Ask HN: Great tech entrepreneurs who saw success in their mid 30s? - <AUTHOR>

There seems to be no end to the stories of entrepreneurs in their 20s becoming an over night success in the tech industry. While these stories are very inspiring, time has pushed me into my mid-30s and the stories have less relevance to me. I'd be very interested to hear from those who screamed F-T-W and finally followed their entrepreneurial spirit in their mid-30s.<p>Anyone care to share their thoughts? <comment><USER2> Just remember that stories of entrepreneurs making it big in their 20s is news because it is uncommon. If it was normal, you wouldn't hear about it. No one writes a news story about the sun rising everyday.

People starting successful businesses later on in their career doesn't make the news because it is probably more common.

Also, there is no such thing as overnight success despite what these stories may have you believe. When I have read or listened to interviews from entrepreneurs, it is quite common that the "overnight success" was 10 years in the making.

This is from Mixergy's latest interview with Seth Godin:

"I started more than 100 businesses before I had one that really worked. I was three weeks away from bankruptcy for six years in a row. I went window shopping in restaurants. I launched a video tape with fish swimming back and forth for people who couldn't have an aquarium. I had a business selling light bulbs door-to-door to raise money for marching bands. There's a really long list of failures."

</comment><comment><USER3> And here I thought that entrepreneurs were the ones who did something nobody else has done before - what's the deal with needing role models that are just like yourself? (And I don't mean the poster specifically)

It really should have no impact on either your performance or your willingness to do something if someone else was this age or that when they did something impressive. IMHO.

If the timing is right and the idea and execution are excellent, it'll be big. If not, it won't. Just go ahead and find out which one it is!

<comment><USER4> "It really should have no impact on either your performance or your willingness to do something if someone else was this age or that when they did something impressive."

This is absolutely right. It's good to learn from role models, but just take what's helpful and leave the rest. Sure there were people who were younger, smarter, prettier, and smelled better, but as m_eiman said "If the timing is right and the idea and execution are excellent, it'll be big".

It's impossible to compare your situation to anybody else anyway. For example, it's impossible to tell how successful somebody is by the $80,000 car they drive. They may own it outright, they may owe more than the car is worth, you can't tell.

Actually, watch the Mixergy interview with Seth Godin, he specifically talks about being different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My entrepreneur energy has definitely changed (also in mid 30s). Ten years ago it was all about the "great idea" and working really hard. Now it's about strategy and observing the way the world works and choosing where/when to work hard. I keep feeling like I should be able to "see" the big picture better.

I think Ben Franklin said it well: "At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgement."

It makes me think of a friend that's been an entrepreneur for 40 years. He carefully planned a new business where he could work 15 hours per week and make very good money. It's like he doesn't waste time doing anything unnecessary.

</comment><comment><USER6> Many studies have shown that older entrepreneurs are more successful. The canonical example is Ray Kroc, who started McDonalds in his fifties.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kroc>

<comment><USER7> I think your comment is most on point here. I understand the original poster's need to find validation but the reality is the forces that decide whether you can be a successful tech entrepreneur aren't external. It's the Internet for God's sake you can be 15 or 115 and people probably won't even know. Those who will know probably don't care (there have been YCom. startups by people in their 30s)

The question's that matter are internal. Do you still have it in you? The one advantage youth has is energy. Can you work the 7-9 schedule? Can you make it through the 84 hour weeks? Are you passionate enough about your idea to do that?

That's what matters. The rest is just navel gazing imho

<comment><USER8> Obligatory link to [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1078-it-doesnt-have-to-be- all...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1078-it-doesnt-have-to-be-all-or- nothing-with-a-startup)

      We've repeated this story so many times that it's
      starting to wear a little thin, but here it goes
      again: Basecamp was created wit 10 hours/week of
      programming time and as a 3rd or 4th project alongside
      paying customers for the designers over the course
      of about 6 months.
      In other words, we didn't drop everything we had
      to create Basecamp, and you don't have to either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Larry Ellison started Oracle in his 30s

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison>

</comment><comment><USER10> Reed Hastings founded Netflix at age 37, Peter Thiel co-founded Paypal at age 31, Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn at age 35.

</comment><comment><USER11> i think pg might fall into this category. i checked wikipedia and he was around 33 when viaweb sold to Yahoo:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham>

</comment><comment><USER12> Sam Walton. While he started Walmart when he was 44, he had made headway by the time he was 36. His book "Made in America" is a must read.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think Tim O'Reilly really made it big until he was a bit older: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_O%27Reilly>

</comment><comment><USER14> Duncan Bannantyne (a well known entrepeneuer in the UK) was 30 when he started his first business.

<comment><USER15> His autobiography is a really good read. Very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com at 30. It wasn't that big until 3 years later.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ray Kroc, Jeff Bezos and others are, of course, extremely successful, but these are more than a decade old examples. Anyone aware of more recent cases? I'm not doubting quantity/quality of the "modern" cases, I just can't recall any at the moment..

</comment><comment><USER18> Being older cuts both ways.

Deliberately unlearn stuff about tech. Don't let your additional preconceptions slow you down. What was impossible yesterday is commonplace today.

On the other hand, take advantage of the fact that you know more about business, people & life than you did 10 years ago. Those lessons are timeless for a reason (e.g. How to Win Friends & Influence People).

</comment><comment><USER19> If you look at many of the comments on this thread, they point to the very interesting fact that many of the entrepreneurs became 'over night success[es]', in their 30s, though they may have started the company in their 20s.

Don't let that discourage you BigTuna. Remember that the media needs an angle, and 'middle-aged' or 'mid-thirties' succeess doesn't have the ring of teens and 20s, or 80s for that matter.

It isn't the age that brought the success (though it may have brought some noteriety). It is more likely the ability to do a few things. 1) look at the world with fresh eyes to discover new opportunities 2) accept the risk of actually doing something with your discoveries. I suspect what is being risked is different for each person.

I'm sure there are more reasons, but those two jumped to mind.

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't forget the venerable <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders> from my home-state who started franchising KFC at 65. How long does a successful startup take to build once you hit the proper idea, 5-10 years? You regularly see professional athletes working into their 40s, I find it hard to believe physical degradation is more significant for programming than it is for athletics. I think one thing that happens is that people get older, have families and at this point the risk becomes much higher and the drive drops quite a bit lower - if you've got your wife selected already and a few kids and a good salary, it's a lot easier to just accept that life.

</comment><comment><USER21> Marc Benioff was in his mid 30s when he founded Salesforce, after a pretty successful career at Oracle.

The guy who founded Android (can't recall his name) was as well, but he already had founded some companies.

<comment><USER19> Andy Rubin, he founded Danger after working at Apple, Magic (an apple spin- off) and WebTV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Andrew Black was in his 30s when he founded Betfair.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betfair>

</comment><comment><USER23> The average and median age of a company founder at the time when he/she started the business is 40:

[http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/ResearchAndPolicy/TheS...](http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/ResearchAndPolicy/TheStudyOfEntrepreneurship/Anatomy%20of%20Entre%20071309_FINAL.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER24> Evan Williams was in his 20's for Blogger (~31 when it sold), and 30's for Twitter.</comment>


An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water - <AUTHOR> http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/22/an-introduction-to-global-warming-impacts-hell-and-high-water/

<comment><USER2> Humans are going to come into this climate change crisis and muck it all up just like they did the financial crisis.

Many of the scientists and promoters of the idea that humans caused and can undo global warming have million and billion dollar stakes in the public believing them. Their jobs rely on the idea that we can do something. Their solar panels are paid for with earmarks. Their hybrid cars drive in the HOV lanes (like mine)...

These global warming charlatans deny that the power of the sun is billions of times stronger than all our power plants combined. They deny sun spots. They deny that, according to their own charts, carbon dioxide levels rise /after/ temperature changes.

And the worst part is, /if/ they are right and we stop producing CO2, we also reduce global dimming, which may be protecting us from the sun: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming>

</comment><comment><USER3> And a more scientific approach(Compared to FUD) [http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/global_warming_and_so...](http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/global_warming_and_solar_radia_1.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are interested in current climate science and commentary on the science "Real Climate" is worth reading <http://www.realclimate.org/></comment></comment>


Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows:  Evidence from Google [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/aldous/157/Papers/GooglePredictionMarketPaper.pdf <comment><USER2> Having now run prediction markets inside companies for over 10 years, we can definitely backup the findings in the paper - especially the revelations of bias among different types of employees. We usually ask people to participate anonymously, and it's often the only outlet people have to express what they truly think.

It's always a surreal experience to sit in a meeting with people and their bosses and hear "we're on track, no issues, the new product launch is going to be great, we're going to sell a ton, etc. etc." and then have a private/informal meeting with the same people who will confide that the project/product/strategy is completely fucked and everyone thinks that. :)

<comment><USER3> How do you deal with the cultural challenge of convincing people there's value and selfish benefits to having more transparency?

I've noticed that in large organizations certain information are held by a small number of people who may be reluctant to share them for political reasons. Another challenge with internal prediction markets is the possibility that knowing the "probability" of an project-related outcome reduces morale and hence creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that further reduces the chance of success. Appreciate your insights.

