New York's Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don't Run at All - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/nyregion/new-yorks-subways-are-not-just-delayed-some-trains-dont-run-at-all.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news <comment><USER3> The MTA's problems begin and end at a weak senior management unwilling to standup to Cuomo's frivolous micromanagement and a transit union unwilling to modernize.

Politicians should be pushing for serious procurement and labor work rule reforms, otherwise the systemic managerial and operational deficiencies will ensure that the deterioration of service we see now will repeat it self in 5 to 10 years, regardless of how much money or technology is poured into the MTA.

London and Toronto have been able to modernize much of their transit systems in last 5 years and its not because they have more money. Once you fix the top everything else will fall into place.

Look what Andy Byford has been able to do in 4 short years at the TTC. His 5-Year Plan to modernize the TTC focused on transforming corporate culture and updating internal processes, in addition to new equipment. The results of these changes have been overwhelmingly positive with the TTC recently being named best public transit agency in North America and The TR Class of TTC subway cars in May having a MDBF of over 924,000 miles.

If your interested in getting involved with transit activism in NYC I highly suggest you follow @2AvSagas on twitter.

</comment><comment><USER4> A lot of what affects the NYC subway is the principle of the "Sick System."

[http://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html](http://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html)

The system is too essential for a stop-the-world overhaul, but so far gone, that only a stop-the-world overhaul can part the clouds.

Without a hard flush of antiquated mission critical infrastructure, millions of turbulent eddies and vortices will ensure that the system is always afflicted by parasitic equipment and debris.

<comment><USER5> Not a New Yorker, but what I heard was that the tunnels only have two tracks, and both are needed for daily operations. So you can't replace one when it wears out because of the service interruption. If they had made the tunnels wide enough for three tracks, they'd have a spare for when they do repairs on one of them. And give them a place to do a rolling-upgrade of old middle-20th century signaling equipment.

<comment><USER6> Why not just do work on it at night like they do on the tube?

<comment><USER7> New York's subway system runs 24 hours, and many residents rely on late- night/early morning service.

<comment><USER8> Is that the official reason though? "The service cannot be stopped even for planned maintenance" doesn't sound like a reasonable constraint.

<comment><USER7> They have been doing shutdowns of particular lines for planned maintenance, but almost always with replacement service in place (either other nearby subway lines, or for more isolated lines, buses). And then there are major tunnel repairs, which can lead to shutdowns of over a year. (There's an upcoming shutdown on the L which a lot of people are dreading, as there is no good replacement service of anything like the same capacity.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >"Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged that the schedules were not being met, and they blamed overcrowding for the shortfall."

No, the overcrowding is the effect of the MTA not addressing massive increases in ridership over an almost 20 year period. The MTA likes to pretend publicly that the ridership boom came out of nowhere and blindsided everyone. However the increase in ridership has been occurring and been every since 1998.

"Between 1975and 1998, New York City subway ridership hovered between about 900 million and 1 billion riders annually. The net change between the annual ridership in 1975 and 1997 was about 100 million, an average increase of just over 4 million per year. However, 1997 was a turning point for the relatively stagnant ridership growth experienced by New York City's subway system. In 1998,just after the introduction of the MetroCard, over 137 million more rides were taken than the year before. The boom continued for the next two years, during which time another 181 million rides had been added to the annual total. Over the next 15 years, the system continued to increase its ridership totals at an average of 25 million more rides per year. In 2015, subway rides totaled more than 1.7 billion."[1]

To make the current situation with chronically late trains worse there is no way to know when the next train is coming until you have paid for a fare and are standing down on the platform. Little good it does you then to find out that next train is not for 12 or 15 minutes.

The MTA could have put the electronic arrival boards up on the street level by the train entrance so that people could make an alternate choice such as to use a Citibike, taxi, bus or even just walk instead. The MTA decided to reserve that space to sell advertising however. Despite their press release you will not find the next arrival times on any of these. See:

[http://www.mta.info/news/2012/03/29/digital-urban-panels- deb...](http://www.mta.info/news/2012/03/29/digital-urban-panels-debut- manhattan-subway-entrances)

[1] [https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/State%20of...](https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/State%20of%20Subway%20Ridership%20-%20Mar717.pdf)

<comment> joatmon-snoo _To make the current situation with chronically late trains worse there is no way to know when the next train is coming until you have paid for a fare and are standing down on the platform. Little good it does you then to find out that next train is not for 12 or 15 minutes._

SO MUCH THIS.

Fortunately, because the MTA has exposed the live schedule data, Google Maps lets you check this (sadly, it isn't 100% reliable: oftentimes a train will claim to have arrived somewhere, or even be departing from a station, while it's still getting there).

<comment><USER9> >"Fortunately, because the MTA has exposed the live schedule data, Google Maps lets you check this (sadly, it isn't 100% reliable: oftentimes a train will claim to have arrived somewhere, or even be departing from a station, while it's still getting there)."

Yes and the issue is that the MTA doesn't make the service disruption data available.

See: [https://medium.com/transit-app/how-were-bringing-real- time-c...](https://medium.com/transit-app/how-were-bringing-real-time- countdowns-to-nyc-s-lettered-lines-482d3b8f9899)

Why wouldn't you make this data available? Why stop short? Most likely because it would expose just how many unplanned maintenance disruptions there actually are.

<comment><USER10> For much the same reasons as not operating all the trains on your schedule, I guess - apathy, incompetence, mismanagement, under-resourcing, etc. It seems odd to expect a transit agency that isn't good at operating trains to be great at providing data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The biggest reason for these delays I've found over the years it the signaling system and headway spacing.

Blocks on a railway system are designed to provide enough space and warning so that trains do not crash into each other. However, when you use line side signals and CTC (Centralized Train Control) to dispatch them, you end up with a set of rules that create spaces for occupancy that can easily be longer than the trains themselves.

In the NYC subway, speaking as an observer as opposed to an insider, the signaling and dispatching requires certain distances between trains and headways (time between trains) to provide safety of 2-4 minutes. However, this results in the cascading delays as one train that dwells too long in a platform can have a stacking effect on trains behind.

For example, if your minimum block distance is 1000 feet, and a max length train is 500 feet, a stack of five trains waiting to enter a station would actually occupy 5,000 feet of track. This could stretch to previous stations along the line.

The best solution would be dynamic blocks and cab signals, where the system itself defines spaces occupied by trains and only allows a train into a space where it can occupy safely, but also can make the distances dynamic based on conditions. Cab signals would be required as you can't have dynamic blocks with line side signals.

However, to do this requires a massive investment in new equipment both line side and on the trains that would take years to implement, along with a massive amount of painful work that would cause even more issues while it is being set up.

Sadly, running more trains probably won't cut it as the system literally cannot handle more safely.

<comment><USER12> Can't you also use manual train control during delays? I was once on a badly delayed train (we were second in line to the station behind a train with "police activity"). The operator pulls up to the train that's being held with maybe one inch between the bumpers and let's passengers off through only the front-most door. More creative thinking like this could help alleviate delays and increase passenger happiness.

<comment><USER13> I think overriding the signalling system should only be done in extreme circumstances.

If it becomes normal, it's too easy to make a mistake during the procedure, and cause an accident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to take the 456 line on Lexington Ave. back and forth between Home & Work for the past 5 years. In January, the Q line on 86th st. opened, and although it takes me ~10 minutes longer each way, it is a MUCH more pleasant experience.

The 456 is a nightmare, and I can tell you first hand, that it is crowded to a point where it is inhumane (imagine people literally fighting for a spot to have the "privilege" to smell the arm-pits in their faces).

The Q line is well worth the headache, and the frustration of dealing with the 456.

<comment><USER15> The 456 is the reason I stopped commuting to work before 10. Taking the L from where I live today isn't much different. The trick I've found is that if the sign says there are two trains incoming that are within a minute of each other, always take the second train. People will self-sardine themselves on the first and the second with be mostly empty.

<comment><USER16> That was my biggest lesson of the L or the 4/5/6\. If you _wait_ , the next train will be much, MUCH less crowded.

Another trick is that if I'm at Union Square trying to get into Brooklyn on the L and the station is packed, it ends up being faster and more comfortable to take the L backwards to 8th ave, and then grab a seat on the Brooklyn bound L at the 8th ave terminus.

<comment><USER17> I use this technique when I need to catch a Queens-bound 7 train in Midtown. It's much better to take a walk over to Hudson Yards and board there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So the transit authority decided that it was more important to have trains evenly spaced out (to minimize the worst case wait times), but the tradeoff was less total capacity and thus more crowded trains.

I'm really not sure which is the better case. Trains always arrive in a short time, but can be full. Or you may have to wait longer for a train, and then a little longer still for the train right behind that train that isn't as full.

<comment><USER19> It might also be that "longer worst case wait times" risk turning into a different failure mode entirely. Like maybe if the rush hour train is 5 minutes late it's just uncomfortably packed, but if it's 10 minutes late it gets so packed that letting people off at each station now takes 3x longer than it should, the wait time spikes further, and every other train in the system gets stuck behind that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm always impressed how terrible the subways are in America.

