Ask HN: How Do You Securely Share Passwords in Teams? - <AUTHOR> How do you securely share passwords and secrets in a startup or organization? We're currently using Meldium but looking at other alternatives. <comment><USER2> Ideally, you don't share passwords. If it is a server, every user should have their own account with sudo access if needed.

If it is a website that you are unable to add multiple users to an organization with, LastPass has a password sharing feature that doesn't directly expose the password with people you share it with. Although if someone cares enough, they will be able to find it.

Any time an employee leaves a company, all shared passwords should be reset. It doesn't matter if it was an amicable departure or not.

<comment><USER3> This is pretty much how we do it. We have many sites that only allow a single user and we use LastPass for sharing passwords with the relevant groups of users that the site accessed by.

<comment><USER4> We also use LastPass. It has the knock-on benefit of getting everyone used to LastPass, and they inevitably start using it to manage all their passwords, and generate secure ones for all sorts of different sites where they would otherwise use the same password across sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm working on a piece of software (SaaS, self-hosted) that acts as a reverse proxy and stores credentials. The goal is to avoid having to require users to know any secrets other than the ones you already trust them to have (a domain login, a Google Apps account, etc.) The goal is to have a single-sign on for the entire internet, and any topology of mapping users to accounts. Account per user could be used if you want to provide access to individual (but company controlled) Reddit, email, Trello, etc. accounts. Many users per account could be used to manage Facebook, Twitter, et al. And access policies can control whether or not users are allowed to send particular types of requests or visit URL fragments.

It's a work in progress, I have an online parser/rewriter for HTML, CSS, JavaScript that can handle moderately complex websites now, including Facebook. Might have something ready by the end of the summer.

Here's an album with some screenshots from last year: [http://imgur.com/a/ekoO2](http://imgur.com/a/ekoO2)

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks neat - thanks for the share. Feel free to message me progress :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Passwords: We don't. Everything that could use a password is either keyed or certificate auth. Edit: I should add that there are things that use passwords but those are user-specific accounts or communal accounts (which are considered, essentially, public accounts) and are accessible only on the internal network. Users are responsible for the safe-keeping of those passwords and user accounts can do no harm, so to speak, if compromised.

Secrets: In a closed office, verbally.

<comment> bjelkeman-again Don't you have external services which use a password? DNS provider, VPS admin console for example?

<comment><USER6> Not really, we have our own datacenter and DNS servers. We have HSMs for somethings (like CA certs) and yubikey/similar for things that require passwords but those are all protected by user-specific certificates.

<comment><USER7> Do you have a company Twitter account?

<comment><USER6> Yes/no, one exists but its unrelated to my job. Its probably worth noting that we also have sets of accounts that while password protected are essentially considered public. Those accounts are accessible to anyone who knows the well- known standard passphrase

<comment><USER8> It kind of negates your first point.

"Passwords? No. We don't. Everything is a certificate or key."

...

"We have sets of accounts ... accessible to anyone who knows the well-known standard passphrase."

<comment><USER6> As a company "we" don't have passwords for our company infrastructure, individual users may have passwords for their accounts but those aren't secret/ as important. Its not practical to deploy PKI to and expect ~100K users to use it. As for communal accounts they're almost all for paying for services offered in-house by a group other than yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Large enterprises usually use PIMs (Privileged Identity Managers), web based consoles where you check out credentials for the task. I have seen IBMs and it has some pretty creepy (if you are the dev)/powerful (if you are CISO) features like session recording etc [0], does allow you to see who used what at what time and rotates passwords for the systems required between use..

[0] [http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/pim/](http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/pim/)

edit: video demo [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CITq80gf6Hk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CITq80gf6Hk)

<comment><USER10> As an IT Auditor, I have seen one such tool at a client once and found it to be the best solution for this specific problem (if personal logins and sudo or another custom made script couldn't do the trick).

But I've also come across dozens of unprotected .xlsx and .txt files stored on group shares which give me shivers every time I see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been thinking about this lately and it occurred to me that it would be nice to be able to store sensitive info in an area accessible to everyone on the project but still be able to limit access.

Currently we use ssh keys to limit access to servers and code repositories so the perfect solution would allow passwords and such to be protected by similar means.

I believe gpg[0] has a solution but I have not implemented it myself yet.

0: [https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual/x110.html](https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual/x110.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> A couple of KeePass files in DropBox.

<comment><USER13> Same here, but I don't love it as a solution. Kinda cumbersome, especially if you've got different groups of users who need access to different (overlapping) services. And then of course you have to communicate (and hopefully occasionally rotate) the master password(s).

Price is right, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Write it on a post-it, walk up to the person, give it to them, then take the post-it back.

Passwords are designed to be human-interface memorized authentication tokens. Sharing it any other way than via human interaction just makes it a digital key, and real digital keys are much more secure than digital passwords. So share it via human medium, or rethink why you're using a password.

<comment><USER15> In our case, there's not much to think: we're using passwords because that's the only way to authenticate to those services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> None mentioned gitcrypt yet. I used it for 3 years, sharing password in a team of 4. A bit cumbersome to setup, but once you've been through the installation instructions, it just works.

[https://github.com/shadowhand/git-encrypt](https://github.com/shadowhand/git- encrypt)

<comment><USER17> Thank you for recommending Gitcrypt! I have been trying to remember the name because we have a couple of Git repos that need protecting. We need to encrypt them but I don't want it to be a big hassle to the developers that need to work with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For user specific passwords, our team uses whichever software they prefer (usually LastPass or KeePass)

For passwords that can absolutely not be made user-specific, we use SimpleSafe ([https://www.simplesafe.net/](https://www.simplesafe.net/)). It allows you to make groups of passwords and assign rights to those passwords, and has decent logging. It's web based and works ok on mobile.

These few passwords are for network devices, passwords for websites where only one account can be made, or master/root/administrator passwords that we don't use but need to write down somewhere just in case.

These are the keys to the kingdom, so it should be behind VPN/SSH, ideally completely isolated from your regular infrastructure, and with tested backup procedures.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://www.secureshareme.com/](https://www.secureshareme.com/)

Pros: 1\. Open source tool, you can run internally in your company. [https://github.com/saravanacp/secureshareme](https://github.com/saravanacp/secureshareme) 2\. Very secure: it encrypts the data in the browser and the key is stored in the URL anchortag which is not sent to server at any point of time. Only the sender and the receiver has access to the keys. 3\. You can also opt to send a secondary verification code to receiver's mobile for two layers of security. 4\. Option to self distruct message based on time or if an attack is detected.

<comment><USER15> They should point out that it's vulnerable to JavaScript injection, particularly if you use their servers. One simple change and suddenly they can get your key on your next access.

<comment><USER19> Yes, you are right we can modify our JS and get your keys. This vulnerability is in most of the commercial tools out there too. Thats why it is open sourced so you can run it in your own servers. Running it on your own heroku account is close to zero dollars.

<comment><USER15> Not sure if giving Heroku that access is any better :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Password safe in a smb share. I don't really like the idea but it's imposed.

<comment><USER21> How do you securely share the password to the password safe containing the passwords?

<comment><USER22> In another smb share.

<comment><USER23> ...that sits on the back of a giant turtle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Honestly the original "share" isn't the big issue -- many ways to communicate securely. But the history is what will get you if your communication platform ever gets broken into.

Most of the external accounts (log analysis, analytics, CDN, etc) have individual accounts, no sharing necessary, up to the individual to maintain complexity and remember the password.

For other services, certificates and multiple authentication methods (2FA) works out nicely.

<comment><USER25> OTR messaging gives perfect forward secrecy. So you can't attack the history without breaking AES entirely: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secrecy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secrecy) The bigger attack on OTR is social engineering, you need to verify signatures out of band.

But as you say, it's better not to have the secret at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> When we HAVE to share passwords, we email them using Virtru (encrypted emails). All of the encryption is done client side. You can set the email to expire after 1 hour. No one would ever be able to read it again. [https://www.virtru.com/other-platforms](https://www.virtru.com/other- platforms)

That being said, we use personal accounts for all external services. All personal passwords are stored in 1Password.

</comment><comment><USER23> A handful of text files containing sets of passwords of similar "privilege level" (e.g. one containing social media logins, one for PayPal or services that cost money, etc), stored gpg-encrypted to specific lists of people and kept under revision control. It is cumbersome, particularly with regard to editing and key management. But it works and doesn't rely on any 3rd parties.

</comment><comment><USER27> We use KeypassX ([https://www.keepassx.org/](https://www.keepassx.org/)) and store the encrypted password database inside BTSync ([http://www.bittorrent.com/sync](http://www.bittorrent.com/sync)), hosted on a secure internal server within our office. Both KeypassX and BTSync are free.

</comment><comment><USER28> Keystok ([https://keystok.com/](https://keystok.com/)), which uses JavaScript to encrypt/decrypt secrets in the browser, and also provides a REST API and client libraries to access the secrets programmatically, for deploying API keys to apps etc.

(I'm one of the developers. It's a commercial SaaS service.)