<comment><USER4> You might be right about the self-fulfilling prophecy. But this effect might already be in effect, as people might already have a gut feeling, while nobody cares (or knows) about it.

<comment><USER5> A trivial instance of this would be release planning in software. After our initial delivery plan my team gives a confidence measure, one release it was quite low, which was an important signal since we could discuss why that was and what we could cut to increase the confidence. Without that signal, we'd have overcommitted, and suspecting as much but without common knowledge might have even delivered less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Conclusion (emphasis is mine):

In the past few years, many companies have experimented with prediction markets. In this paper, we analyze the largest such experiment we are aware of. We find that prices in Google's markets closely approximated event probabilities, but did contain some biases, especially early in our sample. The most interesting of these was an optimism bias, which was more pronounced for subjects under the control of Google employees, such as would a project be completed on time or would a particular office be opened. Optimism was more present in the trading of newly hired employees, and was significantly more pronounced on and immediately following days with Google stock price appreciation. Our optimism results are interesting given the role that optimism is often thought to play in motivation and the success of entrepreneurial firms. They raise the possibility of a "stock price‐optimism‐performance‐stock price" feedback that may be worthy of further investigation.

We also examine how information and beliefs about prediction market topics move around an organization. _We find a significant role for micro‐geography. The trading of physically proximate employees is correlated, and only becomes correlated after the employees begin to sit near each other, suggesting a causal relationship. Work and social connections play a detectable but significantly smaller role._

An important caveat to our results is that they tell us about information flows about prediction market subjects, many of which are ancillary to employees' main jobs. This may explain why physical proximity matters so much more than work relationships – if prediction market topics are lower‐priority subjects on which to exchange information, then information exchange may require the opportunities for low‐opportunity‐cost communication created by physical proximity. Of course, introspection suggests that genuinely creative ideas often arise from such low‐opportunity‐cost communication. Google's frequent office moves and emphasis on product innovation may provide an ideal testing ground in which to better understand the creative process.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, so if you want to cultivate a diverse set of opinions and ideas in your company, it's enough to place them on different floors – no need to move them to different cities.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there anything public beyond betfair and predictit? Specially for the EU

</comment><comment><USER8> Augur is my favorite shitcoin for this very reason.

<comment><USER9> Why is it a "shitcoin"? Your comment is ...confusing.

<comment><USER10> shitcoin is just slang for any altcoin</comment></comment></comment>


California High-Speed Rail No. 9 – the Chairman's Turn Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/08/california-high-speed-rail-no-9the-chairmans-turn-again/379381/ <comment><USER2> "Current standard LA-SF airfares are more in the range of $250 one way."

What planet does the author live on? I just kayaked flights on a weekend exactly one month from now and got perfect friday/sunday timing (which should be pretty congested) for $150.

I am such an enormous supporter of rail, but we will never get there if people keep lying about the cost competitiveness.

<comment><USER3> don't forget to add costs for getting TO the airport. BART costs ~$15 (for either Oakland or SFO), by cab (Uber) ~$50. So while $250 might be on the upper side of things, I think $150 isn't exactly right either. so the low $200 range.

<comment><USER2> To be clear, I got $150 round trip; they said $250 one way. My numbers fit roughly with my experience. Their numbers are ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tend to align with what Alon Levy called "technicals" in my criticism of CA HSR[0]. I think Fallows comes across as uninformed as to the details of railroading and public transit in CA, and Dan Richards is a rather one sided mouthpiece. The biggest challenges to HSR that I see are:

1\. Pacheco vs Altamont. Altamont is faster, involves less travel through the Santa Clara County suburbs, is faster to Sacramento, and gives us a second bay rail crossing.

2\. Tejon Pass vs the detour to Palmdale. Yep, HSR is going to make a big detour out to Palmdale to help build up exurban sprawl. Never mind that its more properly a Metrolink concern, the state is subsidizing sprawl.

Finally, this whopper from the article: "Uh, I helped build that project [JF note: Dan Richard was on the BART board from 1992 to 2004] and it is a smashing success. The ridership projections proved inaccurate in its first few years only because of the effects on air travel of Sept 11th and the ensuing economic downturn. Within five years, the project was quite robust and today is operating at 105% of its costs from downtown SF to the airport, extraordinary for an urban mass transit system. "

Jesus, what a joke. BART to Millbrae ruined SamTrans financially, and has been underwhelming performance wise. Does anyone think the current system works well? What should've happened is that the people mover at SFO should've been extended to Millbrae or San Bruno. The Millbrae BART station is nothing more than a massive gift to contractors (my god, how much concrete was used?), and is horrible to actually get around in. Oh, BTW there are three BART tracks in Millbrae, and one is never used.

I remember hearing plans of building an HSR tunnel _under_ Millbrae BART (in a world where money grows on trees) rather than having BART give up a track or two.

[0][http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/polit...](http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/politicals- vs-technicals-the-primary-division-of-transit-activists/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anybody else find this squabbling kind of embarrassing?

It's quite clear that California has no political, fiscal or operational capability to finish (or even begin!) this project.

Given this premise, how would you evaluate the discourse surrounding it?

<comment><USER6> It's a ploy from the rail companies to have the tax payer foot the bill to build these high-speed rail lines, knowing full and well that there is just not enough demand at the price (per trip) they are proposing.

Sure there will be the occasional passenger train to warrant keeping it around, but the long term goal is to have the rail companies step in and say "See, no demand for passengers, but since you have all of these tracks built, we'll gladly use them to haul our freight."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Criticism 9

The speed limitations and cost overages are not what Californians voted on. This is a bait and switch.

<comment><USER8> The authority has stated over and over again that the travel time will be as good or better than the ballot measure protected. The ballot measure did not promise any particular cost. It only said it would cost 19.4 billion to pay off the initial 9.95 billion in bonds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article doesn't even mention the Hyperloop once. In doing so, it makes me think that the author has a one-track mind, hell-bent on making "high-speed" rail the answer to any and every question.

Ignoring serious technological advances won't make them go away. I admit, the Hyperloop hasn't been built before, but is that really an issue for a guy that runs a company that makes rockets that routinely go to space and back, or electric cars that people actually want?

Given the merits of Musk's proposal, we should really be rethinking the entire California rail project. If we don't, we could be saddled with yet another expensive and obsolete infrastructure project for a long time to come.

<comment><USER10> A CAD drawing and a nice powerpoint is not a 'technological advance', even if it comes from Elon Musk. A working prototype (even small scale) would be a big step forward. If someone starts shooting hamsters in capsules through a tube, call me, but until then the Hyper Loop is Vapor Ware.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, you'll note that even Elon Musk hasn't mentioned the Hyperloop (as far as I've heard) since he sent out a press release and a back-of-the-napkin drawing.

A small-scale prototype wouldn't cost that much, surely?

<comment><USER12> > A small-scale prototype wouldn't cost that much, surely?

Some ideas can't be meaningfully tested on a small preliminary scale:

1\. Fusion power.

2\. A trip to the moon.

3\. Marriage.

I doubt that any practical small-scale model would educate us about the full- sized system.

<comment><USER13> The Hyperloop -can- be meaningfully tested on a small scale model. For example, the scaling laws of fluid dynamics are fairly well known. Building a scale model with knowledge of the scaling laws can at least give us a sense of the performance/cost of the full scale system.

Other small scale test that can be done. A 100m long full diameter segment of the track could be built and then kept at the vacuum pressure needed for some extended period of time while pushing simulated hyperloop vehicles through the length. This can inform us to the real costs of maintaining the vacuum, and give some hints towards real maintenance costs.

A key part of the Hyperloop proposal is the cheapness of fabricating the track and pylons. Actually building the track and pylons in limited quantities is important so that a) areas where efficiencies can be introduced can be identified and b) give a sense of just how much efficiencies can be gained.

As far as I know, the actual compressor drive that the Hyperloop runs on has never been used on such a scale before. At least building a single full scale demonstration model is surely prudent before even considering it.

Maglev was tested with real prototype trains on real prototype track for decades before commercial use. Transrapid (which made the Shanghai Maglev) has a 31km long test track that was in use for over a decade before they started working on the Shanghai line.

Until something of roughly that magnitude is built, the Hyperloop is an interesting (and well thought out) idea, but nothing more.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Day 1:  Who Should Be CEO?  A Checklist - <AUTHOR> http://saastr.com/2013/03/29/day-1-who-should-be-ceo-a-checklist/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting how Larry Page fails all but 1 of these criteria, and Steve Jobs fails all but 2. Jan Koum fails all of them.

That's not to say they're wrong - they're probably right within the domain of small enterprise-based SaaS companies, where the company lives and dies by its sales ability and there's no fundamental technological breakthrough. But it does highlight the context-dependence of advice: what works for a SaaS firm may be very different for a consumer web startup, which may be very different from a startup built around a fundamental technological breakthrough.

<comment><USER3> The assumption underlying these criteria is that you have a B2B, enterprise, and/or SaaS company.</comment></comment>


Fjord Trends 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://trends.fjordnet.com/ <comment><USER2> I was expecting an article about fjords and climate change. That sounds much more interesting.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Trends impacting design, business, government and society

Fjord's Annual Trends focus on the digital developments we expect to disrupt organizations and society in the year ahead. Fjord hope Trends will motivate, inspire and provide actionable insights to help businesses and society move forward in the coming year. Insight and inspiration is drawn from Fjord's team of 750+ designers, developers and thought leaders to create this year's 10 trends.