In Moscow the metro is running really smoothly since the day of it's creation except for a single day. But that was because of Hitler.

<comment><USER21> just in NYC because of its age. I don't think it's so bad in other big cities.

I don't care about the delays or capacity. I just wish NYC subway stations weren't so filthy. Yes, they've gotten better in the past 20 years, but every time I go to oversea, I'm reminded of how disgusting nyc subway is.

<comment><USER20> I honestly don't know how Moscow does it. I never saw a garbage can while at the same time never seeing any garbage laying around.

<comment><USER21> I think Japan does something similar.

[http://jpninfo.com/54373](http://jpninfo.com/54373)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why would it take 50 years to install signalling across the system ?

This doesn't sound right at all.

<comment><USER23> The problems with NYC subway signaling have been very extensively covered in previous reporting that you might find interesting:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/nyregion/new-york- subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/nyregion/new-york-subway- signals.html) [http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-subway-relies- decade...](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-subway-relies-decades-old- outmoded-signals-switches-article-1.3184666)

"Even something as basic as a cable is an antique.

Workers popped open a junction box to show a 70-year-old cloth-covered cable, due for the scrap heap next year, connected to newer rubber-covered wires."

Basically, the system is so old that an incremental retrofit is very complicated to achieve without full shutdown. Remember the overall NYC subway system is the only train system that actually operates 24-7 so maintenance scheduling is also much more involved.

<comment><USER24> Then it should close at night. Pretty much every city with a subway system worth bragging about does.

It always seemed strange to me that Philly is the only city I've been to that fully replaces the subway at night with buses.

<comment><USER25> Part of what makes the subway system worth bragging about is that it runs at night.

<comment><USER26> I am proud of that as a New Yorker, but I would much rather replace it with buses at night if that would make it actually work during the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Relevant article on a tax to fund the changes [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/nyregion/bill-de- blasio-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/nyregion/bill-de-blasio-will- push-for-tax-on-wealthy-to-fix-subway.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone know whether anyone's carefully considered simply adding new parallel systems, e.g. for signalling?

I can completely sympathize with the difficulty of upgrading 24/7 critical infrastructure, especially given that mistakes can kill or injure people. I'd try to just deploy separate parallel systems instead.

At a comically reduced scale, businesses migrating between ERPs (or similar line-of-business apps) often run both the old and new systems 'side-by-side' for some period of time. What I've never seen or heard them doing is trying to replace components or sub-systems of the old system with those of the new system. That kind of integration work would be awful and would probably drastically increase the odds that the migration would crash and burn.

<comment><USER29> This is what's actually happening to a large extent.

While CBTC signaling is being installed, the original fixed-block signaling remains in place. It's nearly impossible to do this otherwise - you'd have to shut the entire line down for the entire time it takes to install new signals - which could be years.

Once the new signal installation is complete the two systems may operate in parallel (with the fixed-block system acting as a possible backup if CBTC fails, and also so older trains can still run).

The issue is that with 24/7 operation, there is no consistent regular time where work like this can be done. It can only be done in short spurts (late- night shutdowns) or the work crews in-lined with train service, which has obvious safety concerns as well as drastically reducing the capacity of the line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is this just a problem with NYC's system, or is this an "elephant in the room" problem with mass transit?

If an individual's car breaks down, they can find alternate means to get where they need to go. If everyone were to depend on public transit in the future, how do you handle upgrades? I know the metro in DC will run extra bus routes for some down trains, but I think that's just for certain smaller repairs.

It's something I haven't really thought much about before. The simple answer is to have redundant equipment (tunnels, tracks, cars), but few would stomach the cost. Most likely it would just get used instead, in the same way that you can never alleviate traffic jams with more roads, you just get more people using them.

<comment><USER31> Almost every Subway supports transparent upgrades during operation. In the absolute worst case scenarios you shut down single stations at night. By design almost every Subway _is_ redundant - you at least have to have two lines, one for station bypass and one for returning trains. When you work on any Subway, you shut down one of the lines and manage traffic through the other.

The NY Subway is just the most incompetent, most mismanaged, most technically indebted subway on Earth.

There is no "problem with mass transit" as much as it is a problem with centralized administration of complex things, period. Anything of large scale that impacts many lives but has limited controllers to manage it is both rife for ineptitude / corruption / incompetence and easily ignored on the consumer side because of the complexity.

The same issue turns up all over infrastructure - outdated bridges, power lines, internet infrastructure, water pipes. Central authorities of incompetent taxpayer dollar rent seekers run them, the people are too ignorant / ill informed about deteriorating conditions to care, legacy technical debt builds up over _centuries_ to be impossibly large.

And you won't escape them. The inverse of your scenario - rather than the car breaking down, the road collapses from age - is still wholly applicable. Car travel and vehicular routes are just as mired in corruption and bureaucracy making them a nightmare as trains. Trains breaking down is as easily solved as cars - there are maintenance stations, you take one train off, you put a new one on. The real problem is always when the tracks go bad - the centralization part. You could have a billion trains but not enough track / switching capacity to use them.

<comment><USER13> In much of Europe, metro systems will shut down for maintenance for appropriate periods. This is massively cheaper than working around a live railway (especially underground), where safety would necessitate many more staff required and more interruptions to work -- if it's even permitted in the particular location.

The period depends on the city. Here in Copenhagen, where the metro runs all night, they tend to shut part of a line from 00-05h on a Monday-Thursday night, and put on buses instead. Cities with bigger metro systems might not need the buses: this was the case the last time I visited Berlin, and a central section was closed overnight.

London sometimes closes parts of lines at weekends, and every 2-3 years or so there is major work on a line (closed entirely) on ~25-30th December.

(To be clear then: the "absolute worse case" is closing an entire line for around a week.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> NYC MTA needs billions of dollars to fix the system. NY state must raise taxes on the rich and deploy it too the MTA. The federal must chip in too. The MTA will never make money and this is how it is.

<comment><USER31> Where does the misguided notion infrastructure should make a profit even come from? Everyone hates on Amtrak for not being a profitable company. When in history has infrastructure ever existed for the sake of the network operators profit? It is always for the sake of profiting those who _use_ it - <USER2> infrastructure enables profits, but in the same way sticking profits into medicine cripples the efficiency of the system, trying to stick rent seeking into infrastructure defeats the point of using it.

<comment><USER33> Hong Kong has one of the best subway systems in the world and it generates a profit every year [1]. The USPS also generates profits as well [2]. I would argue that the profit motive incentivises efficiency in both of those examples.

The best innovation often happens when working under constraints; often a drive for profit results in better service for everyone using the infrastructure. Of course this isn't the case 100% of the time, like your example of medicine, which is why I think that to get the best of both worlds you need a mix of government regulation with privatized capitalism. But I think it would be incorrect to dismiss the profit incentive entirely as being bad, and probably in the case of US infrastructure we would benefit from more privatization and not the other way around.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/30/news/hong-kong-mtr-subway- pr...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/30/news/hong-kong-mtr-subway- property/index.html) [2] [http://www.newsweek.com/post-office-aint-broken-its- profit-s...](http://www.newsweek.com/post-office-aint-broken-its-profit-so- why-fix-it-397788)

<comment><USER34> There's a couple interesting issues at play. One is that a profit incentive can be at work without the goal being to break even. For example, perhaps the goal is to subsidize by only $XXX million/year and above/beyond this goal is considered "profitable" with appropriate incentives.

Another is the issue of correlation/causation. Well-run systems may tend to be efficient in their use of monetary resources (almost by definition), but it's not clear that setting a for-profit goal will be a cure-all intervention that causes a system to be well-run.

It's also a big leap from setting profit goals to full-on privatization, which I'm skeptical of for several reasons. Private companies are often only pushed to be "good enough", better than the competition. A public transit system that is just barely better than a cab (say for daily work commute) is no good at all. Private companies tend to have short-term incentives, for instance, the CEO may get a bonus based on the current year's profit, which will be destroyed by investment in infrastructure. Companies care about maximizing revenue rather than welfare. Etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The line about overcrowding being one of the major drivers behind delays doesn't hold much water. Ridership has essentially been flat or even declining in some areas[1] (peaked in early 2010s). Decreasing mean distance between failures in cars [2] (as well as mismanagement of crews & trains as mentioned in article) are among the main culprits.

[1] [http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/ridership_sub_annua...](http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/ridership_sub_annual.htm)

[2] [http://web.mta.info/mta/news/books/archive/160725_1030_NYCT....](http://web.mta.info/mta/news/books/archive/160725_1030_NYCT.pdf) <\-- See page 29

<comment><USER36> Are you sure? nytimes recently said its doubled. (thougcomparison to 40s is interesting)

> Subway ridership has risen dramatically since the 1990s, when about four > million people used the system each day. Now it is nearly six million riders > each day — the highest level since the 1940

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subw...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subway- delays-overcrowding.html)

<comment><USER37> What caused the spike in the 1940s? Wartime fuel rationing?