</comment><comment><USER29> For most of the services we create separate accounts. Nowadays most sites support multiple accounts, those who don't are rare enough to just share a password via email.

Personally I use 1Password for storing passwords and it allows sharing vaults between users so as my team grows we might actually consider using these.

</comment><comment><USER30> Other than the default answer of "rarely," we've started using a shared 1Password vault. We actually end up using the notes functionality more than anything, but there are some common team accounts in there. Since most of us used 1Password already, it was easy peasey.

</comment><comment><USER31> If there's no other way than using a shared password, you might resort to using the gnupg suite to encrypt it (and then share it with your favourite messenger/mail client). The necessary programs are usually pre-installed on your distribution.

</comment><comment><USER32> We've just started using [https://www.mitro.co](https://www.mitro.co) which seems better suited for us, we've created an org, and have teams for different projects/level of access.

</comment><comment><USER33> We use [https://commonkey.com/](https://commonkey.com/), it works pretty great and all the encryption is done client side (although the usual caveats about javascript encryption still hold)

<comment><USER34> +1 for commonkey and their client-side encryption/decryption

<comment><USER35> +1 for client-side encryption in general^^. Commonkey and Keystok.com both work well, CK just has a nicer UI and Keystok a better API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I might have missed it, but has HN done any kind of review of zerobin? [http://sebsauvage.net/wiki/doku.php?id=php:zerobin](http://sebsauvage.net/wiki/doku.php?id=php:zerobin)

</comment><comment><USER37> KeePass with triggers for synchronization, it syncs on opening and closing the db. Two factor authentication for the db files and separate db file for every unique group.

</comment><comment><USER38> Keepass wallet stored on a secure, internal network.

</comment><comment><USER39> "Sharing Passwords" could mean sharing the master account of a service you don't have ssh/certificate access to

</comment><comment><USER40> Team Password [http://www.teampassword.com/](http://www.teampassword.com/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Hands down: [https://www.meldium.com/](https://www.meldium.com/)

<comment><USER10> ... this doesn't work for software hosted on premise, right? Especially not enterprise-grade software ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> LastPass

Cheap, effective and good security track record.

</comment><comment><USER43> Lastpass. It's awesome and easy to use. Wish the UI was a little better but it's not terrible.

</comment><comment><USER44> Sendinc.com is an option for secure self destructing emails. As much as you trust a 3rd party.

</comment><comment><USER45> passpack.com -- have been using it for a few years now and never looked back.

<comment><USER15> Clickable, for lazy people like me: [https://www.passpack.com/](https://www.passpack.com/)

</comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again Why are you looking for alternatives? Looking at this issue myself.

</comment><comment><USER46> Excel spreadsheet on the network drive. I wish I was joking.

</comment><comment><USER13> What don't you like about Meldium?

</comment><comment><USER47> Google Drive/Docs.</comment>


How expensive is SF rent? Use Unix commands to find out - <AUTHOR> How expensive is SF rent? Here's a coding challenge that uses Unix command line tools to find out.
Hacker friends suggested I post the result and code here because I'm writing open source statistics software and this is a practical example of results and code.
The results for a one bedroom in SF: mean $3348, median $3475, interquartile range $1514, and standard deviation $1130.
How to use Unix commands to find out: use `curl` to fetch Craigslist apartment listings, then `sed`, `grep`, and `tr` to filter and parse the data, then `num` to calculate the statistics.

    curl -s http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sfc/apa\?min_price\=1\&bedrooms\=1 |
    sed 's/\(<p class="row"\)/\n\1/g' |
    grep ' 1br ' |
    tr ">" "\n" |
    sed -n 's/^\$\([0-9]\+\).*/\1/p' |
    num mean median interquartile-range standard-deviation OFMT="%.0d"
 The software I'm personally writing is the `num` command to calculate the statistics. The software is free at http://www.numcommand.com <comment><USER2> @echo "very expensive"

</comment><comment><USER3> What happens if the price overflows the limit of a 32-bit integer?

<comment><AUTHOR> If the price overflows 32-bit, then everyone in SF moves. :)

For this script, the fetch returns at most 100 rows, so won't overflow.

More broadly, the Num command runs using awk, and number handling depends on your system's awk implementation and C libraries. Current awk implementations use an internal representation of all numbers, including integers, that uses double-precision floating-point numbers. I know GNU awk supports arbitrary precision arithmetic, and also can use --bignum, GNU MPFR and GNU MP (GMP); these will be great additions to the Num command for the next major version upgrade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a perl script to do mean, median and std dev; it'd be great to have this functionality available through the OS vendor as a package.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I'm writing the Num command specifically to become an OS vendor package. (For example I'm writing Num using Awk, which is available on every current POSIX system.)

<comment><USER4> Love it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> sed: RE error: illegal byte sequence gawk: cmd. line:1691: fatal: division by zero attempted

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you contact me about this? I'll diagnose it. My direct email is email@example.com. I really appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> FreeBSD 11-CURRENT

       num: command not found
       tr: Illegal byte sequence

<comment><AUTHOR> To install the num command, use [http://www.numcommand.com](http://www.numcommand.com)</comment></comment>


Hero engineers can be deadly to team culture, it's time to retire those capes - <AUTHOR> https://ochronus.online/kill-your-heroes <comment><USER3> In most startups, there's going to be that one engineer that's over the team's baseline as far as skill, sense of responsibility, and willingness to hurt themselves. Since most startups habitually commit potentially mortal strategic and planning errors, that one engineer will be repeatedly tempted to become "the hero." One of those times they will take the bait, and the cycle described in this post will commence.

I would venture that the startups that make it are the ones who luck into having a good supply of these types, and they all have a long trail of burned out bitter "heroes" in their wake.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hero seems like the wrong term. Why not call them a workaholic? Whether they choose to put in that many hours or the company asks them and they comply... isn't that what's going on?

<comment><USER5> "Martyr" is probably more apt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article annoyed the hell out of me.. "Kill your heroes?", "Heroes can be deadly to team culture?" First off all, there can be many reasons why a project is late: bad time estimations, bad resource capability estimations, feature creep, to name a few. There can also be a whole list of things you can do about that: Revisit those time estimations, cue in time for training and education to better tacke the problems at hand, better scoping, and of course: the choice to work harder.

The last option above should in all cases be a choice, not something that's forced on anyone, but if it's a choice, something that makes the individual happy, a challenge to tackle, then by all means, go for it and the team should be the better + happy for it. Of course this also means that one can not expect/force it on anyone. If I have a 6 person team and two people decide it's a good challenge to try and make the deadline, that does not mean the rest of the team are slackers; it also doesn't mean that those two are "heroes that need to retire their capes".

When an individual decides to work harder, to reach a goal (or when the default pace of the individual happens to be higher in the first place), does that suddenly make the person or the practice toxic to the team (or "deadly" as the headline calls it)?

What the article implies is that when a person tries (intentionally or not) to stand out from the group, it's bad for the group and bad for the person. This implication is highly alarming to anyone who would want to do his best to stand out, to be a better programmer than you were last week.

A team is not a box that demands the average from each individual and punishes the one that stands out but a group of dynamic and different individuals that, through their differences achieve greatness.

<comment><USER7> Aside from the hyperbolic "Kill your heroes" heading, the whole article is about management error. It doesn't even advocate firing the hero if they emerge, just recognition of this emergence as a warning signal that things are going wrong for the organization.

I think the topic of the article is analogous to a military situation familiar from pop culture and current events. Let's focus on the human dynamics and ignore any technical baggage that might confuse the issue with 10x or rockstar developers and such. You can have regular infantry and special forces. The pathological situation would be expecting special forces levels of performance out of an infantry group, embedding a few special members to magically elevate them. It will deteriorate morale for all involved and produce unpredictable results, since they do not have the training and methods to work together effectively. But, don't get distracted into thinking that this argues that no regular infantry can be heroic. It's a metaphor, not a moral judgment.

If properly managed, special units would have different missions which might complement the regular units. The special unit members are held to higher standards and still must cooperate. Self-serving cowboys typically get washed out, as the special teams demand high unit cohesion in order to accomplish their missions. But, the special team can excel together, not being limited by the roles, capabilities, and methods of a regular unit.

It is not good for one member to try to stand apart from his unit. He can mentor and motivate from within, but members of the unit need to be able to rely on each other and to some degree substitute for each other. It would be a mistake to let him try to create his own special grade informally within the regular group, lacking the proper logistics and management support for that role.

Another failure mode, not discussed in the article, is when an organization tries to be "all special". Lacking missions aligned to their preparation, they will eventually lose their skills and morale. They will start to perform unpredictably as they lose cohesion and focus. Also, in an attempt to grow a large special force, you would eventually run into supply problems and lower your entry or retention standards. Then, you might end up with forces special in name only, returning to the original scenario with a general infantry with some special members embedded in a toxic brew.

<comment><USER6> Really interesting take on it, and one I haven't considered before. Is there a name for this "military situation"? Sounds interesting and logical, at least from a military perspective.

