Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her - <AUTHOR> https://letgrow.org/mom-lets-her-kids-walk-to-the-bakery-down-the-block-child-protective-services-tells-her-never-again-till-they-are-12/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how we got to this. I'm all for parents being protective over children that aren't theirs, but when did we develop the entitlement that we should police the parents of other children?

Obligatory "When I grew up...": When I grew up (I'm 32), there were still murderers, kidnappers, drug dealers, gangs, etc. My parents and the parents of all my friends let us roam free from the minute we finished our chores until dark. They often let us decide for ourselves how we wanted to get our lunch, dinner, snacks, etc. We could choose our own transportation, our own paths. I treasured that freedom.

What's crazy is that it's my same generation of parents that now seem to be doing the policing. I had "heard" of this happening around me, but I was still dumbfounded when it first happened to me. One Summer, my 6 year old was playing in the front yard. My wife was sitting inside on the couch in front of the window so she could keep an eye on her when suddenly the neighbor walks up to my daughter, grabs her hand and brings her to the front door. "Did you know your daughter was playing outside alone?" in a very accusatory tone. This isn't a call to CPS, but it still made us feel both angry and ashamed.

As a Utah resident, one thing I'm happy to see is the new "Free Range Parenting" law [1]. I still think it's crazy that it was needed, but I think in today's parenting culture it really, really is.

[1] [https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Family/utahs-free-range- parenting...](https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Family/utahs-free-range-parenting- law-now-officially-effect/story?id=55021088)

<comment><USER3> completely agree. I'm roughly same age as you, same experience. When we were kids we literally ran all over the place until dark with no adult supervision. Man I still remember coming home, having cuts and bruises all over me, having a pencil stuck out of my arm, bleeding, covered in poison ivy, the works. But I loved it! Those were some of the best memories of my life, exploring the woods, building tree forts and swinging from tree to tree with garden hoses we strung up in the trees, finding lizards, swimming with tadpoles, catching carp with my hands, building fish traps. Playing football in the mud on those perfect autumn days.

We used to build spears from old broomsticks and shields from rusty trash can lids and ride our bikes down hills at one another jousting each other off the bikes. I remember one hot summer day we actually figured out how to make our own fires by rubbing sticks, sparking rocks and using a lot of very dry pine needles. We then cooked ourselves some random veggies we stole from a neighbors garden. It tasted absolutely disgusting but of course everyone said it was delicious.

I don't get why so many people in our generation turned into complete snowflakes with their kids (don't forget our generation is also responsible for "gender neutral parenting").

<comment><USER4> My mate Bob had free-ranging parents, but he was hit by a car and killed when he was seven so he's not here to say "survivor bias".

<comment><USER5> Plenty of kids whose parents _were_ watching them got hit by cars, because parents can't be watching every second. Kids with a tendency to get carried away and run in front of cars are going to do it even with their parents in view. Better to condition kids not to do a few obvious dangerous things, than to maintain constant vigilance and try to intervene before they do dangerous things.

Also, these days, a parent "watching" their kid(s) means proximity, not awareness. The parent may be within view, but that's useless when they're glued to their phone a good percentage of the time and only glance up now and then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone curious in an in-depth look at how we got here and the unintended consequences, check out Jonathan Haidt's book "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure". This gets into what happens when these kids leave home and no longer have parents bulldozing their path.

Here's a short talk from the same author about how overparenting backfired: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aMAJYtRPPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aMAJYtRPPM)

 _" In the mid-'90s there was a sharp shift to overprotective parenting. In previous generations, kids were allowed to out of the house unsupervised from age 5-8, which has now become age 12-16. As a result, their independence, resilience, and problem-solving skills suffer."_

</comment><comment><USER7> The busy body who was "following closely behind them" sounds like she could have been a kidnapper. The parent should have called the police on that person.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, maybe they should consider legal action against this person as well.

(Not surprising this is Canada t.b.h. this is the country where it seems people can't follow common sense in place of procedures and where people are too worried about anything that "might be dangerous")

And of course kids die because of such stupidity [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ontario-mom-urges- scho...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ontario-mom-urges-schools-to- let-asthmatic-kids-carry-puffers-1.2455861)

<comment><USER9> The Ontario law preventing children from carrying and administering their own medication was changed in 2015[1].

[1] [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-law-passes- to...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-law-passes-to-let- asthmatic-kids-carry-inhalers-in-school-1.3055534)

<comment><USER8> Good to know, still it's sad that this was an completely preventable death

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can see the social erosion when you compare to a more coherent society like say japan. [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/09/why-are- littl...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/09/why-are-little-kids- in-japan-so-independent/407590/)

<comment><USER11> These posts rarely point out incredibly strict immigration policies and the stark racial makeup of the countries that rely on group dynamics for rather inconvenient reasons. When you have a largely homogenous population that has been stable over decades - centuries in the case of Japan - then these types of relationships evolve.

<comment><USER12> It has nothing to do with immigration. I was out walking to school, going to the bakery, sledding, etc with friends in Germany throughout the 90s from like age 6.

<comment><USER11> Yes, Western European countries - particularly in the 1990s - have a much less diverse racial makeup than counterparts like the United States of America. That's exactly my point.

<comment><USER12> Germany and Western Europe generally also had a strong, nationally-funded social support system and a high quality, affordable education, which contributed to smaller socio-economic divisions and combated the rise of an impoverished class whose members would be stuck in a setting surrounded by danger and casual crime. Even those that are lucky enough to have decent education in US are often having to sacrifice their own upward mobility in order to support their homes and families at early ages.

The political and media landscape in the US is blatantly, openly toxic and corrupted so severely by just a few powerful people that it feels second maybe only to the Soviet Union and despotic dictatorships. Race (and religious difference) has always been, since the foundation of the country, the thing that the ruling classes of the US blame while pillaging the commonwealth. While you may idolize ethno-nationalism, it will solve no real social problems.

Racial minorities in the US have been systemically mistreated for centuries. To look at a Native American reservation today and blame its residents for their own misfortune is equivalent to ripping out 350 years worth of pages from a US History book. It's deluded. Racial minorities in the US don't choose a harder life of fewer opportunities and a tougher path to success -- they have it imposed on them by hundreds of years of force.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do we have any studies done yet which show whether or not this is a growing trend or just random isolated incidents in countries with millions and millions of families containing children?

In my region and places I travel I see children walking around everywhere and there don't seem to be armies of CPS workers stalking them.

I guess I'm just wondering if this is an actual trend or just more outrage_porn attempting to get people riled up about how the millennials are killing childhood or whatever.

<comment><USER14> It's odd, as I see it where I live, but not my hometown. The funny thing is, I live in a bigger town (~70,000) than my hometown (~3,000) is. The children of our neighborhood there (a set of four streets) all are out all the time during the summer, often unsupervised and with younger siblings. They'll play up and down the streets, and talk to anyone they see walking and wave and such. They're very street aware too.

It's actually nice to see, as my hometown is not like that at all. Parents often won't even let their kids go to the park playground while watching an older (and sometimes younger!) sibling play ball. That's despite the fact there's other parents over there, and it's fairly small so everyone really does seem to know everyone. A family friend has gotten criticized for letting their kids walk from their house to their grandparents, which wasn't even a mile on back roads. They also let their son ride his bike to the park often (2 miles, perhaps), and got criticized for that. It's really weird to see the contrast in the two places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I biked all over my Midwest USA neighborhood, to and from school, and beyond from the time I was about 8, maybe even younger. This was in the 1970s. It would have been unthinkable for anyone to be overly worried about it, much less report it to the authorities, because that's what almost all the kids did.

<comment><USER16> The kid in article was 3 years old. There is a big difference between a 3 year old kid and an 8 year old.