<comment><USER38> The spike was in 1946. Whenever this statistic is trotted out I always wonder how they made the trains run back then but MTA can't figure out how to do it today. Their handwaving about narrow doors slowing down passengers doesn't hold water.

<comment><USER37> That's interesting. By 1946 most soldiers would have been back in the states but automobile production would still have been ramping up. New car designs didn't really hit the market until after 1948. Maybe that contributed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Instead of cancelling trains, why not take the unused cars and make the running trains longer? I understand that the stations may not be able to handle the length. You could stagger entries so that the first half of the train loads, pulls forward a bit then the second half loads.

If it is an issue with the strength of the train engines, could you use two train engines together? Especially if their intended routes are just getting cancelled.

<comment><USER7> The trains on the 4/5/6 lines are already the full length of the platforms. (As on every other NYC subway line except for the G and a few of the shuttles.)

<comment><USER39> I was thinking that you could have trains that are longer than the length of the platform and have multiple steps to fill it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Anyone know of a documentary on the New York subway? I would love to see all this old equipment and what they are really battling in order to keep it running.

<comment><USER41> There is this[1] video from the MTA that goes into the signaling system, which is extremely old and in the process of getting updated in certain sections.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The people in NY/NJ area have no choice but to endure the mess of NJ transit and MTA. Politicians lack vision and will to build a modern transportation system that accounts for growing number of riders through these systems. Somebody must have told try these folks to keep the "lights on" and forgot to mention that it also includes getting riders on time.

</comment><comment><USER43> It would seem one could analyze the performance in this day of big data and find a more efficient plan for scheduling the trains and adjusting in real time. Maybe the system is too unpredictable to make this possible. Even so it would be fun to try to model the entire system and try.

<comment><USER44> The problem isn't in modeling the perfect train distribution, it is in that the system itself can't handle anything else. Many of the parts in the subway infrastructure are from the 40s and they just can't handle more trains.

<comment><USER28> > from the 40s

30s! And maybe even older!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone know how much those ridiculous touch screens cost?

<comment> rkuykendall-com You mean the ones that allow them to show multiple ads, changed digitally, without paying someone to manually change them out?

If those are net-costing anything at all, I'd guess it's a rounding error on any subway upgrades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The worst part about this is the New Yorkers who are fleeing New York City and landing in Hollywood and Silverlake and Echo Park and Eagle Rock. No xenophobia here it's just they're bringing their adjusted economic expectations to LA making the Airbnb inflicted housing crunch seem OK.

</comment><comment><USER47> I find it quite shocking how little of the NY subway is automated.

<comment><USER31> What would incentivize it to do so? Upgrades come effectively from the state, and need to be passed in budgets. So you need to persuade opinionated Albanian politicians to upgrade the NY Metro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I know this would probably be unpopular but why not just temporarily raise prices until fewer people can afford the train. And use the extra money to upgrade the system.

<comment><USER49> In current ecosystem, with so many politicians promising golden eggs, price rise will almost never end up in the decrease.

Also, you are taxing the poorest. I think they struggle enough. You could start selling premium services though.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Fun side project pebkac-stories - <AUTHOR>

I've been a long time lurker on HN, though, not giving my value in comments but I visit the site on a daily basis.  I plan to share all my upcoming sideprojects with the community.
This one might get my karma further down but we needed a perspective on site we started for people to share their day-to-day pebkac stories: http://www.pebkac-stories.com
Site is just on a simple wordpress template...we'd like your feedback. <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://www.pebkac-stories.com></comment>


Iron law of oligarchy - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy <comment><USER2> When you see the same family names in so many places (Bush, Kennedy, Clinton) the oligarchic tendencies are pretty obvious. It's fucking crazy that 2 Bushes have been president, and Jeb Bush is a governor, and might one day be president. This would never happen in a healthy democracy.

<comment><USER3> I was just thinking that from 1988 to 2008 (20 years), a Bush or Clinton was president _the entire time_. From 1980 to 2013, a Bush or Clinton was either President, Vice President, or Secretary of State _the entire time_. If Hillary or Jeb Bush wins in 2016 and serves two terms, then from 1980 to 2024, the only years that a Bush or Clinton will not have been in one of the three executive offices of the United States is 2013-2016. Let that sink in: for 40 out 44 years, members of the same two families will have occupied the top 3 offices in government, and for 28 years, they will have been President.

Man. I thought we got rid of hereditary monarchies in 1776, but that's a helluva lot longer than most kings served.

<comment><USER4> There was an Adams or a Jefferson serving as either President or Vice President of the country, as well, for the first twenty years of our nationhood. And then after an eight year break, the son of the first President Adams became Secretary of State. And then President himself. An Adams or Jefferson was President, VP, or Secretary of State for the first 36 out of 44 years the US existed!

I'm not sure what the above proves. Neither then nor now is what's going on anything like a hereditary monarchy. For one thing, Hillary Clinton is not the heir of Bill Clinton. And in both cases other people have been in the mix holding power. Washington during Adam's Vice Presidency. Obama during Hillary Clinton's Secretaryship of State. Which kind of kills the "mono" part of a "monarchy" \-- if there are a bunch of different people from a bunch of different families running around with power. (Is "polyarchy" a word?)

So don't get too freaked.

(Also, plenty of first world democracies have hereditary monarchs. The United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Canada, Japan, etc. The existence of a hereditary monarchy isn't necessarily anti-democratic.)

<comment><USER5> > Is "polyarchy" a word?

Oligarchy, per the OP.

<comment><USER4> No, polyarchy is something different. The word does seem to exist:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The endpoint of his thought process was to join Mussolini.

      "Michels stated that the official goal of representative
      democracy of eliminating elite rule was impossible,
      that representative democracy is a façade legitimizing
      the rule of a particular elite, and that elite rule,
      that he refers to as oligarchy, is inevitable.[1] Later
      Michels migrated to Italy and joined Benito Mussolini's
      Fascist Party, as he believed this was the next
      legitimate step of modern societies. The thesis became
      popular once more in post-war America with the
      publication of Union Democracy: The Internal Politics
      of the International Typographical Union (1956) and
      during the red scare brought about by McCarthyism."

<comment><USER7> I still don't understood how that followed. What am I missing?

<comment><USER8> Tyrants are servants of the people, and enemies of the oligarchs.

That's why republican democrats hate them so intensely, and have been murdering tyrants by sword and word for so many centuries.

<comment><USER9> >Tyrants are servants of the people

[citation needed]

<comment><USER10> Does Plato cut it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the article... 'Darcy K. Leach summarized them briefly as: "Bureaucracy happens. If bureaucracy happens, power rises. Power corrupts."' \-- how does this not also apply to corporations?

This is a super pertinent question when a company grows over some threshold size

<comment><USER12> The only successful model I'm aware of, for dealing with that when it comes to huge scale corporations, is the Berkshire Hathaway model. Delegation to great operators across major, highly independent units. Even then, inside of the large units you inevitably get a replication of the problem with increasing scale.

It's clearly one of the reasons Google did what they did. At 60,000 employees they were beginning to drown in the bureaucracy of it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My burning man camp, [http://thephage.org/](http://thephage.org/), recognized the underlying oligarchy in our own organization and decided to make it open and explicit by identify leaders through proxy voting ([https://github.com/ThePhage/phage-proxy](https://github.com/ThePhage/phage- proxy)) on a few different axes: who each individual thought was best at conflict resolution, who we would each go to for life advice, etc.

The end result was remarkably high-confidence, transparent, and harmonious. I expect proxy voting will have a far more significant role in the future.

<comment><USER14> >'cook2': ('A second Phageling you trust to enjoy cooking with!',

Cooks are leaders at Burning Man?

Is this similar to instant runoff voting? Only had time to glance at the code..

<comment><USER13> > Is this similar to instant runoff voting?

No it involves building a graph of voter preferences to find the central nodes. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting#Delegated_voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting#Delegated_voting)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For a counter-argument, see Karl Popper's _The Open Society and it Enemies._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies)

</comment><comment><USER16> I think this is largely explained by Hayek's 'Problem of Knowledge in Society': [http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html)

Direct Democracy was impossible and representative democracy was necessary because it was impossible to aggregate the wishes of a populace.

Mass telecommunication solves or at least paves the road to solving this problem.

<comment><USER17> What people may wish for and what needs to be done seem, to me, to be completely different things.

Take Germans and their nuclear power plants. Despite the plants in Japan failing because of conjunction of shoddy construction, earthquake and tsunami, of which only 1 could even be a case in Germany - Germans closed their nuke plants in response.

I don't see how wise decisions would result from aggregation. We've not been shaped by evolution to be rational or realistic, but to have an inflated opinion of self and of our chances - because that was advantageous.