The thing I'm thinking is: In the military, roles and units of soldiers/ops are very clearly defined: The purpose of the unit, the actions that individuals within the unit execute, etc. So I would imagine that special- forces calibre people would not often show up in more elementary troops and/or they'd make promotion, shift upwards/side-ways to somewhere where their skills would be a better match to the goal of the unit.

In business teams you usually have much more variance in requirements on the team, the individual members, their skills and knowledge, and oftentimes also much more variance in capabilities per team member (possibly related to the fact that the missions for these teams are not always clear-cut and the fact that the teams have to handle widely varying stuff from moment a to b). I think that for smaller businesses this variance is even higher as compared to teams in larger corporations.

Regardless, I think it is damn interesting to look at what armies do organization- and skill-wise, I've never looked at that more in-depth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My first thought on reading this is that the author is blaming the engineer for something that is as much a failure on the management side as anything else. The little clarification block at the bottom is too little too late in my opinion...

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point, thanks for the feedback! I'll consider moving that statement up ahead

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The pattern outlined here and the problems it causes are certainly real - <USER2> think most people who've seen a few large projects will recognize it.

I wonder, though, at the final section about how converting 'hero engineers' back into regular ones is possible, but unpleasant and unreliable. If you try to change someone's role to involve less work and shorter hours and they hate you for it, something has probably gone very wrong. I've been friends with a couple of perennial 'hero engineers', as opposed to people pushed into that by a specific crisis. By and large, they _like_ working that way, and would be very unhappy to swap into 'normal' roles. That's a useful trait! It's just squandered by a career of 12+ hour days and random priority shifts. (More broadly, I think healthy insight that software doesn't come from lone geniuses often neglects the value of those people and tries to reduce them to line programmers. Roles like hero engineer, guru, or hermit hacker can be perfectly useful in a business - just not as ways to produce day-to-day features in a larger project.)

What's the alternative? Some of them have become excellent managers, using the same resourcing and firefighting skills more proactively. Others have ended up as sort of 'internal contractors', doing hero engineer work with a few key changes. In particular: time off and/or not working long hours between crunches, setting priorities by importance rather than convenience, making their role clearly distinct from 'normal' engineering expectations, ensuring teams understand and have a say in changes, and recognizing that this is the 'unhappy path' for projects to take. It generally seems to work best for companies doing things like selling customized software platforms, since they have many different 1-6 month projects going with independent schedules and shared domain knowledge.

In practice, this looks something like: a projects falls behind or gets new requirements, an extra engineer (or several) are brought in, they work long hours getting up to speed and helping solve problems, once things are stable they spend some normal-length days with the team on training and tech debt to avoid 'owning' the result, then take some time off before the next cycle.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have been relied upon by management for quick fixes, breadth of familiarity with company systems, urgent code review of critical features nobody heard about until now, etc.

* "hero" is a ridiculous word, we never feel like heroes and nobody treats us that way. we feel dirty and abused

* of course it's a management problem, everything is, recognizing management problems is not part of the path to fixing them

* the only thing management respects is hitting (arbitrary) deadlines, ergo that's our actual job

Trying to leverage my position as a bottleneck to effect process change has ALWAYS resulted in a deteriorating relationship with executives. Maybe I'm not the most tactful guy, sure. But EOD it's their company. Just quit.

</comment><comment><USER11> General statement: The presence of a hero means something has gone terribly wrong.

Anyone got a counter-example?

<comment><USER9> Not a counter-example precisely, but it's a truism in software that something _always_ goes wrong. Sometimes the hero comes from mismanagement and bad planning, but sometimes they're a response to 'natural' problems.

I've seen a few heroes at largish companies who do this fairly sustainably by floating around different projects and teams. They're not necessarily the most brilliant engineers around, but they're a bit less subject to the tyranny of Brooks' Law than most people; they pick up new projects fast and are willing to work crunch hours to contribute. In most companies, I think the presence of someone in that role would be inherently unhealthy, but there seem to be a few places where it's a workable response to the general schedule slip of software development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Heroes exist due to incompetent management. Rule one of management is reduce risk and having a single developer fail the bus test is always management's fault.

<comment><USER13> > Heroes exist due to incompetent management.

Yep - in the article incompetent management was laid out pretty clear:

* The project is 3 months late * but he also wants you to finish your colleague's project * But of course the original two projects are priority. But please fix the bug because it's important

I've been the "hero engineer" and I think that this manager is totally ignoring what he's already postulated. I'm not happy if I'm on a team that's three months behind and being tasked to do other's work because they're incapable, and I'll end up with a chip on my shoulder when I'm the only producer on a team (seriously, who wouldn't?). And mostly - you're damn- straight I'm gonna leave! Why would I STAY!?

This sounds like a manager who has no business in picking a team of engineers to work on a project, which IMO happens way too often. We should be whiteboarding our leadership just as much as the engineers. In the US it's a pattern of zero technical competence at the middle management level... this leads to articles like this where high-performing developers are demonized for "bad attitude" immediately after the author outlines REAL reasons anyone may be unhappy with their employment.

Welcome to the new work world though - where it's about the narrative of work more than it's ever about the work.

</comment></comment><comment> grayed-down On some teams I've managed, I have had that one developer that's a great producer, but projected a great deal of negative energy into the group.

This situation has to be dealt with as soon as it's recognized. Some of the actions I have resorted to is heavy "counseling", work from home, rent a small office separate from the main work space or bite the bullet and fire them.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is practically impossible advice. Hero engineers can't stand sitting back watching things fail because no one else on the team cares enough to succeed.

For the hero, either the project succeeds or fails. Step up! But non heros instead look for a target to blame and then proceed to sabotage that person and the project to ensure they don't get the blame themselves. Their job is to find ways to work as little as possible.

The hero's job is a successful project. If it fails the hero is to blame. At the end of the day, it's always the engineers' fault if it fails.

I can't believe this article blames the problems on those who step up to fix them.

Better just to ignore the problems?

Reminds me of the folks who say, "don't work so hard! You're making the rest of us look bad! "

<comment><USER15> No, the article is about the fact that when "heroes" stand up and "save" a poorly managed project, it creates a negative feedback loop that validates the poor management style and lack of planning. The "hero" also devalues themselves and their teammates by allowing management to abuse them and violate everyone's work-life balance.

If this behavior is not nipped in the bud, it creates a toxic culture where projects are always being planned poorly, management's expectations are always misaligned with reality, and all of the engineers are burned out.

<comment><USER6> Right, the issue here is that 1: a project is poorly managed and 2: that an individual decided to take up the banner and by sheer force of will (however unreasonable) "saves the project".

I would say that if 1 is the case, then 2 might not be the best way to deal with it, but:

What if a project is not particularly poorly managed? What if you simply have an ambitious deadline that the team as a whole tries to make, whereby different individuals probably perform differently? Is the "hero" or heroes, defined implicitly (in the article) by a higher pace, still to blame for a "toxic culture" as you call it?

While you go ahead and nip that in the bud and make sure your teams are as average as possible, I'd go work somewhere where going the extra mile is actually appreciated.

<comment><USER16> "Ambitious" deadline a.k.a. crunch time required to meet deadline == poorly managed

While you're working unpaid overtime, I'll go work somewhere where "work life balance" is not just something they put in the company description.

<comment><USER6> What if you have an autonomous team that set the ambitious deadline themselves? What if the deadline initially seemed realistic but later became more questionable?

My point is, the option and choice to work harder is one of a few options that can be chosen. That choice should never be forced upon the team or individual members, but if done freely it can work out great.

And who said anything about _unpaid_ overtime?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What incentives do developers have to stay at myspace? - <AUTHOR>

Other than the fact it's a paycheck can't see any other upside in staying. Especially after reading:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/bitterness-anger-and-betrayal-at-myspace/
and recently
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/exclusive-the-bleak-financial-numbers-from-the-myspace-sale-pitch-book/
If it was me I would find another job so I can leave asap. <comment><USER2> For those "keeping the lights on" you'd pay a bonus if they agree to stay for set amounts of time (three months to a year). If the company is sold those still standing will find themselves having a ton of job security since they know where the bodies are buried. Although the security can be an illusion sometimes...</comment>


Consumerism: More is More - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/05/25/consumer-society-more-is-more/ <comment><USER2> Huh, reminds me a bit of "the system of objects" by Baudrillard.

On a side note, my favorite formulation came from the sitcom Frazier: if less is more, think about how much more more is!</comment>


Racebox.org - The Census since 1790 - <AUTHOR> http://racebox.org/

<comment><USER2> The original purpose of the race box was to count slaves as 3/5 of a person (for congressional representation). Since we no longer do this, why is the race box still there?

<comment><USER3> There is a lot of history / context / baggage packed into a single question on the census, but I think our concern with race is fairly obvious when you consider our history . The US has always been concerned with figuring out its racial composition, since slavery and all its multitude of consequences (Jim Crow, lots of poor blacks leaving the south for Northern cities) have made it so important. Think of all the money and power that used to go with whether you were white or black, or whether you could treat an employee (or slave) as white or black, or whether your state had a lot of black people or not who only got you 3/5 of a representative!

