hacked say like their security credentials was leaked?

</comment><comment><USER29> Does this mean Amazon can mine Netflix's data to improve their Prime Video services?

<comment><USER30> Customer data is sacrosanct within Amazon. Cannot touch it without the customer's consent.

source: I work for Amazon Web Services.

<comment><USER31> Amazon already showed its hand at maliciousness when it blackballed all chromecasts from stores, including 3rd party sellers. I don't put suddenly blackballing netflix beyond amazon's consideration. Amazon is cutthroat with public customers, corporate customers, and with its own employees. I think netflix is stupid to put more eggs in the vulture's nest.

In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that at the first opportunity where the lawyers agree it is a usable hole, they'll try to kill netflix through denying it service. Taking out netflix for a week or two while the engineers rebuild the backends with a different provider would be excellent for amazon's video division.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is this why my daughter can't watch Young Justice? I've noticed quite a few titles show unavailable. Curious if Netflix is positioning to sell to amazon.

</comment><comment><USER33> Dropped Oracle, using MySQL. Why not use AWS Aurora instead?

<comment><USER34> FTA: While our subscription processing was using data in our Cassandra datastore, our payment processor needed ACID capabilities of an RDBMS to process charge transactions. We still had a multi-terabyte database that would not fit in AWS RDS with TB limitations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This thread is missing Google's PR team and links to its SRE book

</comment><comment><USER36> Am I the only one who initially thought that Netflix is passing the bill for migration to AWS?

</comment><comment><USER37> _Considering how much code and data was interacting with Oracle, one of our objectives was to disintegrate our giant Oracle based solution into a services based architecture. Some of our APIs needed to be multi-region and highly available. So we decided to split our data into multiple data stores. Subscriber data was migrated to Cassandra data store. Our payment processing integration needed ACID transaction. Hence all relevant data was migrated to MYSQL._

Considering that Cassandra is not ACID compliant with her "eventual consistency", and that MySQL is notorious for corrupting data and not functioning correctly, I am compelled to wonder just what kind of people work at Netflix. And who gets the idea to go to AWS and pay the full virtualization on Linux performance penalty?

Now, I've done Oracle engineering at some very large databases (hundreds of millions of rows, OLTP and DWH), and I know that Oracle is a smoking fast database when the right people develop on it. Also makes me wonder what kind of code they had running, and what kind of people selected it, when they managed to gum up what is essentially the Bugatti Veyron of databases.

Given this information from "Netflix" I won't be considering them as a potential employer any time soon. It has to be a mess over there.

<comment><USER38> The majority of the corruption issues with MySQL comes from using the innodb engine. AWS built their own MySQL engine called Aurora that I would be shocked if Netflix wasn't using. It's designed for distributed workloads and should be harder to corrupt.

I'll admit I'm confused about picking Cassandra as well, but not for the same reasons you are. They're only storing subscriber data (billing address, subscription type, etc). That data is going to remain static for months at a time. When changed the only potential problem that could occur is the billing process using old data, but I'm guessing their system is smart enough to try again in thirty minutes.

Oracle may be fast, but it's also expensive. This is billing, which means batched jobs running in the background- they don't care how long each individual transaction takes, and I'm positive it's going to be cheaper to roll up more servers to compensate than it is to pay Oracle's licensing fees.

<comment><USER39> I'm not sure if you saw this other thread, but I thought it answered one of your questions so was worth sharing. Sounds like Aurora wasn't stable when this migration began, so they did the migration with an eye towards the next migration (to Aurora).

Sorry about the c/p but I don't see a permalink on lapitopi's comment.

lapitopi 1 day ago I work on the Netflix Billing Team. PostgreSQL was indeed a very attractive option, but we wanted to keep a path to Aurora open. When we were working on the migration, Aurora was still in beta, so instead of going to Aurora directly, we decided run our own MySQL instances on EC2.

edit: begun/began</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Gitpushblog Static blog generator for GitHub pages uses issues&comments - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/geekodour/gitpushblog <comment><USER2> Isn't one of these famous full-featured static site generators allow running custom scripts to fetch data from anywhere and turn them into website pages?

It is surprising that they don't.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> gitpushblog is a set of npm scripts that make it easy to build a blog using the githubAPI and nunjucks and makes it really easy to push it into appropriate repository, for both user pages and repository pages. I somehow managed to complete it, almost lost motivation.</comment>


Wall St. Journal's new tech news site "run autonomously as a small online startup" - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Still has a pretty old-media feel to it. If this were a YC startup I'd advise them to get the giant pictures of themselves off the frontpage and put enticing stories there instead.

