Twitter jilts Ruby for Scala - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/01/twitter_on_scala/ <comment><USER3> The very title of this article shows the religious nature of much of the hype around dynamic languages. Why is using the right tool for the job "jilting" another language which was never designed or meant to be suitable for the same job?

I am curious though whether they tried running their Ruby code using JRuby ... if the bottlenecks were (as stated in the article) in the ruby VM they might have got the same result just by switching VMs (pure speculation).

And ...

> "The biggest selling point for certain organizations is that Scala is 100 > per cent compatible with your existing JVM code.

No, it's not. There are problems with quite important features like annotations etc. which are now very important in the java EE space but Scala cannot do them. This was one reason I've used Groovy so far in a lot of situations.

Having said that - I'm seriously looking at Scala because groovy has plenty of faults: the complete lack of any static type checking at compile time and very poor IDE support and error reporting all weigh down on the productivity benefits to the point where it's sometimes a net negative. Scala could end up being the best of all worlds.

<comment><USER4> >Why is using the right tool for the job "jilting" another language which was never designed or meant to be suitable for the same job?

That would be a question for the journalist who made it up ;) I am sure the answer was "cause it sounded cool !".

<comment><USER5> that's pretty much how "the Reg" operates.

Without regard to the tone of the article though, Scala and Lift are worth spending some time with.

Lift still has a ways to go in terms of providing a turnkey stack in the same vein as a Rails or Merb stack. If you thought putting together a Ruby dev environment had a lot of pieces, get ready for Lift...not so much Lift's fault as its the nature of the heavyweight JVM toolset world.

<comment><USER4> I love scala, as a language, and love rails, as a framework which doesn't make me thing to much - I can see how twitter would like the combo too. Even with the toolchain annoyances I think scala is pretty productive, at least it is for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think anyone who has any depth of experience with Ruby can attest to the flaws it has data-intensive tasks. Thats why many of us just drop down into another language when we need to get something done efficiently. Ruby's clarity and conciseness make a lot of sense when writing views, controllers, and models, but don't have the same effectiveness in a background process that needs to be written and forgotten about.

Unless there are some major changes in Ruby (MORE than 1.9), I believe that it will be relegated to simple web applications, and never really be good at processing tons of data.

And honestly, isn't Ruby really just about prototyping? I admit, its great for startups who have nil for cash that need to get something written QUICK (to get money from investors), but once you cross that threshold, why not write it over with a language designed for efficiency?

<comment><USER7> I'm not a ruby dev, but could you be more specific? Assuming you are refering to syntax, not speed: how is it good for prototyping but not "data-intensive tasks"

<comment><USER8> All of the Ruby runtimes are unreliable (buggy) and very slow. Ruby syntax is perfectly good for "data-intensive tasks", but the current runtimes are not.

<comment><USER9> How does JRuby's implementation compare to Scala's, though? I've been pleased overall with Scala, but I've not had much JRuby experience, so I'm curious.

<comment><USER10> JRuby's a pretty solid implementation. It's generally faster than MRI 1.8.x, and has the benefit of quality threading. I think Scala is probably ahead, because Scala has the benefit of being-more Java-like than JRuby, and is therefore easier to implement.

For my serious apps, I typically write the front end in JRuby on Rails, and migrate code back into Java as it stabilizes and/or needs more performance. Works great for me!

<comment><USER11> I'm doing this at my current job as well. Jruby is great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems like a perfectly reasonable approach. They still are going to continue using Ruby on the front end of the site. It's just the backend message queuing, and data operational stuff that they're moving to Scala.

I probably would have just used JRuby for this stuff, but Scala seems fine to me. And if it works for them, thats great. But I hardly see this a "jilt" against Ruby.

<comment><USER13> JRuby is what, a few times faster than Ruby 1.8.x? In a situation where Ruby was too slow, even after optimization by experienced Ruby coders, I don't see how switching to JRuby would have helped. Is there a crucial performance difference (threading maybe, or libraries) that would have made JRuby scale better than Ruby in this case?

<comment><USER14> I use JRuby to run a web application that I first coded in Ruby and it works pretty well even though it reserves and consumes more memory. Having a dedicated server for JRuby applications instead of running such applications on your own desktop alongside other applications slightly helps with the feeling of speed of the JRuby application, as it does not compete for CPU time with the other desktop applications you have like the browser, when you can feel that JRuby requires more work than Ruby for doing similar workloads. :-)

I know that the pros of JRuby for running Ruby applications mean things like being able to run multiple instances of Ruby from the same process, being able to run JRuby applications in a standard Java web-server be it as Servlet or a more high-level installation, and so on.

Also, Java has had a lot experience in running server applications so Java does help with maximizing the use of the resources available, be it 100% of CPU time, gigs of memory, multiple CPUs, and so on. Java has those famous garbage collectors and HotSpot technologies. JRuby can enjoy all of that so it does improve things over pure Ruby. Let's say, Java doesn't break a sweat under heavy load, or at least it shouldn't. Whereas with pure Ruby all bets are off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "And he's pitching his new Scala book. And his new Scala book is published by O'Reilly. And O'Reilly runs the Web 2.0 Expo. ®"

Timing is priceless.

<comment><USER16> So what? He likes Scala. Likes it enough to write a book in his spare time, of which he has precious little since he's, oh yeah, _a full-time developer at one of the biggest, fastest growing sites on the face of God's green earth_.

So it's a (mild) conflict-of-interest (really, it's just a promotional opportunity). Doesn't make the arguments any less valid or his book any less worth picking up. Nice thing about code is that it's like science - <USER2> claim can be tested ad infinitum.

<comment><USER17> And if the Scala reworking goes poorly, he presumably suffers, too.

One idle thought: It'd be hard to eliminate the factor that they might be a better Scala dev team than a Ruby dev team. That's still, of course, a perfectly good reason to go to Scala.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This quote:

"The trouble, he insisted, is that the so-called Web 2.0 languages aren't always as efficient as they need to be, especially in an economic environment threatening to bring Web 2.0 to its knees."

Is particularly dire. Sure, so if we all switch to C or machine code we'll be able to skip through the recession, right? Seriously, less drama and more reporting please.

</comment><comment><USER19> Carpenter jilts saw for hammer

[EDIT: dear downmodders, the intention here is that languages are tools, and you pick the one which fits your current needs best. What's good for Twitter isn't necessarily best for another app, and Scala <=> Ruby is meaningless]

<comment><USER20> HN is getting lamer than ever with this downmodding of anybody who doesn't conform. It would be interesting to know the overlap of opinion-based down- modders and Reddit/Digg bashers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Investors now want to know that you're not going to be paying tons and tons of money for servers because you decided to build in a stack that isn't as efficient as possible," he said.

I've never used Scala and I'm a Ruby dev but I'm still not sure I totally agree with that. Scala is probably great and very efficient but you probably don't need to be thinking at Twitter's level out of the gate.

<comment><USER22> It's also the case that headcount is far more expensive than servers.

<comment><USER23> Still, I worry that despite Ruby's niceness, a lot of time is spent developing around it's issues. Whenever I read about deploying Ruby, it just sounds scary. Memory munching Mongrels that have to be restarted on a regular basis? It sounds like a science in itself, whereas tomcat just runs and runs and runs. Less headaches == less headcount.

<comment><USER24> If you know and like Tomcat, may I suggest you have a look at JRuby deployment for Rails apps? With recent versions of jruby-rack and the warbler gem, it's as simple as listing your dependencies in a config file, and then running 'rake war' from the top level of a Rails app to get a shiny new WAR file ready to drop into your Tomcat deployment directory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And in case you're wondering.. no, this isn't an April Fools joke.

<comment><USER22> In this case, it'd've been a joke cued up several months ago, when this story first broke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think it's important to remember that Twitter had this problem because they were ULTRA successful to the degree of being a household name, a new cultural lingo, a game changing tech of enormous value, etc.

Yes, different languages and techs for different advantages and purposes.

"Just" developing a web app with models and views and controllers is enough to create the user experience smash hits are made off. Scaling issues are big, but certainly fall in the class of problems we want to have at some point.

<comment><USER27> > Scaling issues are big, but certainly fall in the class of problems we want > to have at some point.

Well actually with a big of good design from start you may avoid this problem from the start with little efforts. You'll have to scale anyway but it will be a matter of buying more hardware and not redesigning the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Although the Reg sensationalizes the story, it's interesting to see how Ruby is in limbo. How much damage has been done to Merb by the 1.8 to 1.9 fiasco?

<comment><USER14> I agree that the Ruby 1.8 to 1.9 transition has caused headaches. But the 1.9 version does have some interesting features that have been long being cooked to get to this point, and perhaps more interesting is that the 1.9 version has motivated even more developments in Ruby-land as found in MacRuby that uses the 1.9 version or in yarv2llvm that recompiles the bytecode to llvm or something.

Let's say that many folks might have had higher expectations that have been hard to meet given the reality of it all.

The Merb guys helped with further explorations themselves which probably helped with making Rails advance more decisively, given the promissed "merging" of the Merb ideals with Rails.

Also, with things like Passenger, the deployment of Ruby met an all-time high in features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't understand a lot this approach. Basically the front-end is almost always not the problem, but the Db / backend is. And this should be written in C probably. If you write a queue system in Ruby and it's slow where is the news?

The article title is misleading since Ruby continues to be used for its core business that is the front end.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sheesh, from the comments you'd think The Register is known for level-headed journalism.

It is a snarky, piss-taking, grease-trap that mixes news with commentary with little to no discretion or fear of violating "journalistic integrity." Once you understand that, it becomes a great source of news and entertainment.