</comment><comment><USER3> I sort of assumed this would be discordian up front, just from the title. I guess it isn't a joke, but going into it assuming it is one puts an odd spin on the whole thing. All that marketing, buzzwordy talk just reads too well as humor, if you look for it.

<comment><USER4> >I sort of assumed this would be discordian up front, just from the title.

Wouldn't that have been "fnord" instead of "fjord"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sigh, scrolling to the bottom of this page added 10 entries to my chrome browser history.</comment>


Ask HN: Sites for Practicing Object Oriented Design - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,<p>Are there any sites like hackerrank, hackerearth, which focus mainly on object design oriented solutions in languages like Java? <comment><USER2> I know this isn't a great answer to your question, feel free to ignore it :).

You may find that books are under rated. With all of the free resources available I find that I often underestimate the value of someone having spent several hundred hours preparing material specific to a subject that I want to learn more about.

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143390/recomm...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143390/recommended- reading-for-object-oriented-application-design-architecture)

<comment><USER3> I am also not aware of such websites since good OO design is difficult to measure and the major impact is on quality and non-functional aspects of the system (maintainability, reusability, testability etc).

In addition to the books mentioned in above link I'd like to wholeheartedly recommend Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans. I've found the described approach very helpful in design of enterprise applications on the Java platform.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Litigating to remove false information on your credit report? - <AUTHOR> Recently I've had a collections agency put materially false information on my credit report. They sent me information regarding a debt that I dispute, and legally in the US I have a 30 day window to dispute the debt in writing via certified mail, which I did. However, they cleverly put a fake date on their initial letter to me, to narrow the date in which I could dispute it. I.e. they wrote me a letter about the debt on February 25th, but put a fake date of February 1st on the letter- thus only giving me until March 1st to respond within the 30 day window. They now state that my certified letter to them was outside of that 30 days. I cannot think of any way of proving when I actually physically received the letter, so their fraudulent 'date' on the notice made it impossible for me to respond in time.
Yes I am familiar with credit repair agencies and some of my federal rights, but- I was planning on purchasing a property this year, and their fraud likely makes that impossible. Even if I eventually have it removed, it will be months or years too late. And no simply paying the debt isn't worth it now, as my credit report would still show an account that had been in collections very recently.
I know this is not the right place for legal advice, but I am considering aggressive & punitive litigation. It's rational for me to spend significant money on a litigator, as it's still likely less than what I'd pay in a higher interest rate over 30 years due to worse credit. I am also feeling pretty retributive. Does anyone else have any experience with aggressively attacking false information on a credit report with litigation or threats of litigation, and not just 'dispute item and wait 30-60 days for them to respond', etc.? <comment><USER2> The appropriate escalation step here is probably paying a lawyer to send a properly-worded letter on legal letterhead.

As far as dates go, did they use Certified Mail or a similar service? Does the postmark agree with their date or yours? Writing a date on the letter doesn't prove anything about when they sent it.

If it's a scam an not incompetence, a letter from a lawyer will probably shut them up quickly. Litigation usually isn't acquired, you're switching their opponent from a consumer they think they can scam to a professional they know they can't.

</comment><comment><USER3> What day did you respond? This is a key piece of information you've left out.

What was the postmark date on the letter's envelope?

Do you use USPS Informed Delivery?

Had you spoken with them before receipt of the letter? Your thirty days under the FDCPA runs from first contact.

The first avenue I would try is the credit bureaus. Request that they validate the debt and inform them that you have disputed it. Be advised that the first request for debt validation is almost always treated in a cursory manner. You will probably need to request that they re-validate in order to gain any traction.

<comment><AUTHOR> I responded within a week of receiving the letter. I didn't notice the fake date on the letter initially, and threw out the envelope after opening- so it's lost forever. Yes, I of course used certified mail to respond to them. I had not spoken with them before the letter.

I will of course try the credit bureaus, but in my experience everything takes 30-60 days to get an initial response etc. At the speed they move at, likely sinks my ability to buy a home this year. Hence my interest in a more aggressive tack

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IANAL. You're better off paying them off, getting the credit entry removed and then suing them.

<comment><USER5> Uh, if you pay them, it's not removed? AFAIK it is still there on your credit report. I recently had an issue where I paid the original debtor and disputed the secondary collector and it went away, my credit impact was nullified, but it's still on my report.</comment></comment>


Interactive map of Linux kernel - <AUTHOR> http://www.makelinux.net/kernel_map/ <comment><USER2> Link to PNG image: [http://www.makelinux.net/kernel_map/LKM3_2048.png](http://www.makelinux.net/kernel_map/LKM3_2048.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a fun map.

The Linux kernel has more device drivers embedded in the core than I anticipated. I'm guessing most are used for bootstrapping/fallback (e.g. loading the "actual" drivers)? Such as ext4, ipw2100, ac97, i8042, etc.

Just to be clear, I'd imagine most of the above are common enough to have on almost all but the most niche Linux distributions. My question relates around having them this high up in the source tree, rather than why they're useful/what they do.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean "embedded in the core"?

All drivers are in-tree.

<comment><USER5> Technically unmodularizable

Architecturally integrated into everyone's "this is part of the kernel and not a random printer driver" mental model

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Feels like this needs to be a 3D map. 2 dimensions isn't quite cutting it.

<comment><USER7> Something like jscity[0].

[0]: [https://github.com/ASERG- UFMG/JSCity/wiki/JSCITY](https://github.com/ASERG-UFMG/JSCity/wiki/JSCITY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Linux is such a mess that it needs a map.

It's no surprise they're paying massive technical debt over it. Work that would take a few hours in a well-structured system does take months on Linux.

Isn't surprising either that Dragonfly BSD's outperforming Linux in network throughput, despite its small number of developers.

They went for a components as concurrent lockless system servers approach [1] instead of a complex mess of fine-grained locks like Linux (and FreeBSD, following them) did.

[1] [https://www.dragonflybsd.org/presentations/](https://www.dragonflybsd.org/presentations/)

<comment><USER9> I can only imagine what sort of chaos exists in Windows and OSX. Unfortunately I can only do that: imagine, because it is closed source. With Linux, I can at least see the mess, and well, make a map out of it.

<comment><USER10> I find it annoying that any time someone criticises Linux for something someone has to come and point out that Windows and OSX are also kinda crappy. It's true enough, it's also just useless defensiveness. Maybe the bar we set for ourselves should be a little higher than the stuff everyone complains about?

<comment><USER11> Maybe it's just nigh impossible to build such a complex engineering project and keep it elegant through 25 years of development?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love Linux!

this map is very useful

</comment><comment><USER13> > _Please Enable JavaScript or use plain html_

Link then goes 404.

</comment><comment><USER14> As a noob observing..Many of them seem to have names nothing like what their actual purpose is

<comment><USER15> A dead comment by user 'simoooo':

> As a noob observing..Many of them seem to have names nothing like what their > actual purpose is

Having worked a bit with low level kernel stuff (porting a unix OS to a new platform), I understand his observation. Even after working with the kernel for a while, many names don't really make sense.

Mandatory quote of Phil Karlton:

> There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and > naming things.

<comment><USER16> Out of curiosity, do you know of any examples of seemingly misnamed objects in the kernel?

<comment><USER17> My recent venture in the filesystem have been somewhat fun. The problem isn't so much misnamed objects, and more that the kernel is filled with seemingly undocumented, arcane, old things. `sb_bread` isn't some kind of food, but the "SuperBlock Buffer Read" method, and `brelse` means "Buffer Release" (and not, somethingsomething else, as I initially thought).

BH means Buffer Head. The meaning and usage of Buffer Head has changed a lot across Linux versions. It's the basic unit of IO operations, but nowadays most users would use a bio for most of what you would have used a buffer head in the past. When you're working on filesystems you'll have to use BHs to talk to the hard drive though.

Linux FS infrastructure and Ext2 share a lot of names. For instance, ext2 and linux both have superblocks, inodes, blocks, etc. They are... logically the same, but at the same time they're very different - one lives purely on the disk, the other provides functions to the kernel. This makes conversation very complicated, when talking about the superblock, you have to mention _which_ superblock you're talking about, because that's not always obvious from context.

<comment><USER18> Names like brelse, bread, namei and so on have a _long_ history in Unix kernels and file systems. That history forms people's expectations. If you provide a namei operation in your code, you better call it namei and not make up some other, ostensibly more clear, identifier for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ah, cool!

Hacker News paydirt.</comment>


How humans could evolve to survive car crashes - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/21/graham-shows-how-an-evolved-human-body-could-survive-a-car-accident/ <comment><USER2> Now for this, you would need to take random couples from the whole population (so you'll need almost 4 billion cars for the first round), let them have sex in the car, then crash the car. You'd repeat with the survivors.

I'd guess you'd get promising results quickly enough, half a dozen generation or something.