But it does cure the number 1 problem with the WSJ, which is that you can't read their articles without paying. That alone makes this site newsworthy, because the WSJ were among the last holdouts in that dept. But restricting their articles to subscribers was making them increasingly irrelevant; when was the last time you saw a WSJ article on Reddit or Digg or Slashdot? Now they've decided to work like the rest of the Web.

What next? Will we one day be able to read NYT articles without having to register?

<comment><USER2> I think they will this year; they recently announced they will 'lower' editorial standards to get their stories on the Internet faster. Right now, their Internet standards are the same as those of the print newspaper, so they are just as slow.

However, there is nothing wrong with charging money and controlling access to your content. Reporters need to be paid. I think the NYT is doing the right thing--likely, waiting until they have their own reddit clone or google news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Too much clutter. I would rather them drop all the glossy stuff and give me the content I crave. All the pictures I pretty much block out because they remind me of advertising.

That's why I much prefer news.YC and reddit format to NYT; less annoyances.</comment>


Why Outsourcing Software Development Is the Right Choice, Always - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ekipa.co/outsourcing-software-development/?utm_medium=blog&utm_source=ycombinator <comment><USER2> So a software development outsourcer says that outsourcing development is always the right choice. Forgive me if I suspect that there may be some bias at work here.

</comment><comment><USER3> I could spend way more time arguing this point, but I have bugs created by our outsourced team I have to fix.

</comment><comment><USER4> In other news... Studies show that eating hamburgers is always the healthiest choice for any person on any diet. Read more at McDonalds.com.</comment>


Breath of the Wild and the ethics of amiibo hacking - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15223338/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-nintendo-amiibo-hacking-ethics <comment><USER2> This is a wonderfully complicated mix of in game rewards, but they aren't DLC, some have exclusive in game rewards you can't get elsewhere. You can buy some Amiibo retail, but others which unlock exclusives in a brand new game are locked behind owning collectibles which aren't retail-available any more (and expensive from third party resellers). Some of the items are cosmetic, nice callbacks to older games and similar. Others provide in game advantages.

That makes the ethical questions very challenging to address. Personally I feel more 'ok' with hackery for the items that aren't available retail, but I hate 'pay to win' in games as well. It's hard to articulate how I feel about the situation. I think the article is spot-on that making these available in DLC packs or something as well would clarify the situation a lot.

<comment><USER3> Nintendo are clever with how they limit the availability of some Amiibos. The real value of the Amiibo is really in the actual collectability/rarity of the figurine. You can then make the figure more collectable as time goes on my linking it to specific, valuable in game rewards. All giving more value to brand Nintendo as time goes on.

What's a real stroke of genius though is that they make the packaging in a way so that you can't scan the Amiibo without unboxing it - therefore reducing it's monetary value. You end up with the real Nintendo fans feeling very compelled to purchase two of each - 1 for keeping boxed and 1 for actually using in games.

<comment><USER4> Why must "real Nintendo fans" keep a boxed copy?

<comment><USER5> Collectors' items are often considered higher value when they're kept new-in- box. Someone who buys them as much for the collectibility as for the in-game use might buy two so that they can have their cake and eat it too (by buying two cakes).

<comment><USER4> Yes, but someone who buys items and holds onto them in mint condition for resale value is no more a "real" fan than someone who buys them for personal enjoyment.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, but I was answering as if you meant your question literally, rather than as if you were just nitpicking the other commenter's phrasing. Your implied meaning was just "I disagree with the way you're defining 'real fan'", but that's a pretty boring comment to respond to, so I took what I judged as the more interesting interpretation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I see no moral delimma.

This is nothing more than a cheat code... They are, in effect, rewarding you for having a correct NFC code, thats all. If you obtain that, you have it.

<comment><USER7> As an implementation detail that's true out of necessity, but the simple English explanation of the mechanic would be "they are rewarding you for having an amiibo", not for having an NFC code. You wouldn't say "the passwords on Apple's databases are there to reward intruders who possess the correct password", right?

<comment><USER8> I guess I just feel like there's a lot less harm done in hacking Apple's database than there is in giving your video game character an extra outfit to wear or horse to ride.

<comment><USER9> It's more than cosmetic in these games -- there are entire realms accessible only if you have the right Amiibos or combinations thereof.

So really more like the Pro vs. Home metaphor with the code for both being on the disc you bought.

This doesn't help answer the debate directly, but is relevant to understanding the question.