<comment><USER30> _Once you understand that, it becomes a great source of news and entertainment._

Or rather, a great site to ignore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Following Twitter's issue blog, most of their problems appear database- related. I wonder whether a shift to Scala would have any real effect.

<comment><USER28> Threading.

<comment><USER17> Hmm, I could see that. I just wonder how many of their problems actually come down to thread issues.

May just have to wait and see whether their new "beautiful code" does any better. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> it seems that the article ignores the trade off in cost between efficient code and development time.

<comment><USER32> Scala tries to be pretty good at both. Java like speeds, with type- inferencing, first class functions, and a more flexible syntax to improve programming productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> That is so funny to choice JVM-based stuff is case when you need an accept/select/read/write hardcore (message passing) along with queue processing. Of course, you can do networking from JVM, and it works well in clean cisco-branded qos-enabled networks. =)

If one had had an experience of using java-based network tools over cellular or wireless networks, one knows.

At the same time, Erlang is around for a decade.

</comment><comment><USER20> Unfounded claims, no research, nothing. After years of suffering websites running on JVM web stacks, I am very sceptic of this Scala for the web rant. Plus he extrapolates Ruby to Python and PHP just because. The JVMs (there are several) mostly trade-off memory for speed. Go check the Language Shootout page. It doesn't scale in my book.

So unless Scala has some secret ingredient to use the JVM more efficiently, this looks to me as yet another fanboy rant.

<comment><USER24> First of all, I don't think it's fair to accuse the Twitter dev team of working without real experience and numbers to back up their decisions. They have a huge volume of data being generated by their service, and have weathered the whole "Rails doesn't scale" flame-fest with relative grace and good humor. IMHO, that entitles them to talk fairly freely about the relative scalability of different languages and frameworks.

Secondly, any "ranting" you hear in this article is the product of El Reg, not Alex. He mostly offered a calm, positive presentation about the improved speed (with relatively little, if any, tradeoff in developer productivity) that came from using Scala instead of Ruby for critical infrastructure services.

Regardless, most Java web applications' performance issues stem from framework-itis, not from the underlying runtime. By itself, Tomcat (or another modern Java servlet container) is capable of some pretty impressive throughput -- perhaps not on par with a lean, pure C server like nginx, but not nearly as limited in functionality and extensibility, either.

No matter what you think about Java the language, you at least have to admit that HotSpot blows MRI, YARV, the Python VM, and Parrot out of the water when it comes to raw performance on low-level code. That doesn't save you from bad implementation ideas, but it does at least give you the _possibility_ of getting fast, efficient code, if you have a decent compiler and work fairly close to the metal.

Using Scala is one way to produce that sort of low-level implementation code without wanting to gouge your eyes out (which is how most Java source tends to make me feel, anyway).

<comment><USER20> No, the JVMs use memory like crazy themselves, it's not just the frameworks. As I said, check out the Language Shootout. Java, in almost every test, is several times bigger than most other languages.

The rest of your comment, you change what I said so it's not worth addressing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seeing the April 1st date of the article it was just a little bit harder to believe they would write it like that. As folks have taken it seriously...

The Ruby community was formed without being forced into it necessarily. Academics did not force people into Ruby. Businesses did not force people into Ruby. Even Ruby on Rails was created because DHH was not forced to use PHP and instead tried to make things work in this new called Ruby.

Scala has its followers but Academics push it and business types can push it as well even though many business types still prefer Java and C#. Also, Scala is being primarily used for server-side stuff which is a very crowded market already and many developers are just a little bit too tired of having to interface with complex server-side stuff while trying to innovate on the client-side.

Thing is, as a guy who really digs Ruby, Scala does not worry me one bit. I could always try and use a hyper-advanced Scala implementation or application in the future given I can make choices at one point and then have to revisit said choices in the future given the changes brought by new developments.

Let me tell you a little story. When C# was being first introduced in its very early versions, I was very much playing Ultima Online on pirate servers. A new pirate server was being coded in C# and it was becoming rather popular quite fast and the single developer (or was it?) was having quite a lot of fun with it. Nobody told him to use C# for that kind of thing I am sure, it was just him putting his passion forward with the means he had at the time. C# has grown since then, and many pros and hobbyists use it to create all kinds of little programs on Windows.

Scala? Scala has an uphill battle, and many other languages have had their own uphill battles throughout the years. It's tough.

<comment><USER30> Uh, who cares?

Some day you will realize that programming languages are tools for getting work done, not religions.</comment></comment>


It's the End of E3 as We Know It - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/03/end-e3-know <comment><USER2> Not a single mention of PAX?</comment>


Leaked Docs Show Spyware Used to Snoop on U.S. Computers - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-docs-show-spyware-used-to-snoop-on-u.s.-computers <comment><USER2> This is a serious question: why isn't this illegal?</comment>


The Rise of Pirate Libraries - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-rise-of-illegal-pirate-libraries?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page <comment><USER2> Open access is being increasingly thought of as inevitable and the only ethical option for publishing academic research. What I believe we will end up with eventually is a situation where nearly all new publications are open access, and a good deal of older twentieth century (and earlier) research is publicly available as well due to ongoing digitalisation and expired copyrights. In between, there will be a significant body of research kept locked away behind paywalls by publishers trying to hold on to those cash cows and the inertia copyright on a work has once granted.

At the same time, 'piracy' on a massive scale (like Sci-Hub) will only get easier due to technological advances and increasing amounts of bandwidth available to consumers worldwide. Combine that with an utter lack of sympathy for (academic) paywalls and publishers, and a widespread believe that sharing these works is ethically just, and you have a situation that simply cannot be contained.

I expect that in twenty years time you will be able to download almost the complete library of published academic works from the twentieth and twenty first centuries in the time it takes to make a pot of coffee — legally or illegally.

So publishers will have to learn to deal with this new reality and reinvent themselves in an open access world, or perish.

<comment><USER3> Journal publishing itself is awkward. It's bad use of experimental data - often you have to look at printed graphs to figure out data values not reported in the paper. Statistic power is almost never mentioned. Tons of data that could be useful to other researchers is discarded. Discussion sections tend to be overly biased. There is so much research output, it's almost impossible to refute anything and possibel to support almost anything. And so on and so on. What we need is accurate databases of research results, not more publishing.

We should be rewarding scientists for the volume, integrity and significance of their data output, not for what they claim themselves in their papers.

<comment><USER4> Not all science is statistics. That's just the current paradigm and not applicable in all cases. I agree the reward system is flawed, but it ain't so easy to improve it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a hilarious piece. You yankees are good 20 years behind the real pirate libraries trend, started with lib.ru and well continued with the genesis lib and uneraseable flibista.is. Ah, I forgot to mention nehudlit.ru, which is specialized on textbooks.

<comment><USER6> Good references. On the side, seeing as most of what is the internet started here (packet switching and ARPANET), and there were hacker BBSs and pirated material before Pirate Bay, I'd say we were not behind in any of these trends. And go further back to the invention of the transistor in NJ, USA, mate ;)

<comment><USER5> Steam engine was invented well before Christ in Alexandria. However, its real life applications were really developed much later in England. Same with the Internet.

What the US is holding firmly is production and sales of space-ready elements for high orbit satellites, sorry, sputniks.

<comment><USER6> I really don't like national, or jingoistic-based comparisons of contribution by country, since personally I am an individualist. I am hoping for the day we have no borders or tribes or nations (does that make me an anarchist too?). But, if lines are to be drawn, I believe you're short-changing history here a bit. The U.S. doesn't just 'holding firmly in production and sales of space- ready elements for high orbit satellites' \- it innovates and funds them, and many other areas of tech. The U.S. is number one in most advanced country in space technologies. France is number three, Germany number five. The UK didn't make the top eight. Maybe the ESA would be competitive, but that is a 72-member group, not a single country. The High-Tech sector, Google, Apple, and many others is dominated by the U.S., however, that doesn't account for sheer size. In technology, R&D, tech personnel, education and patents, and accounting for per capita, it is countries like South Korea, Japan, Switzerland, Israel, Germany and others. The UK is ten on that list, the US one. There is a sub-culture in China of farmers building flying tricycles, deep-sea manned submarines to collect seafood, and lots of other cool (and dangerous?) stuff. Unfortunately, they are bound by an information-filtering, state government, but oddly have freedom in the countryside to do just such crazy tinkering. Check YouTube for those items. Amazing. I have lived in SE Asia for over 7 years, and I can tell you that I sometimes feel more free to do things here than where I grew up in Brooklyn, but to a point. I would be stopped once I became 'visible'. 'Tallest blade of grass' and all that jazz!

<comment><USER5> Thank you for sharing that. The US innovates for itself. Gamma rays protected electronics is for more than a year subject to sanctions, so Russia cannot build new satellites for a while (about 30% of electronics used to be imported). I am not patriot of the modern Russia, I am necropatriot of the dead country - The USSR, that makes me sick freak, right ?:> I believe the UK has the best research culture, but the US has the best research funding, except in some areas, where the EU prevails. But we shall see, China will win the Moon and the martian race.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't say I'm sympathetic to publishers. They've been rorting the system for a long time now.

When publisher substantial fund research more than government, I might start feeling differently. Of course, that will never happen as they couldn't make money.

I really would like to know - what do publishers actually do that couldn't be done on a more open system? And why can't Universities manage the peer review system?

<comment><USER8> > what do publishers actually do that couldn't be done on a more open system?

Nothing positive, as far as I can tell. I firmly believe that they hold back the progress of the human race by limiting access to the bleeding edge of human knowledge - all for the sake of money. I'm glad people are attempting to force an overhaul of the system.

An excellent article on the matter: [http://priceonomics.com/post/50096804256/why-is-science- behi...](http://priceonomics.com/post/50096804256/why-is-science-behind-a- paywall)

<comment><USER9> > they hold back the progress of the human race by limiting access to the > bleeding edge of human knowledge - all for the sake of money

Pretty good description of Academia in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Those are some beautiful libraries in the pictures.