I really doubt that is the case when it comes to running countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think that direct democracy enabled by online voting and blockchain technology will eventually supersede the current representative system of democracy. I can understand that pre-internet it was necessary to have a representative democracy as it would not be possible to have all citizens vote in-person or by mail on all issues, but with the internet a direct democracy seems viable even at a large scale.

While there would be security and privacy issues to overcome with a digital direct democracy, at least it would not be as susceptible to corporate capture as our current representative systems of democracy.

<comment><USER19> I believe California has demonstrated that the public voting directly on propositions is a terrible idea.

<comment><USER18> Well, California has medical marijuana, so I guess the proposition system works sometimes. But I do think the proposition system is corrupted by the need to raise large amounts of money to advertise.

<comment><USER20> I would argue that the big problem that the California proposition system caused was property taxes. Prop 13; and that is pure self-interest; homeowners voting themselves a tax cut. Because homeowners vote in state elections dramatically more often than people who don't own property, this law will remain on the books until we can get people who don't own to vote at a higher rate than people who do own. (Which will be difficult, considering that the majority of people live in a home owned by themselves or their family, _and_ homeowners vote much more often than non-owners.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Slightly pessimistic. Also, in 1911 knowledge about what works and doesn't work was a lot more limited. The safeguards modern democracies employ now are far superior. At the very least the control of information doesn't work as well as some people would like...

On the other hand there will always be a power differential between those who strive to political leadership (often sacrificing a lot on the way) and those who don't participate at all. And even in a completely equal power share, the power of an individual in a nation of millions is so small that it is easy to confuse it with zero.

<comment><USER22> 1911 is about half way between the rise of modern democracy and present day, and the pace of development is faster in the beginning. Parliaments and political drama had been around much longer still.

</comment></comment><comment> chroem- This is precisely why we should change our sampling process for selecting representatives, from corruptible elections, to completely random selection.

For more info, see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)

<comment><USER23> "Michels theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies."

How is sortition going to help? It should either also become an oligarchy, or simply be a dysfunctional government, or not actually have anything at all to do with this subject.

<comment> chroem- Would you say an average person who works an average job has a reasonable shot at getting into elected office in the United States Congress? If no, then that by definition is a form of oligarchy.

Though random samples and a large enough sample size, you can ensure that at least those in elected (sortitioned?) positions are not members of the oligarchy. Additionally, since sortition is much more efficient in selecting candidates, it's possible to replace some formerly unelected bureaucrats with sortitioned ones. Even if it's not perfect, it's still an improvement.

<comment><USER24> Who administers the process of sortition? Who ensures that it is properly random and fair? Who enforces the law if it isn't?

<comment><USER14> >Who enforces the law if it isn't?

Your randomly selected police officer.. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For a nice study of how this law extends to online peer production communities, see [https://mako.cc/academic/shaw_hill- laboratories_of_oligarchy...](https://mako.cc/academic/shaw_hill- laboratories_of_oligarchy-DRAFT.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER26> Amen [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you search for CS results online? - <AUTHOR>

When I want to learn about the CS research in a particular area, Google is not my friend. Most search results are overrun by weeds: junky bibliographic sites that can only be called academic spam or publishers who want payment. I'm not going to spend $25 on a 1% chance that a paper is relevant to my problem. (An example of the kind of search I'm talking about is http://www.google.com/search?q=%22quad+view%22+finke).
So far, the best solution I've found is to use Google and Amazon's book search, augmented with some unsatisfying hacks to partly get around their restrictions. There must be a better way. What do you guys suggest?
Update: what percentage of CS research does the ACM Digital Library provide online? If it were close enough to 100%, I might fork out the $200, swearing loudly. <comment><USER2> Don't feed the bastards; IEEE and ACM shall never see a dime from me.

Instead of paying them $200, pay ~$100 to your local big university library, and get all the books, papers, and other research materials you can handle. I am a member of George Mason University's library (go Patriots!) and I paid $150 because I am not an alumnus. My perks include the entire ACM/IEEE publications, of course, along with all the books I can handle :-)

(only bad thing is the parking, which can run up to $20 sometimes; but I learned to go there after 7PM and stay til 12AM; taking home whatever books I like.)

Online? CiteSeer + googling author's names and hoping for their .edu/~home- pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm disappointed, though not surprised, that the situation is as bad as described in your and eugenejen's comments.

It's ironic that the literature surrounding commercial (or at least production) software development is now exemplary in its openness while the academic literature is locked in these backwater ghettos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> ACM has almost all their journals/conferences digitized already.

IEEE has most stuffs since 1991 on line in computer society. I am not familiar with the giant IEEE database.

SIAM has all stuffs on line. SIAM put new one in journal format. They put old SIAM journals in digitial library.

AAAI has put all their stuffs on line. I think now they allow non member to read them online also.

ACL seems lacking of enough funding to put all their computational linguist research on line.

The other way to check the CS research is relying on Citeseer's cache. Most of living/no-retire CS researchers put their papers on line for review after 1990s.

</comment><comment><USER4> At the times in the past when I haven't had institutional access, it has only rarely been a problem: the vast majority of the papers I want to read are freely-available online (CiteSeer, Google Scholar, DBLP, etc.). For the rare occasions when I couldn't find a free copy of a paper, I would just ask a friend of mine with ACM/IEEE/etc. access to get me a copy. The ACM/IEEE web archives are a major annoyance in theory, but I wasn't too inconvenienced in practice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you please spell it out for me, assuming that I am a complete novice? How exactly do you get copies of actual papers from "CiteSeer, Google Scholar, DBLP, etc."?

It may occur to you that if I'm too dumb to find papers I'm probably too dumb to read them. Please ignore this :) I'm sure that a dumbed-down answer would include some helpful tips for those of us who don't do this every day but have a need to dive into the literature from time to time (and would probably benefit from doing it more often).

<comment><USER4> Well, pretty simple: Google for the title of the paper. Some of the hits you'll get will be behind paywalls (like the ACM DL), but there are usually just PDFs you can freely download. Similarly with using Google Scholar and CiteSeer, which often keeps cached copies of the PDFs it finds online. Failing that, check the websites of the authors of the paper.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I get it. That's pretty much what I've been doing, but at least this thread clued me in to the fact that one can sometimes find pdfs on Citeseer.

Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Send alert text messages using Python and a Modem - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lagentz.com/general/how-to-send-text-messages-using-python-and-a-modem/

<comment><USER2> why don't you use twilio for sending text messages?

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is to alert in case the internet is already down via a separate channel...</comment></comment>


The daemontools family - vezzy-fnord http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/daemontools-family.html <comment><AUTHOR> One nice daemontools-encore feature not mentioned here: support for multiprocess services. By default, services run in their own process group, and `svc -t` and friends will cleanly signal the entire process group. Classic daemontools and all the derivatives I'm aware of will spin off orphans when you send TERM to a multiprocess service (eg, anything that involves a shell pipeline) like

        #!/bin/sh
        while true; do
          tar czf - data | ssh backup tar xzf -
          sleep 60
        done

If you've ever admin'ed a multiprocess service, you know how annoying the orphan problem can be.

> _Attempts to package this for Debian Linux have not got off the ground..._

I've got a PPA for daemontools-encore here [1], if you're interested. Be aware that the package itself is named daemontools so that it functions as a drop-in replacement for classic daemontools, and plays nicely with the daemontools-run package.

> _and it is not in the BSD ports /packages trees..._

This info is out of date, daemontools-encore 1.10 is in the FreeBSD ports tree [2].

[1] [https://launchpad.net/~alangrow/+archive/ubuntu/daemontools-...](https://launchpad.net/~alangrow/+archive/ubuntu/daemontools- encore)

[2] [http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/daemontools- encore/](http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/daemontools-encore/)

<comment><USER2> Multiprocess support works in general pretty well but isn't perfect.

Daemontools-encore still has issues with KILL signals, with HTTPD and MPMs a KILL signal will kill the master but workers often go to init and never stop.

<comment><AUTHOR> What HTTPD are you running? If you're running one that does its own child process management (like nginx or apache), you should explicitly disable process group isolation via a ./no-setsid file.

[http://untroubled.org/daemontools- encore/supervise.8.html](http://untroubled.org/daemontools- encore/supervise.8.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's also functionality in BusyBox, specifically the sv and associated tools:

[http://busybox.net/downloads/BusyBox.html](http://busybox.net/downloads/BusyBox.html)

More commentary here:

[http://busybox.net/~vda/init_vs_runsv.html](http://busybox.net/~vda/init_vs_runsv.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> There's also minit: [http://www.fefe.de/minit/](http://www.fefe.de/minit/)

</comment><comment><USER5> nosh is one I hadn't heard of that looks really interesting. I use daemontools for service monitoring, but nosh is the first dt derivative I've seriously considered as a sysvinit replacement.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish there was a DJB Linux/Unix. DJB has clear ideas about service management, ideas about to implement those services, and licensing, but they often clash with existing widespread tools or practices. That's not a problem, but the best place for them would be their own Unix variant.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've always thought OpenBSD and daemontools would be a great fit. Among other things, OpenBSD and djb share a fanatical devotion to security through simplicity.