And an interesting side effect would be that you'd solve the hunger and "human-made warming" in the world at the same time.</comment>


Show HN: automatic iCal calendars for your domain expiration dates - <AUTHOR> http://domainical.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> i made this yesterday after not being able to find an existing service that offered it. there is a mac os app that had a similar premise, but it was not free and i wanted to be able to subscribe to the calendars from multiple places.

i've been told it may be laborious to use for those with large lists of domains, but i'm not sure what i can do to make it easier to use. bulk importing is as easy as just listing each domain, one-per-line, in a big textbox.</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I get an orange YC vinyl sticker for Mac laptop? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Why advertise a venture capital company for free?

<comment><USER3> I considered doing the same thing myself, as a way to start random conversations with local coders & startup folks.

I often work from cafes or public places, and I figured it's a way of inviting coders who walk past to say "Hey, I saw your sticker... do you read Hacker News? I'm working on a startup too. What are you working on?"

<comment><USER4> There once was the official Hacker News tee shirt. Sales raised money for Watsi and the design was "rather subtle".

The shirts are long since sold, but thread is still a great read: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5363290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5363290)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There you go

[https://www.stickermule.com/marketplace/1550-y-combinator- sq...](https://www.stickermule.com/marketplace/1550-y-combinator-square- stickers-2x2)

<comment><USER6> Will this sticker work on non-Mac laptops?

<comment><USER5> Yep, it should. It's just a removable paste up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It'd be trivial to make your own with google image search and stickermule.

</comment><comment><USER8> OFFTOPIC: I have two "I _heart_ Lotus Notes" stickers on my laptop for the irony value.</comment>


Ask HN: What technologies available today will remain relevant in 10 years? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> There's a great Jeff Bezos quote about never being asked what _isn 't_ going to change in the next ten years, and that those are really the things you should build businesses around and optimize.

Cars, for example, aren't really changing too much, or at least the need for them. The love of the automobile continues to run deep in Western countries, and even an innovative company like Tesla is just building a faster horse here. The idea of the personal vehicle is become even more ingrained into our lives if anything and we become a more individualistic society. Cars may become smaller, they may become electric, but they will still remain largely close their current paradigm.

Tesla to me is likely to be one of the most successful companies of the next ten years because they are building on a foundation that isn't going anywhere and incrementally improving a key product in people's lives.

<comment><USER3> Unless we make progress on building the matrix.

<comment><USER4> Progress? Do you think that is air you are breathing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Almost all of them. Technology is cumulative. Most of the technology that was brand-new the day I was born is still relevant today. Old technologies like cooking and projectile weapons for hunting are still relevant today, after all.

<comment><USER6> Thankfully Visual Basic seems to be dying off. Unfortunately so does Perl. I did get offered a Perl job recently but felt it was a better for future job prospects to stick with Python for the time being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bet for WebRTC. Don't think about just phone calls, or desktop sharing; but a way to connect 2 application in a P2P (when available) or forward-and-relay way.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was going to say the pay telephone but...

<comment><USER6> I am sitting right under one as I type in Doha airport. Only free power socket I could find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Keybord (virtual/physical)

</comment><comment><USER9> C

</comment><comment><USER10> Low Tech, Ultra Low Tech and No Tech survival & solutions:

Low tech hacks [http://amzn.to/HPp7Ar](http://amzn.to/HPp7Ar)

Water drilling [http://amzn.to/1aH6gOH](http://amzn.to/1aH6gOH)

Rooftop farming [http://amzn.to/1bytafM](http://amzn.to/1bytafM)

Architecture [http://amzn.to/I1Z6Od](http://amzn.to/I1Z6Od)

<comment><USER11> OP is abusing HN for affiliate spam. Referer-free links (no endorsement, just battling an [censored]):

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/1597492159](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1597492159)

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/1450580599](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1450580599)

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005T1TX9O](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005T1TX9O)

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/841522334X](http://www.amazon.com/dp/841522334X)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best sites in 2020 to post articles about programming? - <AUTHOR> What are the best sites in 2020 to post articles about programming, math, etc.
I want to grow a community but I don't know where to start.
I really appreciate any help you can give. <comment><USER2> IMO the best place is whatever subreddit best describes that exact topic. I've found technical subreddits to be welcoming of thoughtful, well-written articles (in contrast to much of the rest of reddit which tends to frown upon self-promotion). I've gotten thousands of referrals back to my site on numerous occasions.

Somewhere that's often hyped but is _not_ any good is Dev.to I carried out an experiment with posting a series of articles there and counted how many referrals I got back to my website. Average like 5 per article. Not worth the time to submit. Avoid.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lobste.rs usually has good content to read. I haven't gotten an invite though for an account

<comment><USER4> In case you didn't know, read "Invitation Tree" section from [https://lobste.rs/about](https://lobste.rs/about)

>The quickest way to receive an invitation is to talk to someone you recognize from the site or request one in chat ([https://lobste.rs/chat](https://lobste.rs/chat)). If you wrote a link that was posted, definitely contact someone for an invite, we'd love to have you in the discussion.

I requested an invite on #lobsters and a member responded via dm to verify my profile (GitHub/twitter/etc) and then sent an email with the invitation. Best time would be during the US work hours, since the channel is more active during that time.</comment></comment>


Want a Glimpse of Facebook's Soul in 2019? Look at Its Internal Propaganda Lab - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90308216/want-a-glimpse-of-facebooks-soul-in-2019-look-at-its-internal-propaganda-lab <comment><USER2> Company sanctioned "court jester" moment? I put up a lot of stuff around my workstation which I like to look at. Some is art I made or kids gave me. Some are cut from web pages. Some are just bits of trash like old packing cases.

Somehow, having a group with a GICLEE printer making high quality art feels like it sucks the "me" moment out of it. I don't think its speaking with me, its speaking down to me.

 _the jester lightly bounces a small bladder off the kings head, because actually snotting him one in the royal schnoz would probably be terminally bad for the jester_</comment>


Ask HN: Should I form a C-Corp or an S-Corp? - <AUTHOR>

I'm at the point where I need to form a legal business entity for a product I've been working on, and looking for a little advice. Here's a brief description of my situation:
- Enterprise SaaS, the goal is to turn this into a large company
- I am not aggressively pursuing investors, but don't want to rule out the possibility
- Currently it's a one-man-show (myself)
- I'd like to simply pay myself a "normal" salary and re-invest as much money as possible into the business
Downsides of a C-corp (from my understanding):
- More complex paperwork for setup and record keeping
- Double taxation on dividends (but not salaries?)
Upsides of a C-corp:
- More investor-friendly, and more flexibility with stock classes
What are the reasons to choose an S-corp? If I understand correctly, double taxation in a C-Corp wouldn't become an issue unless you have extremely large profits and want to take a large chunk of it out of the business, so much that you can't justify the amount as a salary and need to pay yourself a dividend. Or maybe if you have shareholders who are expecting to be paid dividends.
I am leaning towards forming a C-Corp.
Is there anyone who has been in a similar position who can share some advice? <comment><USER2> My advice is don't incorporate until you have no other choice. Depends on which state you're in and how much revenue you have (real, not projected), and whether some external event demands it. This is not legal advice, of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> With enterprise sales, at least in my industry, I would never get through the corporate procurement process in order to become a vendor -- without being a legal business entity.</comment></comment>


Bringing 4K and HDR to Anime at Netflix with Sol Levante - <AUTHOR> https://netflixtechblog.com/bringing-4k-and-hdr-to-anime-at-netflix-with-sol-levante-fa68105067cd <comment><USER2> Rather uniquely, the project's assets are released "for download and experimentation" "to help the industry better understand 4K HDR and immersive audio in anime". Although the article doesn't say, the assets are licensed under the Creative Commons 4.0 (By-Nc-Nd) [1]. I know of only a few [2] other [3] media projects that release their source material under such permissive licenses. Although I am not personally in the market for 4K HDR media, I am pleased that Netflix seems honestly interested in improving anime's production tools and workflows, and granted such permissive access to something they paid a lot of money for, and the artists put a lot of work into.

[1] [http://download.opencontent.netflix.com.s3.amazonaws.com/Sol...](http://download.opencontent.netflix.com.s3.amazonaws.com/SolLevante/sollevante- cclicense.txt)

[2] Blender's "Open Movies" [https://cloud.blender.org/open- projects](https://cloud.blender.org/open-projects)

[3] David Revoy's "Pepper and Carrot" webcomic [https://www.peppercarrot.com/](https://www.peppercarrot.com/)

<comment><USER3> Wow, seems like Blenders Open Movies push is really affecting the industry to share more assets. Seems weird of Netflix not to publicize the choice of license more, they can rightfully brag about being some of the few to publishes source material like that.

Also found more material under the opencontent domain at Netflix, interesting stuff: [http://download.opencontent.netflix.com/](http://download.opencontent.netflix.com/)

<comment><USER4> Why publicize something that threatens your existence?

Kudos to Production IG for doing this, but I don't think this is indicative of CC commercial art. It's just too contradictory in the current world we live in.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it threatens their existence (but I'm not in that industry, so hard to speak for them).

But I can imagine that if people get more experience with how the industry works before they actually join, when they do join, it'll be easier for them to get started, compared to now where the disconnect between production school and actual production is very different.

