FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default - <AUTHOR> https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-proposes-robocall-blocking-default <comment><USER2> According to Ars they want to leave it up to the carriers if they want to charge for it, if that is accurate and the robocall problems escalate then you could end up paying for it by default ... or just get robocalls all day.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/ajit-pais- roboca...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/ajit-pais-robocall- plan-lets-carriers-charge-for-new-call-blocking-tools/)

"It will cost $X a month for service, and $Y more if you want to be able to use it..."

And as a revenue stream I worry this could create a perverse disincentive for carriers, why deal with a problem that makes people give us more money?

<comment><USER3> The more I look at things as I age, the more I see market based solutions as only benefiting the supplier and always hurting the consumer.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, it's not clear to me that most "pro-market" advocates even understand markets. They work best when purchasers have many options, clear information, easy switching, and equal power to sellers. But at least in the US, most of the "pro-market" voices in practice seem to be in favor of oligopoly and the absolute right of businesses to exploit information, wealth, and power asymmetries.

It makes me a bit bonkers, because well-designed markets can do an amazing job solving optimization problems.

<comment><USER5> In the US, I think one problem is have too much mixing of public and private. We give the public sector a lot of decision making power relatively free of consequences, and leave massive profit opportunities for anyone in the private sector who manages to buy enough influence. Healthcare was far from a free market already before ObamaCare. But if we're going to regulate it as heavily as we do, I think we need to just step up and socialize it entirely.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately completely socializing the healthcare system would tank the economy thats why no serious person in washington is pro universal healthcare.

<comment><USER7> "a new study [0] from the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst finds that single-payer health care will save the US $5.1 trillion over a decade while drastically cutting working- class Americans' health spending." [1]

"Blahous's paper[2], titled "The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System," estimates total national health expenditures. Even though his cost- saving estimates are more conservative than others, he acknowledges that Sanders's "Medicare for All" plan would yield a $482 billion reduction in health care spending, and over $1.5 trillion in administrative savings, for a total of $2 trillion less in overall health care expenditures between 2022 and 2031, compared to current spending." [3]

[0] [https://www.peri.umass.edu/publication/item/1127-economic- an...](https://www.peri.umass.edu/publication/item/1127-economic-analysis-of- medicare-for-all)

[1] [https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/12/medicare-for-all-study- pe...](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/12/medicare-for-all-study-peri-sanders)

[2] [https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/blahous-costs- medicare...](https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/blahous-costs-medicare- mercatus-working-paper-v1_1.pdf)

[3] [https://theintercept.com/2018/07/30/medicare-for-all-cost- he...](https://theintercept.com/2018/07/30/medicare-for-all-cost-health-care- wages/)

<comment><USER8> Studies like these are worse than worthless. Just look at any recent major public works project for an example of cost overruns.

Here's how we could lower costs for Americans overnight: Allow importation of prescription medicines.

Medicare for all will lead to doctors for none. It's really hard to get appointments from places that accept Medicare, it's just not worth the hassle for many doctors to deal with them.

<comment><USER9> "This study is worthless, but here's my unsubstantiated opinion instead" is a weird argument.

<comment><USER10> Not really. It's pretty evident at this point that most publications are basically worthless.

<comment><USER9> You've said the same thing with zero evidence, again.

<comment><USER8> [https://sf.curbed.com/2019/5/2/18527196/high-speed-rail- cali...](https://sf.curbed.com/2019/5/2/18527196/high-speed-rail-california- cost-estimate-overbudget-sf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been getting this call[1] literally every month for about a year now. It goes straight to voicemail because their dialer can't get past my voice captcha. I tried blocking the caller id but they keep using a different last four numbers. I've now configured the call flow so that this entire exchange now has to pass the captcha to even get to voice mail.

What I'm saying is, this proposal can't come soon enough.

1\. Transcription, for your amusement: _Hi this is Carolyn calling from reliable resource communications. Reliable resource communications is a telecommunications service used by other companies to notify consumers on their behalf. I have made numerous attempts to reach you regarding an entry form that was filled out in your name within the last 12 to 18 months to receive a new car. Now this will be my final attempt to notify you that your name was pulled and you are going to receive one of our top three major prizes. It will be in your best interest to give me a call back at soon as possible. My number is 984-292-1515 at extension 3:21. We are not a telemarketing agency nor timeshare and this is not a cold call please do not ignore this message. I 'm very aware of the do not call list but wouldn't be calling unless someone actually answered. This is a time sensitive matter and I do look forward to hearing from you. Once again congratulations my name is Carolyn._

<comment><USER12> > _this will be my final attempt to notify you_

It's always the final attempt/notice. Every time. I've received dozens of "final notices" that my 22 year old car's factory warranty (10 yrs, 100k miles) is "about" to expire.

<comment><USER13> Get this one all the time. I did have a car warranty that expired (a while ago), so I always wondered if its just a stock message, or if someone actually sold the data of my car warranty.

<comment><USER14> I've been getting a bunch of sketchy post cards about extended warranties using _wrong_ language about my warranty just expiring on a car I purchased used (9 years old, 50k miles, 3rd owner according to CarFax). I've been filing postal inspector requests on their bulk mail code every time, but no response so far. That particular sorta scam is not limited to phone calls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Direct link to the news release (PDF): [https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-357464A1.pdf](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-357464A1.pdf)

tl;dr the action would allow carriers to default to blocking calls on the part of their customers. Once SHAKEN/STIR (caller ID authentication) is available, this means carriers can block calls that don't include authenticated caller ID. Presumably they already could do this if the customer opted in.

This all seems like a good idea, but I think Pai is overselling it a bit by calling it "bold."

<comment><USER16> > Today, many voice providers have held off developing and deploying call > blocking tools by default because of uncertainty about whether these tools > are legal under the FCC's rules.

Is this really true? How absolutely dysfunctional things must be.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure I agree it's dysfunctional. "We're going to block some people off from the phone lines because we don't think they ought to be making calls" is exactly the kind of policy that should be heavily scrutinized.

<comment><USER18> That policy wouldn't be about blocking people from making calls. It'd be about allowing TOOLS that let USERS block unwanted calls.

<comment><USER19> It says it is about tools that "allow _phone companies_ to block _unwanted_ calls" (emphasis mine). So the one wielding the tool is the phone company. It's unclear whether users can opt out of the default. It's also unclear whether "unwanted" is defined with respect to the user or the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> j-c-hewitt Robocalls are a constant annoyance for me (I get maybe 1 per day on average) and almost all of them are criminally fraudulent solicitations of some kind including calls impersonating the Social Security Administration etc.

It's like being forced to read my spam folder with an audible alert. I have to field calls from a lot of clients that I have never spoken to before or have only called them a couple times, so only answering phone calls from recognized numbers isn't really an option.

<comment><USER20> I get about ten a day and you are dead on. They are all criminally fraudulent. This shouldn't be handled by the FCC but the fbi. Every single person at the robocalling company should be arrested, even the secretary.

This isn't a civil matter, this is criminal and should be treated as such.

<comment><USER21> I agree 100%.

It's clear to me that the U.S. has the technical capability of hunting down the origins of these calls, and bring the offenders to trial.

This leads me to believe it's a matter of political will, and I don't understand the inaction.