</comment><comment><USER11> Assumption 1: the primary customers of increasingly expensive subscriptions from academic publishers are universities.

Assumption 2: the cost of the subscriptions is passed on to the primary customers of the universities -- students.

Assumption 3: assumptions 1 and 2 are correct.

Question: Is there any correlation to be made between the profitability of such academic publishers with the astounding rise in university tuition in the US over the past three decades?

<comment><USER12> > Assumption 2: the cost of the subscriptions is passed on to the primary > customers of the universities -- students.

This is not likely to be true. Most universities in the US take overheads on grants. So if you get a $20,000 grant, the university will often take up to $12,000 of that (usually it's in the $6000–8000 range), and the researcher uses the rest. That money in overheads is used for a variety of things, including supporting the research (i.e., paying for journal subscriptions).

> Question: Is there any correlation to be made between the profitability of > such academic publishers with the astounding rise in university tuition in > the US over the past three decades?

Journals are expensive, but they're not _that_ expensive. It's much more plausible that the rise in tuition can be linked to non-academic expenditures at universities, including athletic facilities (e.g., gyms for students), fancy dining halls and dorms, and non-academic staff. Maybe one could argue those aren't the drivers of high tuition, but I'd be surprised if a rise in journal costs were remotely comparable.

<comment><USER13> > Journals are expensive, but they're not _that_ expensive.

[https://mako.cc/fun/overpricetags/](https://mako.cc/fun/overpricetags/)

Would $25,888/yr for a single journal not count as '_that_ expensive'?

But I agree they're not likely a tuition driver. After all, institutions can simply drop subscriptions: they don't do much for attracting students compared to facilities.

<comment><USER12> > Would $25,888/yr for a single journal not count as '_that_ expensive'?

For a journal cost, $25,888/yr is expensive, but no, it wouldn't count as "_that_ expensive". I meant "_that_ expensive" as "expensive enough to be a tuition driver".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bufferbloat: Dark Buffers in the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/1/144810-bufferbloat/fulltext

<comment><USER2> Overall, does anyone have a feel for how close we might be to a congestion collapse on today's internet? I've been reading about this for a few years now and have obvious worries about real solutions not being implemented until after the storm hits.

Or is this being overstated? Are there mechanisms in place that would mitigate or prevent large-scale congestion collapses of this kind?

<comment><USER3> The worldwide internet infrastructure is remarkably fragile. I can think of a few example off the top of my head where it's been abused or broken:

1\. China 'borrowing' traffic: [http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/11/how-china- swall...](http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/11/how-china- swallowed-15-of-net-traffic-for-18-minutes.ars)

2\. Myriad undersea cable cuts slowing / segmenting the internet

3\. Juniper routers going down: [http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/110711-internet- outage...](http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/110711-internet- outage-252851.html)

4\. There was an incident (2 years ago?) where an European ISP broadcast a low-cost route incorrectly and blackholed a large portion of the internet, although I can't find a link right now.

With respect to buffers specifically, AT&T's network issues when the iPhone launched were largely self-inflicted by having overly large buffers: [http://blogs.broughturner.com/2009/10/is-att-wireless- data-c...](http://blogs.broughturner.com/2009/10/is-att-wireless-data- congestion-selfinflicted.html)

So yes, widespread issues are certainly possible. The internet is not nearly as resilient as people would like to believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I admit, though I found the topic fascinating I only had time to skim. But I did notice something which may be of interest to others: CeroWrt is a branch of OpenWrt geared towards fixing the buffer problem on your home network. So I'm guessing if you get this configured correctly you might see significant improvements in latency. I'm intrigued.

I posted it as a separate topic here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3461790>

</comment><comment><USER5> Yep, I definitely see this from time to time, especially over mobile networks. Interestingly, most of my problems went away when I started using OpenVPN. It connects with UDP to my Amazon EC2 VM, which is close enough to the internet's core that everything after that is low-latency. I'm not sure why this works, but it does suggest a practical testing ground for bufferbloat-workaround strategies: you can't make the rest of the internet adopt your weird new protocol, but you can install it on a VM, and route all your traffic that way.

As an added bonus, this gets you security on untrusted networks and a static IP. And you could potentially use this sort of trick to get a cool multi-homed connection, although there's no software for that currently. It'd be interesting to see what possibilities there are when combining a fast but bufferbloated or high-latency connection, with a slow but low-latency connection.

</comment><comment><USER6> Feel free to try this at home: [http://wiki.linuxwall.info/doku.php/en:ressources:dossiers:n...](http://wiki.linuxwall.info/doku.php/en:ressources:dossiers:networking:traffic_control#a_word_about_bufferbloat)

</comment><comment><USER7> Must be nice to have Vint Cerf on hand to consult on your networking issues!

</comment><comment><USER8> I've observed behavior similar to this from my cable ISP and chalked it up to malice. It's interesting that the problem is so widespread, but apparently not very well understood by so many providers.

<comment><USER9> Mobile data links are especially prone to this kind of madness in my experience. I quite often experience data links which sit at 4-5s ping times for extended periods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, just scrolling to the bottom if this article took ages. #sent2kindle</comment>


Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/PlayStation-s-secret-weapon-a-nearly-all-automated-factory <comment><USER2> Lots of folks here are talking about the latency and throughput, but nobody is amazed at what the robots are doing. Plugging in cables and putting down tape is fiddly and hard. I'm _super impressed_ that they elected to automate those things based on cost merit. Massive kudos to the manufacturing engineers who managed to pull that off.

<comment><USER3> I had invested in a semiconductor factory early last decade, and it had started making bitcoin miners, it had reminding me of Zion from the Matrix because it seemed like the first time that a machine could make another machine which could immediately start earning a negotiable asset and then transacting for resources.

Very surreal to think about.

<comment><USER4> There was this little game I played on Linux years ago where you played an AI trying to reach singularity status while evading detection by humans.

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

Early in the game, you'd hack machines to run mechanical-turk style jobs to earn money. Later you'd build a factory to manufacture more processors... ;)

<comment><USER3> Haha just a few years ahead of its time!

Some of the first bitcoin faucets had captchas to "reduce spam", as in prevent humans from getting too much free bitcoin, but really the captcha was a real captcha that a bot was stuck on, and was just paying humans to solve them to access some greater bounty

<comment><USER5> Morally ambiguous, but I actually implemented exactly what you're describing back when bitcoin was at $50-100. I found some service that would pay me $1 for every 1000 captchas I solved, and then I scraped that and built a BTC faucet site (I think I called it captchacoin.com, or captchabit.com) that would essentially pay the user $0.50 in BTC for each captcha they solved.

It went from 0 captchas per day to 10000 captchas/day over the course of about a month with just word-of-mouth. Then the upstream service just quit paying me with no explanation. My accuracy rates were good. Maybe latency was high? I don't know why they terminated it. But I struggled to keep the users while finding a replacement, and in the end I shut it down.

On the one hand, I'm bummed, because that thing could have mostly run itself and made a tidy profit for someone still pursuing a degree. On the other hand... maybe it was for the best: 90% of captcha solving work is paid for by spammers who make the internet worse.

<comment><USER4> Have an upvote for the story, but don't pretend it was "morally ambiguous". That was plain evil with one level of detachment, and helped enable spammers and scammers.

<comment><USER3> cryptocurrency needed faucets and it helped adoption

<comment><USER6> Cryptocurrency is the biggest backwards step for the climate since CFCs.

<comment><USER3> Thats a huge misconception actually, the information you have is the amount of energy being used, but you don't have information on the source of the energy.

Would you be willing to accept or at least corroborate that cryptocurrency mining is one of the cleanest sectors and a boon for sustainability?

70-80% of that energy use is renewable energy or reducing pollution - specifically hydrocarbons. So existing energy is not being wasted or reallocated, and additional unclean energy is not being ramped up to facilitate mining, and previously wasted energy that _was_ going into the atmosphere is now being used.

The educated discussion is to make sure it stays this way. As nation states are the only actors that could mine at a loss with inefficient ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you enjoy that you will probably also enjoy the fully-automated Valve Steam Controller assembly line (including video)[0].

[0]: [https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/11/9890914/valves-steam- con...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/11/9890914/valves-steam-controller- assembly-line-video)

<comment><USER8> This is a fantastic video, extremely well done in my opinion. I remember fanatically watching "How It's Made", in that show they focused on more run of the mill assembly lines for generic plastic things and usually there was a ton of labor involved. The video linked here was really the first time I saw this level of automation and my jaw nearly hit the floor, the technology industry has created some incredible feats of engineering.

<comment><USER9> I watched How It's Made with my kids for a good number of years, and I was just amazed that the parts that were automated worked as well as they did. It made manufacturing look _really complicated_ and that human hands were the most important part of the assembly line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In case anyone misses the link in the article, they have a graphic-rich version:

[https://vdata.nikkei.com/en/newsgraphics/sony- playstation/](https://vdata.nikkei.com/en/newsgraphics/sony-playstation/)

(The content is different, though both articles cover the same topic. A bit weird)

<comment><USER11> This article is crying out for GIFs, great pictures but you can't hype me up about how these robots move and not show me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fully automated assembly lines rarely make sense economically even in Europe, and Japan.

A "lights out" factory needs a really expensive, complex widget to make, but one which doesn't vary, or change over time much.

Game consoles are exactly like: long product life times, and can be engineered specifically with automated lines in mind, without compromises.

Robotic factories are by no means a final solution for manufacturing.

<comment><USER13> > Robotic factories are by no means a final solution for manufacturing.