It is starting to seem anachronistic to worry over race (thank god!), but that history is really very recent; think about bussing riots in the 1970s, etc. Also, a huge number of government programs have a mission to try to fix racial disparities (successfully or not), and they need information on basic racial population composition.

That said, I can't wait until nobody cares about race anymore. The litmus test on this will be whether ("inter") marriage matters; in coastal cities among college educated people, it isn't really news if one's parents are asian and white, or latino and white, but it still elicits comment and introspection if they are black and white...

I think the big dividing lines today depend on education and family cultural background, but I am not sure how a decennial census might track that.

<comment><USER4> _I think the big dividing lines today depend on education and family cultural background, but I am not sure how a decennial census might track that._

The Census Bureau also continually sends out the American Community Survey to a subset of the population. It asks much more detailed questions, so the data may already exist.

<comment><USER3> Right. My point was that the job of decennial is basically to get a 100% count of bodies and residences, and that is hard enough without going into sociological detail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Much more about this issue in the context of college admission, including tracking the number of students officially reported as "race/ethnicity unknown" via mandated college reporting to the federal government:

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/92721...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/927219-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-8-a.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I like how the 1940 census lists "Indian" and "Hindu" as separate races. I'm pretty sure I know what they mean, but just the same...

</comment><comment><USER7> I liked the 1900–1920 ones best. There's no point in trying to pretend that the categories are scientific/natural or otherwise given. Might as well let people just fill in whatever they self-identify as. Would probably yield more interesting and insightful results in the process.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why do Americans use the word race when they mean ethnicity?

<comment><USER5> What privileges one definition of "race" (or of "ethnicity") over another?

"The concept of race as used by the Census Bureau reflects self-identification by people according to the race or races with which they most closely identify. These categories are sociopolitical constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature."

<http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68176.htm></comment></comment>


Nixie Tubes: The first electronic displays. - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixie_tube

<comment><USER2> First?

[http://www.google.com/patents/US974943](http://www.google.com/patents/US974943)

Patent from 1908</comment>


Ask HN: Laptop and OS setup for total web development coverage? - <AUTHOR> As a web developer I was handed a MacBook a couple years ago.  Its 'ok'.  The keyboard is jank and not being able to span windows over multiple monitors is one of my many minor annoyances with MacOS.
However, I was recently given the chance to switch to a laptop+OS of my choosing.  I was eyeing up a thinkpad or xps, but I realized that I have no clue how I would facilitate the testing of Mac specific things like Safari and Apple Pay outside of a VM.  Likewise, currently I have a 2nd windows laptop just for the sake of Edge/IE11 testing.
Folks who need to be able to test IE11/Edge/Edgium/Chrome/Firefox/Safari are you using VM's, juggling multiple physical machines, or have some other solution that works for you? <comment><USER2> On the project I'm currently working on right now we are installing a MacMini...

...into the datacenter (facepalm).

Except for that, what I found is that nodejs (and also python) development although seemed fast on a MacBook pro, but utterly sluggish compared to the experience on Linux, specifically Arch. nvm, virtualenvs, terminal and window navigation, file IO heavy stuff felt so much faster that eventually I gave the MacBook back and stayed on a Lenovo X1 Carbon.

Right now I have to access restricted systems, so a Windows10 VM runs (on two cores, 70% capped) 0-24h, but it doesn't seem to affect host performance and battery life much.</comment>


New urine test can quickly detect whether a person has a healthy diet - <AUTHOR> http://healthsciencemag.org/2017/01/13/new-urine-test-can-quickly-detect-whether-a-person-has-a-healthy-diet/ <comment><USER2> Health insurance companies are going to love this. Expect to see a spinoff for-profit organization that monetizes the tests (charging the end user of course - probably via their insurance premium).

The fancy 'public healthcare' rhetoric coming from a UK research project is all well and good for now, but we all know that this will end up being a mandatory part of any health check for insurance purposes.

On a lighter note, the idea of all that leak data being (inevitably) leaked is amusing

<comment><USER3> >The fancy 'public healthcare' rhetoric coming from a UK research project is all well and good for now, but we all know that this will end up being a mandatory part of any health check for insurance purposes.

Why not? Why shouldn't people who take care of themselves get cheaper insurance?</comment></comment>


Free UI PSDs for Smartphones - alok-g http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/freebies/40-free-ui-kit-psd-for-smartphones/

<comment><AUTHOR> Only one Android template is actually up to date and it just points to the official developer stencils:

<https://developer.android.com/design/downloads/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> I was prepared to be annoyed that something like this appeared on the front page, but this is a very thorough list of the best Photoshop templates out there for mobile.

teehan+lax always have the best iOS templates (they are included in the 40 free UI PSDs list): <http://www.teehanlax.com/downloads/>

</comment><comment> hn-miw-i I noticed Microsoft was doing this too, publishing psd templates for its smart devices.

Problem being that psd is horribly proprietary, all that matters is the geometry, right? Why not use open graphics formats?

</comment><comment><USER3> Balsamiq, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER4> gnarly!</comment>


Ask HN: Can I sample podcasts like trailers or tweets? - <AUTHOR> With the explosion of podcasts, I find myself struggling to keep with my playlist. Is there a way to sample podcasts similar to tweets and then listen to ones of interest? More recently, I also find the same guests showing up at many of the podcasts that I follow. <comment><USER2> Maybe if podcast apps had some kind of user-provided feedback as to which parts were good.. but for the most part podcasts are hands-off fire and forget consumable experiences.

Another alternative would be some kind of excitement recognizer, or monologue recognizer, etc. Get a machine learning model to find the moments that seem like a good back-and-forth or a solid exposition. Pad the recording a minute or two on both ends, etc...

But that raises the issue that in podcasts a lot of the time people build off of parts of the conversation that happened a long time earlier. So, it may be just difficult to sample longer podcasts in general. Perhaps you could try to listen to 5 minute podcasts, or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe you could use the show notes?

</comment><comment><USER4> frankly speaking as of now i don't think there is proper way to do podcast like that

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I thought too.</comment></comment>


Some of what we did at Danger - The future that everyone forgot - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tech-talk/d823af31f7c

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent history if you were ever a fan of the Hiptop/Sidekick. Or if you ever worked there. Good times.</comment>


Ask HN: Obscure Books You'd Recommend? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> _Unleashing the Killer App_ by Chunka Mui and Larry Downes

 _Wellsprings of Knowledge_ by Dorothy Leonard-Barton

 _Winning the Knowledge Transfer Race_ by Michael J. English

 _If Only We Knew What We Know_ by C. Jackson Grayson and Carla O'Dell

 _Artificial Life_ by Steve Levy

 _The Man Who Tamed Lightning: Charles Proteus Steinmetz_ by Floyd Miller

 _The Fifth Generation: Artificial Intelligence and Japan 's Computer Challenge to the World_ by Edward Feigenbaum and Pamela McCorduck

</comment><comment><USER3> Bourne, Charles P., Methods of Information Handling. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1963.

An excellent overview of the state of the art in information handling during the transition from punched cards to computers.

</comment><comment><USER4> A Business and it's beliefs. Thomas J Watson Jr.

(The ideas that made IBM great, before the collapse)</comment>


Understand The Web by Ben Ward - <AUTHOR> http://benward.me/blog/understand-the-web

<comment><USER2> I like how the author focuses on being able to link to content within an HTML application.

The use of the window.location.hash property to support linking to content within apps has been hit and miss in the last few years with web apps. Many times the back and forward buttons don't work, bookmarking a particular hash doesn't go back to that content on refresh, or there is no hash change for content at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr: "Want to know if your 'HTML application' is part of the web? Link me into it. Not just link me _to_ it; link me _into_ it." Fuck yeah!

</comment><comment><USER4> Also note that many "limitations" of the web should instead be viewed as _constraints_.

The right constraints are a good thing, because they allow you to sacrifice flexibility in exchange for useful guarantees. In programming languages, constraints like "no shared mutable state" offer guarantees like referential transparency and thread safety. In user interface design, constraints can offer consistency and interoperability. In network architecture, constraints like "no connection state" offer guarantees that benefit horizontal scalability.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The idea of undermining the core function of the web to achieve that is detestable."

Bullshit. Whether you like it or not "the web" has come to mean both the original application itself: a collection of hypertext documents, images, etc; as well as the greatest application deployment platform we've seen (and those applications may or may not have anything to do with hypertext)

These two things can coexist. Give me a different name and I'll start using it.

<comment><USER6> Simple: _web_ vs _net_. The net is a means of connecting one computer to another. The web is interconnected content, accessible via the net.

The web, with its interconnectedness, happens to be a pretty good tool for distributing content. Applications tend to be tools for manipulating content. So we get web applications: tools for manipulating content that you can find or create on the web. The problem comes when web applications start to bite the hand that feeds, by isolating the content within the application from the rest of the web.