<comment><USER17> The kid in the article was with their 7 year old sibling and within sight of their parent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This was a pretty big story at the time here in Winnipeg. The context is that CPS has a bad rep here. Note that they took a whole month even to follow up on the complaint.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is kind of a grey area it seems. Manitoba IS one province that specifies a legal minimum age of supervision (12) but it applies only to being left at home or in a car (edit: I was wrong about these specifics. They leave it more generalized in the actual law) and is still left with a clause about "unless reasonable situations exist". Meanwhile the age to allow kids to walk to school, while unofficial and no limit exists across canafa, seems to be 9 years by majority opinion agreements.

Sounds like this social worker stepped out of bounds. If Canadian government is by and large okay with kids walking to school themselves at 9, surely walking a block with a 9 year old is reasonable enough. It's clear the parent was still aware of where they were so I'd say it's an arguable case, but IANAL.

Tbh I don't know if this is just one isolated case, but it kinda sounds like it.

Edit: here is the law and I linked the subsection that is relevant. It more clearly states what I paraphrased above. [https://web2.gov.mb.ca/laws/statutes/ccsm/c080e.php#17(2)](https://web2.gov.mb.ca/laws/statutes/ccsm/c080e.php#17\(2\))

</comment><comment><USER16> It is kind of dangerous for a 3 year old to go, 3 year olds like to run especially when they are with siblings, and they can easily end up running on a road, and then someone who hit them on a car will have to live their whole life with that tragedy...

<comment><USER20> Maybe, but according to the article until they are 12 it's not legal.

In some countries, you need to drive you kid to school until they are 14.

<comment><USER21> According the article it does not say it's illegal, it says you have to make reasonable provisions for their supervision and safety if they're unattended. That strongly implies that it is ok under certain circumstances to let children under 12 do things alone, else it would just say that it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended, period.

I think a lot of people would argue that watching the kids until they're practically in the door of the bakery constitutes a reasonable provision of safety and supervision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a German I can't stop laughing about this. It's hilarious to me. If you are curious then see for example the following videos of an New Zealand living in Germany talking about differences in parenting.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLWFHlPF_g8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLWFHlPF_g8) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EpRFqWlVl4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EpRFqWlVl4)

</comment><comment><USER23> It's worth noting, this is in Canada. Laws are different everywhere.

I know that in most of the US, CPS will not come out for a single complaint, not ever. It has to be multiple, repeated complaints, and the vast majority of the time, it needs to be more than a kid walking down the street- generally, CPS has more than enough real child abuse cases to deal with that they don't have time to pick up the odd stuff.

Not saying this didn't happen, but that a localized context matters to these things.

<comment><USER24> This is not true. CPS comes out all the time for ridiculous things like 8-year-olds walking alone in a neighborhood (first time). Read any parenting blog.

We really need a law like Utah's in every state.

<comment><USER25> > We really need a law like Utah's in every state.

That's a phrase I thought I'd never read. Utah has some of the most outrageous nanny state laws, worse than stuff I could even dream up.

<comment><USER24> > Utah has some of the most outrageous nanny state laws

That may be so, but it's irrelevant to the fact that this particular law is both wise and greatly needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Two comments:

i) The term reasonable, I wishfully think, covers this particular incident. I don't think the average family in Canada worries about kidnappings, robberies etc.

ii) How are you expecting kids to grow, and what is the lesson, if you are the watchful un-trusting guardian for even simple tasks for a big fraction of their non-adult life?

(P.S. I remember everyone walked back from elementary school, we ran errands for our parents, ... Any different experience?)

</comment><comment><USER27> At five and six years old I was running around in the woods, playing far from home. In my opinion we've allowed the government to dictate how we are to raise and protect our children. The only way to solve this is to continually push to remove the government's authority To dictate how parents should raise their children.

</comment><comment><USER28> for all people saying what they were doing when they were young while crime rate was higher - was also the traffic higher or lower? it's rhetorical question, I have zero worries about kidnappings and other reasons regarding my children but when i see how are people driving and how big it's the traffic i am worried at what age i will let my children walk by themselves

i was actually thinking about letting my 3yo go to kindergarten by himself as teaching him independence since it's like 100m walk, but there is one road to cross and most importantly he is too weak to open door on both buildings, will see if he will be stronger by age 5-6 :)

</comment><comment><USER29> I biked around my neighborhood as young as 7, to the store a few blocks away, without any problems or hyperconcerned adults around. And the crime rates were higher at the time...

</comment><comment><USER30> If you are curious about the Utah law mentioned, you can find it at [https://le.utah.gov/~2018/bills/static/SB0065.html](https://le.utah.gov/~2018/bills/static/SB0065.html)

The definition of "Neglect" it uses:

>285 (35) (a) "Neglect" means action or inaction causing:

>286 (i) abandonment of a child, except as provided in Title 62A, Chapter 4a, Part 8, Safe

>287 Relinquishment of a Newborn Child;

>288 (ii) lack of proper parental care of a child by reason of the fault or habits of the parent,

>289 guardian, or custodian;

>290 (iii) failure or refusal of a parent, guardian, or custodian to provide proper or necessary

>291 subsistence, education, or medical care, or any other care necessary for the child's health,

>292 safety, morals, or well-being;

>293 (iv) a child to be at risk of being neglected or abused because another child in the same

>294 home is neglected or abused; or

>295 (v) abandonment of a child through an unregulated custody transfer.

>296 (b) The aspect of neglect relating to education, described in Subsection (35)(a)(iii),

>297 means that, after receiving a notice of compulsory education violation under Section

>298 53A-11-101.5, the parent or guardian fails to make a good faith effort to ensure that the child

>299 receives an appropriate education.

>...

>309 (c) "Neglect" does not include:

>310 (i) a parent or guardian legitimately practicing religious beliefs and who, for that

>311 reason, does not provide specified medical treatment for a child;

>312 (ii) a health care decision made for a child by the child's parent or guardian, unless the

>313 state or other party to a proceeding shows, by clear and convincing evidence, that the health

>314 care decision is not reasonable and informed;

>315 (iii) a parent or guardian exercising the right described in Section 78A-6-301.5; or

>316 (iv) permitting a child, whose basic needs are met and who is of sufficient age and

>317 maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm, to engage in independent activities,

>318 including:

>319 (A) traveling to and from school, including by walking, running, or bicycling;

>320 (B) traveling to and from nearby commercial or recreational facilities;

>321 (C) engaging in outdoor play;

>322 (D) remaining in a vehicle unattended, except under the conditions described in

>323 Subsection 76-10-2202(2);

>324 (E) remaining at home unattended; or

>325 (F) engaging in a similar independent activity.</comment>


Hey Apple, See If There's An App for This - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5661045/hey-apple-see-if-theres-an-app-for-this

<comment><USER2> Just use: "There's an app." It's much shorter.

<comment><USER3> I don't know trademark law very well, but the article implied that you might have problems with that phrase. And then there's the issue of Apple's trademark giving them plausible deniability WRT filing a bogus lawsuit; they don't have to win a decision to win by outspending you.

<comment><USER2> If the phrase is altered, short and generic like "There's an app"(no-tm) rather than "There's an app for that"(tm), I don't see why it wouldn't work. I didn't see anything in the article about "There's an app"(no-tm), only "There's an app for that"(tm).</comment></comment></comment>


InstaCRT - <AUTHOR> http://instacrt.com/

<comment><USER2> That's a really cool idea!

I wonder for how long the authors can be bothered to keep the machine running, and whether any customers will complain if/when it stops working.</comment>


How 'Gossip Girl' Is Changing the Way We Watch Television - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/arts/tv/features/46225/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm of the mind this is the case study for the upcoming generation of consumers. It's about the IP, not the medium. How else could a TV show be about so much more than the 40 minute episode?