Robotic factories are by no means a final solution for manufacturing...Yet

<comment><USER14> Definitionally they kind of are inevitably the _final_ solution. We _will_ either totally automate all production, go extinct, or get trapped in a loop of destroying civilization putting the survivors back to pre-industry and having to rebuild in perpetuity. Its only a question of time scales.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks so amazing and I wasn't aware that Playstations are still manufactured in Sony's home country itself. I guess automation helps in keeping the manufacturing cost low.

Now I am intrigued about what high selling electronic devices are manufactured in their home country itself and not by the ODMs/CMs in countries with cheap labour like China.

<comment><USER16> I have a feeling that automation slowed down in many sectors when China came "online". I think this cycle is coming to an end, and there is no comparable pool of labour anywhere in the world so that fully automated factories are going to be the next step (that wasn't technically possible in the early 90s but I think we now have the technology or very close to).

<comment><USER17> " there is no comparable pool of labour anywhere in the world " -> this is not fully true, as when wages in China started to rise, lots of labor offshoring moved to SE Asia (e.g. Vietnam) and there's still a lot of potential for the same to happen in various African countries.

<comment><USER16> There are pools of cheap-ish labour but none comparable to China. They are much smaller and many, like Africa, are not able to take this on now.

<comment><USER18> You made a prediction that these places will never be comparable to China. What do you base this on? What prevents India and African countries from establishing special economic zones that are attractive to foreign investors?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If anyone is interested in factory automation I'm working on a site to catalog different processes. A good design can often be recycled into a similar machine.

[https://automate.engineer/](https://automate.engineer/)

I'm mostly building it for myself but I thought other people may enjoy.

<comment><USER20> wonderful website, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Just a few humans were present to deal with a handful of tasks -- two to > feed bare motherboards to the line, and two to package the finished > consoles.

Maybe I'm just ignorant, but, especially the first task, seems rather trivial compared to what they achieved with their robots? Even the second one, If I remember correctly Amazon does/did this manually because every single package is different and no robot flexible enough, but I assume in Sonys case packages are all exactly the same. Doesn't sound a whole lot harder than plugging in the cables.

So why wouldn't they automatize those steps as well?

<comment><USER22> Loading into the sort of packaging used for electronics is definitely hard to automate. For low margin products it used to be universal that boxed items were manufactured where labor was cheap, and that's for very simple to load items.

Automation is improving at a rapid rate though. I've definitely seen automated boxers for some simple to load items start to show up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if this speaker to its nature of being a Japanese article but the tone is largely awe and pride of the accomplishment lacking the usual fear of automation and jobs lost I see in other such articles.

>"If you keep watching them long enough, they will start to look like humans," said one engineer. The look in his eye is gentle like a father watching over his children. Unlike large robots that lift heavy items, the delicate movements of compact robots resemble those of human arms and have surprising warmth.

<comment><USER21> I don't know if it is just cliche, but I have heard that Japanese people have a very different relationship to robots/automatization than western countries.

Were we immediatly think Skynet, they see something that helps them.

<comment><USER24> I'm doraemon

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "The 31.4-meter line, completed in 2018, has the ability to churn out a new console every 30 seconds."

That seems.... slow? I mean, I have no idea what I expected, but 2 a minute, is that really fast for this type of manufacturing? How does that compare to Xbox or maybe iPhone output? I'm sure 2 a minute is really impressive, but I started reading that thinking something like hundreds or thousands an hour, I guess I was naive.

<comment><USER26> Controls engineer here - no, that's pretty normal. I'm accustomed to automotive work, but I believe the electronics assembly lines are similar. The flexible materials handling stuff (connecting flat flex cables? Applying Kapton tape?) is indeed super impressive, but the timing is ordinary.

A sizeable 6-axis robot like those used here has a minimum cycle time of a second or two for the simplest possible "move in, place the thing, move out" operation. They're not ultralight delta or SCARA bots, they're about as fast as a human can control their arm. Also, there's a second or two lost while the pallets moves along and are parked at the multiple stations along the line, you want to design the system to maximize the ratio of useful on-station time to transition time.

The line is bottlenecked by the slowest process. You can make a slow station run in parallel - as in the photo at [1] with the 16 stations arrayed around the robot - but that adds a lot of complexity. I'd assume that their requirements were to accommodate up to ~8 minutes for burn-in testing at that station, and that by the empty stations, the software guys ended up only using 4 minutes. You can't make the whole line wait that long, so you spend the extra effort and introduce extra complexity by buffering parts there, but now your process has forked and needs to be merged again - really a pain for tracking suspect parts or tools. All that matters is that you unload each pallet before it needs to move on and replace it with a completed part.

Some stations may be doing nothing but running a 5 second electrical test. If there's some station that has to pick up a cable, photograph it, analyze it, contort it by rotating robot joints through large angles, plug it in, and get out of the way, that could easily take 10 seconds. Others may have a human who needs to keep up. Others might be heat-staking a plastic component and need time to blow on the stake until it cools enough to be unclamped. Others might have multi-headed tooling and can connect several different parts all at once. 30 seconds is a nice middling part-to-part value if you've got a few complex operations, a few human operations, and don't want heavy robots slinging your expensive parts around at high speed. I wouldn't have been surprised at a 10-second cycle time, but 30 seconds is still reasonable.

A final consideration is that you don't want an entire factory dependent on a single line. If you want to produce thousands of parts an hour, it's much, much better to have 10 identical lines that work at a 30-second cycle time than a single line frenetically thrashing to put out out parts in 3 seconds. If one line goes down, you still have 90% capacity, and can probably catch back up. If your single line goes down, you're in big trouble.

[1]: [https://s3-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/psh-ex- ftnikkei-3937...](https://s3-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/psh-ex- ftnikkei-3937bb4/images/2/1/7/9/28039712-10-eng- GB/Cropped-1593718166%E9%9B%BB%E5%AD%90%E7%89%88%E8%BF%BD%E5%8A%A0%EF%BC%89%E3%83%97%E3%83%AC%E3%82%B9%E3%83%86%E3%81%AE%E8%A3%8F%E5%81%B4%E3%80%81%E9%9B%BB%E5%AD%90%E7%89%88%E7%94%A8%E3%81%AE%E8%BF%BD%E5%8A%A0%E5%86%99%E7%9C%9F%E2%91%A320200703034521471_Data.jpg)

<comment><USER27> Can you, or someone else, share your experience in becoming a Controls Engineer?

Is your educational background in Mechanical Engineering or Electrical Engineering?

I've always found programming robots to be fascinating. And especially when building a robot to build other robots. I'm sure others will be interested in learning of this as well.

<comment><USER28> Most of the available training for this stuff is vendor-specific, vendor- provided and really expensive to undertake. Indeed, many vendors have solution provider networks who will prefer to do this programming for you, because it is so unintuitive/dangerous/error-prone.

You can, however, learn the control systems by grabbing and reading the manuals. Look for manufacturers then seek out manuals. Many are online though they are often not the latest edition as some manufacturers now seek to keep this internal to paying customers.

All the systems I have seen use G-Code variants with manufacturer specific extensions. Many now offer GUIs to help with spatial planning, multi-machine integration, common code generation, etc. However, at the end of the day it is still nearly all about generating/writing/modifying/replaying stored G-Code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Electronics manufacturing has been moving to more and more automation for years. Humans don't place components on PCBs anymore (well, most components). it's done by machines that look more like a gatling gun than human arm. It's quite stunning how small the components are these days.

Gamers Nexus: How Motherboards Are Made (2019) | Taiwan Automated Factory Tour, ft. Gigabyte [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnAFTMaS5R0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnAFTMaS5R0)

</comment><comment><USER30> I am happy that China reached the point where their average wage is high enough that we can finally resume the manufacturing automation effort that kinda stalled since the 90.

</comment><comment><USER31> More graphics directly at [https://vdata.nikkei.com/en/newsgraphics/sony- playstation/](https://vdata.nikkei.com/en/newsgraphics/sony-playstation/)

<comment><USER3> That's a great sub-site. This is such a good year for exclusives! 2020 was always going to be epic for that, and I haven't been disappointed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Powerful example of operational innovation, and that there is so much untapped opportunity we are not leveraging in so many areas.

A company like Apple may not have the wherewithal or impetus to do something like this. When they need manufacturing, they are resigned to the traditional approach: China. Since labour is cheap there, and they just may not be thinking in these terms and may not have the wherewithal either ... the cost- effective solution invariable involves high labour intensity.

It may very well take factories like this to inspire other organisations to have the necessary 'Eureka!' moment to grasp that they too, might be better off 'fully automated' as well.

Note the eye-watering scale of the business however, quoted at nearly $100 Billion in sales, which is rather a lot of money indicating that it may take a product with a very long life cycle wherein there are considerable profits for this to be feasible.

Looking at this, one has to wonder why Western nations are not more keen to duplicate.

<comment><USER33> > Note the eye-watering scale of the business however, quoted at nearly $100 > Billion in sales, which is rather a lot of money indicating that it may take > a product with a very long life cycle wherein there are considerable profits > for this to be feasible.

You mention Apple. The iPhone SE 2 is basically "iPhone 11 guts in an iPhone 8 shell" – and as I understand it Apple went to software to handle things like the camera so they could keep the older generation optics and not change the body. That type of tick/tock cadence would support this nicely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> God I love my PS4 - it has to be the peak of this class of machine. I can't imagine how it could be improved upon without going beyond the "box under the telly format". Incredible piece of machinery. I can't imagine the PS5 will be much more than an upgrade.