<comment><USER8> That's fair, but my point was more than the consequences of hacking a database with information valuable in the real world are much more worrisome than cheating in a game (no matter how much it affects the artificial world). In the latter, it's debatable about whether it causes real-world harm; in the former, it's unquestionable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is equivalent to a software program where the basic and Pro versions are the same code, but some Pro features are locked by a software gate.

Ammiibo hacking is buying the basic version of a software program, and then bypassing the security code that protects the pro features.

It's the same as piracy, which you may considered a vice or a virtue.

<comment><USER11> Except in this case there exist(ed) far less keys than demand, with the original company (Nintendo) selling them for a flat price regardless of supply vs demand, i.e. if Nintendo sells 1000 Amiibos at $25 each, they'll have $25000, even if those same Amiibos end up being worth $5000 each on the secondary market.

<comment><USER4> So what? That's not a rebuttal the parent comment. In fact, this argument seems strikingly similar to the normal piracy defense of the content being too expensive to purchase.

<comment><USER12> But it's not too expensive to buy from _the original creator_ \- I think this is the point the parent made.

I'm not sure the majority of people would pay Nintendo 50 bucks for this certain Amiibo, but I'd bet it would be quite a few more than those who will pay a reseller.

<comment><USER4> It looks like pythonaut_16 has edited their comment to say something completely different than what it did when I posted my reply. It used to be excusing NFC hacking on the grounds of Amiibo being limited, and therefore not everybody who wants one can necessarily get one.

<comment><USER11> I have not edited the comment, maybe you confused mine with someone else's or misread it?

Anyway my point wasn't to support or deny Amiibo hacking, just to highlight the contrast between basic/pro software versioning and Amiibos.

<comment><USER4> Ok now I'm confused. I know I was trying to reply to a comment that was basically saying that it's ok to do NFC hacking because of the limited availability of Amiibo, but I don't see any comment like that anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't see anything wrong if the particular amiibo is out of production. Nintendo can't get your money.

If you can get it, it's a bit more murky... the content is on the disc, you're just telling the game to unlock it. You can do what you want with your hardware. On the other hand, other publishers do this with on-disc DLC, and few people say that acquiring those without paying is acceptable.

<comment><USER14> Most of these you can only get second hand off of sites like eBay—at significant markup. Real originals are hard to come by.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have no problem with this whatsoever. You bought the game. The bits are yours. The fact that you can send it NFC signals to unlock the hidden stuff is kind of neat!

I would never buy Amiibo.

</comment><comment><USER16> I really like the Amiibo idea. It's like a DLC but I'm actually buying something real, a physical token that has value in itself regardless of being on game or not. In BOTW the Amiibos are specially good because they offer a good reward without fell that you are cheating. You save some time, but nothing that completely changes the game. Yet, as pointed in the article, some Zelda amiibos are impossible to get or way too expansive due to low offer and high demand. I don't care about having a "rare" Amiibo.

</comment><comment><USER17> In the 90's, if a developer made a game with a cheat code that was 'exclusive' to buying a particular strategy guide, would it be unethical to share/use that cheat code without buying your own copy?

I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER18> Googling for rfid toaster does not get much. Where do I find out more, and are they useful for non-amiibo tinkering?

</comment><comment><USER19> amiibo's are a lame money grab by nintendo. I see zero problem with using an NFC hack to get around nintendo locking access to features already in the software you bought from them.

</comment><comment><USER20> > More than anything, the way Nintendo has structured these Breath of the Wild > exclusives speaks to how woefully outdated its digital strategy is.

That may be true but that still doesn't change the fact that the author is unlocking paywalled content without actually paying for it.

There are many instances of games shipping with DLC already bundled and buying it will merely unlock the content locally with no download necessary. Would anyone argue that unlocking that content by other means than buying it was not piracy?

It's the same argument we hear about "abandonware". "Well, they're not planning on selling it digitally and obtaining a copy is difficult and/or expensive so it's alright to download it." Well, legally it's still piracy — no two ways about it (at least until it falls into the public domain, but that'll be a good while still for many of the games listed on abandonware sites).

The whole piece reeks of post-rationalization. I don't care if he pirates stuff or not but this feeble attempt to rationalize it is honestly a bit tiring to read. You can take up the debate about Amiibo availability etc. without also arguing that this is the reason why it's OK to pirate it. And the fact that he rounds it all off by putting all of the blame on Nintendo (despite his weaving back and forth earlier) just cements it for me:

> If only Nintendo would let more players in on the fun.