Same reason studios are starting to adopt Blender, it's so much easier to get experience and knowledge with, because you don't need to go through expensive curses to learn it.

Of course, curses help speed up the education, but it's not longer a requirement, just a helping tool.

<comment><USER4> I don't think CC threatens the livelihood of creative industries, but Netflix isn't in a creative industry. I don't think Netflix, as a publisher, wants to promote free and open licensing. Their only product is licensed content. I suppose there could still be a market for a streaming service of free content, but it isn't as safe as the way things currently work.

<comment><USER3> Maybe the service Netflix is not in the creative industry, but the production company Netflix is absolutely in the creative industry, they produce their own original content and shows. Netflix is not only a content provider but producer as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using an LG OLED TV to grade HDR footage in Resolve (in ACES). They don't quite hit 1000 nits but not too far off, and the colour accuracy is excellent.

Will be interesting to see what the new microled displays will be like. With those in an iPad (hopefully end of the year) you could draw directly on a HDR display.

As an aside - I wish Procreate on iOS had full on animation capabilities. The current layer per frame animation is super basic. If it had a proper timeline, rigging, tweening, maybe even pose/face driven character animation from iOS camera.. it would be amazing.

Would also be great if iOS supported professional video codecs - I think iPads could be an all-in-one solution for many animators if the OS and software was better.

<comment><USER6> Afaik the iPad pros from 2018+ are HDR, aren't they?

<comment><USER7> I have one and it doesn't seem like it. The iPad's display is actually pretty bad compared to the iPhone, it just happens to be capable of a higher refresh rate (but still not in Safari, sadly).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a technically interesting topic, but I hope it's not the main thrust of Netflix's attempts to provide better anime.

I know this is subjective, but my enjoyment level for a given anime is unrelated to it being in 720p vs. 4k. Death Note would have been just as amazing in the 1990's, because it's all about the story. One Punch Man is just as funny at 480p.

The only existing anime I can think of that _might_ benefit is those with high-end 3D CG battles. For example, if someone did a really decent remake of Robotech, maybe 4k would add some visual realism to the space fights.

<comment><USER9> > _The only existing anime I can think of that might benefit is those with > high-end 3D CG battles._

I agree - for example stuff similar to Evangelion ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdU8dyjgXU0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdU8dyjgXU0) ).

A lot of good anime are good because they don't put a lot of effort into cutting-edge graphics but on other elements (characters, story, animation, etc) => using 4k and/or HDR might just drive up the costs without providing a real benefit.

<comment><USER10> And on top of that, some of the technological "advancements" actually make things worse. Personally I loathe the trend towards 3D-rendered "anime", artificially stuttered to make it resemble a hand-drawn animation. The only time such techniques are appropriate is when showing something mechanized. Used on regular characters, it looks terrible. Knights of Sidonia was a great show, but it looked really bad. The visually-best recent animes are ones like Devilman Crybaby that really embrace the hand-drawn medium and run with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This sounds like it could be a great inspiration for AI-based projects.

I understand that for their flagship production, they want people to draw true 4k all digital. But for most projects, I'd wager that a good AI upscaling and cleanup can take a hand-drawn paper character to a usable 4K plate.

Similarly, I don't think the contractors doing in-between frames need to work in HDR. It should be good enough to upconvert their images from SDR to HDR based on the adjacent HDR keyframes.

As for the background images, I myself already felt frustrated a few times when trying to get my 12MP SDR vacation photos displaying nicely on a 4K HDR TV, so solving that problem might even have a consumer angle.

<comment><USER2> There is actually precedent for that. Waifu2x [1] is an image upscaler for anime-style art based on deep convolutional neural networks. As far as I know, it's mostly used by people who want to upscale fan art they found on the internet. It works pretty well, though, and it (or similar) could serve as a basis for the kind of workflow you're talking about.

[1] [http://waifu2x.udp.jp/](http://waifu2x.udp.jp/)

<comment><USER4> Whenever I see that name, I immediately think "oh the poorly rebranded version of NNEDI3".

<comment><USER12> I'd say it's well branded, for the target demographic of weebs. It's also a generally memorable name.

<comment><USER4> Weebs are not the only target demographic of scalers, though. They simply lifted the work of others to associate decent image scaling with anime fandom. Importantly though, scalers shouldn't need a brand since they are not a product. They are a tool that can be implemented, and to that end "neural net edge detection" is much more informative and less likely to turn off an audience than "waifu2x". waifu2x is a product name. All it tells me is something about the publisher and their target audience.

<comment><USER12> > _All it tells me is something about the publisher and their target > audience._

Yeah, that their demographic is weebs... I'm not sure what your point is, but mine is that waifu2x is effectively branded, not poorly branded.

<comment><USER4> "Effectively branded" would be branding for the audience that are ripe for using the tool: almost everyone who watches video and has a high resolution screen.

<comment><USER13> waifu2x is optimized for anime.

Because of its anime upscaling success, it gained a lot of awareness and is now used in more non-photorealistic images in general, with a very decent popularity.

<comment><USER4> It was used that way before it was named waifu2x. It's just NNEDI3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Off-topic, but now I can't even read corporate blogs because Medium is forcing me to log in. Sigh.

<comment><USER15> Same! When did they start doing that? Time to add medium to my hosts file...

<comment><USER16> Yep. It's so very dumb that it now charges you to read content.

It's a great ploy, get authors (who probably don't realise there is now a content gate) to post on your site, then start to charge visitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How many of Netflix users can actually use 4k? I use firefox so I think 720 or 1080 is the max I can get .. nice

<comment><USER18> I think you'd be surprised.

From my perspective a large proportion of people in the UK have at least one 4K TV, (unfortunately) most of which are 'smart'. Carrying apps for Netflix, Prime, BBC etc.

Add to that that the majority of houses contain a current generation games console. From my perspective 4k in the UK has permeated most age groups and economic groups.

It is easy enough for most households to obtain speeds that can support 4K in the UK. The UK (as well as most of Europe I think) don't have data caps, means there is very little concern about streaming 4K.

I think the BBC did a really good job in the earlier days of 4K in releasing fantastic sports (Olympics & Football) and nature documentaries with David Attenborough.

However, I appreciate that this is a small section of the overall Netflix user-base and based on my somewhat bias viewpoint. I'm sure there are subsets of the UK that would disagree.

<comment><USER19> > _From my perspective a large proportion of people in the UK have at least > one 4K TV, (unfortunately) most of which are 'smart'. Carrying apps for > Netflix, Prime, BBC etc._

Having a 4K TV with Netflix won't give you 4K Netflix. You need to actually pay extra for it, about a third more.

<comment><USER20> It also gives you 4 simultaneous users with the premium plan, which I would guess most families use simply based on that.

<comment><USER21> If they're sharing logins, maybe. I bet most families that manage to stream four things at once almost never try to do so on a single service at the same time. Can't you still get Disney+ for about the price of upgrading to 4K Netflix? Or some-ads Hulu.

<comment><USER20> Of course, that's the point of the account to share logins, you still get your own user with your own lists, recommendations and all that. Though, Spotify handles it nicer where you can add your own account to the family group plan.

Not often, but often enough to become a nuisance with 2 TVs or so, some tablet/laptop for school work/gaming/whatever and a mobile device per person.

Yeah, I think that's about right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > While "3D CG" anime is becoming more popular — shows like Saint Seiya and > Ultraman that are generated entirely on computers by 3D artists — most anime > titles are still hand drawn.

Why are these the only two options, anyway?

"2D CG" (i.e. creating libraries of 2D "paper doll" parts for each visible angle + keyframe, rigging them together using tools like Flash, and getting automatic tweening out) is apparently a relatively inexpensive process, used by shoestring-budget-per-title Western media companies like Hasbro Studios.

I think a 2DCG process _may_ have been used a few times as a stylistic choice by Gainax (or they may have been fudging it using "2D-rotoscoped 3DCG"; not sure), but it doesn't seem like any studio has looked into it as a budget- saving technique.

</comment><comment><USER23> Please make 4K the standard for all Youtube videos and all streaming! <3 Let's work on this together of putting quality first!

<comment><USER24> I think that's rather ambitious due to the file sizes. Plus most phones barely due 4k still.

<comment><USER25> Monitors too. There's a rise in 2k but still very few 4k monitors out there. Also even if phone's did 4k, is it really work on a 6" screen?

<comment><USER26> 4k monitors have been $350 or less since 2015. I know because I got one then. There's far more 4k screens than 1440p (wrongly called 2k by some people).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've given up on 4K and HDR with Netflix. It's just too much hassle trying to keep straight which platforms they support which features on in addition to making device purchasing choices that are least likely to fuck me when someone decides it doesn't support a fancy-enough DRM scheme or even isn't worth maintaining support for at all. Buy a streaming box, Netflix drops support. Buy a smart TV, Netflix drops support. I watch my background noise shows on Netflix but if there's a viewing experience I actually care about I download it.

<comment><USER28> Netflix has literally never dropped support of a 4K/HDR set-top box or television. Ever.

<comment><USER27> They will soon enough. I was unlucky enough to own both a Roku XD and a Vizio TV they dropped support for. Why should I have any faith at all they won't decide to sunset everything on the market today after 8K gets popular?