In my opinion the second best console is the PS2. I love Nintendo but they're more like toys than hard core gaming and entertainment machines. PS2 up until PS4 was pretty much the pinnacle, but I think the way PS4 improved upon it is the development platform, and the online experience (which even so does require some improvement). I still play games on the PS2 from time to time and they still feel viable as offline single-player experiences and I could imagine development for the PS4 could continue for 20 years or so and still be producing great and relevant games.

Where to from here? VR is one obvious route but may I suggest a HN-friendly alternative? Hows about selling a more open system that allows end-users to tinker and contribute themselves? I think in order for this to be viable in terms of protecting the profitability and stability of the ecosystem there are some business and technical challenges but I would love to see them take this direction. They've dabbled before with the Yaroze system and Playstation Linux … both had their business operational issues but hardly insurmountable?

EDIT - can't respond below any more so I just have "one more thing" to say:

> PS4 is famous for being the cheapest sony home console relatively speaking

and what exactly is the problem with that? This is a feature not a bug. The PS3 was a novel system with exotic hardware but it suffered from some very serious flaws. It's reliance on proprietary technologies meant it was harder for developers to work with. It never took off as a result and is little more than a footnote in the lineage's history. A learning experience if you will.

Surely an extension of making something easier for professional developers to get to grips with is making something that hobby developers (and other classes of creative) can get to grips with?

<comment><USER35> > it has to be the peak of this class of machine.

I'm sure phones had better GPUs 3-4 years ago than the PS4, and more RAM

When i enter the notification quick tab it takes 30-40 seconds to show the message I've received, then another 10-15 to accept it.

Currently one single game, COD:MW consumes the entirety of the space on the device. From launch it wasn't ever going to be enough. You need to keep <x> space free because the update->patch->relink process needs to duplicate the game.

The menu system is also insane and makes no sense.

The PS4 Store App has to be one of the most poor implementations of something so simple i have ever seen. And despite enabling every level of security possible i still get DM spam that could be detected by a python 1 liner.

On the COD:MW lobby screen alone the console appears to turn into a 747 on take off.

Games are frame locked at 60fps - awful by PC standards and in a world of crossplay, a disadvantage. Performance limitations also limit FOV settings etc etc.

The controller battery life is terrible and it doesn't have bluetooth audio.

> may I suggest a HN-friendly alternative? Hows about selling a more open > system that allows end-users to tinker and contribute themselves?

Could call it a PC or something.

<comment><USER11> > I'm sure phones had better GPUs 3-4 years ago than the PS4, and more RAM

Means nothing though, where is the software? These supposedly dated and under- powered machines are still where the production of some of humanities not only most ambitious art of the last 100 years but most profitable art is being produced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've always wondered if you could automate a sort of standard assembly system with a certain amount of adjustments within some parameters (device dimensions, how things are connected)... and pump out any number of different electronics all on the same assembly line / factory using the same robots?

Granted that probably already is a thing, or isn't for good reason.

<comment><USER37> As you might imagine, this is already the case in places like Shenzhen - there's off the shelf "building blocks" for machines - not necessarily to any written standard, though. In this[1] Strange Parts video he mentions it. If you watch some of his other videos you'll start to notice that many of the machines actually look similar - I highly recommend watching them, they're great.

[1]: [https://youtu.be/PZBQzLfCKpw?t=1019](https://youtu.be/PZBQzLfCKpw?t=1019)

<comment><USER27> That video was incredible. The machines that makes the product, the lithium ion battery for your iPhone, is this super intricate process, that outputs the final product. And everything is made from the raw materials.

Now, this is what I call a true fabrication process.

<comment><USER38> 'Industrial lego' as some call it. Get all right bits and pieces, put them together and you have a production line. Every piece comes with detailed specifications, performance curves, maintenance instructions etc - which means an industrial part is more expensive than consumer grade stuff doing the same task. But when you're building a big machine you don't want unplanned downtime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So why do most of the PS4s I find on ebay all say "Made in China"? Are the parts made in China and then assembled in Japan at the Kisarazu plant? Or are they only making PS4 units in Japan for the domestic Japanese market...and making the rest of the world's units in China?

<comment><USER40> Sony uses multiple OEMs, including Sony EMCS in Japan and Foxconn in China.

Usually, the first batches of a Sony product are made in Japan or the ones sold domestically.

If you buy an early PlayStation 1, 2, 3 or 4 in Japan, they're usually all Made in Japan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> A good baseline to measure how fast these are would be to look at comparative Xbox production times.

</comment><comment><USER42> Taking out the human element. China knows it's coming and it's a big reason they're "investing" in poor countries. They won't have the upper hand on cheap labor soon.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm so fascinated by lights out "autofac" manufacturing. Instead of amazon warehouses along I-90 let's just have "autofac" clusters that can make most anything.

</comment><comment><USER44> Also the origin story for the Portal games.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is so cool, but how long till they automate the packaging too?

<comment><USER46> At only 2 workers per line to package them, would it be worth it to automate that role? Seems like they might've min/maxed the automation already.

<comment> blaser-waffle There is also some (if limited) utility in having someone on the line doing stuff, watching stuff, and serving as a form of QC. You can hang in the control room watching the latest, greatest SCADA software run things, but it's useful to have some eyes-on as the line runs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> When will Sony start supporting Vulkan on PS?

<comment><USER48> I seriously doubt it. The PS4 has a custom graphics API which directly creates command buffers in the GPUs native format. There's not really much of a graphics driver at all other than what's necessary to isolate the game from the OS.

<comment><USER47> Why not though? It makes it easier for developers, instead of the need to address yet another proprietary API. Simplifying things has value.

That API was created by Sony when something like Vulkan didn't exist yet, but today there is no good reason _not to_ support Vulkan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> That indeed is impressive.

</comment><comment><USER50> Nah. They are killing it because of amazing exclusives. That's all.

<comment><USER51> Aha, color me confused. Which would be those?

<comment><USER50> The Last of Us, Uncharted, God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn

<comment><USER51> It's all senseless shooting or close combat...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> nice video

</comment><comment><USER53> Impressive</comment>


Taiwanese businessmen plan to bring the most rural part of China into the 21st century - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200810/rural-china

<comment><AUTHOR> The subtitle from the article probably does the subject more justice, but wouldn't fit in the 90 character limit:

 _Two idealistic Taiwanese businessmen happened into the most rural part of China and thought: Let's bring it from the 15th century to the 21st._</comment>


Show HN: WriteMapper 2 - <AUTHOR> https://writemapper.com <comment><USER2> This looks awesome, I'll use it for the next writeup that I need to make. I was using a basic mind-mapping app, but this looks like it will fit much better in my work flow, by adding the Markdown content under the Mind Mapping nodes.

One thing that seems to be missing though is a spelling checker for MacOS, are there any plans to add one?

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks great, but I elected the 7 day free trial and it popped "trial expired - purchase now" on the first start after install. Immediate uninstall.

</comment><comment><USER4> where have i seen this product before...</comment>


Jon Stewart skewers Freemium iOS Games [video] - <AUTHOR> http://getdenso.com/videos/2711806-december-08-2011-ed-gillespie-part-3 <comment><USER2> Forget the "targeted at our kids!" or "$99 fishies!" thing for a moment, those are IMO red herrings (no pun intended).

The real issue with freemium is that I've yet to see a single example that's actually a _game_ , as opposed to one armed bandits masquerading as games.

Of all the examples I've played, none are any _fun_. They are simply designed to trap you into a treadmill, cough up some dollars, and hopefully run this cycle a few times before you brain kicks in and realize you haven't had any fun the entire time.

I love mobile games. Angry Birds is a great time waster, Cut the Rope actually has a surprising amount of strategy behind it. Neither of these are freemium. Thank God. Hell, I don't even mind the idea of episodic gaming - I will gladly cough up a few dollars now and again to see the next chapter of a story or play a few more levels.

Maybe I'm just being an old curmudgeon, but there was a time when "gaming" actually meant "fun", not "psycho-manipulative casino trap".

<comment><USER3> _The real issue with freemium is that I've yet to see a single example that's actually a game, as opposed to one armed bandits masquerading as games._

I consider those _games_ to be a type of psychological malware that spreads through social obligations.

[http://www.thepensiveprogrammer.com/2010/05/are-social- oblig...](http://www.thepensiveprogrammer.com/2010/05/are-social-obligation- games.html)

<comment><USER4> Ack, accidental downvote. Sorry about that, I'd take it back if I could.

<comment><USER5> Don't worry, I upvoted it to offset your downvote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tap Fish CEO points out how far Daily Show strayed from reality: [http://zenentrepreneur.blogspot.com/2011/12/top-10-things- da...](http://zenentrepreneur.blogspot.com/2011/12/top-10-things-daily-show- with-jon.html)

<comment><USER7> I love the Daily Show but this made me think twice about it's content. There's some extreme trolling going on here that will make me look at their skewering of the right in a different way - which is probably a good thing.

With all the real crazy stuff going on, I'd expect The Daily Show not to have to invent fake stories, but I guess even they have airtime to fill.

<comment><USER8> I think the issue of kids being manipulated by mobile games is a legitimate issue.

That aside, the Daily Show is comedy. It's astonishing that people are surprised that their sketches aren't factually accurate. They have 'live' reports from heaven and hell for f __ks sake. Enjoy it, try not to form opinions based on it.

<comment><USER7> People keep using the "it's a fake news show" as a defense but I don't buy into that. I've always thought of the Daily Show as satire, holding up real news stories to ridicule has a long and glowing history of influencing the public - once you start twisting stories to fit in with a joke you've lost the high ground.

The fact that gamification's effect on kids is a legitimate issue makes it worse - there's enough real craziness around to make fun of without inventing some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was under the impression you needed to enter your app store password to make a digital purchase.