Finally (and now I'm just splitting hairs because I've gotten all worked up about this), I think he needs to revisit his definition of cheating:

> I've been cheating in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I don't mean > that I'm running an illegally obtained version of the game on an emulator, > or that I'm exploiting the game's design flaws to skip over parts of the > story I'd rather not deal with.

The former isn't cheating, that's just pirating it, it's a completely different thing. The latter is up for debate I guess. No speedrunner would consider it cheating (obviously, if it saves time and it's in the game code then it's alright) which leads me to a thing many people could learn from speedrunners' approach to games: Don't make any assumptions about how you're intended to play a game. Unless you have the devs right there to tell you, you really can't know or infer it.

/rant

Edit: I'd be happy to hear opposing views since there appear to be some.

<comment><USER17> >It's the same argument we hear about "abandonware". "Well, they're not planning on selling it digitally and obtaining a copy is difficult and/or expensive so it's alright to download it." Well, legally it's still piracy — no two ways about it (at least until it falls into the public domain, but that'll be a good while still for many of the games listed on abandonware sites).

Law should be based of morality, not the other way around.

Just because something is illegal does not mean it is wrong: Laws, and IP laws especially, have a bunch of side effects that were not anticipated when the laws were created because they were written before digital technologies enabled free and pervasive transmission of information.

Since patent law was created with the purpose of encouraging innovation, I'd argue that the author who teaches himself the skill of NFC spoofing is acting pro-socially, building his own human capital in an innovative way that encourages others to use technology to find new solutions to existing problems. (Arguably, the person who made the amiibo scanner is even more righteous, and the game maker who enabled this learning opportunity even more).</comment></comment>


Does sleeping in 90 minute intervals help? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wakemate.com/2011/04/05/743/

<comment><USER2> I thought the blog post was interesting, but lacking scientific data.

You had citations for most of the information, but I stopped looking after you cited ehow.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well the 90 minute thing is wrong. So I couldn't find a more reputable source than ehow ;-).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would love to hear if there are other sleep related topics people want to hear about.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any polyphasers? I used to do it, but real life intervened. Would be curious to hear about how polyphasic folks use the WakeMate.

For now, I use nature's other natural alarm clock: A newborn.

<comment><AUTHOR> No one that we've explicitly talked with. We're planning on implementing features to guide people along to polyphasic sleep but haven't had the time yet.</comment></comment></comment>


Like Team Fortress 2, Valve make DotA 2 free to play - revenue via in-game store - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dota2.com/2012/06/introducing-the-dota-store/ <comment><USER2> I am becoming a big fan of the free to play model. I think it serves a lot of players well:

* When you're a kid, money is a scarcity. I would have loved to have had a bunch of quality F2P games when I was a kid. (Of course, these games tend to be online-based and the commercial Internet wasn't around back then, kids today don't know how good they have it, off my lawn, etc etc)

* When you're a working adult, it's free time that's the scarcity. I'm happy to throw some coin at Tribes: Ascend to give me some of the equipment that I wouldn't have the time to grind and unlock.

* If you're my wife, it's interest level that's the scarcity. She finds game here and there that _really_ grab her interest, but everything else just gets a "meh". F2P means the ability to sample, no sunken cost besides a little bandwidth usage. It's better than demos were, because if the game is a winner, there's no transition hassle from demo to full product - you just keep on playing.

<comment><USER3> _I am becoming a big fan of the free to play model. I think it serves a lot of players well_

Probably, but not me. I'm the grumpy old curmudgeon that prefers to pay a one- time fee for a quality game and compete purely on skill, not on hours spent grinding or real money spent flipping bits in a DB somewhere. And even at $50 a pop even the typical teenager should be able to pay cash down for a game every month or two.

What this is really about is shutting down piracy.

<comment><USER4> There is absolutely nothing in the dota2 store which affects gameplay. All items are 100% cosmetic. This allows anyone to go in and play any hero on even ground, but if you like a character you can spend a little irl coin to customize and stand out.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I was referring to the comment about buying gear in Tribes. I don't have a problem with cosmetic in-game purchases except maybe a worry that they give game designers the wrong incentives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They pretty much had to make it f2p to have a chance against LoL, the currently dominant game in the genre.

Dota 2 vs LoL should be pretty interesting. I'd argue that LoL has an extremely strong first mover advantage. Dota was technically first, but it wasn't a standalone game, and was completely inaccessible for new players, so I don't really count it.