<comment><USER22> >It's clear to me that the U.S. has the technical capability of hunting down the origins of these calls, and bring the offenders to trial.

Do they? From what I've gathered its mostly small distributed shops in India and the Philippines. Shut one down, three new ones pop up.

<comment><USER23> Duterte pretends to be a hardass, right? Tell him to deal with it by any means necessary or else the USS Jimmy Carter starts to sever their submarine cables one by one until the problem is resolved that way.

If anybody thinks that's too severe, explain to them that DDOSing a nation's telecom system is an act of cyberwar.

<comment><USER24> Do you really think that having Duterte kill these people is an appropriate response to robocalls? I mean, sure, I understand the _temptation_ , but... it's a bit extreme for the actual harm being done.

<comment><USER25> Duterte's a crazy man, if anyone deserves to get whacked, it's him. In a normal administration, we could manage this, but with a septuagenarian and John "war is fucking awesome" Bolton around, the bastard gets showered with praise.

Sorry to say it, ditto for Erdogan

/politicsrant

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It seems pointless to implement any new rules when the bad actors already know that they can just spoof caller ID to use a fake number and avoid any consequences. I'm already on every opt-out list in existence - it does nothing. I've filed complaints with the FCC about people breaking the rules - nothing.

What needs to change:

1) Fix Caller-ID so that it can't be spoofed for fraudlulent purposes

2) Make it easy to report violations of the rules to the FCC

3) Actually enforce the rules

 _Then_ the Do Not Call Registry and bans on robocallers might actually work.

</comment><comment><USER27> If this actually happens I will be thankful that at least he did something good during his tenure.

I suppose this will get through since it doesn't hurt the profits of the telcos. In fact it will give them a new profit center! Because I'm sure that they won't offer "block by default" for free.

<comment><USER28> Funny, because if they charged all those calls by the price they sell consumer services they would make a lot of money. But no

It's the same thing with "USPS going bankrupt", charge commercial mail its actual cost (x10 what costs now) and see the money come in. You get subsidized cost if you actually buy a physical stamp and glue it to your letter

<comment><USER29> You think the letter carrying monopoly is reducing prices by 10x?

Or are there subsidies I don't understand that you think are doing that?

<comment><USER28> [https://www.usps.com/business/prices.htm](https://www.usps.com/business/prices.htm)

See how much a stamp cost vs. "Commercial"/"Direct Mail" options

(though maybe 10x is an exaggeration)

<comment><USER29> Oh, I misunderstood what you were saying. But they are getting a volume discount and have to meet stricter requirements and aren't getting quite the same level of service and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why don't we just fine the telco $10 each time they connect an obviously fraudulent call?

The fact that they're still using signaling system 7 is not a defense for their negligence.

<comment><USER31> Because the people appointed are essentially placed there by companies that profit more by having the system the way it is right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have my iPhone on Do not Disturb allow only contacts to ring my phone.

Also, for each contact I want to be notified about their texts Ive edited each contact > text tone —> Emergency Bypass on and no text tone.

My phone is now back to what I feel belongs to me and not scum using MY phone to bother me for their benefit.

</comment><comment><USER33> If I can plug an app I found helpful in reducing robocalls: Try RoboKiller (iPhone, not sure about android).

I tried Mr. Number and a couple other free options which didn't seem to block much. I paid $30/yr for RoboKiller and unwanted calls have been reduced substantially - to maybe 1 per week slipping through. It's not just doing caller ID analysis, you actually forward your calls to them and they screen them before they even get to your phone. Seems to work well.

<comment><USER32> RoboKiller hosed my voicemail after uninstalling it and they didn't hose it via my device but actual voicemail line got hosed and AT&T has tried to fix it with no avail.

Best solution I've found on iPhone --> Do NoT Disturb --> only allow calls from contacts. Receive texts notifications only from contacts too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I will welcome a workable solution to the robocall problems. In the interim, they provide a source of entertainment.

The most common ones I get are from The Credit Card Company to tell me that because of my excellent credit history, I have qualified to get my credit card directly through them at a lower interst rate, instead of having it resold to me through Visa or Mastercard. For these calls, I'll generate a fake card number, SSN, name, address, etc, and start answering their questions. Inevitably, when the number comes back as bogus, they get angry, and yell at me to tell me how much of a cocksucking faggot I am and that they're going to come rape my daughter. I laugh at their attempts to form insults being less coherent than their English in general and move on with my day.

Of course, as soon as I tried to start recording these calls, they became much less frequent. I can't help but wonder if my number hasn't become blacklisted by these scam centers in India and the Philippines as a known unprofitable time waster or something. Why waste your time calling someone you know you can't get anything out of when there's lower-effort marks out there which will be more profitable?

All the same, I'd prefer not to have deal with these guys, so any actually workable solution would be welcome.

Edit: Hah! While reviewing this post, I got yet another call from these guys. And I got the most persistent one of 'em I've had yet. They're getting good with semi-plausible responses to the most common deflections. But, their geography skills aren't much better than mine. Apparently Lebanon is in Canada.

<comment><USER35> > Inevitably, when the number comes back as bogus, they get angry, and yell at > me

I was really surprised the first time I got a got a bunch of obscenities out of one of these scammers-- I figured they'd consider being screwed with just a cost of doing business.

Weird.

Aside: I went from a couple a day to none in the last three days after saying "DO NOT HANG UP. You have reached the US department of illicit telephone communication"<click>. Perhaps a coincidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> How will this be implemented from a technology and policy perspective?

The idea is one I am definitely supportive of. My phone rarely comes out of DnD now because of the robocallers.

But the devil is in the details. Forcing people to add someone to their contact list before being able to receive calls from them will probably be a bit draconian.

Another possible solution would be that someone can request access to call you and there is some service that verifies their identity and presents that information to you.

"[NAME] is requesting permission to contact you through [VOICE CALLS, EMAIL, TEXT]. Allow/Deny?"

Another good solution might be to add something equivalent to HTTPS / SSL certs, where only secure and verified identities can contact you.

<comment><USER37> I'd settle for non-spoofable CallerID

<comment><USER36> Yes, that would probably be a good thing. They seriously need to fix the problem of being able to listen to other people's voicemail by merely setting the caller id to the target's cell number and calling them.

<comment><USER38> Wait is that a thing right now?!

<comment><USER39> You bet it is, I think the first time I tried this was around 2007 or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1\. Why can we not ban _spoofed_ numbers?

2\. It would be great if instead they introduced legislation that made it dead simple to sue robocallers, i.e. \- request your call records from carrier \- submit said call records through online portal proving excessive calls

<comment><USER40> It's hard to verify caller ID with current tech is why. Well hard, more like costs money to verify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This will probably get buried, but I'll give my personal solution to reducing the number of robocalls over the past few months. Be a robot. Either answer the phone with absolute silence or have a very loud dial tone playing. It might be a coincidence, but I'm fairly certain this has put me on robocall blacklists. Bonus points if they give you a callback number to a call center... just keep spam calling them with a loud dial tone. I only get a couple of calls per week now.

</comment><comment><USER42> Does anyone have statistics on the impact of robocallers? They're ubiquitous and universally obnoxious. I haven't seen any reporting on their effectiveness for the services they're advertising for. I wonder why do they even bother.