<comment><USER28> They'll drop devices eventually, but that's likely after a decade.

The manufacturer will drop security support a long, long time before Netflix will.

<comment><USER27> They dropped support for Vizio tvs that were only four years old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Half of Netflix's anime productions have been cell-shaded 3D animation and frankly they look like crap. Most western cartoons have managed to keep their 2D animation looking like 2D animation so idk if it's a matter of cost or if the creators actually prefer something that looks like it was animated in Borderlands.

</comment><comment><USER30> So, I just watched this (and you can too, it's like 3 minutes). My conclusion is that animation shouldn't happen at this high a resolution.

I mean, I watched on a Pixel 3a, so maybe I didn't get the 4k HDR goodness, but it just didn't seem to add to the experience. Didn't help that the animation was tweened art in several places. I mean, it was all this hype for what seemed to be particle effects.

Really, I think lively animation (like FLCL) or style (Cowboy Bebop or Tatami Galaxy) makes a show much better to look at and enjoyable to watch.

<comment><USER31> You watched it at one quarter of the resolution and on a tiny screen and conclude that "it just didn't seem to add to the experience"? That seems unconvincing...

There definitely are art styles that look great even at low resolution, e.g. games in cellshading look like zelda:windwaker aged really well. I am not really a fan of the art style used in sol levante, but for something like garden of words or other styles I think 4k HDR might be quite beneficial.

<comment><USER32> Seems a bit odd indeed. Here's some stuff that shows off 4k and hdr - and you test it on a screen without 4k and proper hdr? Well, no surprise you can't see any effect from 4k and hdr?

Granted the pixel reportedly has a good amoled screen - but I couldn't find any information on it handling hdr signals, beyond that it "boosts" the image (sounds much like the equivalent of audio compression/loudness for visuals).

At any rate, since people have a hard time telling the difference between full HD and 4k in blind tests, I doubt that this could be anything beyond a subtle effect anyway?

I have a 4k hdr TV here, so I'll have to try and see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I prefer 4:3 grainy shit from the 90s to a slick cg any day.

<comment><USER34> Yes I can't stand the 3D animated anime. In fact I wish it had a different name altogether. I was super disappointed when I saw the new Altered Carbon anime was 3D

<comment><USER35> It really depends on the quality in my opinion - the bottom line is you can't replace quality and effort when making animation. 2d or 3d can both be ugly or beautiful.

For example Aggretsuko is a 2d anime but the animation is so lifeless and boring (entire scenes are just walk cycles), whereas Beastars is 3d but at the same time very expressive and much more visually interesting, dynamic and experimental.

<comment><USER36> Personally I find bad 3-D more offputting than bad 2D.

Bad 2D fades to the background of my mind's eye, allowing me to focus on the story or characters, while bad 3D manages to capture and distract my attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Now if they would start simulcasting instead of their "clever" strategy of waiting until shows finish airing and then releasing them all at once, people might actually use this service...

<comment><USER38> Netflix has > 167,000,000 subscribers [0]

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/media/netflix-q4...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/media/netflix-q4-2019-earnings- nflx.html)

<comment><USER37> I think you missed the point. This is specific to anime on netflix. It's difficult to find metrics on this for obvious reasons, but I'm pretty sure people still pirate shows that they're paying for on netflix because of the simulcast problem.</comment></comment></comment>


The Stock Market Story - <AUTHOR> http://9lessons.blogspot.com/2008/11/stock-market-story.html

<comment><USER2> The fallacy here is that money (dollars) is (at least in theory) backed by something of value. In the economy presented in the article, the only thing of value is the land, which is of infinite worth, because there's nothing else to buy. By definition, it's worth however many dollars there are, so as the economy goes through the normal inflation process, the land increases in value without bound.

Break the spell by thinking of it this way: if there were two pieces of land, they would increase in resale value at the same rate. If there was a piece of land and a truck, they would increase in value at the same rate. We're looking at inflation here, not a bubble.

In the real world, currency is backed by assets (even if those assets are only a promise to pay). It doesn't make any sense to talk about dollars independent of their backing.</comment>


Optimizing HTTP headers for 'ajax' webapps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mibbit.com/?p=143

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of:

<http://cr.yp.to/sarcasm/modest-proposal.txt>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is actually a good idea.

Google has already proposed a gzip content compression scheme that could operate over a number of pages.

It would also be feasible for them to come up with a header compression scheme - perhaps even in Chrome first.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I think a great option would be for the server to specify in a response header that it doesn't care about any headers for the rest of the keep-alive connection, unless they change.

X-Only-Send-Header-Changes: true

<comment><USER5> axod, I came across this the other day: <http://axod.blogspot.com/>

I've been getting into comet a bit more lately, and am wondering (if you don't mind telling of course) 1) what you are currently using on the backend and 2) if you ever checked out Meteor (which I was playing with today)?

<comment><USER4> I decided to write my own. Gives me much more flexibility and am able to change, adapt, streamline the backend as much as I like. (Java nio) It peaks at about 10k connections at the busy times at the moment (incoming and outgoing). The backend code is about 22k lines of code, but that's everything - not just the base comet server.

I did have a look at Meteor and some of the other comet type servers but they didn't look like they would be a great solution for what I needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like premature optimization to me. You can't "save" bandwidth at the sub-packet level. It is like trying to "save" space used on files of less than a kilobyte in length -- you can do the math showing impressive theoretical gains, but other layers of your hardware/software stack process the data in chunks larger than that anyway, all your effort is for naught.

<comment><USER7> @patio11: Actually, you can save bandwidth at the sub-packet level. Ethernet is a common link layer protocol that we can examine: It has a variable length frame, and because it uses time-delimited bit-level framing, the smaller your ethernet frame the quicker it can be sent. The only real caveat to axod's article is that you often can't save on performance of intermediary systems (routers) because they tend to pre-allocate blocks of memory for packets, so no memory is saved when some packets are smaller. But your ISP doesn't meter you at the link layer anyway (or often even the IP level), so the savings as reported by the article are absolutely real in terms of bandwidth costs. (as in money)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting technique and could spur thought in optimization tangential js operations...but does 300 bytes really matter that much?

<comment><USER4> as I say this will save mibbit 300GB/month So yes it does matter for me

<comment><USER8> Ah, good point. With computes 300 bytes, 300 milliseconds, and other seemingly minor values matter because they are multiplied by large numbers. Every bit counts all the time I guess if you have a high traffic web app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice trick and a quick read. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER10> just use comet istead

<comment><USER4> People seem to be terribly confused as to what Comet is.

This is Comet if you really want to use that word. Comet goes over HTTP.

<comment><USER11> I suspect that his point is-

Using long-lifed connections, and sliding more data through as time goes on, avoids some of the overhead of additional HTTP headers that you see in opening new requests and replies.

<comment><USER4> That is good for _receiving_ data. Yes, having a single JSONP etc would save some headers there. (Although creates other issues).

But for sending data from the browser, you can't do any other sort of streaming, so you have to send a new request each time.

<comment><USER11> Sure, I suspect he was referring to the server modifications section, not the Javascript. The JS really is a clever idea, I didn't realize that was configurable through JS!

Edit- Just checked the posting history of the OP. He looks like a troll. I withdraw my comment, he was just being a jerk.

Cool demo, though. Very clever- I wouldn't have necessarily thought about the header size in the sends.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Truth on OpenGL Driver Quality - <AUTHOR> http://richg42.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl-driver-quality.html <comment><USER2> The write-up by the Dolphin team is also worth reading: [https://dolphin- emu.org/blog/2013/09/26/dolphin-emulator-and...](https://dolphin- emu.org/blog/2013/09/26/dolphin-emulator-and-opengl-drivers-hall-fameshame/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a vendor per se, but since they pretty much prevent you from installing any updated drivers I'll also say: Apple's OpenGL support is horrid. Like, buggy, entirely behind the times, incredibly slow. I tend to reboot my mac into windows whenever I need to do actual graphics coding, which is a shame.

<comment><USER4> > Apple's OpenGL support is horrid.

Funny, they still do get a lot more game ports than Linux so far (while Linux is progressively getting there).

<comment><USER3> Well, sure, but I don't see what that proves. Game developers find a lot of hacks to work around bad software if there's a market.

<comment><USER4> Well, I see a lot of developers bitching about how hard it is to port stuff for Linux, but I don't recall so much bad mouthing when it came to porting stuff for Mac in the first place.

<comment><USER5> A friend of mine works on ports for both platforms, and he _vastly_ prefers the graphics driver situation on Linux, both in terms of driver quality and vendor support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So... Vendor A - NVidia, Vendor B - AMD, Vendor C - Intel. What are the two Intel drivers?

<comment><USER7> Windows and Linux drivers.

<comment><USER8> I'd assume:

        Vendor C #1 = Intel on Linux
        Vendor C #2 = Intel on Windows

Given the "open source wiz kids to keep driver #1 plodding forward" and "GL on this platform is totally a second class citizen" comments in each description.

<comment><USER9> I can't imagine anyone taking it up, as it'd be a monstrous project, but it'd be interesting to see someone port the Linux OSS Intel drivers to Windows and/or OSX.