<comment><USER2> it's about telling us what we like instead of the other way around. and the scary thing is that it is working so well.</comment></comment>


Rewrite Twitter to Improve Discourse - <AUTHOR> The general sentiment of discourse on Twitter seems to be at an all time low. It's an actively depressing place to spend any amount of time browsing. My question is, if Twitter could rewrite overnight, what fundamental changes should they make to the platform to make it a more pleasant place to exchange thoughts and ideas? Furthermore, what changes could be made to make the platform more open to civilised debate across a range of (potentially sensitive) topics?
I realise that hate is good for engagement, ideally any changes they made wouldn't affect this (else they wouldn't make them). I also realise that the average level of "pleasant" isn't a metric you can directly measure - so we could assume average positive sentiment per tweet.
On the second question let's assume you can measure ad hominem (somewhat possible: https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P19-2028.pdf) and changes which minimise this are desirable. <comment><AUTHOR> Some questions I had - which might spurn ideas. Obviously some may have undesirable side effects, some are technically challenging etc.

Q: if emojis didnt count towards character count, would the discourse on twitter be any better? Q: What if tweets has a minimum character count, instead of a maximum? Q: What if you could just detect Ad Hominem - [https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P19-2028.pdf](https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P19-2028.pdf) Q: What if Twitter had moderators? Q: What if you had a reputation on Twitter - and your reputation determined your reach? Q: What if you subscribed to topics and ideas - not to people? Q: What if Twitter fact checked every post? Q: What if there is no concept likes? OR what if there were downvotes as well as up? Q: What if it were easier to mark something as harmful? Q: What if the community was always kept small?

<comment><USER2> > OR what if there were downvotes as well as up?

Downvotes can be abused for undermining people's thought you disagree on.

Instead, provide a way to "counter-argument", which if upvoted, will count as downvote to the parent argument.

This will enable people to "rob" votes of swing voters from the parent argument to the counter-argument

Also, hint: you might want to separate those questions above d with double line endings

<comment><AUTHOR> Really like this idea, and thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The way it works right now, a ton of random people can write nasty defamatory things about you and before the reporting system kicks in you can't really do much. And even then they won't take most stuff down. For example most profane insults are perfectly fine to Twitter.

Blocking doesn't help much as it only blocks future replies from a given person.

You'd probably want to try solving this problem without being too censorious.

90% of accounts I've been harassed by looked like they've been made exclusively for that purpose so I imagine just being tougher on fake accounts would solve most of the problem.

Twitter is a niche social network with poor growth and a strong political slant so not buying the argument that it's so great for engagement. It just has a lot of mindshare in some circles. Could easily double the userbase.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can't fix social problems with technical solutions.

Twitter is by design a melting pot of opinions because of it's global access to anything, which is good and bad in it's own ways. Until this design changes, there is not much you can improve on fundamental levels. And any fundamental change would mean for twitter to stop being twitter. Then you could also just switch to your personal forum, blog, discord or whatever controlled safespace you prefer for your content.

Thouhg, this was with twitter always the case, it's nothing really new. Maybe it's your perception which changed, or your bubble which has moved? Maybe you are at the point of being "to old for this shit" now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughts, Twitter is a melting pot, and that's a fantastic thing. I would probably agree that fundamental social problems can't be "fixed" by technical solutions. However Twitter (in particular) seems to exacerbate out of group bias

<comment><USER4> It's not Twitter in particular. The same happens on reddit, facebook, youtube and any other place where enough peoplle gather to voice their opinions. Before twitter the same happend in usenet and smaller webforums. After twitter the same will happen in whatever global space will be envogue then.

The only real way to fix it is to not give people any space at all, otherwise hate will always find it's way. Anything else is just patching details and managing tradeoffs between advantages and disadvantages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you do not need global reach, private forums are great for discourse. Everyone one a private forum is there for a reason. The theme/topic of the forum is very focused.

For example, I belong to a karaoke forum. I used it to learn how to build my own karaoke system.

</comment><comment><USER6> Try to avoid the positive feedback loops in the system. Everything gets distorted by that.

Retweets get more views and in turn more retweets. And so on. Everyone tries to game this system to harvest these feedback loops. HN, Reddit, Facebook all have the same problem.

I'm preparing a blog article about this topic with an analysis and some solution approaches.

If you're interested, please contact me, I'm happy to discuss this very important topic.

</comment><comment><USER7> Add a captcha per post/retweet.

This would trash all the engagement metrics, but I feel like making bots do more work and making humans think twice about their actions on the site would make the platform better overall.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had been thinking about a sort of human prompt, like a time window to take back a tweet with a prompt to consider if it's kind/necessary. Won't do anything about bots, since I imagine it would just be a tick box or something, or no action means you're happy for the tweet to send

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Removing replies would be one way to differentiate themselves further from something like a facebook post.

Maybe also retweets without added context.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify - don't allow retweets with a reply? I like this idea to get around the sort of "dunk tweet" culture (assuming I'm understanding your point correctly)

<comment><USER8> Yeah exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Up and down votes with a karma system

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like the Karma system. I think Karma as a way to decide user permissions is interesting (as is the case on hacker news). I also wonder if karma should decide the "reach" of a tweet, that way more respected users get to amplify their ideas and trolls do not. Downvotes is a contentious one, as we want to foster active debate. The issue I see with downvotes is that their ambiguous - you might downvote because you disagree with the statement OR because you don't like the tweet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it Twitter or who you choose to follow?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good question - I found recently that I was following more political accounts and maybe if I used it just to keep up with my industry/hobbies I might have a nicer experience. Does anyone find twitter is a pleasant/supportive place though? (Genuine question)

<comment><AUTHOR> Although with that said, I don't notice political views seem to enter most discussion regardless of topic</comment></comment></comment>


Drawing mathematical functions by hand - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.brown.edu/~banchoff/DrawingTutorial/

<comment><USER2> see also Cassidy Curtis's Best Homework Ever (pdf): <http://www.math.brown.edu/~banchoff/BHE.pdf>

<comment><USER3> Wow! This is awesome. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know where to find tutorials like these, but for drawing less complex objects in 3-D like the ones that we can see in MIT multi-variable calculus courses?

</comment><comment><USER5> Gotta love a page that has a tutorial on "realistic shading" for drawings of 4-D objects.

</comment><comment><USER6> thats so cool - who needs software to draw 3d graphs, eh?</comment>


Mass Opt Out – Control Your Online-Tracking Status - <AUTHOR> http://optout.aboutads.info/ <comment><AUTHOR> Mass Opt Out by Region:

• In the US: Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) - [http://optout.aboutads.info/#!/](http://optout.aboutads.info/#!/)

• In Europe: European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (EDAA) - [https://www.youronlinechoices.com](https://www.youronlinechoices.com)

• In Canada: Ad Choices: Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada (DAAC) - [http://youradchoices.ca/](http://youradchoices.ca/)

\--

Source: [https://choice.microsoft.com](https://choice.microsoft.com)</comment>


Why "I'd Google it" is not an acceptable Interview Answer - <AUTHOR> http://softwareplusplus.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/why-id-just-google-it-is-not-an-acceptable-interview-answer/ <comment><USER2> "I'd google it" is a terrible answer to some questions, e.g. stuff people ought to know like what recursion is. It's a great answer to other questions, e.g. stuff not worth remembering (like API details you use infrequently).

Some things are simple enough you can (re)learn in 5 minutes with google. Others aren't. Knowing which is which is a good skill. Trashing Google in all cases equally is wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe one that can be answered by 5 minutes of Googling is not an acceptable interview question.

<comment><USER4> It really depends on the question.

From the article: "what is a class?" can easily be answered as a definition from a Google search, but that definition doesn't help you write a class, use a class, etc. Similarly, you can search for a definition of a join, but if you can't come up with an answer off the top of your head, you don't have the skill to use a join.

This is different from, say, being asked what the "succ" method of the Ruby Integer class does. Or, the preg_replace in PHP takes 5 parameters, which position do you place the subject string in?