The vulnerability _i thought_ was that the iPad remembered the password for a short amount of time, if you handed your iPad to a kid in that time they could fire up the app and make a purchase without needing to re-enter the password. Typically though, the kid would be unable to make purchases without a password.

I lesson I learned quickly on the iPad was that few applications were really free. Either the ad's were intrusive or the majority of the content had to be purchased. I typically do not bother with free app's any more and just look for a high rated paid version.

<comment><USER10> > I was under the impression you needed to enter your app store password to > make a digital purchase.

That is correct.

> The vulnerability i thought was that the iPad remembered the password for a > short amount of time, if you handed your iPad to a kid in that time they > could fire up the app and make a purchase without needing to re-enter the > password

That is also correct, but can be fixed via parental restrictions: the default configuration allows in-app purchases, mandates password entry and remembers the password for fifteen (15) minutes, it's possible to disable in-app purchase altogether (independently from AppStore purchases) and to not remember the password at all.

<comment><USER11> One problem might be that many kids know their parents' password – they mght even be the ones who created the account for their parents.

<comment><USER9> Many parents hide behind a wall of ignorance. That looks technical so I will get my kid to do it. Maybe when I get a bit older I will be the same. However... as soon as my kid asks for my credit card details I will be like 'hang on.. whats this for?'

I remember the first purchase I made on Amazon. I was like 13 and I needed my mum's card to make it. She knew nothing about computers and almost nothing about the internet. It took her 2 weeks to look into it before giving me the OK. She then struggled through the Amazon website to get what I wanted. Spent a large amount of time making sure she was only getting one, the item was correct and it was being delivered to the right address. She then pressed the purchased button.

That is parenting. That is common sense. I have no idea when it became the norm to trust teen and preteen kids with parents passwords and access to credit card linked accounts.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like you've got this parenting thing sorted out. Do you have any kids?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a hard time imagining how the CEO did't see this coming. He either must not be familiar with the show at all, or must have some serious cognitive dissonance going on.

Also, I think it is good to see Stewart and co. cash in on some of the ridiculousness of SV. I thoroughly enjoy video games on a limited basis, and gladly pay for the experience, but never quite understood how anyone could consider the freemium game model anything but a boderline scam.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I have a hard time imagining how the CEO did't see this coming. He either > must not be familiar with the show at all, or must have some serious > cognitive dissonance going on.

I think this applies to most interviewees on the Daily Show.

<comment><USER14> It's worth pointing out that The Daily Show has always employed a modest amount of creative editing during their interviews.

To my knowledge it's just to accentuate the comedic effect and not to the point of actually manufacturing any portion of the interview, but it's no coincidence their interviewees routinely come across like complete buffoons.

<comment><USER13> Stumbled across this. Sounds like the original pitch was that it was going to be a segment on the economy. It makes it slightly more understandable (how one can get duped into this), but unless you are an author or a Nobel prize winner getting interviewed live by JS, it would be wise to stay away from the show.

<http://zenentrepreneur.blogspot.com/>

<comment><USER14> Good find, and definitely worth a read! 4 hours is certainly ample time to slip up and make a mistake.

The live interviews seem to be a safe bet. It would reflect poorly on them if they routinely skewered their guests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think he is skewering games that smell very much like manipulative scams. A "game" that targets children, is initially free and then asks them to pay $100 (by clicking a button in game) for some virtual fish? What?

</comment><comment><USER16> So to view this video on "denso", video that they've appropriated from another content creator, all I have to do is download the denso app?

Gee, that sounds so much less sketchier than the free mum thing.

*Edit: I was using my iPad. I understand that the Daily Show site doesn't support iOS. Still, this is kind of annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can view the video from the browser and it doesn't require an app download - if you can't, its probably a bug. Please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com with your browser/OS details and we'd love to figure out the root cause. Thanks!

<comment><USER16> My apologies. I forgot to include that I was viewing this from my iPad. You can see how this is kind of annoying, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for this, there was a bug in our player which didn't enable HTML5 mode. It should work now - do let us know if it doesn't, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If this was iamclovin's way of showing us "Denso," the splash page didn't impress. The video took forever to load, stuttered continually, and basically failed to get me to explore farther. I also particularly dislike video players where I can't go "full screen" (Apple trailers I'm looking at you.)

Oh, and it's not even 0800 EST.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, promotion is obviously a welcome benefit of sharing something I thought was a very interesting take on the world of social/freemium gaming.

I apologize for the bad experience though - we're still a young service constantly looking to improve and we definitely welcome more feedback - thanks!

edit: You can now enable fullscreen on the player.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Checking on the App Store (<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tap- fish-2/id443891725?mt=8>), you can buy less than $99 worth of "FishBucks". Most in-app purchases are between $1 and $10. It's just a freemium as any other.

You can disable in-app purchases with Parental Controls, which should be used by, you know, parents, to, err, control.

Of course, being The Daily Show (or should I say "American TV"?), it's completely one-sided and exaggerated. That gets the message across, I guess.

<comment><USER19> Disabling in-app purchase is something new that was added to the App Store because of complaints by parents whose kids ran up huge bills.

<comment><USER20> Parental restrictions allowing you to disable in-app purchase were released the same time in-app purchase was released with IOS 3.0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Too bad Jon Stewart's writers didn't bother to "skewer" unsupervised pre- teens.

There is a balance here - the same kids will also run out into busy streets.

Handing your kids an iphone or ipad with an attached credit card is insane.

<comment><USER22> _Too bad Jon Stewart's writers didn't bother to "skewer" unsupervised pre- teens._

The writers simply don't have time to skewer everything that might deserve it in a single 4-minute spot. I'm sure that they aren't particularly in favour of unsupervised pre-teens, and are probably able to find a gag or two there if needed, so they might get around to addressing that in time.

 _Handing your kids an iphone or ipad with an attached credit card is insane._

My father's iphone has two apps on it: some golf thing, and Angry Birds. He played the latter for two minutes because he was curious. I certainly wouldn't brand him "insane" for not knowing about the Mighty Eagle and handing his phone to a six year-old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Worth watching. Asif Mandvi (Daily Show) did a really nice piece on that. They "featured" one software company that peddles this kind of slimeware. It actually tricks kids into buying stuff like digital fish for $99 in the middle of a game! Most parents don't realize this and one guy's kids ended up spending $1500 or so.

This is worse than penny auctions as they are stealing from kids here. True, people who actually participate in penny auctions probably have IQs worse than 7 yr olds. But stupidity is not an excuse.

<comment><USER24> > This is worse than penny auctions as they are stealing from kids here.

They're not stealing from kids. Kids don't have anything worth stealing. They are using psychology to entice kids to spend their parents' money when they're not looking; that's different.

> True, people who actually participate in penny auctions probably have IQs > worse than 7 yr olds.

This is an outrageous statement and I'm sure you realize this. These strategies are profitable precisely _because_ you don't have to be ridiculously stupid to be fooled. It's the same reason casinos work.

Everything these companies are doing is legal and whether we morally agree or not, this is how the business game is played: you find (hopefully legal) ways to get people to give you money.

If one of those ways is enticing people to _voluntarily_ agree to pay app store fees that they incur through their use, and then enticing them (or someone else on their behalf) to incur those fees, you've won the business game and you deserve the profits. Let customers vote with their money elsewhere if they disagree. Welcome to the free market.

Every time you walk into a store, you are being manipulated with psychological tricks centuries in the making. And any parent has paid far more for useless stuff they were psychologically coaxed into getting than their kids will ever spend on the app store.

Yet whenever children are involved, the slightest sign of "sleaze" triggers rage -- a deliciously ironic example of the same psychology these business people use to get your money :).

<comment><USER23> > This is an outrageous statement and I'm sure you realize this.

Outrage aside, please log in to a penny auction site and observe for a while. You'll see people spending hundreds of dollars for $25 gift cards. In effect they are buying $25 for $50 or so :). Usually the bid process lasts for a few hours (The pennies do have to add up). So this lack of judgement on the bidder's part is not momentary. It lasts at least for a couple of hours, time enough to think about your actions and do some basic math.

> If one of those ways is enticing people to voluntarily agree to pay app > store fees..

That's a bit of a stretch in this particular case. It was advertised as a free game. These people didn't voluntarily sign up to pay $1500. The amount charged goes beyond all reasonable expectations.

> you've won the business game and you deserve the profits.

Well, you've to be careful about entitlement there. In this case, all you've managed to do is rope in a number of clueless parents.

> Let customers vote with their money elsewhere if they disagree. Welcome to > the free market.

Yes I welcome the free market. You are seeing the free market in action. Just because you used the phrase "free market" does not justify the seller's actions. People like Stewart have picked it up because there is something fundamentally wrong with this kind of behavior. There is no reason to be smug about fundamentally making people part with money they would never have if they knew the fine print ahead of time. This is dishonesty and will always be punished eventually.

In a free market someone could sell you asbestos fortified lead paint infused toys to your kids a lot cheaper than market price. Maybe you didn't buy it, but someone dropped it off at a day care somewhere. This product should never have entered the market or been manufactured in the first place. In a free market, you could also have credit card companies arbitrarily change your APR or change their rules on you any time. If a telemarketer gets hold of your number in a free market and calls you in the middle of the night, are you ok with that? Even a "free" market has rules. Granted, it takes time for the free market to realize these shenanigans and react. To this particular product, we, the market is reacting :)

> Yet whenever children are involved, the slightest sign of "sleaze" triggers > rage

No. Children are being used as mere accessories or tools. Again, this particular case exhibits a great degree of sleaze!

> a deliciously ironic example of the same psychology these business people > use to get your money :)

True. Again, that doesn't justify the business's behavior. In the same segment, they also interview a child psychologist who argues that children's brains are not fully developed that they appreciate the nature of their actions.