<comment><USER10> You'd need access to the Windows OpenGL ICD DDK which is one of the few things Microsoft doesn't hand out freely and without signing a NDA (unless the situation somehow changed withing the past few years).

OTOH the ICD API should be easy enough to reverse engineer. The registry keys, where the OpenGL ICD is registered are well known and there are plenty of drivers in plenty of versions you can dissect to learn how to talk "ICD".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the greatest problem is still OpenGL itself. Vendors have a hard time implementing these and other Khronos specs.

<comment><USER3> I don't know why you were downvoted for this. OpenGL spec is a mess. I think a lot of the driver issues arise from the fact that OpenGL has so much backwards compatibility and so much complexity.

<comment><USER12> Not to mention how obtuse it is to learn. Even without the backwards compatibility issues (which are very real), the entire mental model of how OpenGL works is completely messed up.

Things like having a texture ID, which you then bind to a particular target on a particular texture unit in order to use it make so little sense to someone learning it for the first time. On the CPU, I just pass the pointer to my image to a function to manipulate it. I don't have to put it into a special slot of a special structure in a special place in memory! It took me years to understand many of these things, and I see others struggling in the exact same way on Stack Overflow, for example. So sad.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the API is basically insane. Not to mention how many "best" practices aren't. For instance, I remember a few years ago the advice was always "Use VBO's, don't use display lists they're deprecated". Ok, but when I benchmarked them against each other display lists were still twice as fast for the geometry I was rendering than very carefully constructed VBO's. Wtf.

<comment><USER13> If I'm not mistaken there are hardware reasons why VBOs will never be as fast as other methods, at least that is what I dimly recall having heard from a talk by a guy at Valva / Nvidia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not just affecting 3D applications that need OpenGL though. I find it sad that we have no modern standard akin to VESA / VBE -- to get any reasonable graphics at all at your native display resolution, you have to live with an incredibly complicated (and unreliable) graphics stack. Purely CPU based rendering (which was fast enough in the 90s) is no longer a choice really.

<comment><USER15> SDL

<comment><USER16> To expound on this comment: SDL1 defaults to fully software rendered output. You can hack in opengl hardware rendering, but it's fairly common for SDL1 games and such to be fully software rendered and run fine.

SDL2 in general is hardware rendered.

SDL1 is a good counter-example to "software rendering isn't quick enough anymore". You can make perfectly performant 2d games with sdl1's software rendering... 3d, not so much.

<comment><USER17> People usually use SDL1 _with_ OpenGL, and I don't understand what part of it is "hack". Is using OpenGL with a manually created context with tens of platform ifdefs less hacky? Or is EGL/glut/<your favorite wrapper> the one true way of doing things?

<comment><USER16> It's not a hack in that it's held together by tape, precarious, or any such thing; it's a hack because it's going around the back of SDL to do the graphics, even though SDL is supposed to do all the graphics for you.

Perhaps my wording was poor. It's more of a hack than in SDL2, where all the SDL functions support hardware rendering with no need to touch OpenGL directly ever.

The general point still stands that you can write performant software rendering in SDL1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This guy should try some OpenGL-ES development on Android. Suddenly vendors A, B and C don't sound so bad anymore...

</comment><comment><USER19> Most of those things pretty much stem from the fact that OpenGL is nowhere near priority for those companies - D3D game performance in benchmarks is what sells the accelerators. Additional features like HW video encoders are second.

OGL support is far behind.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm completely missing the mobile space in this writeup, but I bet it is a situation even worse than ATI (no way to update the GPU drivers, short of a full OS upgrade on Android)

<comment><USER21> It absolutely is from what I've heard. There are devices where the Mali GPU works well in some games/apps with one version of the OS and are severely broken in a newer version because the driver broke a lot of things to make other apps work.

It's one of the big reasons I'm hoping that with efforts like the driver for GPU for the RPI being open sourced that we'll start to see some more consistent drivers for mobile chipsets.

<comment><USER20> I more fear of a world like DOS/W3.11-era games - that games ship their own drivers like back in the old days it was done for soundcards...

<comment><USER22> Or move the whole rendering to a server in the cloud, where any awfulness is at least going to be consistent and predictable. This is what NV were (are?) pushing as "Grid", though I haven't heard all that much about it. They _say_ they can keep latency at acceptable levels, but it strains credulity a little bit.

<comment><USER23> I think it is a real solution to the cheating problem too, far better than say VAC: [http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3105&cid=1442601](http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3105&cid=1442601)

<comment><USER22> Yeah. Piracy too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have been wondering about this for long time. The biggest cost in GPU development isn't the Hardware itself. But the drivers. Nvidia famously said they have much more software engineers then hardware guys. And as history can tell having great Hardware on paper means nothing when your Drivers aren't being up to standard ( S3, PowerVR on Desktop). Hence the smaller group of GPU maker were forced out because they dont have the resources to complete on the software front.

And yet over the decades nothing has improved. When Browser wanted to do hardware Acceleration there were many Laptop GPU being blacklisted simply because they dont have any drivers update. Situation is much better on Mac because the drivers and testing happens to be the same people.

There are people who wanted the GPU to be just another CPU. Intel Larrabee. But none of them has succeeded.

I wouldn't have thought with GPU IP taking rounds, drivers quality being in the hands of vendor would have improve the situation abit. However it seems no one wants to invest into it.

So do we have no solution for this? Rumors has it Apple are designing their own GPU. May be they are tackling the drivers problem themselves by getting rid of it?

<comment><USER25> Larrabee did succeed - it just got rebranded as Xeon Phi and is sold as a high-performance computing PCI card.

<comment><USER26> Not really, at least for those of us that seated at an Intel talk about Larrabbe on GDCE back in 2009, on how Larrabee would revolutionize graphics programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> ATI drivers are horrible on the Mac OS X platform too, even though Apple controls all their drivers on the platform. Even though Intel's GPUs are slow their drivers are very stable and work most of the time.

<comment><USER28> That's actually not true, the NVIDIA and ATI drivers are maintained by the vendors.

<comment><USER29> Then how come you can't manually install driver updates? Because Apple controls the release channels and public facing interface.

<comment><USER30> You can install Nvidia drivers on your own for OS X, look up "Nvidia Web Driver". Here's an example: [http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/73628/en-u...](http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/73628/en- us)

<comment><USER27> AFAIK, that driver only applies to CUDA and other proprietary Nvidia platforms, not necessarily OpenGL.

<comment><USER30> I think you misunderstood something. If you read the info text for the driver on the linked page, it explicitly mentions that you need a _separate_ driver for CUDA.

GPU driver: [http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/73628/en-u...](http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/73628/en- us) Additional CUDA driver: [http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx- cuda-6.0.37-driver.html](http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx- cuda-6.0.37-driver.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can someone explain why the drivers are closed source. Is it the fear that the hardware can be reverse engineered from just the driver?

<comment><USER32> That, and sometimes device A is x% faster than competing device B because the _driver_ for device A is faster, not because of the silicon. Open that up, and you give away your competitive advantage.

Also, there are always rumors about $LOW_COST_PRODUCT being the same silicon as $HIGH_COST_PRODUCT from the same manufacturer, just with a few features turned off in the driver. This probably isn't true, but nobody can rule it out.

<comment><USER20> Rumors? Uh, no. NVIDIA is known for this ([http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia- GTX-680-GTX-770-BIOS...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia- GTX-680-GTX-770-BIOS-Flash-Hack,22561.html)). IIRC one could also flash a consumer-grade card with a Tesla BIOS and "convert" a couple-hundred-dollars- card into a thousand-dollars-card.

<comment><USER33> While technically the same hardware, isn't it the case that the "higher end" products are the units off the production line that met a higher QA bar?

That's my understanding of how it works for CPUs. A four-core CPU with questionable functionality on the 4th core may be sold as a "3 core" CPU. Depending on how "questionable" the 4th was though, it might be possible to use it anyway.

<comment><USER34> I don't think production quality is the only reason. Sometime it's cheaper to design one product and sell it as multiple products to capture more value. For example, some people are willing to pay 1k for a graphics card while others are only willing to pay 300. So you sell the same graphics card to both groups but for one you artificially lower it's capability. This allows you to capitalize on the market a lot more efficiently than selling your product either at a low price or a high price.

<comment><USER35> With Tesla cards, you get a professional-oriented driver that is good for Maya and CUDA, but not optimized for games. There are also a few hardware features that are important for pros but are not an issue for gamers --stuff like ECC RAM, double-precision fp, better handling of multiple 3D viewports.

But, it's my understanding that most of what you pay for when you buy a Tesla card is support. If you call Nvidia saying Maya has a driver problem with your Tesla card, they will pay attention. If Maya has a problem running on a GeForce card, they will direct you to the forums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In my experience of writing a GL Windows desktop app alone, driver bugs have been the #1 cause of stability problems for real end users. It's a complete nightmare, with pretty much every manufacturer. I guess that's what happens when hardware companies need to write software.

<comment><USER37> Have you considered shipping a D3D rendering backend for your Windows clients? Or is it too much duplication?