I understand these calls mostly take advantage of unsuspecting people, but I still can't imagine the impact these calls are making financially.

</comment><comment><USER43> There is only one actual solution to this problem.

1\. Get the list of phone numbers of everybody working at AT&T (Sony style) 2\. Set up robocalls randomly from each of these numbers to each of the other numbers 3\. Share this list and your specific howto instructions with three other people

Every other solution fails.

</comment><comment><USER44> I feel the correct solution (given the current admin, and U politics in general) is just to stop allowing telcos to charge for receiving calls. Fundamentally for everything they say about robocalls, it's still profitable for a telco if you ever pick up.

</comment><comment><USER45> This should be a no brainer. Robocalls should be illegal and blocked by your phone provider. Must the chairmen really make an exploit a profit margin for corporations? We need somebody in the FCC that can at least understand technology and consumers.

</comment><comment><USER46> I disagree with having the service providers block the calls. Shouldn't that be up to the consumer? Having your carrier block a call seems like an overreach. I feel this erodes trust in the phone system even more.

<comment><USER47> Presumably they would be blocking it on the consumer's behalf, with the consumer's consent, through an opt-in program.

<comment><USER48> And wouldn't they, presumably, expect to be compensated for providing this convenience?

<comment><USER49> > And wouldn't they, presumably, expect to be compensated for providing this > convenience?

Maybe. I think, though, that there is growing understanding that consumers may just opt out of the phone system altogether if something isn't done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is there any legitimate use case for robocalls at all? Can we not make it illegal punishable with the death sentence? Would any law abidng citizen be affected? Presuming post and sms messages are still allowed.

Hypothetically, natch.

<comment><USER51> > Can we not make it illegal punishable with the death sentence?

I think all spammers should be dealt with in the manner Vlad Tepes used to deal with Turks, criminals, and people who talk at the theater. However, we're going to need a lot of thick, sturdy bamboo stakes if we're going to impale every spammer we find.

<comment><USER35> > However, we're going to need a lot of thick, sturdy bamboo stakes if we're > going to impale every spammer we find.

Sharpen the femurs of their predecessors. Because most spammers yield two femurs, you only need one starter stake and then your supply of weapons is self sustaining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is awful. There's no chance of their system having a 0% false positive rate (positive in this case meaning spam). Even a low FPR means that potentially important calls will get blocked by default.

</comment><comment><USER53> How about this:

No one is allowed to call me unless they are on my contacts list, or perhaps another whitelist of not-quite-contacts-but-allowed-to-call-me. Any calls off those lists silently fail. Phone providers must upgrade their infrastructure to include origin-number verification.

No business is allowed to expect I be available to answer phone calls, or to require me to conduct business over the phone, for any reason, ever. Each time I am charged or penalized by a business in any way for missing their call, or not doing something that can only be done over the phone, they are required to eat the charge and then fined $10,000.

Let's throw business over the phone where it belongs: in the fucking garbage. The death of robocalls will be a nice side bonus.

<comment><USER54> I get plenty of calls from people outside my contacts list that I want to hear from. My doctor calls me to discuss test results. My daughter's school calls if there's an issue.

I want to get rid of robocalling, too, but I don't want my phone neutered to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> We _could_ just get rid of our telephones. Let's be honest here: when was the last time you were actually _happy_ to make or receive a phone call? It's time to KonMari this tech into the nearest dumpster.

</comment><comment><USER55> tl;dr: Upload your contact lists to your service provider so that your service provider can block calls from people not in your contact list.

If the blocking doesn't work completely from within my own device then it's going to be a no from me.

<comment><USER25> How would this account for (legitimate) blocked numbers or those that originate behind a switch? I get calls from recruiters from time to time that do this as a matter of course.

Although I have no expectation the GOP would actually do this, I would add an asterisk to the policy...

* If you use these lists for marketing to existing customers, we reserve the right to sue you out of existence. Kindly GFY.

<comment><USER56> > * I get calls from recruiters from time to time that do this as a matter of > course.*

If this gets widespread adoption, then recruiters and legitimate robocalls will come up with solutions. The problem I have is that if I block all unknown numbers, I'll also be blocking my bank/credit card/pharmacy or other legitimate robocalls. So I can't do this myself. But if _everyone_ blocks unknown calls, these entities will be forced to come up with a solution (e.g. sending out emails instead).

The particular example you give of recruiters with blocked numbers rubs me the wrong way. Like you can call me out of the blue and interrupt my work day, and you're not even exposing your phone number? Good riddance.

<comment><USER25> They likely do it so they don't have people calling back a direct line on a whim. Usually will ask me to call a different number if I'm actually interested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> All thanks to John Oliver : [https://youtu.be/FO0iG_P0P6M](https://youtu.be/FO0iG_P0P6M)

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm curious why robocalls aren't protected by freedom of speech. This is the government censoring small businesses from doing direct marketing.

I don't actually believe this argument, but I'm curious what self-described free speech absolutists think.

<comment><USER59> The government isn't censoring anything, they're allowing private organizations to block spam calls by default.

<comment><USER60> When all channels of communication are owned and operated by private companies, it's not quite so clear cut as that. The only means of long- distance communication not operated by a private company is the USPS and that's simply not comparable to email/IM/telephony.

<comment><USER59> Not at all. When all channels are owned and operated by private companies, then it is _clearly_ not government censorship.

<comment><USER60> It's clearly not a free speech issue in much the same way that when military actions are conducted by private contractors instead of soldiers, violations of the rules of engagement are purely a private commercial issue and not the fault of the government.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Run .NET Core Apps Directly from a GitHub Gist - <AUTHOR> https://www.hanselman.com/blog/SharpScriptFromServiceStackLetsYouRunNETAppsDirectlyFromAGitHubGist.aspx <comment><USER2> Discussion of SharpScript 2 days ago, including some attempts at explaining its licensing:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20738557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20738557)

TAForObvReasons: _The actual Project repo[https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack](https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack) appears to be AGPL3 with some exceptions_

mythz: _The Exceptions are for OSS projects, where it can be used as the OSS license for that project. Regardless it 's completely free to use for both commercial/non-commercial usage._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20738557#20739419](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20738557#20739419)

<comment><USER3> Yeah I'm surprised there's so much focus on the license of a free library that's also OSS. The AGPL/OSS license only applies if you're creating a custom build from source in OSS projects, if you're just using #Script from the official NuGet package you're using the commercial license which is free to use without restrictions for both commercial/non-commercial usage.

#Script started out as an alternative to Razor Pages [1] (where it was initially called ServiceStack Templates [2]) to give ServiceStack Apps a productive alternative to Razor for developing server-driven Web Apps, but as it's highly extensible without external deps or reliance in external tooling it was easy to re-purpose as a dynamic emeddable language to be able to basically script any .NET App, hence the rebrand to a stand-alone #Script language, all the whilst its implementation remained in the core ServiceStack.Common assembly. If it becomes an issue we can look at pulling it out of the main ServiceStack repo in a stand-alone repo with a weaker copyleft OSS license, but it would require a bit of work and would need to ensure it's not disruptive to existing ServiceStack Customers, I just didn't expect there to be any issue for a gratis library that's also OSS.