<comment><USER7> Thank you, Qz. I really regret that final line. It was too blunt, absolute and negatively emotive. I'd have edited it later had it not been extensively quoted by the time I woke up next day. Your expansion here gets to the heart of what I was hoping to say, and is fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> absolutely + amen.</comment>


Sinkhole contains botnet neutralized by Microsoft and Kaspersky - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/09/sinkhole-contains-botnet-nuked-by-microsoft-and-kaspersky.ars <comment><USER2> I originally thought that a _literal_ sinkhole had like taken out a piece of critical botnet infrastructure and I was very, _very_ confused.</comment>


Luciding – Induce Lucid Dreaming Through Transcranial Stimulation - <AUTHOR> https://luciding.com/#/ <comment><USER2> I just started poking around the Internet for more on this topic. I found this study ([http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n6/full/nn.3719.html](http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n6/full/nn.3719.html)) which indirectly led me to this blog post ([http://www.diytdcs.com/tag/lucid- dreaming/](http://www.diytdcs.com/tag/lucid-dreaming/)), which led me to this subreddit ([https://www.reddit.com/r/tDCS/](https://www.reddit.com/r/tDCS/)), which led me to this Vice article ([http://motherboard.vice.com/read/we-wore- electrodes-to-bed-t...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/we-wore-electrodes- to-bed-to-induce-lucid-dreaming)).

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is a new emerging market. But soon everyone will realize that they don't want to spend 1/3 of their lives just sleeping. As there is such an incredible opportunity which can be easily reached with our wearable.

<comment><USER4> It's an old market dating back to the 80's that's getting popular again. Called us Reality Hackers at one point. I like that name for more than it's original purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lucid dreaming is exhausting. When I was younger I trained myself to maintain that thread of control as a fell asleep. It _is_ an incredibly powerful experience to be able to command every aspect of reality. I didn't wake up rested though, it was the exact opposite. Managing both my own actions and decisions and the entire world I was interacting with wiped me out.

As a side note, it was much harder to learn to stop doing it, than to start.

<comment> david-given I can't do it (or rather, it's happened maybe once or twice in my life) --- I don't have a strong enough grasp of reality! When I'm in a dream, I am playing the character in the dream, so any strange events will always come across as completely normal to me. Which means most of the standard lucid dreaming tricks won't work on me.

Interestingly, however, I do get another thing, which I haven't seen described anywhere, which I'll dub _false memory syndrome_ : while in the hypnogogic state on the edge of sleep, sometimes my memory will change. I'll still be me, unlike with ordinary dreaming, but with a whole new backstory. Unfortunately I don't remember the new backstory afterwards, so all I retain are second-order memories; memories of thinking _about_ the backstory.

e.g. once I was suddenly convinced I'd committed some sort of crime or other, and was wondering whether to try and run or resign myself to going to prison. No idea what the crime was now (I'd quite like to know what my subconscious was worried about).

This has happened to me so often I will occasionally think, hmm, this is odd, I wonder if it's false memory syndrome again? Which is a classic lucid memory trigger. Except I'm not really asleep, and I will always decide that it's not.

After waking up from the one described above, I was really relieved to find out that it really _was_ false memory syndrome.

...hang on, the police are at the door.

<comment><USER4> You should avoid lucid dreaming. It can fuck up your mind if it already is too flexible in how it handles memory or reality. False memory syndrome + strong, lucid experiences that mimick aspects of your real life (including relationships) seem quite risky. Neat as it is, one's sanity is a much more rewarding experience. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People interested in this topic should look up Monroe's Hemi Synch, old books on Lucid Dreaming (esp "reality checks"), reality hackers, and so on. Not endorsing any specific source rather than showing where most info was in 80's and 90's. This stuff goes way back.

Easiest method takes persistence rather than tech. Try to remember dreams, write details in journal each morning, and use reality checks all thfough the day until they're habit. Look those up on net as there's good examples. My favorites are how, in dreams, (a) mirrors oftdn have no reflection and (b) text you write changes if you look away then back again. Also regular naps in day with high REM.

A few weeks in you will look into a mirror and see nothing. Lucid. ;) Just don't do it if you have mental disorders or high stress. After all, it amplifies what's in your mind and you want to be in control.

</comment><comment><USER6> Price listed in the store: 20,700.00p. = USD 328

<comment><USER7> What currency is p? And what is that 50% tax (Europe / USA tax depending on location)?

<comment><USER8> Russian Rubles. The tax is about 30-50 USD for the US location.

<comment><USER7> The shopping cart shows 6,900p tax (109USD). Which is 50% of the price of the item which is 13,800. Is this an export tax of some sort?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd love to try this to induce lucid dreaming, but I'm not sure about the unknown health risks of electrical stimulation to my head for hours.

<comment><USER3> Glad to hear that! But the truth is that stimulation lasts for several seconds each REM phase. If you have any other questions I will be glad to answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a question about lucid dreaming. Is there a reliable way to tell the difference between a lucid dream and, essentially, dreaming that you are having a lucid dream, because you are preoccupied with the idea?

Seems like if you are constantly working at, reading of, and hearing about lucid dreaming, the idea would make it into your dreams, lucid or not.

<comment><USER4> Awareness is the key. When lucid, you will realize the world around you is fake, your thoughts won't be scripted, you might change things with focus, and the dream may even implode (you wake up) seconds after first awareness.

Easiest way to know difference is keep asking if you're dreaming. Right now, something is in your mind that _knows_ you're awake that you don't feel in dreams and not for long in lucid ones. Plus, lucid dreams break rules of reality in obvious or subtle ways you'll spot. Persistent awareness of this means you'll eventually notice a discrepency from habitual checks and wake up instantly (in dream or in reality).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can lucid dream without this easily. Just requires focus until you drift into your REM state then it takes over.

<comment><USER8> Lucky you! I've bought multiple devices in the past and they still wouldn't help. Nothing using brainwaves though.

Was it always easy or did you have to practice a lot?

<comment><USER11> Instead of drifting off into sleep focus on a narrative. I try to imagine myself doing things and create new characters as I go, I do this until I notice the sides of third eye start to go blurry and colours start to pour in, that's how I know I'm sleeping.

No practice, just came naturally to me. Learned this while on shrooms and focusing on the visuals, then tried it off them.

<comment><USER8> I'll try that, thanks!

I'd love to chat more about this. Can I add you on skype or something?

<comment><USER11> Added.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the site is ok. But if I can offer some constructive criticism, the english needs to be fixed:

"It is really ahead of time among Lucid Dreaming enhancement devices and technologies." "Live out an extremely unforgettable night experience with the device that literally tunes on your dreams!"

</comment><comment><USER8> I know the founders. The product is great. They've actually put a lot of R&D hours behind it.

<comment><USER3> Thank you very much! We truly work hard to make Lucid Dreaming a reality for everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wait! This is like the only thing today that can actually offer to ride a HOVERBOARD! (well, in your dreams, but it would be just as real)

Quick, you have another 50 minutes to fulfil the promise before Marty and Doc arrive in their shiny band new DeLorean!

</comment><comment><USER13> Russian web store. not working.

</comment><comment><USER14> They have more information the their fb page facebook.com/luciding

</comment><comment><USER15> coincidence: watched this interesting 53 minute interview of Charlie Morley about lucid dreaming last night: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwpPbZZxFwY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwpPbZZxFwY)

<comment><USER14> We are working with Charlie and he is waiting for our device!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Certainly an intriguing product.

</comment><comment><USER17> How do I purchase this in the US?

<comment><USER3> Please, contact us via page messaging here -[https://www.facebook.com/luciding](https://www.facebook.com/luciding)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this TMS or TDCS?

<comment><USER14> It is tACS

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Worst scrolling of any website of any website I've ever used. I can't get it to stop on the second slide.

Seriously people, when can we drop this obsession with landing pages that hijack the scroll bar and turn a document into some sort of slide show? I just want to scroll down and read your content, but instead I'm forced to try touching my trackpad in various spurts trying to get it to stop when needed.

<comment><USER20> Front end devs or some graphic designer.

Its good for marketing a product as long as its kept to like under 5 items.

For showing data/information, it is a terrible way to do it. I dont want to read a powerpoint presentation.

<comment><USER19> Even with 5 items, it's bad. It would be better if they just disabled scrolling altogether and gave me a big "next" button to click on - at least then it would be possible to reach a discrete slide.

I think this might have looked good on whatever device it was designed for (I'm guessing PC+mouse), but as soon as you try to interact with it using a trackpad or mobile the experience turns to shit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm sorry, but the website is virtually unusable. A few barely-comprehensible paragraphs of hyperbolic sales talk, and links to the shop. Explain to me what your product does, and why I should care, and I might be interested.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback! Luciding reinvents the traditional understanding of dreaming. All you need to do is to put on our headband device and go to sleep. The device detects REM sleep and pushes mild electronic stimulation. Your consciousness wakes up in a dream and you can control your dream.

You can visit our social network pages for more and ask more specific questions here. I would also recommend visiting our blog post with some feedback: [http://blog.luciding.com/luciding-first-customers- feedback-o...](http://blog.luciding.com/luciding-first-customers-feedback- official/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I hope this isn't snake oil, but for some reason I don't feel like letting Russians who can't even make a proper website strap a big electromagnet to my head.