Those are two different types of questions. The first paragraph has questions about key computer science/database topics that, if you don't know, it will take learning and mastery to use them in a practical application. The second paragraph has questions of an arbitrary nature - knowing argument order in one language doesn't prove you understand regular expressions nor does knowing what a somewhat ambiguously named method does - especially a method that is also called "next" and can be accomplished as "var += 1" both of which seem clearer.

But there definitely are some things that can be answered by searching that don't necessarily mean that the person has a mastery of the topic that would be required to actually use the definition. Now, the second set of questions might be a clue that this isn't a good place to work since they emphasize random knowledge that doesn't actually prove any competency, but that's another story.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, if you don't know what a class is and is applying for a OO programming job you don't qualify, and it's not OK to look it up on the job. That's basically what the article is saying.

But at least googling for answers to inane questions is better than going directly to asking your fellow coworkers. RTFM!!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the summary of the article:

 _All else being equal it's better to know the answer than to have to look it up. Also, the author of the article is going to assume all kinds of things about you_

<comment><USER7> I don't really think that captures what I was saying in the article. This quote is a little more representative of the overall message:

"On the job, the goal is to solve problems and get things done using any tool at your disposal. At the interview, the goal is to demonstrate why they should hire you instead of one of the other candidates who also have access to Google... A job interview is a competition, not a pass-fail test"

As for the comment that I am going to assume all kinds of things. Of course I am and so will other managers. We are all human and make assumptions all the time, often subconsciously. My point was just that it is in the candidate's best interest to recognize what you may be communicating by deferring to Google.

Getting mad about it doesn't help you get the job, so there is no sense in that. The intent of the article was to HELP candidates put their best foot forward with the benefit of some inside information from the other side of the interview table.

<comment><USER6> >A job interview is a competition, not a pass-fail test"

Yes, that's what it really means - "all else being equal during competition, remembering things will get you ahead".

The problem I have with you article is that all else is not equal. This could only work if you have an excess of qualified engineers. I have tons of anecdotal data about severe draught of qualified engieneers and none on the surplus, across Microsoft, Google, Amazon and funded Seattle startups. I am yet to see any data on actual competition, so your position does not pass the "inituition" test for me.

Are things that much different in the valley? It can't be, some of my data comes from people getting offers to move to the Valley.

>As for the comment that I am going to assume all kinds of things. Of course I am and so will other managers.

I think you are projecting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It used to be that this was a valid interview tactic - asking people hard/obscure stuff and seeing if you could get them to admit they didn't know, then get them to explain where they'd go to find out. It used to be that there were many different places to go to find disparate bits of technical know-how, each specific to the task in hand. It used to be that knowing how to find out was a valuable skill, required of any developer - every developer looks stuff up, no-one can know everything.

This has changed a lot over the last few years - now the answer to all of that is basically just 'Google it.'. The only value left in this interview tactic is to probe the depth/breadth of the candidates knowledge and to see how they respond when they get to the end of it, in an interview/pressured situation. It's a good sign when they calmly admit they don't know and suggest sensible strategies for finding out. It is, however, a terrible sign if their domain knowledge stops before you get to 'What's a class?' - you really need to know the important stuff, end of story.

I'm always shocked by the number of candidates that I've intervied who get weeded out by questions like that.

</comment><comment><USER9> In my youth (which was like...1 or 2 years ago) I used the far more naive "I'm not sure" or "I don't know" instead of "I'd Google it", and responded to the follow-up "So how would you find out?" question with some vague account of my research method (which included Google).

It turns out that a lot of problems require far more specific researching skills, say, if you're writing code to automate some type of proprietary system that Google knows nothing about. How do I automate a functional test? I talk to the people who run the test manually. How do I learn how to do this and that with a given box? I talk to the engineers who designed it.

"I'd google it" is the wrong, right answer. It's the right answer because you should have some ability to research things you don't know. It's wrong because there's no way Google will teach you what you need to know. Sometimes you need to read a book or make an appointment with an engineer in the other building, or run controlled experiments.

<comment><USER10> When I have received the "I'd Google it" response to a question in an interview I would the ask for the search terms, enter the query and discussed the result.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. I think it's up to the interviewer to redirect the responses towards something more meaningful. For example, "what criteria would you use to evaluate what you find on Google?" Or "how would you determine if the information was up to date/accurate/etc.?" I've found that a person might jump to the "I'd Google it" answer but still have a good knowledge of the problem domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It really does depend on the question. A lot of interview time, particularly on phone screens, is "Does this person's resume reflect reality?" That's where "What's a class?" and "How do you do a join in SQL?" come from, and if the candidate can't easily answer, their resume is bloated, game over. Google it is a bad answer.

Also realize that even though you consider something to be trivia, your interviewer doesn't or the question wouldn't be asked. Saying, "I'd just google it" is dismissive, and people don't like being dismissed.

What you can do is invoke Google techniques as part of a larger problem. Like, "I forget the order of arguments to this function, but that's on Google, can you tell me if I got it right?" When the point of the question isn't the trivia, but the approach.

</comment><comment><USER13> "I don't need to know the answer," he growled "if I know where to find the answer." - Henry Ford

</comment><comment><USER14> This article comes to my mind: <http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm>

It summarizes a model of possible levels of "knowledge", making a distinction of Data, Information, Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom.

So in this context:

      API -> Information
      SQL join, class, OO paradigm -> Understanding
      Work experience -> Wisdom

I believe a job interview should mainly focus on evaluating the candidate's Knowledge and Understanding, not on Data or Information. One can argue that by using Google long enough, it is possible to reach the upper levels, but that comes at a price (you would need a lot of time).

</comment><comment><USER15> I didn't realize people thought it was an acceptable answer, I just thought it was something people said afterwards (as in, "Can you believe he asked me about the fourth argument to the foo function? In real life I'd have just Googled it"). It's almost an insult to the interviewer (Of course I don't know the answer, you shouldn't have expected me to).

As an aside, I hope people don't mean this literally. If I wanted to know what the fourth parameter to function foo is, I have quick access to my language's reference manual, and I look in there. I don't just pop it into Google and hope whatever comes up is right.

</comment><comment><USER16> You can always make it sound like a plan of action: "I don't remember/know off the top of my head, but I will after 5 minutes with Google". (Provided that it's one of those ultra-specific questions that have nothing to do with the actual job).

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much, since chances are that no one else actually gets these questions right anyways.

</comment><comment><USER17> He argues that a job interview is a different situation than being at work with access to google because it's 'a competition'. If he likes to select people on things unrelated to the job, why not ask them to sing and dance too?

<comment><USER7> Go ahead and pretend a job interview is not a competition. I hope that works out for you.

Also, you seem to imply that I favor asking questions unrelated to the job when my article says exactly the opposite, that I despise those questions and only resort to them when I have two candidates who are running neck and neck and I need a tiebreaker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Google is a tool every job should allow you to use.

Google for me is like an extension to my brain which doesn't have much more available free space.

So, yes, "I'll google it" IS a valid answer.

<comment><USER7> I think you might want to re-read the article because you seem to be mischaracterizing the point. That point is: Yes Google is a critical tool to do your job, but it doesn't differentiate you from other candidates when interviewing so it is a worthless answer _in that context_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of course not, the appropriate answer is:

"I'll just Bing it!"

<comment><USER19> I know that we want to keep HN focused, but is all humor going to be down voted from now on?

<comment><USER20> Always has been. Quick, witty quips that add nothing to the conversation are the domain and downfail of Slashdot.

If you have any sort of filtering at all, all you get are useless, trashy jokes and no real conversation.

<comment><USER21> (Score:4, Informative)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


On the Surfaces of Things: Mathematics and the Realm of Possibility - <AUTHOR> http://www.hypocritereader.com/59/surfaces-of-things <comment><USER2> This is nice. If this topic is of interest, I highly recommend spending some time with Do Carmo's differential geometry. Particularly Gauss-Bonnet (pg 264) as it is possibly the most profound result for surfaces.