I guess what I'm getting at is this whole business idea is based on the fact that children would buy digital fish for $99 without their parent's knowledge in the middle of a game. This model will not last long. They've made their money like a pretty good fly by night operator who hides behind platitudes like the "free market." So don't try to justify their actions using creative word play.

Edit: I just read the CEO's take on the whole deal. Sounds like Aasif did go overboard with a lot of creative editing. However, he does dodge the issue of $99 fish. Looks like that is indeed an option, but reserved for very special kids :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminded me of this article: "S Korean dies after games session"

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm>

</comment><comment><USER26> Is that how all videos and movies look on an iPad? That letterbox is huge. Seems distracting.

<comment><USER27> Have you really never used an iPad?</comment></comment>


Magic Leap photo leak shows prototype for first time - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/magic-leap-photo-leak-prototype-2017-2 <comment><USER2> It is hard to take Business Insider news about this company seriously. They reported in June that Magic Leap was going to start production by the summer (of 2016)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/magic-leap-production- begins-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/magic-leap-production-begins- summer-2016-2016-6)

<comment><USER3> According to discussion posted by Scoble, Magic Leap says this is just an "R&D test" and not the real thing. [https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154991564634655&id=5...](https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154991564634655&id=501319654&set=a.18390289654.24496.501319654&source=48&ref=page_internal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are those fiber optic cables connecting the glasses to the backpack or just power and data? If they've really built a fibre scanning display into glasses that size then some of the hype may be justified.

<comment><USER4> Also not sure those are batteries in his left hand. The power brick indicates the backpack is still plugged into the wall.</comment></comment>


Apple's 2TB iCloud plan will only cost $10 a month - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/06/icloud-2tb-plan-10-dollars-a-month/ <comment><USER2> I use mostly Apple devices, iPhone, Mac Pro, Airport Extremes, Apple TV. I love the tight integration.

For me, the choice isn't about price; it's about functionality.

I desperately wanted to like iCloud, but Apple missed the mark on this one.

First, the way they try to "integrate it" makes it difficult to manage your data. Don't want your iCloud stored on your root partition? Huge pain to move. Second, it's hard to tell exactly what it's doing, when it's syncing, what's in sync, partially syncing content, etc. In other words, clarity to what's occurring is lacking. The list goes on, but this was enough for me to drop it.

Google Drive got it right, which is what I'm using. (Of course so did Dropbox, who pioneered it)

Until Apple allows more flexibility as to what's synced, how it's synced, where its synced, I won't be going back at any price.

(Note: I do use iCloud for photo storage just because it's easy, but I'm not using anywhere close to the current limits).

<comment><USER3> I hear you on a lot of these issues, and as someone who uses Apple everything, I too rely on GDrive. But my girlfriend pays for the 200gb plan and loves it. She doesn't know what a root partition is, and she doesn't want to understand how syncing works. She just wants her stuff to be everywhere as she has come to expect it. This is where Apple shines. I wish they would open it up a bit to allow power users to really fiddle with it, but I would argue that they nailed the intended functionality which is specifically to abstract away all of what you mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The choice of the word "only" is an interesting one. It may be better than Drive or Dropbox, but from my perspective that comes out to $120/yr, which is still double the price of a Crashplan or Backblaze yearly subscription, both of which are unlimited.

I don't have a Mac, so many someone can explain whether the iCloud integration into MacOS and iOS is worth the price premium. For me, it wouldn't be enough, as I have _way_ more than 2TB of data.

<comment><USER5> Also Amazon Cloud Drive is $60/year, and is unlimited. They also have an unlimited plan for photos for $12/year.

<comment> david-cako ACD just royally fucked those of us that use rclone with it. I've now just bought a bunch of hard drives and a recent model optiplex to keep at a family member's house for my offsite backup. Not worth the "convenience" of a managed service when they pull this shit, especially with how expensive it really is compared with owning the equipment and keeping it at a friend/family's house.

Apparently rclone violated amazon's TOS by having an API key in the source code instead of authing with a central server? The cynic in me says "whelp, that's what we get for actually utilizing an 'unlimited' service".

<comment><USER6> How is their local internet connection going to handle that? Do you have the same kind of professional reliability like data centers do?

You should be doing a local NAS type thing like you do with your optiplex at home and a cloud service to diversify your backup types.

<comment> david-cako I think the 99.99% uptime that most residential internet has will suffice for my incremental backups that I run daily from all of my machines. ACD with rclone had relatively mediocre throughput and slow stat-ing compared to a basic rsync, so if anything I'm in better shape than before for performance.

I already have internal, networked, and cold backups. I just needed one offsite. Doesn't matter to me whether it's a 15 minute drive away, or across the country. If my entire city gets nuked I have bigger things to worry about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To put things in perspective, Hubic's 10 TB plan costs 50€ a year, that's about USD 4.7 a month.

That doesn't mean anything about features / reliability / whatever, though. I'm no user of either of these services.

<comment><USER8> Reads are really slow. Thumbnail previews take ages to load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised engaget included Amazon in their comparison as Amazon lacks filesystem integration (on MacOS and Linux; dunno about Windows) which doesn't really make them competitors for Dropbox, Box, Google Drive or iCloud.

Dropbox seems to have the best integration despite their underhanded use of Accessibility capabilities.

Our company has tried to use Google Drive, but found too often the client would claim that the sync was up-to-date while in fact it had simply stopped synching. We now have a Frankenstein system of google docs for text, GD for a library of PDF literature (for historical reasons), and DB pdfs, powerpoint and excel, and code. Sucky.

We used Box at a previous company. Meh. It seems to be aimed at F500 companies.

Oh and I continue to get a stream of confidential documents from another previous employer who standardized on Google, despite my efforts to stop it. Lucky for them I'm a nice guy since I'm no longer covered by NDA ;-).

<comment><USER10> Amazon Drive doesn't provide filesystem integration? What is it by "filesystem integration" that you mean that it doesn't do (on MacOS and Windows, at least)?

<comment><USER9> Well blow me down: when I go to the Amazon Drive page there's now an "app" button and if I click on it there's something that implies it's a FS driver. Either it's new or I was blind when I looked at Amazon before.

Prime gives you free Amazon storage, so I had a preference to use it instead of paying for DB. I'll give it a try, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you own your own domain, Google's GSuite for Business costs $10/month/user and offers unlimited storage. I'm fortunate to have fiber at home and upload to GDrive at around 90 megabytes/second.

Yes, it says you only get unlimited with 5 users (at $10/month apiece) but it works with only one.

I have just under 17 TB in mine-- I point Crashplan to a Google Drive mounted via FOSS rclone[1], saving $120/year for my old Crashplan family plan. And of course it's great for storing whatever you want, movies, pictures, etc.

One major disadvantage for iOS users is that you can't store your iOS backups on Google Drive. So I also pay Apple $1/month for the 50GB plan, simply because their base 5GB plan is insufficient to backup 2 iOS devices.

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

<comment><USER12> That's going away, because of rampant abuse of Google's services and their inability to shut down pirate movie sites that use redirectors and fetchers to steal links from Google's CDN.

<comment><USER13> Source?

<comment><USER12> Well given they're shutting down GSuite accounts which upload movies and their continued insistence on increasing difficulty for get_video_info methods to fetch video source, I give it 1-2 months before they stop offering unlimited storage with GSuite.

<comment><USER13> The accounts recently deleted were sold on ebay against TOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To anyone seriously considering this, I urge you to check out Syncthing. It's free. You install it on all your machines and it syncs the files to each. If you lose a computer all of your files are available from one of the other ones in your setup.

<comment><USER15> Syncthing is great for file sync.

If you have a 2TB RAID box somewhere, preferably offsite, preferably backed up to Crashplan, things start to look similar to cloud storage.

BTW running ZeroTier on your machines _and_ on a small cloud box with cheap traffic makes for a great LAN-like setup, when you e.g. have easy time syncing with your home machine behind NAT from anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apple charges $1 for 50gb . By default I have 5GB and have a 16gb phone , constantly fighting for space cleaning up to install apps or take a photo. Why can't they make default storage 50gB which is more than enough for many. I pay $700 for my phone can't they spend like $1 per month on me to give 50GB, they have $250 billion in bank doing nothing. Google gives unlimited storage for photos and 16megapixel. Why can't apple do something similar

<comment><USER17> Why would they? You already overpaid for their hardware and ecosystem because you believe in it. A smart consumer would, given the defined variable if not wanting to switch to android etc, buy a bunch of microsd and backup to them. They sell dongles that plug into any phone's port and hold a microsd. You can even overwrite the card for free. And use its contents when you have no signal. Cloud debates are hilarious to me.

<comment><USER15> Have you seen a MicroSD die before your eyes, failing writes, then reads? I did several times.

A RAID array of MicroSDs, or maybe other flash devices, could be more reasonable reliability-wise, but it would be anything but a sleek consumer device.

OTOH, Apple is selling the "experience", the polish and automagic features. Maybe iCloud integration leaves a lot to be desired, it still beats a dongle 99% of the time.

(Disclaimer: Android user since Android 1.x.)

<comment><USER17> Yes I have and it's no less horrifying then thinking you can access your cloud server when you suddenly cannot. My point is for a small amount you could afford to buy microsd cards in bulk and backup every day. Or even CD-R/DVD-R/BR-R. But I was trying to keep the discussion to direct transfer from a cellphone as per the parent.

<comment><USER15> A relatively hassle-free, alternative local backup solution makes sense! Does it exist? For being realistically useful, it should work either over w-fi, or over cable when attached to a computer.

<comment><USER17> Yes as I already described amd you chose to ignore. Pick your choice or backup program that asks what drive and select your sd card. They are also available with wifi dongles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like you will be able to share that 2TB across the family too, which makes it quite attractive

<comment><USER19> Where do you see that?