<comment><USER23> > _Russians_

That reads like you intended it as a slur. If so, not cool.

<comment><USER14> We are a team from Siberia and Ukraine working together to deliver lucid dreams to everyone interested! Please, refer to our blog for first customers feedback - [http://blog.luciding.com/luciding-first-customers- feedback-o...](http://blog.luciding.com/luciding-first-customers-feedback- official/)</comment></comment></comment>


Google is testing an alternative Material redesign for Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/04/24/google-testing-alternative-material-redesign-chrome/ <comment><USER2> For a minute there I was watching at post date to make sure this wasn't an April 1st post.</comment>


Show HN: Boards for Mac – task board and personal organizer app (beta) - <AUTHOR> http://kitestack.com/boards/ <comment><AUTHOR> Developer here,

Feedback is very welcome! It's an early beta so some features are still missing, but there should be enough to use it for smaller projects. Most things are drag & drop (adding images/links).

Looking forward to your thoughts!

</comment><comment><USER2> What are the chances this could use an api to sync state with a server/service, for team usage?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well… adding team server/support is the one thing I don't plan to add. I made this as an alternative to the many web-based Kanban/Trello-style apps when something "simple" will suffice.

Everything is saved locally on your Mac. You have full control over your data. No servers involved.

I'm somewhat of a control-freak when it comes to app data. For personal projects and data, I want an app that works offline and I want to know where my data is kept (preferably on the device).

Ideally I can even access my data in 10 - 20 years down the road, when the app doesn't exist anymore.

That's why each board is saved as single file on your Mac. You can see these files in Finder and even open them with a browser (they are just zipped HTML files).</comment></comment>


PS4's LLVM-based Developer Toolchain [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://llvm.org/devmtg/2013-11/slides/Robinson-PS4Toolchain.pdf <comment><USER2> Function-level optnone is definitely something I would appreciate as well. Optimized code can often look nothing like the original code... and having the whole binary non-optimized is just too slow.

<comment><USER3> I'm eagerly awaiting its inclusion. It isn't as simple of a task as it would seem. Unfortunately, you can't simply disable all of the passes in LLVM. Some aren't optimizations at all and are transforms required for subsequent optimization passes. MachineFunction passes are even trickier. Some are strictly necessary for correct codegen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone else find it strange that these slides are filled with some pretty hardcore technical jargon, yet on one of the slides they feel the need to clarify "GDDR5 is very high end graphics memory only found on PC graphics cards"? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It was given at some LLVM conference so most people in the audience are probably compiler people who will probably know a lot about compilers and less about GPUs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My kingdom for a proper technical report instead of a slide deck consisting of thick walls of bullet points.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://llvm.org/devmtg/2013-11/videos/Robinson- PS4Toolchain-...](http://llvm.org/devmtg/2013-11/videos/Robinson- PS4Toolchain-360.mov)

</comment><comment><USER7> Wonder how big of a factor that the upstream PS4 OS codebase now using LLVM/Clang was in this decision. Even if the PS4 wasn't FreeBSD based I can see the switch making sense on it's own tbh.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't seem like any factor, there. The PS4 is using FreeBSD 9 as the kernel, which was still built with gcc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder why they wrote their own linker instead of improving gold.

<comment><USER10> Isn't gold specifically targetted at x86 and/or linux only (I can't remember which)? Having it as part of the LLVM project means they can use a lot of the infrastructure that already exists, and exists to used as libraries, and also allows them to write the code as another set of libraries for use in other unforseen systems. It's also aimed at being a generic linker for use on many different platforms. I don't think gold has these goals; from I remember they were just after speed on their target platform.

<comment><USER9> The PS4 is x86. And I wouldn't be surprised if it used ELF (like the PS2/3). Though I can't find any mention of the format that's being used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What was used before? gcc?

<comment><USER12> Slide 13. TL;DR: From Sony, yes - as well as an independent third party toolchain.

<comment><USER3> That is now a first-party toolchain after acquisition.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Froze My Account and I Still Don't Know Why - <AUTHOR> https://bardsandsages.com/juliedawson/2018/05/06/amazon-froze-my-account-and-i-still-dont-know-why/ <comment><USER2> I think this is the future rise of the robots. It won't be Skynet, with clearly malicious bots trying to destroy humanity. It will be capricious and arbitrary bots, locking us out of our bank accounts and merchant accounts with little or no recompense. We've already seen it with Google, now here with Amazon. How soon until your phone gets turned off, and that's just the end?

<comment><USER3> I feel like the "rise of the machines" won't be some bloodbath with terminators or AI killing people outright, it will just be that _everything_ will be a Kafka-esque maze of bureaucratic complexity with no human recourse when you get caught in the system. It's like those Coke Freestyle machines, where you get stuck in line behind someone trying to figure out the touchscreen system when all you want to do is get a Coke. The future of society is all of us frustratedly waving our hands in front of an automated paper towel dispenser before we just give up and wipe our hands on our pants.

<comment> temp-dude-87844 This is already the case. Much of the adult condition consists of trying to prove one's case to bureaucracies: why you shouldn't have incurred that overdraft, why you shouldn't have been denied that insurance claim, why you think there's a mistake on your bill -- and merely getting a human on the phone isn't sufficient to resolve your issue. You should also come armed with ample documentation (which you may not even have) to support your case, and be prepared to set aside a chunk of time as you bounce from department to department. This is part of why money-poor and time-constrained people have such terrible outcomes: each mistake hurts more in proportion, they lack the funds to hire an expert (e.g. tax professional, lawyer), and they're constrained on time to deal with offices that are only open for less than a quarter of the week.

There's a march towards more automation, more externally-opaque algorithms, and less humans to escalate to, but the core of the problem is quite old. Instead of a polite-if-flustered customer service representative telling you they don't know, you need to speak to someone else, you'll have to scrape the secret number from a 3-year-old reddit post or publicly shame them on Twitter to get answers, but the outcome's the same: the better-equipped and loudest voices win, while there's a bunch of others who get shafted with no recourse. Eventually, you quietly learn to keep thorough records, emergency savings, and eat the loss, because unless you can fight these sorts of issues in a higher forum where damages are an option, fighting them more than two roundtrips deep isn't worth your time.

<comment><USER4> I've spent a lot of time trying to come up with a business case for this problem. Something like : 'For $x I will call your bank/real estate agent/local council/supplier and sort out $problem. If I don't solve it, you don't pay'. Somewhere between a lawyer and a PA.

But I couldn't get around the privacy implications - I'd need all your passwords, birth dates etc and would need to either certify myself as your agent, or pretend to be you.

Edit: dizzystar and other below actually do just this thing for dealing with Amazon

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As many I'm afraid of a future (and present) where big platforms like amazon, google, facebook are essentially without alternative, and laws governing competition and thelike become a farce in the face of "rule by terms and conditions".

In Germany though, we recently had a nice case about a nation-wide football (soccer...) arena ban, in which the constitutional court ruled that this constituted a significant obstacle to taking part in regular social life. They pretty explicitely stated that this is _not_ limited to football arenas, but can in principle apply to facebook and thelike. According to this ruling, they'd have to come up with a good reason for banning a user and there would be potential recourse. Very encouraging, really, since the ruling just admits what many already claim: the big platforms are an essential part of private/professional life, really they're more infrastructure than a choice made by the user.

</comment><comment> j-c-hewitt Having had to work with Amazon support in a variety of capacities for many different businesses this is a common response to Amazon's support.

Contrary to what a lot of people think these are generally not robots. They're just people with a very short training period governed by an extremely didactic decision tree. If you do not give the support person what they expect using Amazon's unique definitions for terms which are often orthogonal to the dictionary definitions (e.g. you are supposed to get IP owners to 'retract' complaints even if you are really supposed to 'resolve' those complaints and there is a giant distinction between 'counterfeit' and 'inauthentic' products in Amazon-land) .

This often causes a lot of frustration as people shake their fists at the injustice of a highly bureaucratic system. Fist-shaking doesn't really do much and it just sorta amps up the frustration level. Sending lots of messages in also tends to befuddle the support people and/or cause giant problems if the wrong thing is said.

In practice what it means is that people who try to sell on the marketplace without knowledge of the opaque rules that govern it will tend to get weeded out. People tend to expect that the systems that they rely on are governed by moral rules about who is right and who is wrong. But it is really more easily navigable by people who are savvy.

What's fair doesn't really enter into the picture and the way that Amazon's systems in particular work tend to run against the average American's expectations for justice (expecting to be innocent until proven guilty, that laws and procedures be readily comprehensible, that judgment be even-handed and based on precedent, and so on).

However unlike some other big tech cos like Google/FB you at least have avenues of appeal beyond suing them. If you have a business problem with Google you will probably have to do something insane to get their attention.

<comment><USER6> > In practice what it means is that people who try to sell on the marketplace > without knowledge of the opaque rules that govern it will tend to get weeded > out. People tend to expect that the systems that they rely on are governed > by moral rules about who is right and who is wrong. But it is really more > easily navigable by people who are savvy.