[http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~aar/papers/docarmo.pdf](http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~aar/papers/docarmo.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Came across this reading The Browser (a site that curates the 6 best links every day). Worth checking out. [https://thebrowser.com/](https://thebrowser.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Which website allows you to sell merchandise online cost effectively? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking to sell some items online. What web sites are out there that allows you to sell items cost effectively? I looked at eBay but they charge to list items for sale & also they take a percentage on the sale price of the item. This is in addition to the transaction fees. I stumbled across www.highwire.com and they charge only like $6.95 monthly fee but the transaction charge via sites like PayPal still exists. I am leaning towards www.highwire.com but was wondering if there are any other options. <comment><USER2> ccnow.com

fees are: 4.99% of Gross Sales plus $0.50 per transaction

$9.95 setup one time

$9.95 per month _if_ you sell < $100 per month. > $100 in a month, no fee.

I've been using them for years for some stuff - works out fine.</comment>


Maybe the creepiest unsolved crime case ever - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YOGTZE_case <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> _In Submissions_

> _Please don 't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or > exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an > article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's > important._

> _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait._

</comment><comment><USER3> Weird. Sounds like something Arthur Conan Doyle would have Sherlock solve.</comment>


DIY Video Hosting - <AUTHOR> https://tyler.io/diy-video-hosting/ <comment><USER2> I'd like to point out that this still has deficiencies compared to Vimeo or YouTube, who transcode the source file into multiple bitrates and adaptively serve an appropriate quality based on the viewer's available bandwidth and screen size.

This manifests as buffering on slower connections, where YouTube or Vimeo would just downgrade the user to a lower bitrate transparently (or nearly transparently).

An end user today will expect that behavior and have very little tolerance for buffering if their connection is unable to smoothly play the one bitrate the creator published (no matter how fast the CDN is).

Edit: I'm aware that it's possible to do adaptive bitrate streaming outside of using Vimeo or YouTube (as several commenters have explained below) however this isn't what TFA describes and I think it's important to note this deficiency in the author's described approach to serving their own video.

<comment><USER3> If you want this functionality you can encode the video into chunks at multiple quality levels using video2hls[0] and host them anywhere you like[1].

[0]: [https://github.com/vincentbernat/video2hls](https://github.com/vincentbernat/video2hls)

[1]: [https://ryanparman.com/posts/2018/serving-bandwidth- friendly...](https://ryanparman.com/posts/2018/serving-bandwidth-friendly- video-with-hls/)

<comment><USER4> HLS is half of the answer, that will only work of half of all devices. You need HLS + MPEG-DASH.

<comment><USER3> For browsers that do not support HLS you can use a JavaScript HLS client implementation[0] using Media Source Extensions[1].

[0]: [https://github.com/video-dev/hls.js/](https://github.com/video- dev/hls.js/)

[1]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Media_Sourc...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Media_Source_Extensions_API)

<comment><USER4> Isn't this super battery intensive?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get it. You can unlist your video on youtube, disable the comments, disable related videos etc. and that solves every problem the author talks about. You can even disable monetisation so a user will never see an ad.

You can also go one step further and deliver youtube video through an entirely custom player: [https://github.com/videojs/videojs- youtube](https://github.com/videojs/videojs-youtube)

<comment><USER6> You can try, until they'll block you for not having the ads as they did with the blender channel.

[https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks- blende...](https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender- videos-worldwide/)

<comment><USER7> After reading the article, it seems inaccurate to summarize it how you did. In particular, all the videos are now back up, and the Blender channel still does not have ads.

<comment><USER8> Only because of public outrage. If it was just some guy, that probably wouldn't have been reversed.

<comment><USER9> By using any google = ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We were on the Vimeo business plan, which was supposedly unlimited. Until you hit a certain threshold... we run a fairly popular education site with lots of videos and reached that cap. Our bills went up 10x or so.

For our business I guess it's still worth paying, but worth being aware that not all unlimited is really so.

<comment><USER11> You can checkout mux.com. Idk about if the pricing would be cheaper or expensive. But a regular develop should be able to integrate them fair easily.

<comment><USER12> One nice feature of Vimeo is you can prevent a video from being accessible (streamed, embedded, etc.) on anything but a list of domains of your choosing.

Mux doesn't have this feature (yet). The best you could do is sign every video and have it expire after X time. This can get quite complicated and is less secure since it's only restricted by time (IP address isn't an option either), but due to the nature of how it works, you need to make the video accessible for a bit longer than the duration of it.

If Mux were to add domain restricted security features, I think I would switch to them because having the option of using a custom player is nice for niche content.

<comment><USER10> Mux and cloudflare stream are on my list of potential alternatives. We do use this domain restriction of Vimeo. It's not fullproof but definitely stops casual downloads.

<comment><USER12> What can you do to bypass their domain restrictions, besides things like recording your screen during playback and distributing a separate video.

<comment><USER10> I haven't tried it, but I think youtube-dl can bypass it

[https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/10541](https://github.com/ytdl- org/youtube-dl/issues/10541)

Our own videos have been pirated already and are shared around some torrents sites and on telegram, and there's nothing we can do besides plead to people's sense of moral duty. We're not a huge Hollywood studio or a megacorp. We're just a small bootstrapped company and producing our videos is the most expensive and time-consuming part of our platform. Luckily we still offer some added value besides videos, and make it easy to "do the right thing" and pay a subscription. Yet, we just have to live with piracy I guess. Vimeo didn't prevent it, although perhaps made it only slightly harder.

<comment><USER12> Hmm.

It looks like the "hack" is to only set the referrer header of the request to be the domain that's whitelisted which can be done with any HTTP client, but the issue is also 4 years old. I wonder if that's been addressed because the referrer header is really not something you can trust from the client.

I wonder if this also means if you use browser extensions that focus on security (such as randomizing your user agent and deleting the referrer header) that those folks wouldn't be able to even watch the videos.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention because if domain restriction does indeed still work like this then I don't think I will use Vimeo for that feature alone.

Signed URLs with both time and IP address based restrictions would be ideal. I wonder if IP address based restrictions is something Mux has planned.

<comment><USER10> Yes, we come across some people with privacy browser extensions that remove the referrer and indeed this is causing playback issues for them.

It's still a fairly effective protection for casual copying or link sharing, but of course it's easy to circumvent. Even DRM gets broken all the time, so it seems like a bit of a futile effort to try to prevent it completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use a $20/month VPS with unlimited, unmetered 10gbit bandwidth (no, I do not use outrageously priced "public clouds").

I have no troubles serving 4K video (with a 720p low-bitrate transcode) with a simple <video> tag, and I do not pay for bandwidth. This month, I've egressed 11TB for $20, and I could easily triple that at no additional cost.

I can stream 4K without buffering fine and I've never had a user complain, so it works.

<comment><USER14> The benifit of a cloud/managed cdn is in it's availability, latency, and peering agreements.

Your vps is perfectly fine so long as you're not serving traffic in China, India, etc. If you need to push data globally, need to handle very peaky traffic above the throughput of one machine, or need to have 99.9999% uptime, a cdn will look attractive.

<comment><USER15> Outsourcing your infrastructure to others is an existential risk. CDNs and such don't look so good to a lot of people because there's something to be said about the nature and value of doing it yourself. The nature being that no one cares about _you_ more than _you_

An analog for me is car repair. I could take my car in to get oil changes, have brakes serviced, etc. etc. Disregarding the money I save the reason I don't use those services is because those technicians and companies do not care about the quality of their work on my property as much as I do.

As an example, I was feeling too lazy to do a radiator replacement myself and so I took it to a big shop. Terrible mistake, when I got the car back they'd unplugged some of the sparkplug wires and forgot to plug one back in. There's no way they didn't notice the rough idling when moving it out of the bay. Even worse they wanted to say nothing was wrong until I had them pop the hood and pointed out the spark plug boot just sitting there.