Incidentally the ServiceStack.Glue library that the Desktop Apps use to embed .NET Core Apps in a Chromium Desktop Shell is MIT [3].

[1] [https://sharpscript.net/docs/sharp- pages](https://sharpscript.net/docs/sharp-pages)

[2] [https://github.com/NetCoreApps/TemplatePages](https://github.com/NetCoreApps/TemplatePages)

[3] [https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.CefGlue](https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.CefGlue)

<comment><USER4> Surprised? Let me give you my perspective on this whole thing.

I was almost sold on sharpscript for handling our email templating needs until I realized how obfuscated the licensing and overall project structure is. I've been reading through threads about it on HN for 2 days now, and still don't have a clear understanding of what the real intentions are here.

If I just follow the rabbit hole from the #script nuget.org page:

[https://www.nuget.org/packages/ServiceStack.Common](https://www.nuget.org/packages/ServiceStack.Common)

I wind up at the following license URL:

[https://servicestack.net/terms](https://servicestack.net/terms)

Which has the following:

"Use of the Software and Documentation is subject to the restrictions contained in this Agreement. ServiceStack, Inc. grants you a non-exclusive, limited, non-transferable, freely revocable license to use the Software. ServiceStack, Inc. reserves all rights not expressly granted herein in the Software and the Content and may terminate this license at any time for any reason or no reason."

I will not be using this software. If anyone wants to change my mind, pull sharpscript into its own repository, give it its own nuget, and post crystal clear license terms alongside each which do not contain any sort of legal backdoors where you get to rip the rug out from under me at some arbitrary point in the future. If you want money for this, just ask for it up front and be honest with your intentions. I may actually consider purchasing a license if the terms aren't trashy like in the current license above.

<comment><USER3> Sure, you shouldn't use anything you don't feel comfortable with. That clause is common in other commercial Software license agreements, e.g. Xamarin originally had the same clause before they were acquired. IMO it's a good deterrent to protect against bad actors from suing us, and why it was included. Fortunately we've never had a bad actor sue us to ever need to test it in courts.

As mentioned in my parent comment you've replied to, I'll consider pulling it into its own repo with a liberal OSS license, but it would be a lot of work since it's included in a core library and any changes can't disrupt existing Customers already using it. But wont be anytime soon as I'm already overloaded with other higher priority features I have to work on.

> I may actually consider purchasing a license if the terms aren't trashy like > in the current license above.

I've no intentions to ever sell any licenses to use #Script, it will always be free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> ServiceStack is one of the best pieces of software I have ever used and saved me from WCF/WSDL hell back many years ago. Just the breadth of detail in the release notes shows that Mythz puts a lot of thought and effort into designing features. I just wish instead of Aspnet core MVC they would have just made SS the web framework.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is the first time in a while I've seen something that really gets me excited about software.

The promise of "run anywhere" has more or less been fulfilled by the web, but it leaves a lot to be desired: shared code is duplicated on every site, the only language available has... quirks to say the least, and performance is always an issue. This seems to solve a lot of these problems, while usable webAssembly is still a long way off (and doesn't resolve all the issues above).

I have seen lots of cool stuff from MS wither on the vine. Hopefully this does a little better.

<comment><USER7> > the only language available has... quirks to say the least, and performance > is always an issue.

I see this a lot, can you point out which quirks still remain in modern JS? Performance is quite fast with today's modern JIT VMs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is .net core not taking the world by storm ? Because most 'real .net devs' still work on .NET 4.x legacy windows apps.

<comment><USER9> My personal opinion is that Microsoft's absolutely terrible naming scheme fails to sell anyone on why it's different or important.

Edit: can anyone give me the one-paragraph rational for why Net Core _should_ take the world by storm? C# is a nice language and I'm a mostly happy VS user (except when I have to fiddle with MSBuild), but why should I go in and change the dropdown from ".Net Framework 4.5.2" to ".Net Core"? Let alone why any user of, say, Python or Node should drop everything and come over to C#.

<comment><USER10> As someone that has been on and off .NET since the pre-release days (thanks to working at a MSFT partner back in the day), the constant reboots from the last couple of years, and breaking changes across .NET Framework and .NET Core (e.g. WCF, EF 6 tooling), inspire a wait-and-see attitude among a large majority of us.

<comment><USER11> Absolutely this. They changed names, project format, build tooling, etc faster than the ecosystem could keep up. You couldn't even be sure there existed a set of compatible ASP.NET Core, EF, and standard library packages in nuget without endless trial, error, and binding redirects.

I tried 2-3 times up to and including .NET Standard 2.0 to switch and got burned by busted tooling and package conflicts every time. I'm starting a new project now and am still wary.

<comment><USER12> Nuget conflicts is still a big issue IMO.

One of the major pains of my life as a .NET dev who does .NET core right now is Nuget and binding redirects!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NIST Launches a New U.S. Time Standard: NIST-F2 Atomic Clock - <AUTHOR> http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/nist-f2-atomic-clock-040314.cfm <comment><USER2> A whole second every 300 million years? So about 3.33 (repeating of course) nanoseconds a year. Seems like a lot, is this the most accurate created so far?

<comment><USER3> We can measure time more accurately than anything else, but it's still not good enough for some purposes you could imagine. You can't, for example, use two independent clocks to keep two gigabit transmitters in phase without feedback for more than months.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Hurdle When Trying to Grow Your Open Source Project? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I'll share mine to get things started: my biggest challenge is diagnosing and finding the _one_ thing that needs 10x improvement to generate more adoption: better documentation? more tutorials? produce benchmarks? wider language coverage?</comment>


It's Complicated: Breakup in the Social Age - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/frontpage-picks/e9162d6ed027

<comment><USER2> Woah. This article went from relatable to really fucking creepy towards the end there. If you and an ex have a shared account, unshare it. Don't snoop around in it, looking at pictures and notes and shit.

Anyway. The part of the article before it goes to creeptown isn't so bad. I don't particularly like seeing exes on Facebook, especially when I don't really want to reconnect with them. But on the other hand, I don't really want to unfriend them. Somehow that seems really cold.

Strangely, this also results in some internal struggle when dating someone new. "We should be friends on Facebook," he says. "Yeah, but odds are we're going to break up, and I might not really want to be connected to you after that," I don't say, but think.

I always seem to end up adding the person to Facebook anyway. Or breaking up with them right then.</comment>


Bulletin, from Google - <AUTHOR> https://posts.google.com/bulletin/share <comment><USER3> So many services and organisations have gone after hyperlocal for the perception of the ad-revenue that's just waiting to fall into their hands - because if someone's reading about a car accident near their route home they need an advert for the local carwash right?

Similarly if they are reading about some music gig coming up in the area they need an ad or offer for 25% off burgers at hipster burger joint du-jour that covers that night.

I once worked on a hyperlocal project that was funded by a television company to actually curate a stream of interesting and novel content about the local area. These were trained journalists curating sourced and self-created content. If the content was good enough then there would be ad-revenue (and deal placement) to follow, or so you would think. Turns out nobody was interested at all.

I don't think user submitted content will be engaging enough, but we'll see. I think anyone with a disposable income that could be targeted for hyperlocal ads or deals doesn't have enough time to use this app as well as twitter/facebook/whatever.