How does one avoid getting weeded out and become savvy if the rules are opaque?

<comment><USER7> The rules aren't opaque. There just isn't any ambiguity to them, which means that everything is exactly written with no room for Interpretation.

I explain Amazon support like this: if you told someone to grab money from the bank, you haven't specified the instructions, so they will claim they have no idea how to do it.

If you tell them to drive to the bank, walk in, go to the teller, not the ATM...

This very specific instructions will get the response you need.

With experience, you start to get a hang of the lingo. It does feel like you are talking to bots, but you are really talking to humans who click the next step in the Q&A. They probably could hold your hand, but they don't appear to be trained to do so.

It's highly unlikely that you'll get shut down full stop right off the bat. You have a lot of room for error, but if you get frustrated quickly, you can get blocked at some step, but really that's on you.

The situation in the article would have taken me about 1 day to resolve, but the key takeaway is the books were up for sale again because the author did exactly as the instructions said.

<comment> j-c-hewitt 'Opaque' as in 'generally opaque from the outside.' You learn in the process that you're describing.

Hilariously, it's to some extent like playing Zork or a similar text-based adventure game but with real money on the line.

<comment><USER8> The easiest approach is to just ask the rep to install Teamviewer, it will help make the process _much_ less opaque.

[https://imgur.com/a/yaI4B](https://imgur.com/a/yaI4B)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if there is a list of buzzwords you can send to the autoreply that will get it in front of an actual human. Like:

"Hey, seems like your bot is broken and I need to talk to a human, so I've copy pasted the following terms to attempt to elevate the issue and reach a human:

emergency fraud lawsuit hacked liability jeff bezoz better business bureau fuck shit escalate critical severe engineer SLA reliability false positive PARSE ERROR..."

<comment><USER10> A corporate version of the old NSA salute. al-qaeda operation dirty bomb infosec target juliett class prism activate!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have had the displeasure of being on the wrong end. Amazon seller and vendor support is obtuse and designed to confuse. It is adversarial. It is about three steps away from being on the same level as a dealing with a federal criminal charge.

I had to write a plan, to avoid my 'misconduct', which was repeatedly rejected by 'assigned team', a group of unnamed individuals that was only allowed to communicate to me in automated templates.

I would only wish this experience on my worst enemies.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's some assumption here that there's a reason for the account blocking, and if only a human could be reached, it could be explained in detail. But that may not be true. ML systems usually don't explain themselves by default; it's possible there's simply no further information available for a support agent to give.

This is a fun talk about post-hoc explanations from ML systems. It's possible, but it takes real work: [https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2017/just-so-stories- for-ai-e...](https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2017/just-so-stories-for-ai- explaining-black-box-predictions.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Unfortunately it's all too common with Amazon to not give a great reason as to why where and how you violated their terms/expectations (IMO 3rd party sellers have to go down a support rabbit hole in the hopes of finding the one support person that can "guess" what's causing the suspension). Can you imagine how painful it would be to that third party Amazon seller whose whole income is from their (recently) suspended account?

Am relieved to hear that Amazon was not the author's only source of income...note the similarities to uber/lyft drivers being suspended.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is as designed. All these companies ban or block users without explanation because their hand is forced. If they reveal the detailed reasons, or even make it possible to discover why, they become wide open to gaming. It's a losing battle to begin with and keeping every advantage (secrecy) is critical.

Unfortunately.

It falls into the "this is why we can't have nice things" category.

<comment><USER15> This is the correct answer.

Most of those "automated" replies were copy-pasted from humans. This book inadvertently brushes up against something they want prohibited on their platform, but if they explain why it will give you a vital clue as to how to game their system. They can't get into detail, but want to stop you. It looks like the author is writing stories that could be mistaken for Steven Universe fan-fiction, so it may be a lot more straightforward than this writeup lets on: The writing may come off as being related to a franchise they're not a part of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why doesn't Amazon at least include a hint as to what's wrong.

Automating this doesn't seem problematic per se, but omitting a key piece of info like that borderline malicious. It's a bit like an error message that just says "Error" \- short of an absolutely green programmer I'd expect better.

<comment><USER17> That would open them up to people who can try to figure out what the triggers are detecting unwanted activity and getting around it, and possibly opening them up to discrimination claims.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Say what you like about Amazon, but you must admit that they are a very shrewd company. Provide fantastic customer service to the consumers, and almost none at all to the sellers. Brilliant.

<comment><USER19> Although they do sometimes fall down for consumers, I have a 2nd gen kindle bought from the US but running on the UK store which no longer talks to the store (I can download content but not browse).

I ended up in a maze of the US folks saying it's a UK store problem and the UK folks saying it's a US supplied kindle so talk to the US. After a few rounds of "reset back to factory" support calls I gave up.

I suspect the problem is the clock which is out by an hour so SSL / authentication isn't working. I held out until we left summer time back to GMT but even then it was still broken (I also tried from the Caribbean in case it was a European time zone issue). The GSM modem diagnostic page looked correct.

In the end I gave up and my partner got me a Kindle Oasis from Amazon UK for Christmas.

<comment><USER20> I had the exact same problem with a Japan-bought Kindle Oasis used in the US. My Oasis got stolen right before I left for the airport, wanted one while on my trip so ordered one in Japan. I got the exact same run around trying to get special offers removed: US support says to ask JP support because it was bought there, then JP support says to ask US support because it's registered there. There was an additional problem that 3G only works in Japan for those Kindles.

I ended up sending an email to jeff@ asking for an exchange of the Kindle to a US one. Ended up getting a one-time credit for the cost of a new Kindle with 3G.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great read, I loved the letter vs. spirit workaround she employed in the end.

Amazon is growing in a bunch of directions very quickly, so issues like this are bound to crop up.

I think the solution to this one lies in a business strategy (scale support staff at the same rate you are recruiting customers & sellers) or automation rule (i.e. flag and send to support staff if more than X replies have been sent && account remains locked).

It will be interesting to see if they can solve these issues in a timely and cost-effective manner or if certain arenas (i.e. eBook publishing) will be neglected in favor of more lucrative & automatable ones.

</comment><comment><USER22> Amazon once froze my seller account for something stupid and it was impossible to contact a human or get it resolved automatically.

They got humans involved and fixed it pretty quickly once I explained why I was canceling my AWS account.

</comment><comment><USER23> Welcome to Amazon! Look at what is going on with 3rd party sellers there; reliable, highly-rated sellers get their accounts indefinitely suspended for completely bogus reasons with no recourse. I guess they don't need them anymore so they don't care about their shoddy ML and its false positives...

</comment><comment><USER24> On a related note to Amazon taking automation too far, I've noted that they seem to have some serious problems with categorizing products. For weeks and weeks now, in my recommendations are "Men's watches" [1] which are almost always comprised mostly of SSDs and flash drives. The flash drive in question's product page lists it as the "#1 best seller in Men's Watches" and my guess is that SSDs are close enough to a flash drive to also get pulled into the mix. It's frustrating to see large companies with offices full of developers making such public mistakes and then pushing broken technology further.

1: [https://i.imgur.com/Sp7Yd5s.png](https://i.imgur.com/Sp7Yd5s.png)

</comment><comment><USER25> Similar to my experience with them: I had two accounts, one US and one German. After I moved back to Germany I asked them to remove my US account, as I didn't have a US debit card anymore. First they were able to do that, after several complaints and waiting. But then they also deleted my other account, probably by accident. A so-called double close, which is fatal on glibc, and in my case. Thankfully I've changed my mind about their services and am quite happy without any account.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been locked out of my Amazon account for a year now, for reasons I don't know. Amazon reps told me I'd hear back, but there's been nothing for months now. Fortunately, the credit card they have on file expired, and the ebooks I can no longer read are not so important to me. So, good riddance, I say.

</comment><comment><USER27> Again, this is the trend I posted about [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014500](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014500)

What happens if Amazon decides to disable your account? Well, folks. This is no longer a "what if", but a "now what?!"

Sure, you can sue. But as many people here are pro-capitalist, they will assert a company's decision to fire users with absolutely no redress of the data that was decided upon. Personhood rights, and all that.

(No, I don't believe that companies should get personhood rights. And yes, I do believe that we people have the right to see what data they use to determine how they work with us, or not. The GDPR in Europe is a good start.)

Where does it leave everyone? Well, for these people, certainly not using Amazon AWS now. And I'm guessing that they can't even extract their data either.

Aren't automated system "Great" ?

</comment><comment><USER28> Hmm I wrote you an email. I am a dev only though. Let's see what we can do ;).

</comment><comment><USER29> Twitter froze my account today and I have no idea why either. Hate blockchain all you want, but I'm in pure love of it. I/We sorely need transparency and decentralization.

<comment><USER30> How would blockchain help?

"Twitter froze my account!" "Yep. I see here twitter froze your account at this time, in this date, in this transaction chain. Proof of work is right here."