What i'm curious to see is if a company with as much reputation/money as valve can overcome that. If I was a gambling man i'd guess that LoL is going to stay #1, both because they have the first mover advantage, and because this is Riot's only product, so they have way more at stake than Valve, and are going to work harder to make sure they have the best product.

<comment><USER6> I expect that LoL might retain a devoted playerbase, sort of like Runescape, but I definitely predict that Dota 2 will be making a ton of money and getting all the attention.

\- They seem serious about sponsoring tournaments and making it competitive and balanced

\- LoL turns off a lot of people with pay to win

\- Their interface and client is already _holy shit way better_ , like night- and-day better, and I expect that it will just get more better, since they have more talent and more man-hours

\- They should know how to promote and run F2P games as well as Riot, since TF2 was a big success for them

<comment><USER7> When I worked on LoL, there was a lot of focus that it _not_ be play to win (this right up to release). I wondered how that would turn out. What would you say is wrong?

(I'm not a big fan of the genre [I'm not a pvp guy], so I haven't kept up on the game.)

<comment><USER6> As a semi-casual player -- maybe I played 200 games ever -- I could not possibly play enough to earn many of the champions, so I get to choose between not having them or paying a _ton_ of money (IIRC, many are like five to ten bucks a pop.) In addition, the newest champions are typically both the most powerful (at least for a while, until they are nerfed) and the most expensive, so those who pay get them first.

Stronger players could also buy XP boosts, to level their summoner faster than I could, and IP boosts, to buy better runes than I could -- those are just strict improvements to their characters' stats with no caveats. The only way a non-payer could achieve parity on these metrics would be to play many hundreds or thousands of games.

<comment><USER8> Upon reaching competitive level (level 30), you must have won a descent enough amount of free points (IP, as opposed to RP that one gets only by paying) to have a bunch of champions with appropriate runes. I think it is not really a problem, because you need to master the champions you play anyway to have some fun and win games. Then, if one really enjoys the game, one plays just for the fun and IPs can stack up without you noticing.

The IP boosts thing is actually not a good idea: you reach higher levels artificially, without gaining real experience with the game and the champions you play. If you go straight to ranked games at level 30 by this mean, your ELO will probably be very poor; you'll be flamed by your team for your poor play, and that's a really bad experience (you'll have to learn to ignore clueless flamers though).

It should also be noted that Riot is not very greedy: sometimes you get free IP boosts, and even free RP (not enough to immediately buy something though - well played). And upon a recent server incident they refunded me RPs without asking questions - even though they could see I never bought anything from them.

The only things one cannot get just by playing are skins (custom outfits for the characters). As strange as it seems to me, it is actually the first thing that some players buy - instead of things that would improve their character's stats.

It seems to me that it works in a similar way as shareware games works. I also think it is an interesting response to the problem of piracy. See for instance Blizzard with Starcraft 2, who apparently refuse to offer LAN mode just because of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are few concerns about how ability to customize a hero can affect fantasy aspect of the game. It will be weird if a hero called Anti-Mage suddenly walks around with cowboy hat. There is also a concern of heros suddenly not being recognizable at all, but I think valve will provide various options to get around that.

All in all pretty good move though. It will help propel Dota2 to biggest game in China etc where Warcraft3 engine based DOTA is already very popular.

<comment><USER7> Ten Cent made an investment in Riot Games with the plan to take League of Legends into China. How is it doing against DotA?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really think Valve knows how to do this right. If you get people hooked on the gameplay they'll pay for silly extravagances. See: Basketball and LA Lights.

<comment><AUTHOR> For the community generated content, Valve pays the creator twenty-five percent (25%) of the Adjusted Gross Revenue[1]. TF2 has already paid out $3.5 million to creators, so it's reasonable to assume the TF2 economy has rewarded Valve to the tune of ~$10 million.

I think this could work out very well for them.

[1]: <http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoplegalagreement>

<comment><USER4> That number doesn't include items which they don't pay the item creator. Most notable as far as I know keys don't pay anything towards content creators, and they're a very important piece of the economy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it possible to play a dota-like game in single-player? I don't enjoy playing multiplayer games and registering to play.

<comment><USER12> Dota2 has a co-operative play against AI players, and I assume you can play this mode on your own if you wish; however this entire genre typically focuses on multiplayer values to get the most out of the game. For example, there is no storyline, and the gameplay depends entirely on working together with your team-mates to overcome a huge range of situations that develop from different hero line-ups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> in my previous company, a large national financial institution, we (IT dept) had "dota hour" almost every day during lunch time. the interesting part is the teams were divided by "managers/supervisors vs staffs".</comment>