As the systemd apocalypse approaches, those of us who strongly disagree with that maximalist approach will start looking around for alternatives. Adopting daemontools (or a derivative) into the base system, and phasing out the old SysV init scripts, would make a distro suddenly very attractive.

<comment><USER7> I have found that systemd whilst large is actually spot on for managing services particularly from say ansible. Just drop a service file and the binary on disk and start the service. No external supervisor process, no funny acres of bash to HUP and KILL stuff. Just works.

It solves the old problem of "so how the hell do I restart this network interface on distro X" as well.

I'm a pragmatist and it _does_ solve a lot of core configuration issues with Linux.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Well, there's something to be said for daemontools which insists you set up a properly managed service namespace as opposed to going towards the convenient but limited route of the quick fix. I still don't see how "svc -u" is more complicated than "systemctl start", though.

That said, I would definitely not characterize systemd as "just works". Besides the issues that come with its intertwining system state, service state, process management, process supervision, configuration parsing and so on all in one critical process, the unit file mechanism is significantly less expressive than the chain loading mechanism (which really shines when used with a small dedicated lexer for run scripts like execline). You are limited within the bounds of the INI key pairs and you have no way to compose them, because they're just fixed entries in a hash table that systemd sets up at build time to look up.

The dependency mechanism is a quagmire of its own, with it mixing up semantics between ordering and dependence while limiting the service relationship types to whatever the systemd toolkit gives you. It introduces the problem of dependency loops which barely give you any debugging context when they occur, and it requires that systemd maintain complicated internal job and transaction consistency checking for a dependency system which will fundamentally always remain incomplete, because dependencies with respect to processes work entirely different compared to dependencies in libraries where you have fixed expectations of public symbols, relocated and resolved by the dynamic loader.

It feels like systemd, in the part where it's best at - service management, isn't ambitious _enough_. Instead it has decided to be a sprawling middleware doing 100 things and none of them completely, in an attempt to be a standard userland you just theoretically plug in between GNU and Linux and get a distro. In practice, the integration work required to maintain a systemd- compliant runtime and keep up with the rapid chaotic pace of development is not any less difficult than maintaining poorly written SysV initscripts.

<comment><USER8> Maybe my needs just aren't that exotic? I'm currently using daemontools at work and so far I have a slightly unfortunate handful of bash scripts that repeat in different projects with minor variations.

I've also used launchd (OSX) for Serious Things That I Don't Want to Fail, and it was easy. One config file with a few details. Completely watertight abstraction, as far as I could tell.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. I just want to keep a couple of processes running without having to learn the DJB ecosystem. I also want them portable if we shift off CentOS to Ubuntu in the future or something.

<comment><USER9> I'd argue that the DJB ecosystem has an almost-zero learning curve if you have a decent grasp on your systems fundamentals. As long as you understand how process handling works, the administrivia of DJB's tools is dirt simple.

It also has the odd benefit of already being cross-platform, so even if you move whole systems distributions (e.g., from Debian GNU/Linux to FreeBSD), you can still use that same knowledge there too.

Edit: Note that simple does not imply easy. Daemontools, for example, does not provide a means for doing dependency handling, so you'll actually have to engineer around that by writing a script to handle it. Same goes for bouncing things that go off the rails. Same goes for pretty much anything that does not fall strictly under the purview of starting a process and restarting it if it crashes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What surprises me more than anything about this is that ntlworld.com still exists and still resolves.

<comment><USER11> Probably plenty of ntlworld customers who haven't changed providers (and are now Virgin Media customers). I think I still had a working email address with them.

<comment><USER12> This is true. I have seen many working ntlworld.com emails. NTL, when my parents switched from a 56k modem. Good memories. I remember having an argument with my parents about NTL's search engine. They tried saying Google was screwing their computer up because they used NTL search. I may have set Google as their homepage. This may have been deliberate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let me guess, the documentation is in hex for no apparent reason.</comment>


Mendeley alternative - <AUTHOR>

What is your favorite Mendely alternative? Recently I discovered bohr.launchrock.com <comment><USER2> Not my favorite but some of my friends are currently trying <http://www.colwiz.com/></comment>


Password Managers: Under the Hood of Secrets Management - <AUTHOR> https://www.securityevaluators.com/casestudies/password-manager-hacking/ <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this research by ISE, referenced in an article in WaPo that summarized as follows:

It found the Windows 10 apps for 1Password, Dashlane, KeePass, LastPass and RoboForm left some passwords exposed in a computer's memory when the apps were in "locked" mode. To a hacker with access to the PC, passwords that should have been hidden were no more secure than a text file on your computer desktop.

<comment><USER2> Could you elaborate on which passwords were not hidden in locked mode? By your wording I assume that it's not all of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there any such research done for browser extensions and macOS?

</comment><comment><USER4> I use KeePass (currently version 2.40). The author does claim to use "in- memory protection" of secrets while the program is running, but apparently it is not thorough enough. However I would need to have malware running on my machine (or give physical access) to exfiltrate the in-memory passwords right?

<comment><USER5> Correct. Also if a malware is running it can do better then just steal your manager's password. So I'd say you're OK with only that "bug".</comment></comment>


Pathfinding Demystified (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://gabrielgambetta.com/generic-search.html <comment><USER2> So weird to open Hacker News in the morning and find my own writing on the front page :) Happy to answer any questions.

Shameless plug I: check out these Client Side Prediction articles, they tend to be well received! [https://gabrielgambetta.com/client-server-game- architecture....](https://gabrielgambetta.com/client-server-game- architecture.html)

Shameless plug II: check out my Computer Graphics textbook, [https://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from- scratch](https://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch) Coming soon as a real, actual book, with pages and stuff, in collaboration with No Starch Press :)

<comment><USER3> It's weird to open Hacker News and see how far the author of Betty's Beer Bar has come :)

<comment><USER2> Now I'm literally blushing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice and simple, but I'm a big fan of Amit Patel / Red Blob Games articles on the subject, and more. The interactive visualisations really drive the point home, and also tackle less usual stuff like hex grids and circular objects in dedicated articles.

Introduction:

[https://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction...](https://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction.html)

Much, much more, with in depth notes, variants, optimisations, moving targets and obstacles...:

[http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/](http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/)

And other intriguing articles:

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

<comment><USER2> Amit's articles are fantastic. I devoured them in my early gamedev days (late 90s / early 00s). I finally got to meet Amit at GDC in 2017, I hope I didn't go into fanboy mode too much! He's the nicest guy. Worth following on Twitter too: [https://twitter.com/redblobgames](https://twitter.com/redblobgames)

<comment><USER5> Oh, thanks for the twitter link! Followed. I also found his site in my early programming years (2000) but took many years before I finally actually implemented A* and found it's actually not hard (at least not for a toy implementation).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Additional info (known to most, but might be useful for someone): A* is not at all specific to path finding; it's a general strategy for optimized search across a problem space.

</comment><comment><USER7> Prior comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7753278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7753278)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you want to understand A* , just watch this animation.

I had to do better than A* recently. Didn't have enough memory for all the data A* needs. Used "head for goal, hit wall, follow wall both ways until fail or can head for goal again". Examines fewer cells than A* .

(I hate this implementation of Markdown.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Great instructions</comment>


He was lost. Rebuilding a 1980s Chuck E. Cheese robot in his bedroom saved him - <AUTHOR> http://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/he-was-lost-a-chuck-e-cheese-robot-helped-him-find-his-way-20181011/ <comment><USER2> TBH, at about 5, those clunky animatronics gave me nightmares.</comment>


Ask HN: Why would you prefer Signal over WhatsApp? - <AUTHOR> Are there any reasons why you would prefer the Signal messenger over WhatsApp? What reasons are these, then? <comment><USER2> Big obvious problem with WhatsApp is that it's owned by Facebook and seeing as WhatsApp is free they're most likely using it as a data collection / tracking mechanism. Signal is much more based around privacy, it's open source and Open Whisper Systems are funded more transparently through grants and donations.

But ignoring that and just looking at the features.

Typically I use them for different things. WhatsApp works better for sharing with groups of people because lots of people have it on their phone.

I use Signal as a layer on top of SMS but typically only 1-1 communication, so if both of us have Signal then great, but otherwise it's just regular SMS.

</comment><comment><USER3> While the messages themselves are definitely E2E encrypted using Whisper Systems' specs (which is nice), the problem is that once the app decrypts them, I have no way of verifying that Facebook does not steal my message for profile building purposes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Signal is easier to use. I use it primarily as a SMS client but when I'm talking to someone who is also using Signal the conversation automatically becomes way more secure.

</comment><comment><USER5> Signal was just much easier to start using. The desktop app is seamless. Also, no one I know uses whatsapp.