<comment><USER4> Interestingly, NextDoor seems to be taking off in my area. The premise is that the neighborhood has a mailing list or bulletin board for neighbors, by neighbors. A bit of the feed contains events from community organizations like the nearby police station soliciting feedback or park service having an open house.

This might be a swing at services like that.

<comment><USER5> I made a comment below asking if this was basically supposed to be like Nextdoor. I do get the sense that this is the market they're going for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Bulletin makes it effortless to put a spotlight on inspiring stories that > aren't being told...Effortless: No setup is required to create a story - <USER2> > you need is a smartphone_

Speaking as a former newspaper journalist, not much about local journalism is _effortless_. Even writing a glowing positive obit is a lot of stress -- make a mistake and you'd hear about it from the dead person's loved ones for awhile. A smartphone definitely helps with the mechanics of publication and dissemination but I don't think that's generally the bottleneck from the content-generator side. I'm interested in what mechanisms will be in place to filter -- i.e. a "PageRank" for contributors. But given how difficult a problem it has been to do this for YouTube, which is actually a cash cow for Google, how many engineering resources will be devoted to a news app?

</comment><comment><USER7> "Open: Bulletin stories are public and easy to discover: on Google search, through social networks, or via links sent by email and messaging apps"

I'm not a fan of Google these days by any stretch of the imagination, but if they're sincere about making Bulletin content truly open and accessible via the web and not stuck in a proprietary mobile app silo, then this could be a good thing. The recent trend of large companies towards closing themselves off from the open web is troubling, so any new content platform that makes openness a priority is something to applaud.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a crypto hat lets you bet on when Goog will pull the plug on this new service. I'd wager 1000 doge that this will stop taking new users in 18 months and be offline in 36.

</comment><comment><USER9> This would all be nice ...

... if it wasn't for the hunger of Google for my personal information.

<comment><USER10> You mean just like your bank, your retail store, your ISP, your news outlet, your car dealership, your ...

Google is no different and isn't doing anything new that hasn't been done for decades; even hundreds of years.

<comment><USER9> I would have a problem with it if my bank, retail store, ISP, news outlet and car dealership were all the same company.

The scale and connectivity of the data is the problem here. It's now possible to draw conclusions from the combination of datasets.

<comment><USER10> Do not think that the scale and connectivity is different. All those businesses sell your information and extract your information, too. In many, possibly most, cases, they know more about you than Google does.

<comment><USER9> But in many countries that kind of sharing is not allowed without an "opt-in".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It doesn't seem different from how, say, WhatsApp is used in some places to spread "news".

The potential for abuse is big. What sort of curation will be done?

Right now, I can safely say that 90% of everything I get in popular WhatsApp groups is fraud, misinformation, fake news, baseless accusations, harmful medicine advice, etc.

Maybe Bulletin will be exclusively focused on events and they'll have a better time curating that.

<comment><USER12> If Bulletin shows hyperlocal "news" based on your actual location without the need to join anything, then there's already added value compared to WhatsApp et al.

As for moderation, could it be possible that they have an AI to weed out the stupid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, is this a Google version of Nextdoor? Or a mashup of Twitter and Nextdoor?

</comment><comment><USER13> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16240345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16240345)

</comment><comment><USER14> Discontinued?

<comment><USER15> Probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Its card style doesn't follow Material design.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh look another Google project that will last for a while and then they'll pull the plug on it.

<comment><USER18> Looks like something they can integrate into Google Maps, once it's successful enough. But because nobody will ever find it again there, it will be removed 3 Years later because of lacking usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like they are aiming at Instagram? Well. Good luck.</comment>


After Anonymous Tip, 17 Bodies Found at Nursing Home Hit by Virus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/nyregion/coronavirus-nj-andover-nursing-home-deaths.html <comment> blaser-waffle I would anticipate a low but consistent parade of these discoveries for weeks to months. A lot of old folks are fairly isolated and non-mobile, and when disruptions like this hit they die out of sight.

Same thing happens with heatwaves / cold snaps, and power outages.

<comment><USER2> But these weren't elderly people dying alone where no one would check on them. They died in a nursing home. The nursing home staff _did_ check on them, someone at some point found them, realized they were dead, and put them in the morgue.

The facility didn't call health authorities to investigate the possibility (probability?) of COVID-19, or funeral directors to bury the bodies, or go through whatever paperwork's normally needed to properly report dead people. They decided to just illegally hang onto the bodies for a while without notifying family or officially reporting the deaths.

They knew what they were doing was wrong, and did it anyway.

Parent's talking about "Older folks dying out of sight" which is like some older guy lives by himself, no family or close friends, catches COVID-19 and dies from it, and all his bills are auto-pay so nobody discovers him for 3 months. That's sad, and maybe society as a whole has done him a wrong for letting him get so isolated, but that's a little different than some specific medical-ish institution knowing he's dead and then actively covering up the death.</comment></comment>


When Good Engineers Write Bad Software - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/reviews/when-good-engineers-write-bad-software <comment> barry-cotter "IBM … in the '70s … had made some progress on turning software into an engineering discipline. That essentially all got thrown away. The invasion of people [during the personal computer revolution] … basically ignored everything that came before them."</comment>


New Blogs for Shoes and Hackety Hack - <AUTHOR> http://blog.steveklabnik.com/new-shoes-and-hackety-blogs

<comment><USER2> Please change the horrible broken-monitor-look background. I'm sure it's all artistic and stuff, but it's also extremely annoying. Thanks!</comment>


Vista Kicks Ass - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=275 Matt's take on Vista. <comment><USER2> _I haven't had to reinstall once, and with XP I typically would have 3 times by now._

I had no idea MS OSes were so bad. Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing?

<comment><USER3> The MS OSes are terrible. Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing. More typical computer users just buy new systems when they become unusably slow after a couple years, which is good for Dell and the like.

What gets me to stay is tablet PC support and font rendering. Linux doesn't have an application that comes close to Microsoft OneNote for note taking. I wish that Apple made a touch screen Mac and I will probably switch when they launch one.

The font rendering on Windows blows away Linux and Mac, in my opinion. There is nothing so crisp as Windows standard font smoothing (not ClearType). Linux and Mac look incredibly ugly without subpixel font smoothing or other heavy anti-aliasing. I spent a while trying to figure out how to get Linux to render fonts better and gave up when it required a kernel recompile.

Has anyone here gotten Linux to render fonts well without subpixel anti- aliasing?

<comment><USER4> I'm definitely not a fan of Mac fonts, but that might just be what I'm used to.

<comment><USER3> With Windows, you can turn font smoothing off completely and the fonts look like pixel fonts. With Linux and Mac, things look terrible without font smoothing.

See this post for an explanation of the fundamental difference between Mac and Windows font smoothing: Mac tries to render as closely to the printed typeface as possible and Windows tries to look good onscreen. <http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000885.html>

<comment><USER5> Odd... Personally I see Mac as gorgeous on screen fonts, and whenever I have to check things in IE on Windows XP the fonts look like some kid knocked them up in paint shop pro on a lazy sunday.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I've not seen nice fonts on windows yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the point of the anti-Vista stuff is not that Vista is significantly worse than other MS OS, but that it is not enough of an improvement over XP for people to put up with the speed hit. It seems the people who hate Vista the most are people who use Mac OS or Linux anyway.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm still divided on Vista. I've been using it for well over 2 years starting before the beta stage via an MSDN account. Lately, I use Vista, Ubuntu, and XP evenly throughout the day and XP is my least favorite. Vista has been more annoying then XP, but the added features (yes there are actually features worth using) make it worth it still. That said, Ubuntu is great, but I have had more issues with it on an old laptop than either XP or Vista which have both been on the machine. I think I am more willing to accept Ubuntu's short comings because I know it's open source, and it's what I expect.