<comment><USER29> That's how: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/87k9iz/presenting...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/87k9iz/presenting_peepeth_a_decentralized_alternative_to/)

<comment><USER31> How does that help? There are thousands of well-meant projects from overenthusiastic but inexperienced developers. The "interesting project!" graveyard is overflowing. Nobody knows this project or cares apart from some enthusiasts, and that won't change. Never even mind the discussion about the purpose of the blockchain here. Even if there was a purpose, I'd say tweets are the _last_ thing that needs to be archived all over the place.

The unique service of Twitter is that it is famous, not that it is able to distribute tiny snippets of text. Just like Medium. By using the brand name service you get an increased chance to actually be noticed and read in exchange.

<comment><USER29> So like Facebook. So let's not change anything then?

Alright let's do this: you don't change anything and stay on Facebook/Twitter indefinitely.

You will change you mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> while i think her response was clever isn't it basically lying. like if you knowingly phrase something in a way to give someone a different impression from what you actually will later claim to mean its just a really clever lie.

<comment><USER6> Which part of her response gives an impression different from what she actually meant? I assume she read the rules and plans to comply with them. She checked that none of her books violate the rules, so she doesn't have to delete any of them to live up to the statement.

<comment><USER32> You are correct. I re-read her response and it looks completely reasonable to me on second reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why not send the "I promise to follow the rules" email - since OP clearly desires to do so - and then follow-up afterwards instead of repeatedly ignoring the instructions given?

<comment><USER34> As they explained in the article, they cannot agree to stop violating the terms if they have no understanding of how they're violating the terms.

They did review them, and could not locate the violation. So they contacted Amazon for confirmation and wound up in this bot loop.

<comment><USER33> The email doesn't ask them to agree to stop.

It asks them to confirm they've read and agree to the rules, which they do.

Reply to the bot, then escalate. If the bot required wording like "I'm very sorry for violating the rules", that'd be a potentially different story.

<comment><USER35> Even without an explicit admission of guilt, you're putting yourself in a compromising position. Amazon made an accusation and then asked for redress, so if you give them that and were then involved in a lawsuit you'd have to explain why your actions (giving Amazon what they demanded to forgive you for rule-breaking) are inconsistent with your claims (you didn't break any rule).

<comment><USER33> So, add "Having reviewed them, I do not appear to have violated any of these terms and believe this to be a false-positive" to the wording they request, and send a follow-up to customer service.

Present in court, if necessary.

<comment><USER36> That is exactly what she did.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Programming Langauge for Genetic Engineering of Living Cells - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/gec/

<comment><USER2> I demoed an early version of this about a year ago. It had an intuitive UI that any biologist without programming experience could understand even back then.

The two main time-drains for synthetic biologists are 1) Lab work creating (which will be phased out when cheap synthesis gets going in 1-3years) and 2) designing the sequence (which this program helps automate). So the rate of progress in the field is definitely going to accelerate...

</comment><comment><USER3> A programming language for creating living things? Developed by Microsoft? _shudders_

<comment><USER4> The objects can be programmed to turn blue when they die. They call it the Blue Death of Screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Synthetic biology aims at producing novel biological systems to carry out some desired and well-defined functions. An ultimate dream is to design these systems at a high level of abstraction using engineering-based tools and programming languages, press a button, and have the design translated to DNA sequences that can be synthesised and put to work in living cells._

Why do I have a bad feeling about this? I can't help to wonder: "Will the world necessarily be a better place when this will be possible?"

<comment><USER6> I don't see this as Pandora's box, in part because we've already got that; I think you have a bad feeling about this because you're insufficiently worried about things that are actually really scary: cancer, heart disease, HIV, malaria, and so on.

<comment><USER5> I'm actually more worried by the fate of the planet while we let the world population explode and keep suppressing possible causes of human death. We should first get concerned about how these trillions of people will live in a dying world.

I sincerely hope these technologies will be used in the purpose of preventing the planet's doom, although I'm pretty sure they will only serve for more human selfishness, as you seem to suggest it.

<comment><USER7> I don't know that the super-population-explosion that people keep fearing will really happen. For that to happen, a LOT more food will have to be created, which implies a more prosperous world as a whole. But more highly developed nations tend to have _negative_ growth rates.

Reducto ad absurdem (maybe), but this implies that the solution to overpopulation is to bring the whole world's standard of living up. At which point we slowly allow ourselves to die off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How do you press Ctrl-Alt-Del on a cellular level? First function for Microsoft to implement.

<comment><USER9> I am more interested in how to save memory to disk and restart...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Down for everyone or just me?

<comment><USER11> Just you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not sure I want to meet the human genetic incarnation of Windows Vista ;-)

</comment><comment><USER13> jpatte, there is absolutely no need to worry about over-population. If we abolish all diseases and discover a method that allows biological immortality, such that the world ends up with a lot more people then it has now, then we will always have war, which in the past has allowed for a wonderful restoration of lower population densities. Just think how quickly a bad situation could be improved through the use of just a few nuclear weapons.

</comment><comment><USER14> On the creation of the first synthetic cell: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHIocNOHd7A>

</comment><comment><USER15> The headline made me think of this 2002 Cory Doctorow story:

[http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2002/08/28/0wnz0red/...](http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2002/08/28/0wnz0red/index.html)</comment>


Internal documents show how Amazon scrambled to fix Prime Day glitches - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/amazon-internal-documents-what-caused-prime-day-crash-company-scramble.html <comment><USER2> Has "Sable" been spoken about externally before? I found a few details about it on a LinkedIn profile: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kokamd/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kokamd/).

"Sable has been hugely successful in the company: it provides storage and computation environment to over 850 teams, running 2450 unique applications, hosts 10,000 data-sets comprising of 2.05PB of (replicated) data across all retail regions. It handles about 2.2 trillion transactions per day with average client-side latencies of 3ms. In the first half of 2016, there were two outages of the cluster in North America due to operator errors, and this brought down multiple lines of business, not just Amazon.com. Leading the project to reduce SABLE blast radius. This involves segregating the data-sets and providing seamless fail-over to alternate storage solutions (for example DynamoDB) for data that is very critical such as Amazon catalog."

"SABLE is Amazon's e-commerce storage and computation platform. It hosts some of the most important applications running on Amazon.com. Altogether there are about 400 teams (including Shopping Cart, Items, Prices) that use SABLE within Amazon.com for high performance storage, caching, and new business object derivation services.

Part of the team that built SABLE from ground up. SABLE uses BDB (Berkley Database) for persistence and Libevent for non-blocking I/O. My specific feature contributions include: repartitioning support (add/reduce fleet size without any impact to live production traffic), SABLE reactors (computation platform for propagating prices, availability to the website). I optimized SABLE reactors by eliminating worklogs (which is the bookkeeping mechanism used to keep track of the amount of work that needs to be done in the system) which resulted in 30% reduction in our fleet size.

As a manager, I had five directs, and our team launched: Quality of Service for SABLE reactors (this helped in faster prices propagation to the website), Shopping Cart on SABLE platform (increased the availability of Shopping Cart application, more than what Oracle could provide)."

<comment><USER3> There are listings for Sable development on amazon.jobs: [https://www.amazon.jobs/en/search?base_query=sable](https://www.amazon.jobs/en/search?base_query=sable)

> Our NoSQL storage platform processes more than 1 trillion transactions per > day to serve Amazon country-specific and private-label websites and internal > Amazon systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _" I'm confident we'll deliver an even better experience next year," he > wrote in the email._

"Even better."

Ugh, I detest this kind of PR-written language. Acknowledge failure.

"We failed, and we're sorry we let down our customers. We'll try our best to provide a shopping experience that's up to our standards, as well as our customers' expectations, next year."

This is not that difficult.

<comment><USER5> How would you know?

<comment><USER6> Because its surprisingly easy to empathize with. The fundemental pattern of choosing between _doing the right thing_ and _doing the easy thing_ is all it really comes down to. The right thing isn't nearly as difficult to do as it sounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> (Note: my knowledge here is out of date as of 2015.)

Sable is relatively ancient and badly in need of deprecation. (If I remember correctly, as of 2011 it was sort of in a "please consider alternate storage solutions" mode.) It is the closest to a single point of failure I can think of at Amazon.

Hopefully this is the kick in the ass they need to move to something more robust.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's amazing to me that CNBC was able to pull such a long piece out of this. The image they used of Bezos is funny too, as if he was ashamed or something. I'm guessing he has a particularly good prime day since Amazon stock hit a new high.

</comment><comment><USER9> So many jokes to be made about Amazon having to contact their AWS representative to get their limits raised, etc.

<comment><USER10> Not sure what you mean, running Amazon retail on AWS is a fact that demonstrates AWS' maturity and Amazon's commitment to have the same infrastructure for internal and external users, which is a bold and long-term- effcient strategy where many cloud providers are struggling to achieve.

<comment><USER3> Sable is run on non-AWS infra to prevent a single point of failure for the entire AWS side of the internet. They still likely have an auto-scaling system specifically for Sable, however without the numerous amount of AWS servers that could have been used to auto-scale.</comment></comment></comment>