<comment><USER6> No one I knew used WhatsApp or signal (I'm in the US). However I just finished a project with a customer spread between Middle East, Singapore, and India. They ALL used WhatsApp and asked us to use it to communicate with them.

So definitely seems to vary in popularity depending where you are located.

<comment><USER7> I quit all social media and that included WhatsApp, about a year and a half back. Everyone is fine with me leaving social sites but how dare I leave WhatsApp? They look at me weird for that.

Surprisingly though, Signal is slowly gaining popularity among the smarter crowds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not needing to enable wifi on smartphone and still being able to message from the desktop is one of the big reasons.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would definitely trust Signal over Facebook-owned WhatsApp</comment>


Microsoft Hires 14 Yahoo Researchers to Kickstart New NYC Research Lab - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120502/microsoft-hires-14-yahoo-researchers-to-kickstart-new-nyc-research-lab/

<comment><USER2> Wow, MSR got some really good people out of this. Yahoo! have had a great research lab, but with the recent layoffs and now this it looks like it's on the way out. MS has shown they commercialise products out of MSR (e.g. the Kinect) so this could have a big impact in a few years.

<comment><USER3> Underlying technology of Kinect came from a different research lab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> John Langford's comments on the subject: <http://hunch.net/?p=2341>

</comment><comment><USER5> Yahoo has more pressing issues than research. A shift of focus away from research was to be expected after the last reorg.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but it's a sign of a company in decline. Research is what keeps you at the forefront of your industry- at this point no-one is expecting Yahoo to do that, but it's still sad.

<comment><USER5> Not always. It's extremely hard to integrate an internal R&D department into a product pipeline. Id your research organization is detached from the rest of the company, its work will not be as readily integrated into the products other divisions make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome news. Microsoft Research already has a great set of theorists in their New England lab, but clearly they were missing resident sociologists/economists. They can't have hoped for a richer haul than what they just landed here, that too in one shot.

Also this just proves further (in case anyone doubted) that Microsoft is in the game for the long haul.

</comment><comment><USER8> David Pennock Morgan Stanley Process Driven Trading, New York, NY, May 2008

Many quants have moved to silicon alley/valley from wallstreet due to the spectacular crash of 2007. Curiously, there have been much chatter about a crash in the tech sector lately - strange attractors.

</comment><comment><USER9> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_and_Strogatz_model> Serious pickup for MS.

</comment><comment><USER10> Awesome. Hope they open the kimono and invite people in for meetups from time to time :)</comment>


No Google Glasses allowed, declares Seattle dive bar - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2013/google-glasses-allowed-declares-seattle-dive-bar/ <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure there were a lot of businesses who banned cell phones 10 years ago. We'll wait and see how Glass goes.</comment>


Lecture notes on Computational Geometry - <AUTHOR> http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mechanical-engineering/2-158j-computational-geometry-spring-2003/lecture-notes/ <comment><USER2> Some notes on discrete differential geometry:

<http://ddg.cs.columbia.edu/></comment>


The case for firearm insurance - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-case-for-firearm-insurance-2012-12

<comment><USER2> This is pretty pointless, most insurance companies will not write policies to pay off on homicidal acts. Accidental, sure, intentional, no. I would argue that people who do not have some sort of personal liability insurance (if they're worth more than $0) to begin with, should probably reconsider.

This also further illustrates the issue that people aren't getting; this is not a problem with a tool, this is user error.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's kind of fun that this article is illustrated with a man firing a gun that, upon following the source link to flickr, turns out to be for paintball.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, maybe a not so subliminal message that if people feel the urge to shoot they can always play paintball :).</comment></comment>


Stackoverflow: Joel and Jeff want VC Money? Say What? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cforcoding.com/2010/02/stackoverflow-joel-and-jeff-want-vc.html

<comment><USER2> [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/39545/possible- negat...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/39545/possible-negative- effects-of-vc-funding-for-stackoverflow/39565#39565) \- interesting comment from Joel over on meta.stackoverflow.com

<comment><AUTHOR> That is interesting for two reasons.

1\. The "insurance" aspect (which is good); and 2\. Because Joel bothered to reply (within about an hour) to something on Meta.

If you listen to the SO podcasts Joel rarely visits Meta so I guess he was on the lookout for a reaction, which is understandable. But it's still interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice if the guy could get his facts straight.

 _The infrastructure (hardware and bandwidth) is cheap (almost free) for Q &A. Stackoverflow.com hasn't even gone to two Web server yet._

Let's count them, shall we? [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack- overflow-network...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow- network-configuration/)

6 web servers and 2 database servers (the load balancers are virtual machined)

And about the money, there are labor costs.

 _Fog Creek has ~24 employees._

34 - <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/02/14.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> It's worth pointing out that those servers are for the entire set of sites of which only SO is anywhere remotely close to capacity but yes there are three Web servers for SO.

And yes the hardware/bandwidth costs are (still) nothing. Read:

[http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/8/5/stack-overflow- arch...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/8/5/stack-overflow- architecture.html)

(slightly outdated)

and you'll see how cheap the servers are: single CPU, relatively low RAM.

The 24 was a typo (now fixed). I updated the other too. Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ugh, 3 pages of how Stackoverflow and everything around it is doomed to fail. Also, seems like he's attacking Jeff & Joels decisions on a regular basis. Is this some personal thing of him?

Please just let them do their thing, they've been successful with everything they've done so far and I'm sure they have their reasons for raising VC. Kinda hate this gossip sometimes.

<comment><USER5> Mr. Shields (Cletus) is a very active member of the StackOverflow community who have contributed a lot to the site. I believe this is more like friendly criticism, not "personal vendetta".

<comment><AUTHOR> My interest in this instance is twofold:

1\. I simply don't understand this 180; 2\. I am concerned about how this will impact what is an otherwise successful formula by any metric except perhaps its ability to generate its owners wads of cash.

For the record, the main thing I've criticized to date is Stackoverflow Careers because it comes across as snake oil.

On the other side, I support their efforts at monetizing that included things others criticized such as adding Adobe logos (sponsored) to the flash and flex tags.

See [http://www.cforcoding.com/2009/10/stackoverflow- advertising-...](http://www.cforcoding.com/2009/10/stackoverflow-advertising- and-ethics-of.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Mathematical Consultants – Do they exist? - <AUTHOR> I have a few ideas where I know roughly that a concept will work, but where I lack the background math to be able to be able to fully optimize them. Are there mathematical consultants out there (freelance) that I could get to help me? Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> John Cook is pretty well-known for doing this sort of thing: [http://www.johndcook.com/blog/top/](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/top/)

His blog is always a good read to boot.

<comment><USER3> Seconding this. Also his twitter accounts are pretty interesting: [http://www.johndcook.com/blog/twitter_page/](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/twitter_page/)

He's written some posts specifically on how he transitioned into consulting; I can't find them right now but they're worth poking around for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a background in physics and various areas of mathematical software development. I also worked on an Innocentive DNA analysis competition a couple of years ago. I thought I had some interesting ideas but was not able to achieve competitive results in the time frame of the competition. If you'd like to discuss your ideas my email is in my HN profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the offer - I will be in touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course, there are several mathematical consulting companies:

[http://www.scmsa.eu/](http://www.scmsa.eu/)

[http://www.maths2b.fr/](http://www.maths2b.fr/)

etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Charles Brenner ([http://dna-view.com/index.html](http://dna- view.com/index.html)) works specifically on "forensic mathematics" (DNA identification, etc.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should add that anyone who wants to get in touch with me can via my HN profile.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sonja Benson Grear, Overland Park, Kansas, sgrear at planetkc dot com

Kevin Christian, Belmont, California.

They are both on facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Michael.</comment></comment>


The Print Book Trade, and Money - <AUTHOR> https://mwl.io/archives/6210 <comment><USER2> This is an excellent article. I've self pubbed for years and knew most of this, but I did not know about Aerio.

Further, the breakdown of revenue shares across channels is by far the best I've ever seen. Extremely clear, excellent use of graphs + colour.

Sidenote: does anyone know how to deal with a possibly malicious review on amazon listings? Someone copy pasted the same one star review on each of my books. I contacted Kdp support, they seemed sympathetic. But when amazon emailed back they only looked at one review, not the set of them.

<comment><USER3> I think it would be clearer to put the "red" numbers in the "their cut" row. Why are we giving $2 of retail to "your cut" when you're not getting it in the first scenario??

Every single figure has the same numbers for every scenario; only the colors differ. That's a clue that there is something wonky in the choices they made regarding the visual display of information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are a few other problems working with trad distributors & retailers that drive publishers batty:

\- Retailers expect to pay a 55% discount off list _and_ return books that don't sell. ([https://outskirtspress.com/articles_trade.html](https://outskirtspress.com/articles_trade.html))

\- Many retailer won't work with anything that's self-pubbed or POD, although the latter issue is changing as quality improves.

\- Distributors want to have review copies, art, promo materials, etc. in hand many months before the official release date (6 is typical) which forces planning and editorial deadlines to start at least 18 months in advance.