Edit: To expand on this, the answer isn't buy a CDN solution. The answer is make CDN solutions so easy to implement that anyone can setup their own with their own hardware hosted in colos around the world.

<comment><USER16> Outsourcing your infrastructure to others is an existential risk, no doubt, but virtually all of us do it in our personal lives -- we trust that electricity will be delivered to the plug and water to the faucet, and would die off in quite short order if it did not.

Building your own infrastructure is like living "off the grid" with a wind turbine and a well and a composting toilet. You might have mitigated some risks but let's not pretend that there isn't an enormous cost in doing so.

<comment><USER17> >Building your own infrastructure is like living "off the grid" with a wind turbine and a well and a composting toilet.

And your infrastructure still isn't really literally "off the grid" of course. It's dependent on colos, network providers, etc. Sure, there's far, far less of a single point of failure than using YouTube but you're always going to be dependent on others to some degree.

Further, _no one_ has the time or the money to do everything ourselves. To the upstream comment, I have neither the time or the energy to take on car maintenance. I have other things to do even if it means I spend more money and sometimes the shop doesn't do an optimum job. I'm not going to criticize someone who wants to do things themselves, but you have to choose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> First of all,you can use HTML video element and host the video yourself. (This works in non-js browsers too. You can enhance it by video js scripts though for js enabled browsers.).

I think that peertube will be another good option. You can self host it and there are also many available public instances of it. This is particularly useful if your userbase is very large because it uses Bittorrent(webtorrent) p2p to reduce load on servers and it increases availability of content if viewerbase is huge.

<comment><USER19> I strongly believe in Peertube for media creators who want to take control back from Youtube.

Regarding the seeding I was thinking that you could put a few dollars into seed boxes to bolster some older or rarely watched videos.

<comment><USER20> An avg video creator wants the money, not control. Its the reason why youtube is so hot right now. Avg user just doesn't care.

<comment><USER19> Well you can't be average to run a good peertube instance. I was thinking more of people like Joe Rogan and Linus Tech Tips. People who've built a company around their content creation hobby and are capable of paying for ops and potentially seed boxes if needed.

It wouldn't be hard to host, but you'd have to be confident in your service provider or consultant.

Of course I doubt Linus would ever be censored by Youtube, he was just an example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every time I access Vimeo, with no exceptions, I'm forced to solve a recaptcha v2, then expected to wait for longer than 30 seconds before being allowed in.

Result: I don't use Vimeo.

Any alternative is better.

I don't have this problem with any other website (that I have noticed), including any video and streaming services.

<comment><USER12> Do you get this on sites that use Vimeo to embed videos?

I'd be curious if you get a captcha here: [https://laracasts.com/series/laravel-6-from- scratch/episodes...](https://laracasts.com/series/laravel-6-from- scratch/episodes/1)

<comment><USER22> Not OP, but yes, I do get a captcha: [https://i.imgur.com/Paocsee.png](https://i.imgur.com/Paocsee.png)

I'm using a VPN, maybe that's why. It's annoying as not only you need to fill the captcha, but it takes 30s to 1 minute for the video to load.

<comment><USER12> Ah, using a VPN seems like it would likely be the culprit for 30+ second load times.

What happens if you don't use that VPN?

<comment><USER22> It works without the VPN, but I need the VPN more than I need Vimeo, so I just avoid anything that uses their service to host videos.

They seem to be very aggressive blocking IPs. For example, I have VPS on Digital Ocean which I use for small projects and also as a VPN server. The IP has been "mine" for almost a year, I don't use it to scrap sites or abuse any service... but I still get the damn captcha on their videos.

<comment><USER23> That's why. Many providers can detect a VPN hosted on DigitalOcean and trigger security measures or captchas. I'm testing a commercial vpn (Mullvad) this month and it's working fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a nice write up, but don't forget that YouTube isn't just about hosting. It's about distribution. If you host your own videos, you are 100% relying on your own means of getting people to watch it. In the use-case that is state here, that's probably just what the author ordered. But not everyone has that luxury.

</comment><comment><USER25> One project comes to my mind:

[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)

it uses web-torrent so you safe allot of bandwidth.

<comment><USER26> Does anyone have a source for the claim that it saves a lot of bandwidth, actual figures? The only PeerTube videos I've ever looked at are saving absolutely nothing, because it's only the original server seeding it. Admittedly they haven't been hot-off-the-press videos that are getting a large number of views immediately, which is the main time when you may have more seeders, as I understand it.

<comment><USER27> It's probably less about having peers seed videos all the time but buffering bandwidth spikes.

Let's say a video gets posted and gets a million views in the first day. That's a lot of load on a server. But if thousands of peers can serve each other the chunks, then the server isn't responsible for all of them.

So WebTorrent can provide a level of scalability without greater hardware. Just doesn't mean that most of the videos are going to be served by peers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why are people overcomplicating web video so much?

With the HTML5 video tag it's not much more complicated than serving an an <img>. You still "need" two formats, I know that sucks (but av1 will hopefully become the solution). A small to medium sized blog can just upload the files to shared hosting (or even archive.org if space is sparse). No JS, no CDN needed.

<comment><USER29> Great question, it's actually not quite that simple. HTML5 was indeed supposed to bring trivial video to the browser, and it almost did.

If you want a good video streaming experience for all your viewers, you need something called Adaptive Bitrate (ABR). Some protocols that you may have heard of the implement ABR include HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and MPEG Dynamic Adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH).

ABR allows the stream to adapt to the bandwidth capabilities of the viewer. If you don't do this, some users will experience buffering, and some will have to sacrifice on quality.

Unfortunately most browsers don't support an ABR format natively, so you need to use Media Source Extensions, and a more complex player to support these protocols in a browser.

<comment><USER30> What's wrong with buffering? Just let the client download it in full, provide a progress bar, and then allow it to watch/enjoy.

Obviously it's not going to be YouTube/Netflix-level anyhow.

<comment><USER31> So you would like to watch that 30min 4K video on slow 2G, which then will (probably) download for 3000 hours before you can watch...

Or you will just get a lower resolution and you can start watching in an instant.

<comment><USER32> So you'd much rather watch absolute shit for 30minutes?

Yeah that's a hard no.

<comment><USER31> I agree with you - partly. It's either "watch nothing" or "watch not in 4K".

Not everybody in this world has such a good internet connection. There are still enough people that would be happy to even have internet...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you're willing to publish your video under a free license, you can upload it to the Internet Archive and embed it on your website.

[https://archive.org/help/video.php](https://archive.org/help/video.php)

</comment><comment><USER34> My usecase involves sharing private video with access control for my sports club. For that I use [https://mux.com/](https://mux.com/) which take care of hosting, CDN and all the conversion shenanigans. On top of that I've build a Django app which uses video.js as a player.

<comment><USER35> Prices appear to be a bit steep, no? What's your experience?

[https://mux.com/pricing](https://mux.com/pricing)

<comment><USER36> It's comparable to Cloudflare Stream: [https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare- stream/](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/)

Streaming is more, storage is less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Quote:"So that's how I moved off Vimeo and started hosting my video content myself"

No, no and no. You still don't host your video content yourself. You simply found another cheaper service and despite your claim this isn't some paid ad (quote: "This really isn't any sort of paid or sponsored content crap for Bunny."), it's exactly that.

<comment><USER38> (separate comment for separate discussion)

> despite your claim this isn't some paid ad (quote: "This really isn't any > sort of paid or sponsored content crap for Bunny."), it's exactly that.

I don't understand this comment. Do you have some sort of proof that the CDN reached out to the author, or even knows he exists outside of a CMS?

I've seen this sentimentality a lot, where people aren't allowed to talk about a service or a product positively without some sort of money being involved or sneaky guy-in-a-trenchcoat bs. I really don't understand it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can you still say that you are hosting the content yourself if the content is still on a 3rd party CDN? I guess that is just semantics. Great article none the less!