<comment><USER36> No time for a startup, and we had previously used D3D and had other annoying problems (horrible text rendering, annoying redist issues, etc), so it just had its own set of problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is it practical to create a driver abstraction that masks cross vendor issues and provides a consistent interface to the dev? Like what jquery did for browsers.

<comment><USER39> > Is it practical to create a driver abstraction that masks cross vendor > issues and provides a consistent interface to the dev? Like what jquery did > for browsers.

Yes and no. The situation with OpenGL and drivers is quite different to browsers and jQuery.

OpenGL drivers are generally quite good in implementing the API as it is specified and this is tested with a huge bunch of conformance suites. It's not like ancient browsers where one vendor's understanding of the CSS box model is different from the others'.

However, OpenGL has a huge number of different versions, some require hardware support (major versions like GL 4.x vs. 3.x), while others might be software only additions (minor versions, GL 3.2 to 3.3). And then there are lots of API extensions that may or may not be available. This is a relatively simple problem to solve and we have tools like Regal and ANGLE to patch the little things.

But the real problem is functional bugs. Incorrect pixels on the screen ranging from a minor annoyance to a completely destroyed image. And more severe issues like application crashes, completely corrupted display/desktop to blue screens and kernel hangs. This is something that cannot be fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I assume driver incompatibility and things of this nature are one reason why so many games are built on engines like Unreal, Crytek, Unity, etc.? At some point you need to be working on shipping a game, not writing driver compatibility code that a framework could/should handle for you.

</comment><comment><USER41> Not to stray too off topic but what does TDR stand for? :)

<comment><USER42> Apparently, it is a feature where Windows detects that a video card is unresponsive and resets it.

[http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3335/~/td...](http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3335/~/tdr-\(timeout- detection-and-recovery\)-and-collecting-dump-files)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> What's horrible is I've done almost zero OpenGL dev and I could pick these out _immediately_ based on anecdotal experiences with drivers on Windows. Vendor B might be getting better (supposedly), but I still have a tendency to shy away from their drivers (thus, them) due to past experiences.

<comment><USER25> Well let me put it like this. I bought a Radeon 9600 back in 2003 when ATi still existed as an independent company. In the time since then, I haven't seen enough improvement to justify buying anything other than nVidia.

To be fair, they are better - I haven't heard them lately crashing the kernel so hard the alt-sysrq combos don't work.

</comment></comment><comment> ah- Any idea wether the Intel osx driver is related to the Windows one or also completely different?

</comment><comment><USER44> What do they mean by nVidia embedding developers on teams? Like covertly getting nVidia employees hired by game teams to sabotage non-nVidia?

<comment><USER45> Not covert at all. Nvidia engineers come to your office and work on your code for you. They know more secret sauce and contacts inside their company, so they can help you get your performance up on their chips.

<comment><USER46> So, they're Field Application Engineers, basically?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Any ideas on whether Nvidia and Intel will support opencl 1.2 on their gpus on linux anytime soon?

<comment><USER48> Even though this is offtopic I'll answer: Not going to happen.

Nvidia hates OpenCL as it eats their Cuda business and Intel performs market segmentation, therefore their Linux implementation supports only CPU and Xeon Phi and Windows supports the GPU. They don't want server builders to purchase their desktop chips with GPU's. They want them to purchase the massively expensive Xeon Phi and use normal Xeon CPU's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> "you can _git_ your hands dirty and try to fix it and submit a patch."

Typo or funny wordplay?

<comment><USER50> Intel's OSS driver is maintained in git.

So, wordplay.</comment></comment>


Startup will connect campers to landowners. - <AUTHOR>

We are participating in a Garage48 event supported by Eesti Telekom and Startup Wise Guys and our team of developers and designers are working hard to complete QuikCamp (https://www.facebook.com/Quikcamp) platform by tomorrow evening.
QuikCamp is an online platform that connects campers to hosts. You might want to sleep in a tent and wake up with the sound of roosters and moaning cows, while paying virtually nothing. Or you can pick a campsite, where you can use a fridge, showers and a pool. Maybe there is even an attractive hostess, who wants to play drinking games. If you are prepared to pay more, you can stay in a tent and live as a king.
As a landowner, you might think your day job is not "cutting it" and you want to branch out - we can help you here as well. Our platform lets you list your lawn real-estate and make some money out of it. If you are going to host more than one tent on your campsite, we will also help you do the logistics for that. For example, we will let people book a certain part of the land and there is a "locate my tent" function that helps people find their way back to their belongings. Even if they have bonded with locals and cannot make out your location further than the camp itself.
We are supposed to have the first prototype up and running by tomorrow evening. And you have an opportunity to help us out now, by LIKING and SHARING QuikCamp's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Quikcamp) or just signing up early, to get the free night in a tent. <comment><USER2> "Maybe there is even an attractive hostess, who wants to play drinking games"

And they say there are sexist attitudes in startup companies.

Regarding your goal, your competition include governmental sites like naturstyrelsen.dk/naturoplevelser/overnatning/ , which list the places in Denmark to pitch a tent for free on national lands, and camping organizations like [http://www.friluftsraadet.dk/indhold/overnatning-i-det- fri.a...](http://www.friluftsraadet.dk/indhold/overnatning-i-det-fri.aspx) which also list private and municipal camping sites in Denmark. These are almost all places where you pay literally nothing, and sometimes include a shelter, firewood, and water. One that we stayed at was in a Scouting building, with access to their kitchen.

At least one of the blurbs for a private campsite says that you can share some of the owner's beer, but it didn't say if he was attractive or interested in drinking games. What is your resolution process if he turns out to be not as attractive as he says he is?

</comment><comment><USER3> Aside from geography, how is this need not served between Hipcamp, Airbnb, and Couchsurfing?</comment>


New 360 Panorama of the Milkyway - <AUTHOR> http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/glimpse360

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really interesting setup for looking around the Milky Way.</comment>


"Charlie Hebdo", not racist? If you say so… - <AUTHOR> http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article%2011.htm

<comment><USER2> This article seems to be confusing muslims with arabs. Charlie Hebdo is only attacking religions, not arabs as an ethnic group. White catholics have been mocked, too, more than any other religion if you look closely at the history of that journal ; but, of course, attacks against catholicism often go unnoticed because, well, this is so common in France (and catholic extremists haven't murdered journalists for a very long time).</comment>


Show HN: Rxdb – A fast, reactive, client-side database - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb?v=4.0.1 <comment><USER2> Past submissions: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rxdb&sort=byPopularity&prefix&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rxdb&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><USER3> Past 20 submissions in the last 4 months by 2 multi-accounts + 2 "normals"! Interesting to see the different spins.

<comment><USER4> It's only spamming if you get caught. Otherwise it's growth hacking.

<comment><USER5> Most perfect definition of growth hacking I ever saw. Made my day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How is access control handled? For instance, what if the data itself encodes access control, how do I prevent the data being sent over to the client-side inadvertently?

<comment><USER7> This is the problem Meteor had. They had this complex allow/deny configuration to see if the client has permission to run a query but it was impossible to get around all the edge cases. They started recommending not using it and instead call controllers that then would check server-side if the user has permission or not and return the data to sync to the client. Then every query client side is considered to have full read access to the data in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does it compare to pouchdb and why would you chose rxdb instead of pouch?

<comment><USER9> RxDB relies on PouchDB. It mentions it in its README <[https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb/blob/master/README.md#feature...](https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb/blob/master/README.md#feature- showroom-click-to-toggle>) and in its package.json <[https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb/blob/master/package.json#L64>](https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb/blob/master/package.json#L64>)</comment></comment>


Capitalism to the Rescue - Green Tech Rising - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Green-t.html?_r=1&oref=login&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Part of the reason green tech will have a hard time rising independently is the market it works in. The energy market is very non free-market and as a result of all the tax grants and government intervention.

So, I think it is hard to say that green tech should be able to rise above on it's own without some gov spending.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow that was A+ submarine.

It was also rather inspirational. I want my own Bloom box. It would be interesting to see cost details on that compared to the grid... pretty sure there is no way it is cheaper, but it might be a brilliant way to replace all those diesel generators that hospitals and hurricane victims keep around.

<comment><USER4> Do they need to be replaced? I mean, they're already there, reliable and aren't exactly polluting a lot - they're only used in exceptional circumstances.

Could be useful for off-grid applications. Homes that are solar/wind/etc, but the Bloom Box kicks in when energy demand is high or reserves are low... Might reduce or eliminate the need for (polluting) batteries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the article; it was informative and inspirational.</comment>


Now you see me, now you don't, face detection scripts - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2010/06/27/now-you-see-me-now-you-dont-face-detection-scripts/ Tetsu and myself were just posted to Hackaday for our famicam project. It's a face detection application written in Python using OpenCV. Every 15 minutes we snap a photo, detect the faces, and upload the results to twitter. <comment><USER2> sure, you could have multiple avatars. they would be chosen randomly, right now, not cover up a particular person's face with a particular avatar. we don't do any facial recognition yet. we'd have to train classifiers on our faces to do that. thatd be kind of anti-privacy, but might be worth trying w/e

</comment><comment><USER3> will multiple avatars be possible for multiple faces? this is most excellent work!</comment>