<comment><USER20> Very bottom of the page here: [https://www.apple.com/macos/high-sierra- preview/](https://www.apple.com/macos/high-sierra-preview/)

"iCloud storage plans. With room for the whole family. Now you can share an iCloud storage plan with your entire family. Choose 200GB or 2TB and give everyone enough space to store photos, videos, documents, and more."

Strangely this comment is the only mention of it I have found outside of Apple's own site. I'm desperately looking forward to when this will be an option though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have an iPhone and use Onedrive for photo and video storage. Apple can do one with their greedy fingers. Besides now i get added functionality that iCloud cannot match: Share video and image with friends. Quick browsing on Desktop with folder like structure.

Added Office 365 ++ much more

</comment><comment><USER22> That's $10 too much.

</comment><comment><USER23> How much is the version that doesn't auto-share with hackers?

<comment><USER24> $100 for a 2TB hard drive.

Monthly fee to maintain access to your own data: $0.

Monthly fee to keep hackers from stealing your information and spreading it all over the Internet: $0.

Monthly fee to keep some slimy corporation from handing your data over without your knowledge in response to a secret warrant: $0.

<comment><USER25> One-time fee for when you want to restore data for the first time in years and bit rot has eaten everything: priceless

<comment><USER26> But of course he was smart and used ZFS so there is no issue with bit rot.

<comment><USER25> I was under impression that ZFS on a single disk is pointless, because while an error can be detected it can't be fixed. Am I wrong ?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Let SOcket CAT Be Thy Glue over Serial - <AUTHOR> https://bloggerbust.ca/post/let-socket-cat-be-thy-glue-over-serial/ <comment><USER2> Also, try `screen`

      screen /dev/ttyS0
      screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

You can specify baud rate (defaults to 9600), and a number of other parameters. Some of these are nicely documented at [https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/unix-linux-apple-osx-bsd- scree...](https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/unix-linux-apple-osx-bsd-screen-set- baud-rate/) if you dislike reading the entire man page for screen(1).

<comment><USER3> I imagine many will go see if tmux does it as well. Tmux appears to not want that feature: [https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/1862](https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/1862)

<comment><USER4> whats the advantage over just using something like cu inside a tmux window?

[https://man.openbsd.org/cu.1](https://man.openbsd.org/cu.1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> socat + "everything as a file" lets you network up stuff only designed to be used over a serial link too, which I've found super useful. Wireless calibration of a drone using software that only supports USB serial? Hook it up to a raspberry pi in AP mode, stick some socats with udp on one side and /dev/ttyUSB0 on the other, boom, now you can talk to the flight controller untethered with 10 minutes reading the man page for socat and some trial and error.

<comment><USER6> I'm using socat to emulate a PTY that I then run a PPP link over. socat gets its byte stream from an RTL-SDR and send out data using a tiny FM transmitter. After setting up these on both computers, I was able to SSH and ping google over FM radio.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any page describing it?

<comment><USER6> I'll be uploading a video to my youtube channel in the coming weeks! Part 1 will be describing the link layer. Part 2 will be full duplex communication.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsRWsHhvzSoMgVfiNhy0NoA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsRWsHhvzSoMgVfiNhy0NoA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slightly off topic, but socat and lzop are my favorite utilities for shuttling data around a local network at high speed.

Backing up a disk:

        alice$ pv /dev/sda | lzop | socat - tcp:bob:1234
        bob$ socat tcp-listen:1234 - > alice.sda.lzo

Copying a bunch of files:

        alice$ tar c dir | lzop | socat - tcp:bob:1234
        bob$ socat tcp-listen:1234 - | lzop -d | pv | tar x

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't netcat be easier?

<comment><USER8> Some versions of netcat have no way of closing the connection when the file is finished transferring. You just have to wait long enough and then hit control+c.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In case anybody is interesting, over the last month I used socat as a simple way to transfer serial over IP. Here you can see the "sending" part [https://novamostra.com/2020/05/15/rasperry-pi-as-a-usb- gadge...](https://novamostra.com/2020/05/15/rasperry-pi-as-a-usb-gadget/) and here [https://novamostra.com/2020/05/15/rasperry-pi-as-a-usb- gadge...](https://novamostra.com/2020/05/15/rasperry-pi-as-a-usb-gadget/) you can see how you can redirect input from a remote serial device or the local UART port of a Raspberry PI to the Gadget port using socat.

</comment><comment><USER10> AGH omg I've needed this. I'm connecting a few Digimesh nodes to Arduinos, Macs, and RPIs. Sometimes I just need to reproduce a problem by sending the raw transmission again a few times. I've used minicom, but it's a "little too much" tool for the job.

On OSX I haven't been able to get screen to work properly, not sure why; I've just used minicom.

</comment><comment><USER11> //Opinion

The issue with socat (and some other tools) is the esoteric argument syntax. Arguments should always be passed as "-s arg" for short option names, or more preferably "\--long-name argument" as long names, and multiple different things should be passed as multiple different arguments instead of some crammed way.

<comment><USER3> Since you can specify several devices on one command line, that might make the number of options too high.

The "cramming" allows the 2nd, 3rd, etc, argument to contextually tie to the first. Like: _" /dev/ttyUSB0,b115200,rawer"_

<comment><USER12> ffmpeg (and some other programs) has a different solution to this: options apply to the succeeding non-option argument: ffmpeg -f wav infile -f mp4 outfile means to convert the wav infile to an mp4 outfile. of course, nobody ever reads the manual, so they use it wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's the difference between netcat and socat?

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought this was about the old google ctf challenge...</comment>


Show HN: Fisher 3.0 – the package manager for the fish-shell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jorgebucaran/fisher/releases/tag/3.0.0 <comment><USER2> 3.0? Isn't the current version fisher 3.2.4? Or does the 3.0 refer to fish 3.0.0?</comment>


Who's the guy in the in-flight entertainment system? - <AUTHOR> https://anders.io/whos-the-guy-in-the-in-flight-entertainment-system/

<comment><USER2> I have been tempted to play with the entertainment screen in airplanes a couple of times.

But as it is on an airplane traveling 900km/h 10 000m in the air. I dont feel like poking at stuff that is connected to the stuff that is keeping me and the other passengers alive.

Also it i don't feel like speeding life in prison.

But those things don't exactly feel like top quality stuff. They feel more like something that than be crashed and taken over in 20 minutes using a teensy++ and a Linux laptop.

<comment><USER3> In-flight entertainment system is barely connected to the important parts of the airplane, if at all.

<comment><USER4> Future HN headline:

Hackers Remotely Kill a Boeing during Flight - With Me in It

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I noticed the unmistakable X Windows "X" cursor and gray loading screen on an in-flight entertainment system that crashed on me. I think it was Virgin America, one of their early flights after they launched.

<comment><USER6> The Delta in-flight entertainment systems also (at least as of a couple years ago) seem to be Linux-based. I had one crash and reboot spontaneously while I was using it, and was greeted by a couple Tux logos and a verbose Linux 2.4 boot process when it came back up.

<comment><USER7> I used to freelance at one of the big two major IFE manufacturers. Their systems are a bit of a hodgepodge of platforms. Currently, the dominant platform is Linux, running either a) a QT based GUI or b) a HTML based GUI.

But most new planes coming off the ground today are moving to Android based systems, since they have many advantages - it's much easier to get content like games and apps, and cheaper to engineer and develop for.

One of the problems with IFE systems today is that both A380 and 787 deliveries have been significantly delayed - often the IFE hardware is just sitting in a warehouse for several years waiting for the plane to catch up to it. So by the time the plane finally is delivered to the customer the IFE system may already be 4-5 years out of date.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Several years ago, on a transatlantic flight, I observed some strange behavior in a game when I specified a high score name with some special characters. I noticed it would crash and exit back to 'home'.

I tried to hack at it by specifying the semicolon and such, but could not get it to do more.

I observed they had it at least mildly secure - it would not accept input for some special characters when typed; they would simply not appear on the screen within the game. But clearly there are holes in these. Without more information on the construction it was not trivial though.</comment>


Not everything is awesome - <AUTHOR> http://labs.ft.com/2014/08/not-everything-is-awesome/

<comment><USER2> Awesome article. I can't tell you how sick I am off job postings which say they're looking for "rock star" developers, etc. Nothing turns me of faster because as this article illustrates well, who on earth would describe themselves as a "rock star"? And would they make a good employee? I doubt it. I certainly don't want to work with people who think they're rock stars, or for people who expect me to be their subjective and imprecise definition of a rock star.</comment>


Ask HN: How can react's SEO argument hold up? - <AUTHOR>

I have read in a lot of comparisons and tutorials that react has the advantage of being SEO friendly because you can better render the first page on the server.
How is that even an argument when the maker of angular is the absolute dominant leader of search engines? <comment><USER2> The problem was that until recently googles crawler didn't execute JS at all, it only looked at the markup received directly from the server. That meant that, to google, your SPA looked like an empty page since it's rendered on the client. That's why being able to render your SPA on the server so you can send the markup with your first request was necessary for SEO.

Google have started executing JS now though, so it's able to crawl your SPA site even if they're not server-rendered. However if you want a good ranking on other search engines other than google you still need server-side rendering.

</comment><comment><USER3> What does Google making Angular have to do with how crawable Angular pages are? Are you saying that Google's crawlers have optimizations for Angular pages, or that Angular is also very well suited for server side rendering? I don't get the argument, sorry.

Also, Google is not the "absolute dominant leader" everywhere, so compatibility with other search engines can matter a lot.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am saying that Google can at any time make angular crawable if it wishes so. Having two main products incompatible is not very common or wise and I think they will do it soon</comment>