Ingram is a silent giant in the U.S. book publishing industry. TFA mentioned IngramSpark for self-pubbed authors, but Ingram has other wholesale and distribution programs aimed at traditional and indie publishers as well as the iPage book database, which many retailers and libraries use to place orders and find titles for their customers/patrons. This post outlines their approach to indies: [https://www.ingramcontent.com/blog/demystifying-book- distrib...](https://www.ingramcontent.com/blog/demystifying-book-distribution- for-small-to-mid-sized-publishers)

</comment><comment><USER5> The author of article also has a plethora of books... the cover art of which are phenomenal.

[https://aerbook.com/store/mwl/](https://aerbook.com/store/mwl/)

</comment><comment><USER6> As someone who leads the operations of a small magazine publisher, I've found the publishing world murky to say the least. We're using Ingram Spark but I had no idea about Ingram Aerio. This opens up so many possibilities.

<comment><USER6> A couple of hours and an excited email to my fellow editors later: turns out Ingram Aerio only distributes to the USA and Canada. Deal breaker :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The comma in the title is killing me!

<comment><USER8> The first publisher costs to get cut in this scenario are the copyeditor and proofreader.

This is a rudimentary but still fair description of the basic process of trade book publishing, and you conceivably could make more money self-publishing, assuming sales are roughly equal in both cases. They probably won't be, but you could still come out ahead. A few folks have done quite well with it, but you will be doing all the _work_ needed to make that happen.

<comment><USER9> (Disclaimer: I am the author of the linked article.)

NEVER cut your copyeditor and proofreader. NEVER NEVER NEVER.

You still have the responsibility of creating a quality product. You can sell a few buckets of poo, but that market is very small.

Sustained quality is a prerequisite to a writing career.

<comment><USER10> Seriously.

I was looking at [https://www.ingramspark.com/environmental- responsibility](https://www.ingramspark.com/environmental-responsibility) and saw this:

> The purpose of print-on-demand book manufacturing, is to reduce our > environmental impact.

That misplaced comma is already enough to make me think these folks aren't serious about books (money _from_ books, sure, but not _books_.)

<comment><USER8> It's basically a vanity publisher operation, so they're not giving you much beyond access to their distribution services.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dutch Court of Appeals overturns Pirate Bay IP blockade - <AUTHOR> http://bureaubrandeis.com/duly-noted/court-appeals-denies-ip-block/ <comment><USER2> I'm always intrigued by the lack of vision shown by organisations like BREIN. Blocking an IP address will not block an idea deeply embedded in the mindset of almost whole generations.

It is, after all, "common knowledge" distribution has shifted, and pirates use this at every turn to justify their actions.

>A copy is not theft, it is a copy, final.

>The money I didn't spend on this movie was already earmarked for another purpose; nothing changed.

There's a social aspect, too.

>All my friends are pirating, if I do not, I fall behind; there is no choice.

Like an empire or a dynasty, the entertainment business is simply too entrenched; disconnected from the real world, to realise they are the ones at fault. It's not a question of ethics ( _we_ made it, _we_ earned it, abide by _our_ wishes), it's a matter of majority opinion.

It's refreshing to see this result, I just hope it sprung from correct reasoning, blocking any form of information should be done under the harshest of scrutinies, which means not just for the sake of attempting the sate a billion-dollar industry.

Used to be a time, when capitalism meant keeping with the times or succumbing to it. This sometimes feels eerily reminiscent of what I was taught about Soviet Russia: keeping their factories and businesses going at all costs, because the 5-year-plan was more important than progress.

USSR did not need billions of buckets, we do not need billions of optical disks.

<comment><USER3> The vision of BREIN is not build on killing piracy, it is to secure funding. BREIN gets most of its funding from Hollywood. It is a commercial institution: If they generate lots of anti-piracy press they get more, or easier-to-get funds, if they are not visible they get less, or harder-to-get funds. BREIN does not necessarily have to kill piracy to secure its funding. It just needs to raise a stink. If they killed piracy they would also kill themselves.

The blocking of TBP and all known proxy IP's was a huge stink. Persistent pirates will find it easy to circumvent this. They may even abandon public tracker torrents and flock to Usenet. I think the goal is to make the life of the common pirate more difficult. Many moms and pops only knew how to download a movie from TPB. Once they saw the "The court ordered us to block this page" they stopped watching movies or went back to ordering DVDs.

Just a few weeks ago BREIN send its threatening letters to amateur subtitle sites and their uploaders (for unlicensed derivative works). Piracy on the whole will not be hampered when pirates can't download the Dutch subtitles to an English movie. Just a few kids, deaf people and older folk who have trouble understanding English, or the few anime lovers who can't fully speak Japanese. So what _have_ they accomplished with this? A big stink. A nice report to give to those that fund them. Shown that they are willing to align themselves with Hollywood's agenda (I bet the idea to start going after subtitle sites originally came from there). Shown that they are deserving of (more) funds.

If we all agree that facilitating copyright infringement is against the law, then blocking sites that exist to facilitate copyright infringement does not seem too harsh or close to censorship to me. If you want to avoid sites being closed for being against the law, then lobby to change/overhaul copyright law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The fight against Bittorrent is more important than many realize. If "they" get away with destroying a technology (after all, it's only a protocol) for something as unimportant as copyright, we're truly fucked.

<comment><USER5> > for something as unimportant as money

Fixed that for you. Music and movies are huge industries.

BTW, I think they are loosing. Sure, some laws are being passed, but there are several generations alive today that consider piracy something normal and natural. It's all a matter of who is in charge; today's leaders are old, they don't consider piracy to be good and normal. When we (our generation) become old and get in charge, we'll embed our worldviews in the laws.

<comment><USER6> except it seems to be that those who pirate (or consider piracy "normal") are not those who are going to be the elites that sit in parliment and make laws.

<comment><USER7> Haven't they linked piracy coming from Senate IP's? I think it's already happening in Congress. I also think you're underestimating how many people have pirated something at least once a year. Perhaps some are the kind of people who "always pay for their music and shows", since it's relatively cheap to begin with, but then go and pirate something like Adobe Photoshop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's nice to live in a country where courts still exist that are not influenced by lobbyist and politics. Especially since BREIN has been ordered to repay the 326.000 in court fees.

<comment><USER9> And where internet providers owned by publicly traded corporations actually spend time and money fighting in court.

<comment><USER10> And where an internet provider not even included in the original case joined in only for the pursuing justice. XS4ALL has always claimed to be fighting for a free internet, with this case, they proved it to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the few a great judgment in recent time. It is nice to see that cost–benefit still count for something, rather than emotional response backed by government control.

It has been around 200 years, and society has changed for the better by it. Every time government trail away from it, especially in punishment, it seem to be caused by corruption. Good that the Court of Appeals of The Hague can recognize and see it.

<comment><USER12> This is subjective, but as an American living in NL I've been fairly impressed with the Dutch government's (parliament, cities, unions, within parties, and courts) pragmatism.

While there are cases of people maintaining hard-line statements, it seems to be less common than in normal US discourse.

<comment><USER13> Probably, the common law vs. Civil law has a lot to do with that.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure. Civil codified law would make the judiciary less able to say "well, we tried X, it doesn't work, let's do something else". Anyway, I'm referring to something more broad than that.

While Dutch politics is still, well... politics, it seems like there is much more of a pragmatic approach. People expect the government to be effective. "Is policy X working or not?" is a common theme on the news, there are lots of statistics and reports, and politicians aren't trying to _always_ spin their way out of them (though it certainly still happens, just less).

The whole society is a lot less concerned with black and white framings like grand economic theories, philosophical stances on law and order, or enforcing morality. They're more concerned with things working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The ISP just said on the news that the blockade that they had to apply since 2012 was actually very helpful for their case. Independent research (from TNO) showed no decline in torrent traffic and literally no effect of the blockade. The judge ruled the blockade "ineffective" and said "there are other means of copyright protection that make more sense".

<comment><USER14> TIL TNO is the new NSA

<comment><USER15> congrats. you compelled me to create an account.

[https://1-media- cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/q/image/1365/86/13...](https://1-media- cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/q/image/1365/86/1365867839932.jpg)

<comment><USER14> Go back to 4chan ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems like this would open the way for the UK ISPs which are currently obliged to block torrent sites to get that requirement overturned. BT and others pushed back against it in the first place, IIRC.

<comment><USER17> Only if the legislation there also permits doing away with ineffective measures. Not to mention that this will then lead to a push for more effective ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Too bad I live in a country where it's possible and too easy to buy the courts (Sweden).

</comment><comment><USER19> They did not really "denied" it. Their conclusion was: it just doesn't help. So we are taking away the possibility to block piratebay.

The only result (according to the judge) is that less frequent downloaders look for alternatives.

PS. Still glad that something like this just happens. Entertainment industry allowed firms like Netflix to rise because of their lack of vision, it's easy to blame the internet...