That said, my next laptop will probably be a mac, although which OS I use most (OSX, Vista, or Ubuntu) has yet to be determined.

<comment><USER4> I always want to try OSX, but the ridiculous price and sub par hardware/build quality keep turning me away. All of my friends have Macbook Pros, had it not been for that I probably would have gotten one by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Matt, here's the secret to buying from Dell: shop in their small business section, not their home section. I'm quite pleased with my Inspiron 9400.

<comment><USER3> There used to be a real build quality difference between the Latitude and Inspiron lines but now some of the Latitudes are just black-painted Inspirons with marginally better support.

Lenovo is the way to go.

<comment><USER7> I'm not talking about Inspiron vs. Lattitude, I'm talking about the home line of Inspirons versus the SB line (9300 vs. 9400, when I bought mine). I find Lenovo's displays intolerably bad.

<comment><USER3> Oh, ok. What was the difference between the 9300/9400 Inspiron when you bought it?

<comment><USER7> I don't recall exactly, but there were at least two components -- the video card and wireless card IIRC -- that worked well with Linux on the 9400 but not the 9300.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Vista Kicks Your Ass...

1\. Self-limiting software

2\. Vanishing functionality through invalidation

3\. Removal of media capabilities

4\. Problem-solving prohibited

5\. Limited mobility

6\. One transfer only

7\. Stealth Installs with Windows Update turned OFF...

8\. Restrictions on your rights to use MPEG-4 video 9\. Windows Update file deletions of 3rd party software

Reference:

[http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/19/forbidding...](http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/19/forbidding_vistas_windows_licensing_disserves_the_user.html)

And thats just the EULA. Once you actually install this piece of malware you find that if you watch it with a net snffer, even while completely idle, after several days with no interaction, it is constantly sending stuff across the net. Try it for your self with Snort. Its spooky.

If you value your privacy, the security of your company, and give a damn about protecting your investments, you will read the EULA for yourself before you rush down to the beach with the rest of the lemmings.

</comment><comment><USER9> The author hints at a major issue with corporate deployments -- old machines. It's all fine, well and good that Vista runs on machines it shipped with; but many large shops have to turn down an upgrade to Vista just because the performance is egregiously bad on older machines. By extension, it is unwise for developers to assume that Vista will be there when they need it, making it unsuitable as a platform for the near future.</comment>


Stop designing websites, start designing posters - <AUTHOR> http://boagworld.com/design/no-more-websites <comment><USER2> Couldn't agree more ... that is, once I have a good selection of downloadable fonts, and browsers support most desktop-publishing trix (like fonts set along curves ... good luck, CSS! ... and shapes other than rectangles). Because nothing kills a "poster" faster than having to use the same handful of crappy web-standard fonts everyone's seen 2000 times ... and setting them into box upon box upon box.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title for this article is right at the bottom of my screen when I first load the page. Not a great example of design.</comment>


Hundreds, thousands of Twitter accounts hacked in "Nazialmanya" attack - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/hashtag/Nazialmanya?src=hash <comment><AUTHOR> Compromised accounts include the European Parliament, various US gov accounts, security professionals.</comment>


How to Quickly End Police Brutality in America - <AUTHOR> https://fixingtao.com/2015/12/how-to-quickly-end-police-brutality-in-america/ <comment><USER2> "I'm not bullshitting."

Funny you'd say that, this pegged my bullshit meter to maximum.</comment>


WikiLeaks cables: Pfizer 'used dirty tricks to avoid clinical trial payout' - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/09/wikileaks-cables-pfizer-nigeria?intcmp=239

<comment><USER2> I would suggest anybody interested in this sphere watch "The Constant Gadener" (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387131/>). Pharma companies are usually right up there with oil companies when it comes to exploiting the third world.</comment>


Simlish, the language that defined The Sims - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/7/21126705/the-sims-simlish-language-history-20th-anniversary-game <comment><USER2> The article reminded me of Pingu[1], which also used an invented Grammelot[2] named "Penguinese".

Fond memories of watching Pingu with my kid. I'm not sure which of us enjoyed it more! Noot noot!

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

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

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a bit more of an in-depth take of the history of Simlish and the people who created it in this article: [https://www.techradar.com/news/simlish-how-an-improv-game- tu...](https://www.techradar.com/news/simlish-how-an-improv-game-turned-into- the-most-recognisable-language-in-gaming)

<comment><USER4> The timing of the articles (both in the same week) makes it appear to be a PR push.

[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

<comment><USER5> The reason for the timing is likely that The Sims was released on february 4th in 2000 so it is the 20 years anniversary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Sims is where I learned the appropriate way to interact with others based on what provided higher relationship status. I grew up in a very rigid, structured family without a lot of external interaction so this was my primer to "succeeding" later in life. I still experience crippling anxiety from social interactions, but at least the The Sims provided an appropriate socialization path to allow for quasi normal relationships with coworkers.

</comment><comment><USER7> I played quite a few of the Maxis games and I thought that the Simlish of the Sims was the natural progression from the Sim noises of SimCopter which can be heard here:

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

<comment><USER8> Sim Copter was indeed the first appearance of the Sims. The Sim character tree editor was first used for Sim Copter, which was in development concurrently with Sims. They were "project X" and "project Y" respectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Heh, based on the title I first thought it was a novel domain specific programming language, not a human language!</comment>


Remote Working Niche-YouTubers Traveling Together - <AUTHOR> http://www.createabroad.org <comment><AUTHOR> There's quite a few startups popping up in the remote working/co-living community. However, they all cater to a certain crowd. Why not expand to other niches?

Create Abroad is for YouTubers, actors, filmmakers, and other video lovers. Opinions?</comment>


Looking for CS textbook covering boolean logic up to assembler, by simulation - <AUTHOR> As far as I can remember this book appeared on a best-of list either on Hacker News or some other site associated with Y Combinator. The book teaches how computers work starting with boolean logic, and on up through circuits, processors, and assembly language. Student exercises are based on simulation, each time building on what was learned in the earlier (lower) layer. The author may be Israeli or working at an Israeli institution.<p>Any pointers are welcome. <comment><USER2> Are you thinking of "The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles" <[http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing- Systems-Building-Pr...](http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems- Building-Principles/dp/0262640686/>) by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the one. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.nand2tetris.org/](http://www.nand2tetris.org/)</comment>


After Docker: Unikernels and Immutable Infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@darrenrush/after-docker-unikernels-and-immutable-infrastructure-93d5a91c849e <comment><USER2> Rump kernels ([http://rumpkernel.org/](http://rumpkernel.org/)) are essentially Unikernels for POSIX. I'm currently working on running unmodified application stacks (base firmware/"not-OS" \+ rump kernel + userland application) on Xen and later, KVM and bare metal.