<comment><USER22> > [...] I still store my large app downloads and videos on S3 and then have > Bunny (and previously MaxCDN) pull from AWS as an origin server. [...]

He hosts the videos on S3, the CDN fetches the files from S3 and caches it. He's using the CDN for the cheap traffic/more pops. This would work without S3 and without a CDN too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> +1 with author on BunnyCDN. Low latency, good value and great support!

I'd pay them more if they handled adaptive bitrate automatically.

<comment><USER41> I couldn't agree more. BunnyCDN is founded and managed by some of the most passionate and caring people I've had the pleasure of interacting with.

I would recommend BunnyCDN every time without hesitation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I didn't know that HandBrake also supported command line. It's much easier to use than ffmpeg directly.

</comment><comment> the-dude To everybody claiming a <video> should be enough for everybody : are you really sure?

Because I distinctly remember random iOS devices would not play certain files or fail to sync.

This is why you use YT or Vimeo and the like.

<comment><USER22> It won't work on all devices, but a h264 video encoded with the baseline profile should play fine on any phone or tablet sold in the past 5 years (maybe even older). On desktop, assuming the browser supports HTML5, it should be fine too.

Just to be sure, offer at least one version of the video with VP8 just to cover weird cases where h264 isn't supported. You can also encode 480p, 720p, and 1080p versions for users on slow connections.

Now, will it load on the original iPhone or IE 6? Maybe not - they'll see a link to the video file instead of a player - but not everyone needs to support legacy devices and browsers.

YouTube, Vimeo, and other similar services are nice because they handle everything for you, but sometimes they become too expensive or are blocked. Depending on the type of user you have, <video> with a h264 video is cheaper and works well enough.

<comment><USER43> Unfortunately Chromium on Linux (and for those who have desktop apps - Electron on all platforms) doesn't support h264. Chrome does.

<comment><USER22> Mozilla recommends[0] WebM (VP8 and Opus) and MP4 (h264 and AAC) for good compatibility. That's why I suggested suggested having a VP8 version of the video for cases like this.

I guess OGV could be used for even better support, but it doesn't compress as well.

[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/V...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/Video_codecs#Choosing_a_video_codec)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've been thinking about a "meta cloud" stack - essentially something with the convenient interfaces of various common SAS but then backed up by a user configurable transport.

So you could "migrate" existing apps to say, use some machine at a colo instead of a variety of s3 services without much effort and thus unshackle yourself from a vendor.

Maybe _you_ are making gobs of money and don't care, but a lot of people aren't and saving, say, a few hundred a year sounds very tempting. Not every competent person is rich

<comment><USER45> It's called OpenStack :)

[https://object-storage-ca- ymq-1.vexxhost.net/swift/v1/6e4619...](https://object-storage-ca- ymq-1.vexxhost.net/swift/v1/6e4619c416ff4bd19e1c087f27a43eea/www-assets- prod/openstack-map/openstack-map-v20191001.pdf)

<comment><USER44> What is all of this technical jargon? This is not the solution at all.

If it's equally hard and an equivalent amount of effort than starting from scratch then it's completely a non solution. It's just another giant mountain to climb.

I'm looking more into it. It looks very complex and sophisticated. It's also built on a cloud "marketplace" where you're still doing SAS, now just in a way more complicated way with some wonky exchange system like you're a municipal energy broker.

Apparently they even sell multi-tier training sessions to understand all the jargon and complexities. There's no pretense that it takes anything less than months or years of study to use the thing

No, this is not it at all.

I'm talking about a worry free, drop in, simple replacement, an hour max. Set it, forget it, walk away. Not a multi year career path.

<comment><USER45> It turns out infrastructure is hard. Who knew?

<comment><USER44> Unnecessarily so for most problems.

I swapped out s3 with simply doing scp and holding the same interface. It worked fine.

Does it scale to a 100 million users? No of course not. The point isn't to provide giant scale solutions over multiple continents but something to replace a ~$20/month service that a few hundred people use and make it effectively $0.

There's a huge market for that and it's the vast majority of cloud software written.

People will defend these complexities as The Right and Proper Way except it isn't. I've built half a dozen companies for people using $10-$40/month VPSs that do 6-7 digit annual revenue and run for years. All this autoscaling kubernetes prometheus blah blah blah, totally unnecessary. We aren't serving terabytes per second of video here... Transactional RDBMS, a Crud interface, basic file store, done and done.

The problem is all these systems are designed to facilitate building the next Paris or Hong Kong and if you're just trying to build the equivalent to a store on the side of the road, you have to do it the Paris way. It's nonsense.

People have other things to do with their lives than spend vast amount of time keeping up with the latest versions of irrelevant stuff to solve problems they will never have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Imagine if HTTP was truly distributed and servers from different organizations could pool their bandwidth to serve static content. Similar to Bit Torrent.

</comment><comment><USER47> CDNs are the best thing since sliced bread. Found this out both from ease of setting up frontends and the pain of setting up backends.

I wonder if there's a way to build a database on top of a CDN, or a webapp backend (might just be something like serverless, but instead of function definitions you have files+config a CDN automatically knows how to run). Something like Plan9 for the web.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is very helpful for anyone trying to understand how to avoid using YouTube or Vimeo. Many people find those choices fine, but many of us find them unacceptable for a variety of reasons.

While the author's answer may not be perfect or precisely tailored to your situation, they cover all the bases IMHO. A must read.

And several of the comments add to the discussion.

[edit: ufind -> us find]

</comment><comment><USER49> If the author is concerned about bandwidth costs, it sounds counterproductive to encode the videos as 60fps where 30 is plenty for everything but high speed action shots. Given that it sounds like he is doing demo videos / screencasts etc, it there is a lot to gain here in just getting the encoding settings right.

<comment><USER50> Compression rate would be quite high for a mostly static video where nothing much changes from frame to frame, regardless of framerate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The best homegrown platform I have seen so far is [https://media.ccc.de/](https://media.ccc.de/) , where the video and audio files from Chaos Computer Club events are stored. I don't know how willing they are to share the code though.

<comment><USER52> its on Github: [https://github.com/voc/voctoweb](https://github.com/voc/voctoweb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is interesting but I'd have to assume that the actual cost Vimeo is charging is not an important factor here. The developer time spent setting this up would quickly exceed the annual fee for Vimeo in just an afternoon. That excludes the ongoing maintenance and inevitable edge cases you would encounter over time. Still fun, but I don't think Vimeo's price justifies this effort alone.

<comment><USER54> time=money assumes you are taking time away from something else, if there is no other work to be done that generates money then spending some time to save a little money might be a valuable way to spend time.

Most likely it's just to satisfy some sort of nerd-ocd.

<comment><USER55> Opportunity cost definitely falls in the "something else" range.

On the other hand, there is a ROI on building things either way. Always tough to measure

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Does anyone know if Cloudflare is cool with audio files? I know they don't want you to serve video.

Or any similar fast CDNs allowing for audio files.

<comment><USER57> I think they just don't want you to serve _large_ stuff, because their CDN isn't optimized for that.

I serve all kinds of files <10mb via CF, that includes audio, video, images etc.

Files over >10mb I handle myself. Around 100TB is handled by CF each month and around 700TB by my own servers (4 Hetzner dedicated servers).

The whole setup costs me around 300 euros/month paid to Hetzner, and 20 to CF. That means I pay around 40 cents / TB.

So far CF hasn't complained, and I've been using them for years. Though they try to pitch me their higher priced plans now and then.

<comment><USER58> I've never used Cloudflare, so I got to ask, do they prohibit serving large files or discourage by some quota?

<comment><USER59> They suspend accounts (after months if not immediately) that abuse serving disproportionate amount of non-HTML content, videos specifically. However there is still ambiguity (or lack of detail) in their terms if you can use their Workers, a paid FaaS, to stream blob data.