<comment><USER20> I think a lot of people would flock to legal alternatives if there were any. As long as there are not...

<comment><USER6> > flock to legal alternatives

legal and cheaper. The entrenched publishers of yesteryear's media still makes their products available at outrageous prices. I m glad netflix exists, but the media companies don't like the way technology is making distribution a commodity (where they extract their value from).

<comment><USER20> True, but I think most solutions which are legal in the US now are cheaper right? But it's quite simple (I know a lot of EU based people agree with it); as long as we cannot watch everything the US can watch at the moment the US can watch it (in English, not dubbed as is normal in DE, ES and probably other countries), people will aggressively pirate anything there is. No-one is going to wait for a sports program, movie or show for months after it airs in the US; that time has passed because on Facebook/Twitter/whatever everyone already is talking about that show/movie so you want to have instant gratification. And while everyone seems to do meditation these days, mustering patience for their favorite program is not one of the skills picked up.

It makes me angry when I travel to Spain for business or vacation and suddenly all my devices want to connect to the local stores (even though i'm Dutch, I pay in NL etc) and serve me crap in Spanish. Ever watched a dubbed UK/US thriller dubbed in Spanish? It's painful. Not too strange my UK colleagues living there all have proxies and there are thriving proxy and 'torrent setup box' businesses popping up all over the place.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Smart Home solution openHAB 2.2 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.kaikreuzer.de/2017/12/18/openhab22/ <comment><AUTHOR> Proprietary systems will never fully cover the scope of a smart home. openHAB as an open source software doesn't stop at the limits of one technology but combines over 200 competing technologies to build the true "smart home".

openHAB 2.2 brings VSCode and LSP support, offers dozens new add-ons and includes many UI/UX improvements.</comment>


A Call for Web Developers to Deprecate Their CSS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cool-code-pal/a-call-for-web-developers-to-deprecate-their-css-1f6430781393 <comment><USER2> I'm just going to assume this is meant to be sarcasm/satire... right.. RIGHT?

<comment><USER3> I'm going to assume that your assumption was wrong, merely because nothing has ever stopped a node.js dev from telling the world that javascript is all you need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author seems to be confuse HTML and JavaScript. Ooops:

> California Style Sheets are a standard

OK, now I am fairly confident that this is meant as a satire. Check the author

> #1 in Forbe's "Top 20 Teen Fashion Writers Gone Tech Journalist" in 2013

Touché!</comment>


Teleport 2.3 Released - <AUTHOR> http://gravitational.com/blog/teleport-release-2-3/ <comment><USER2> > Before we dive into the 2.3 release notes, let us introduce Teleport to the > new readers of this blog.

I can't thank you enough for this.

It's so frustrating when you open up a post from HN and find no description of the product. Then you click on the company logo, end up on the homepage of the blog and then have to manually edit the URL to get to the companies actual frontpage. Which sometitimes still doesn't explain the product.

<comment><USER3> I often find myself going to Wikipedia to find out what the company is supposed to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > At the end of a successful login, tsh login command now sends the SSH > certificate to an active SSH agent.

Will it ever be able to create, and use, a DIFFERENT agent?

I use [https://github.com/ccontavalli/ssh- ident](https://github.com/ccontavalli/ssh-ident) in order to have a different agent per "kind" of hosts, so that if I mistakenly ssh to Mallory's ssh server with my default agent, they won't be able to, say, also pull all my private Github repos.

To use teleport as securely, I'd have to - again - concoct a script or something to "pass through ssh-ident". This is tiresome :|

<comment> old-gregg As you probably know, the agent is defined via environment variables, so you're right the same inconvenience would exist. BTW, have you looked into configuring different per-host (or per-environment) credentials via `~/.ssh/config`? Agent forwarding in general is often seen as a weak mechanism to propagate trust and from Teleport's team perspective it's a backward compatibility feature.

Speaking generally, Teleport solves the similar problem (trust propagation and role based access control for SSH) by not using public keys at all, and instead issuing role-based certificates, i.e. enforcing corporate policies like "developers must never touch production data" or cross-organizational policies like "these contractors can only touch this sandbox).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Certainly a very interesting product and something I see gaining increasing popularity, I was wondering if there have been have publicly published independent security reviews on the product / code, default configuration and recommended configuration for production deployment?

(I did a quick search and checked the readme and nothing popped up but I may have missed something while on my phone and commuting)

<comment><USER6> We had a security audit of Teleport performed by Cure53 with the release of Teleport 2.2 which we released publicly. You can view the report here:

[https://cure53.de/pentest-report_teleport.pdf](https://cure53.de/pentest- report_teleport.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Fantastic! Thank you for taking the time to respond.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder why people want to move away from Kerberos and LDAP so bad... FreeIPA works great!

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd prefer an apt repo to the `make install` provided.

<comment><USER8> Spoke with them about this. They are working on getting into Deb repos but in the mean time, teleport is a single binary so no need to worry about `make install`. `cp` will work just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would love to hear people's experiences with Teleport, we are considering it for security and audits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me know if you'd like me to try and introduce you to a couple of our customers - taylor@

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome. Big fan of this product.

</comment><comment><USER11> Really excited for this.</comment>


Rackspace IPO: Failure or early opportunity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2008/08/08/uh-oh-its-an-ipo.aspx

<comment><USER2> It's a tough market right now. I think they look pretty good, overall. To me they pass the "would you buy from them?" test that you hear about occasionally. I think this means that we don't have to hear "A second quarter with no IPOs!" in September, so that's great.

A comment at the bottom of the article was saying that the cloud/utility computing thing could be working against them because they'll be competing with the likes of "Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and to a lesser extent salesforce". I'd say that as a company with a core business of operating a large herd of machines critical to other peoples businesses, they are probably as well off as any of those other companies. I would certainly give a hosting/ISP type company a shot at running my cloud/utility computing setup if I were to ever need one.

</comment><comment><USER3> failure

<comment><USER4> More insight for the curious? I don't know much about Rackspace, minus what they do so their IPO intrigues me.</comment></comment>


ConceptShare | Web-Based Idea and Design Sharing and Collaboration - <AUTHOR> http://www.conceptshare.com/ <comment><USER2> I've used this a couple of times, its been very useful, would be great with a visio-like integration. collaborate and create simple flowcharts

</comment><comment><USER3> Pricey - but it does look interesting.</comment>


Show HN: Servitor.io – Server and website monitoring made easy - <AUTHOR> https://servitor.io <comment><USER2> Looks pretty good, congrats on shipping! Not a criticism, but a question: What does "Paid Hourly" mean in the pricing options?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

Thank you for the reply, it is greatly appreciated. :)

The 'paid hourly' means everything is billed by the hour up to a maximum of the said price based on a server or a monitor. This means you don't have a monthly fee, you have to add credits to your account and these decrease every hour by an extremely small amount. Personally I'd prefer this, since this allows me to create/delete monitors without paying more then I'm getting.

Definitely not seeing this as criticism, if it isn't clear I should change the pricing part because it might confuse more people. I've just added it to my to-do list.

<comment><USER3> You must read the great patio11 / cpersiva (friendly) controversy [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953)

Totally inaccurate short version:

fake patio11> _You will get more business clients if you bill monthly in dollars /month. (Also, raise your prices.)_

fake cperciva> _I prefer to bill in attodollars /second, I get enough money and I happy with that type of clients._

The short version is not enough to explain all the details and the reasons each one has to make their decisions. You should read all the related threads and make your own opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: Implemented more features, fixed feedback, added a demo environment [0] but still looking for more feedback from the professionals. :)

Hi everyone!

A while back I already posted my first SaaS/Sideproject and since then I have been trying to implement more features, fix feedback and in general keep on improving. However, there is still a lot to be done and feedback is always useful. Hence why I'm posting this again.

To give some context about my project, I'll quote myself from the previous thread[1] below:

</comment><comment>

Hi everyone! Creator/developer of Servitor.io here, if you've got any feedback, comments or questions please ask them. I'm happy to read and answer everything, especially since this is my first SaaS side-project I'm trying to launch and I have much to learn. :)

Servitor was developed mostly to scratch my own itch that there wasn't a good, reasonably priced and easy product that allowed me to monitor a few of my other side project servers and websites. Although I'm using it myself for a few months now it is still in early stages, so bugs and issues may be there. There are also many improvements on the roadmap, the most important features are: better graphs/Ajax loading, live statistics and more monitors. (Feel free to get in touch if you know an extra feature)

If anyone is interested in the technology stack, it is just plain old Mysql 5.7, PHP7.1 and Laravel 5.5. Instead of blindly using new technologies and running into issues, I decided to use the old-trusted stack and actually try to ship something for once. So far I'm on track I think.

Finally, I'm not a native English speaker, so my apologies for all (stupid) grammar and spelling mistakes. I'm hoping everyone is able to understand me without too much trouble.

[0] [https://servitor.io/auth/demo](https://servitor.io/auth/demo)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16520161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16520161)</comment>