Will be giving a talk on this at [http://operatingsystems.io/](http://operatingsystems.io/) in London on November 25th.

<comment><USER3> How'd you get started with rump kernels? I tried poking around and there's not much documentation.

<comment> vertex-four I found that the original research paper is currently the best (only?) proper introduction to rump kernels.

<comment><USER4> It is being updated [https://github.com/rumpkernel/book](https://github.com/rumpkernel/book)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't believe no one has mentioned ZeroVM[1] yet. The project page is unfortunately non-descriptive, but Wikipedia has some important details[2]:

 _The ZRT[ZeroVM RunTime] also replaces C date and time functions such as time to give program a fixed and deterministic environment. With fixed inputs, every execution is guaranteed to give the same result. Even non-functional programs become deterministic in this restricted environment. This makes programs easier to debug since their behavior is fixed._

I've had a play with it - there's a version of python that runs on it, and it's surprisingly usable.

[1] [http://www.zerovm.org/](http://www.zerovm.org/)

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

<comment><USER6> This reminds me a bit of how (AFAIK) Nix packages are patched to avoid timestamps and generate deterministic builds when needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "It remains virtually impossible to create a Ruby or Python web server > virtual machine image that DOESN'T include build tools (gcc), ssh, and > multiple latent shell executables."

At work, our tech team has found an interesting way around this for our Python app. We build out the virtualenv in the docker container, and then run our ansible-based deployments inside the same container. With that, our virtual environments are rsync'd to the app servers so we can avoid installing developer tools.

<comment><USER8> I'm ditching virtualenvs and going with old good Debian packaging and private APT repository.

For VMs/containers that already run a single application, except for some weird edge cases, there's really no point in having a virtual environment in a virtual environment.

I have initial success with a few simpler projects, now looking into transitioning more complex ones. Not sure whenever it'll go without any hassle, but seems worth trying. At worst, I'd just waste my time and return to virtualenvs.

<comment><USER9> You could also try virtualenvs inside Debian packages:

[https://github.com/spotify/dh-virtualenv](https://github.com/spotify/dh- virtualenv)

One reason to keep virtualenvs is that the system Python (VM or container) includes extra Python packages that your app may or may not need. If you use a virtualenv, you exclude these system-installed packages and guarantee a clean starting point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Forgive me if I'm totally clueless, but isn't the idea of the unikernel basically a throwback to the earliest, pre-OS days of computing when all programs needed routines to initialize the base hardware resources before they could perform tasks?

The idea of the unikernel and the libOS in general where applications can be linked with their bare minimum OS runtime and packaged is certainly nifty, but it's kind of funny that people are being so hyped over what sounds like a more advanced form of what was regularly done in mainframes 60 years ago.

<comment><USER10> Because in 60 years the OS got useless layers of abstractions when used as server OS with programming languages that come with batteries included.

If the programming language has a rich ecosystem with a runtime that is already taking care of hardware abstractions and scheduling, why replicate it a few times in lower layers?

How many schedulers or device drivers are needed to serve network requests?

<comment><USER11> It's only useless until you discover that you're reimplementing it from scratch on a full-time basis.

<comment><USER10> I assume you program in pure C without libc, using only syscalls for your OS of choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article is correct that there aren't yet best practices about building minimal and secure Docker images, but it seems like switching to unikernels would be much more work. Unikernels also suffer from the lack of VM resizing and minimum VM sizes being too big in many cases.

<comment><USER13> Agreed. The real problem is with the current tools for building images.

As a proof of concept, several months ago I built a few tiny Docker images using musl libc and no package manager. But I had do deviate from the normal image build process to do so.

[http://mwcampbell.us/blog/tiny-docker-musl- images.html](http://mwcampbell.us/blog/tiny-docker-musl-images.html)

<comment><USER14> Ha, I wanted to do something similar to build tiny Virtual Box machines for network labs. I too ended up reading about sabotage linux. Great link !

<comment><USER15> I am a big fan of these nano-images and really want to support them better in Docker's builder. See "nested builds" and "image squashing". Basically, you should be able to define a Dockerfile for the _build_ environment, then within that define how to produce the final image. Then you need squashing to avoid carrying the build layers.

I personally played with aboriginal Linux, but I believe it's the same idea :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the biggest problem with Unikernels that I haven't seen addressed is hypervisor inefficiency. Emulating any part of a kernel or multiple kernels will just be slower. You have 20 guests on your hosts? That's 20 probably- overlapping (uni)kernels running.

Sure you could optimize the heck out of the hypervisor, but now you've created a kernel. And your applications run on that kernel.

With containers, you have one kernel that won't have to instantiate 20 drivers for the disk subsystem. It can be smarter because it knows more about the loads. It's what kernels have been built to do since day 0.

My main concern with unikernels is that eventually the hypervisor will need to be a kernel to be any more optimized. I just worry it will be come something of a self-defeating concept.

<comment><USER3> AWS, Rackspace et al. use hypervisors already, so we're trending toward 4 layers:

      hypervisor -> monolithic kernel -> containers -> application

Unikernels collapse it to:

      hypervisor -> unikernel/application

It's certainly more elegant, although I'm skeptical of the purported performance gains as well, simply because so many optimizations have been thrown into traditional kernels.

<comment><USER17> If you are using a more minimal hypervisor (see my other comment on the parent), then there do seem to be some measurable gains. I've seen a few papers in this style:

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical- sessions/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical- sessions/presentation/peter)

 _We describe the hardware and software changes needed to take advantage of this new abstraction, and we illustrate its power by showing improvements of 2-5 in latency and 9 in throughput for a popular persistent NoSQL store relative to a well-tuned Linux implementation._

That said, a simple application like memcached might be currently latency- bound by the kernel's network stack, but a more complex application that reads from disk (even SSD) won't be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's so much wrong with this post, I don't know where to begin. The idea that security is based on removing files, and not the holistic auditing and hardening of a system. The idea that you can't remove a compiler from a system image before packaging and deploying it (seriously? you don't know how to remove a file before you run a packager?). The idea that you have to ship an entire image to update a couple files. The idea that the entire design of an operating system (which is designed to make it easier for programs to run and interact without having to be tailor-made) is obsolete. It's like this guy has never held an operations job in his life, yet he's telling people how systems should be managed.

<comment><USER19> If you have an idempotent service, why do you need the accumulated cruft of 40 years of bad ideas to provide it?

<comment><USER20> So, UNIX boils down to "the accumulated cruft of 40 years of bad ideas"?

I'm not disagreeing on the principle of immutable servers, but that's a pretty bold claim.

I don't see getting rid of the "accumulated cruft" as being a particularly interesting reason for exploring the unikernel or immutable server concept. The benefit is in building for scale and redundancy. The lighter your image, the easier it becomes to replicate it and maintain it, generally speaking.

Further, there is an argument to be made that building your own cruft into your system is counter-productive compared to letting the operating system cruft handle it. The Linux developers are probably better at it than you or me; unless we understand our usage patterns dramatically better and the options for optimizing them, it may be best to trust the OS "cruft" to do the right thing.