<comment><USER60> I thought this only applies to their free accounts, and that they have no issues with serving any size files as long as you pay them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> for non commercial use I have used github to host my website for a long time, and I have had some instructional videos on there. For small purposes like this, or maybe how-tos on open source software, I can't see github having a problem with or noticing the bandwidth

</comment><comment><USER62> PeerTube is an easy solution to video hosting and comes with many features.

[https://JoinPeerTube.org](https://JoinPeerTube.org)

</comment><comment><USER63> Half-OT: any good solutions for DIY audio streaming?

While I bought radio streaming licences in the past, my streams always got shut down on platforms like YouTube.

<comment><USER64> icecast has been around for a long time, would that serve your needs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> You should try uploadcare.com they are ready to use solution for hosting images and videos.

</comment><comment><USER66> The issue is that a CDN is still involved - and they, like YouTube and others, can ultimately choose to deplatform you. LBRY (decentralized video sharing) might be a better alternative, perhaps? [https://itsfoss.com/lbry/](https://itsfoss.com/lbry/)

<comment><USER67> I don't think they need a Blockchain solution to serve a few, likely uncontroversial, marketing video files.

<comment><USER15> Uncontroversial content gets taken down all the time because, as Googlers who show up in those threads like to say, moderation is not webscale.

<comment><USER67> This is about a CDN though, not Google.

<comment><USER15> Youtube is owned by Google. The parent comment to you was talking about using decentralized solutions to avoid takedowns on CDNs and platforms like Youtube.. which they explicitly mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Have you tried cloudflare hosted video?

</comment><comment><USER69> WhateverCDN will be same game as WhateverVPN, i'm afraid.

</comment><comment><USER70> Ok, but this doesn't solve discoverability.

<comment><USER71> Probably not an issue for the writer of the blog, as he's just using videos to embed in blog posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> If your videos are less than 512MB each, you can serve them through Cloudflare's free plan.

<comment><USER73> No, that's against their ToS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Relevant to post:

I would highly suggest keeping the same CDN as the cloud/storage offering you work within. You get dinged quite a bit on transfer costs otherwise. So, if you're on AWS, stick to Cloudfront, etc.

Potentially relevant to post:

Note: I am the founder of Loom, so this is obviously extremely biased.

With Loom ([https://www.loom.com](https://www.loom.com)) you will soon be able to upload unlimited videos (as well as record since we have recorders) to a plan for $10/month. No caps on viewing or storage.</comment>


I Spent All Summer Running A/B Tests, and Now I Question the Whole Idea - <AUTHOR> http://copyhackers.com/2014/10/running-ab-tests/

<comment><USER2> I wish I knew what to say to her. She's right

A strong sense of neutral decision rules could help.

The other thing that she needs to think about is how to seed that page/product/content. SEO isn't enough.</comment>


Do it Fucking Now. - <AUTHOR> http://seoblackhat.com/2007/01/29/do-it-fucking-now/ <comment><USER2> Anyone else suspicious that this article from a site called seoblackhat got 26 points and got to the top of hacker news in 3 hours?

I am.

<comment><USER3> SEO Blackhattery Superhack #1: Make a very simple statement that nobody can argue with and put a swearword in the title to make it exciting. Submit to social sites. Rake in the fucking money.

<comment><USER4> Gah, how you taunt me! So clever I must vote for you, yet then I fall for your cleverness! Ah screw it, upmod for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is lame. I'd rather HN be a resource for people who actually do things, and not a therapy session for people who can find no other reason to do something than that they should "fucking doing it". For anyone with a soul, anything is more motivating than that.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, anyone want to have an SEOish SEO party where we can SEO our sites together in accordance with only the most smarmy SEO methods?

<comment><USER7> the smarmier the better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like their attitude. I just wrote "Do it fucking now" on a post-it note and stuck it by my desk. We'll see how that works out...

<comment><USER9> If that's what you need to motivate you, then don't bother.

<comment><USER10> Posted on my wall right now: [http://accelerating.org/tech_tidbits/img/2004ttpics/motivati...](http://accelerating.org/tech_tidbits/img/2004ttpics/motivation)(robots).jpg

<comment><AUTHOR> use urltea or tinyurl :)

<comment><USER11> Random plug: I recently released Rims for URL shrinking:

<http://ri.ms>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> cache: [http://18.104.22.168/search?q=cache:WpRgP1s_rYwJ:seoblackha...](http://188.8.131.52/search?q=cache:WpRgP1s_rYwJ:seoblackhat.com/2007/01/29/do- it-fucking-now/)

</comment><comment><USER13> There is some small irony that this post was voted to the top, no?

</comment><comment><USER14> The post is a year old and still has "Julias Ceasar" misspelled. A Nike-ish post with culture. Live-strong.

</comment><comment><USER15> Great advice, just what I needed.

</comment><comment><USER16> 48 points with a bullet. There goes the neighborhood.

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000809.html>

</comment><comment><USER18> glad to see the people on hacker news are very cynical. keep up the good work in spotting bullsh*it

</comment><comment><USER19> Always liked this one.</comment>


Beaker 1.0 Beta – a peer-to-peer Web browser - <AUTHOR> https://beakerbrowser.com/2020/05/14/beaker-1-0-beta.html <comment><AUTHOR> This new version of Beaker took over a year to get done and is basically a ground-up rewrite. Team is here to answer any questions.

<comment><USER3> Congratulations on the progress and getting this out the door! It's very exciting to see significant work on Beaker. I look forward to playing with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let us know how it goes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been following the Dat story for a few months, Congrats!

What do you consider to be THE killer feature(s) of Dat over the classic web? instant Publishing? Resilience?

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally I think it's the hackability. Data is disconnected from apps (in your personal drives) and shared between applications. Hyperdrives are also forkable.

Beaker currently pushes people to create personal sites and build social applications around that. I think a very open social/identity system is just very cool.

There are also some things that are much easier than they normally are - <USER2> instance, you can setup a webrtc call using PeerSockets, so you don't need to setup a server to do that. The "zero devops" story is pretty nice.

<comment><USER4> So if I understand right: Hyperdrive (formerly Dat) is the "p2p platform" and beaker a client which uses hyperdrive to publish and browse archives and websites?

If I want to build an app using this, when should I choose hypercore and when should I choose hyperdrive?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently Beaker only has Web APIs for Hyperdrive, but we're going to add Hypercore APIs

Hypercore is lower-level - it's basically an append-only log. There have been some projects that use it directly such as Kappa-core [1]. You might want it particularly for CRDT work, but generally I think you can use the filesystem to do pretty much anything, and that has the benefit of a regular data-form that can be explored using the terminal and files explorer and browser and etc.

[1] [https://github.com/kappa-db/kappa-core](https://github.com/kappa- db/kappa-core)

<comment><USER4> Ack, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To someone unfamiliar with p2p web core concepts (Hyperdrive, etc.) an "About" page would be helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah so Beaker uses a peer-to-peer filesystem called Hyperdrive to share websites. It works a lot like BitTorrent in that it shares bandwidth. Every drive has a public key and the data is signed in a log.

Since the Hyperdrive FS is read/writable from the browser, you can use web apis and in-browser tooling to work on the files. This even makes it possible to write applications by publishing posts/comments/votes/etc as files in the user's personal hyperdrives.

By default, every user creates a personal drive to act as their identity. We use that to act as a kind of social network, where the site is both their identity and their public data locker. The "twitter clone" is called Blahbity- blog, and it's very simple: it just reads the files you write to /microblog and merges that into a feed ordered by ctime. Typically you publish .md files but it can be anything, including .html (which runs in an iframe).

The p2p network uses a DHT ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DHT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DHT)) with builtin hole-punching ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_punching_(networking)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_punching_\(networking\))) to connect people's devices. You can also send messages between peers using that network with an API called PeerSockets.

<comment><USER5> Thank you. Appreciate the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone build a forum on top of dat? Thinking of posting text but also images... or something like hn</comment>