In short, I'm not really taking a side on this one. I believe there is interesting research to be done, and probably useful outcomes to be found, in this direction. But, why dismiss 40 years of operating system refinement by some of the brightest minds in the world as "accumulated cruft...of bad ideas"?

<comment><USER19> Because that cruft has grown up in service of a timesharing model of computation that no longer holds. Why does my phone have a root user? Why do I have to escalate privileges to bind to ports < 1000? Why am I context switching at all?

I think it's a mistake to conflate path dependence and correctness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Actually, CoreOS is a platform designed for orchestration and management of Docker instances. It's not intended to be used as a base image for Docker containers. Specifically, CoreOS is based on Gentoo Linux, but the recommended base Docker image is Debian._

Well I learned something...

<comment><USER22> You learned wrong. CoreOS is a derivative of Chromium OS, which uses Portage as its package manager. Simply typing "emerge" into a window does not Gentoo make, which is a bummer, because it shows a lack of research on the part of the author (that really came out in other areas, too).

It's also largely irrelevant, because CoreOS should in practice be read-only when you boot it, and you're not extremely concerned with the details of how it's put together (which its usage of Portage is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The ideas here are all very interesting, but I don't think we need to even discuss issues with Docker to find the idea of an immutable server interesting.

I also don't find the "problems" with Docker overly problematic.

* The use of many images is probably(?) not an issue? Do people just use "any old base image" without further thought? * An image of a few hundred megabytes isn't small, but it's not terribly large either.

Lastly, I see people's confusing over what CoreOS is besides the point. What it is becomes pretty apparent after taking a look at coreos.com.

Overall I really like the idea of an immutable server though!

</comment><comment><USER24> One thing to be careful with these models is that you're moving the burden of maintaining libraries to the application code.

So instead of updating packages and what not, you rely on the developer to update the libraries and reship.

Sure its not far from today's model if the dev has to ship the whole container, but it also makes it even harder. How do you know if you have lib x or z when it's sometimes just dropped among a bunch of files? I think it's much worse. it hides the problem and makes it difficult to detect.

I'm suspecting kernels will slowly converge toward plan9-like functionality instead. It makes more sense. It's faster, more efficient, simpler.

The main barrier so far has been portability - but with more and more apps being written on very portable languages (python, Go, C#, ...) its becoming easier.

<comment><USER25> For Mirage OS, all libs are released as packages in OPAM [0], so it's really straightforward to find out which versions you're using (and manage/update/remove them). In fact, we just did a set of releases recently [1]. I'm not sure how it is for the other systems.

[0] [http://opam.ocaml.org](http://opam.ocaml.org)

[1] [https://github.com/ocaml/opam- repository/pull/3028](https://github.com/ocaml/opam-repository/pull/3028)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've always been a proponent of autarchy in these matters, and so am intrigued by the idea of the unikernel. I'm also going to spend some time with OCaml, so Mirage looks like something that might turn out to be really fun.

<comment><USER25> Please do get involved! If you're learning OCaml, then [http://realworldocaml.org](http://realworldocaml.org) is a great resource. When you start trying out Mirage, join the mailing list and let us know how you get on. Finally, to see where we can take this tech, have a look at [http://nymote.org](http://nymote.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Immutable systems are on the rise, and I'm glad that it is getting more developer mind share. I literally just wrote an article about this a couple days ago ( [https://medium.com/@marknadal/rise-of-the-immutable- operatin...](https://medium.com/@marknadal/rise-of-the-immutable-operating- system-f7945b1da993) ) and since then I've seen like 3 other posts about it on top of HN.

</comment><comment><USER27> > _Heroku is a great example of immutable servers in action: every change to > your application requires a 'git push' to overwrite the existing version._

Um, not it's not.

Heroku's buildpacks code caches a hell of a lot of stuff on each execution agent. Still more code has to recognise and try to repair various broken states. It's mutability, through and through.

</comment><comment><USER28> How far away are Unikernels from being adopted in production ? Does it make sense to consider them for a project starting today ?

</comment><comment><USER29> So what do you think of things like Apache Mesos in this regard?</comment>


Ask HN: How much time did you take off after the birth of your child? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to decide how much time I should take off for the birth of my first child.  I'd like to know other's experience in this matter. <comment><USER2> My advice is based on the assumption that you are not having the child yourself and you'll have parents/in-laws/family visiting for a period of time to help out.

\- Take up to a week as soon as the baby is born. You'll need time to recuperate from the delivery and get used to having the baby in the house. You'll find however, the first few weeks are easier than you expect: You have family around to help out and for the first few weeks, newborns sleep more and fuss much less than they will in about 3 weeks to a month.

\- Save the rest of your time off for when your family leaves. This is the best advice I can give any soon to be parent. Firstly, with the family gone, you'll have to deal with the baby on your own for the first time, and it becomes much more of an ordeal with only two people (and one of those people still recovering from delivery.) Secondly, in a cruel trick of nature, typically around the time your family leaves you alone, the baby starts to become much more active and goes for shorter periods between feeding. Unless you are really lucky (your baby sleeps for longer than 2-3 hours or the mom agrees to do all night work and you're able to sleep through it) you will not be getting very much sleep, and it will take some time to get used to being so sleep deprived.

It may sound like strange advice, but you're far better off taking the lions share of the time off a month after the baby comes. The mom will appreciate the support you'll be able to give in the most difficult period of new parenthood. If you take all the time off up front it will probably wind up harder on your family.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, secretagent -

I'm planning on taking two weeks off for my first child, although they will be staggered. My boss is actually expecting in March so he was very understanding about this - your mileage may vary. I'm taking a week after the birth in mid- May, and then another week in June for a trip to see parents and friends from back home.

When are you due?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd rather not give away any clues about my identity since most of my co- workers read Hacker News. I'm just trying to get gauge how others have handled this.

<comment><USER3> Okay, that makes sense. I was just curious because the more time you have up front, the easier it's going to be to get the time off without unnecessary friction. Hypothetically, if I were a manager and one of my reports told me "hey, I'm having a baby next Tuesday - can I have two weeks off?" I'd be pretty teed off. I left my last job partly due to a lack of understanding over what my wife's pregnancy meant for my ability to work the same hours as the rest of the team (I was the only one with a kid and nobody understood why it's important for me to go to OB/GYN appointments). Don't put yourself in that situation.

Tell your boss early and remind him/her often that there is a baby on the way and you're going to need this time off. The only way you can screw this up is by springing a huge surprise on your boss like the hypothetical above.

Good luck and congratulations on the baby!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I take it you work in an industry that is highly competitive. In my experience two weeks straight (ten work days with remote log-in for meetings) is standard.

It really depends on if the expectant mom has family in the neighborhood or willing to spend time. The first six weeks are really, really tough for everyone (baby included). Good luck, sleep when the baby sleeps and practice wrapping burritos. Trust me. You will need this experience when it comes time to wrap the little person in swaddling cloth.

</comment><comment><USER5> None, still working like a horse</comment>


The Great Pumpkin-Pie Conspiracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/squashing-the-controversy/544250/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Well, sure. You don't bake a pie with a carving pumpkin. Normally, you use what is usually labeled a 'sugar pumpkin' in the produce market. They're smaller and, obviously, sweeter than a carving pumpkin. Carving pumpkins aren't good eats. Doesn't everyone know this already?</comment>