10 Million Concurrent Connections – The Kernel is the Problem - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/5/13/the-secret-to-10-million-concurrent-connections-the-kernel-i.html <comment><USER3> > The kernel is the problem

I had an epiphany one day when I realized that the kernel is nothing but a library with an expensive calling convention.

The only reason we bother calling the kernel at all is because it has privileges that userspace programs don't have, and it uses those privileges to control/mediate access to shared resources.

The downside of the kernel is that there's no way around it. You can't "opt out" of any of its decisions. With any normal library, if had an O(n^2) algorithm somewhere, or wasn't optimized for your use case, or just generally got in the way, you could choose not to link against it. User-space libraries are democratic in this respect; you vote with your linker line. But with the kernel, it's "my way or the highway." The kernel is the only way to the hardware.

Here's an unfortunate example: O_DIRECT is one of those few ways that you _can_ sidestep the kernel. With O_DIRECT you can bypass the kernel's page cache, which there are very good reasons for wanting to do. But Linus's opinion is that "I should have fought back harder": <https://lkml.org/lkml/2007/1/10/233> He thinks it's _unfortunate_ that you can sidestep the kernel, because "You need a buffer whatever IO you do, and it might as well be the page cache."

But what if you want better memory accounting, or better isolation between users, or a different data structure, or any number of other tweaks to the page cache implementation? Well thankfully we have O_DIRECT. Otherwise, your only choice would be to try to convince the Linux kernel maintainers to integrate your change, after you've tweaked it so that it's suitable for absolutely everyone else that uses Linux, and given it an interface that Linux is willing to support forever. Good luck with that.

The kernel has always been the problem. User-space is where it's at.

<comment><USER4> People have had that realization in the past

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exokernel>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microkernel>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deba...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_debate)

There are good reasons why they have not caught on, performance being the most salient one.

<comment><USER3> > People have had that realization in the past

"The kernel is just a library" isn't exactly the same sentiment as "the kernel should be as small as possible" -- I believed the latter before I fully understood the former. "The kernel is just a library" means that all of the experience we have designing and factoring userspace APIs carries over into kernel design. Furthermore it means that the kernel is a strictly less flexible library than userspace libraries, with a strictly more expensive calling convention, and that its _only_ advantage is that it can protect and mediate access to hardware.

> There are good reasons why they have not caught on, performance being the > most salient one.

Most of the received wisdom about microkernels is based on outdated designs like Mach, and not modern designs like L4. L4 is significantly more efficient than Mach.

<comment><USER4> Exokernels use library operating systems.

L4 was also one of a kind endeavor extremely optimized for the specific architecture. I can't really imagine that something like this could be achievable for a commercial OS.

<comment><USER3> OKL4 is built on a third-generation L4 microkernel and is deployed to over 1.5 billion mobile devices: [http://www.ok-labs.com/releases/release/ok-labs- software-sur...](http://www.ok-labs.com/releases/release/ok-labs-software- surpasses-milestone-of-1.5-billion-mobile-device-shipments)

<comment><USER4> "[OKL4] is a microkernel-based embedded hypervisor". That does not quite sound like an OS.

<comment><USER5> What is an OS but a process hypervisor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Don't scribble data all over memory via pointers. Each time you follow a pointer it will be a cache miss: [hash pointer] - > [Task Control Block] -> [Socket] -> [App]. That's four cache misses._

Incidentally, game programmers have been spreading the gospel on this issue for several years now. See for more:

[http://macton.smugmug.com/gallery/8936708_T6zQX#!i=593426709...](http://macton.smugmug.com/gallery/8936708_T6zQX#!i=593426709&k=ZX4pZ)

[http://research.scee.net/files/presentations/gcapaustralia09...](http://research.scee.net/files/presentations/gcapaustralia09/Pitfalls_of_Object_Oriented_Programming_GCAP_09.pdf)

[http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2011/11/07/an-example-in- data-...](http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2011/11/07/an-example-in-data- oriented-design-sound-parameters/)

<comment><USER7> I couldn't help but laugh reading the first link. Sure, there are some good ideas for optimization. But (1) no profiling, and (2) there are a couple really bogus suggestions.

For example, suggestion #33, to shift by a constant amount instead of a variable amount. You see, it only _looks_ like you're shifting by a variable amount. This is one of those things that compilers have been optimizing for years and are very good at: strength reduction wrt variables that depend on the loop variable.

You'll also see game programmers do things like "x >> 4" instead of "x/16", because "x >> 4" is faster. It _is_ faster in assembly language, but your compiler already knows that and you are just making the code harder to read every time you do a micro-optimization.

Game programmers spread the gospel on lots of premature optimization nonsense, in my opinion, and are mostly inexperienced when it comes to writing mantainable code. It's a kind of hazard of the industry. Performance problems means cutting beloved features, and rather than doing any maintenance you just start a new game from scratch. (Not universally, of course. There are a few programmers professionally working on engines.)

<comment><USER8> Slide #33 is actually reasonable advice. Variable shift = 11 cycle latency on PS3/Xbox360, and it blocks both threads and disables interrupts as it runs. (Will the compiler figure this out? Maybe, maybe not. But if you write the code you want - which in this case you might as well, since the transformation is simple - then you won't have to worry about that. As a general point of principle you should write the code you want, rather than something else that you hope will become the code you have in mind; computers are very bad at figuring out intent, but excellent at simply following instructions.)

What are the other bogus suggestions? The overall thrust of the slides seems to me valid: know what's expensive (branches, memory access, mini-pitfalls like the micrododed thing), pick a strategy that avoids all of that, and don't throw away performance. Performance always ends up being an issue; you don't have to carefully preserve every last cycle, but that's no excuse for just pissing away cycles doing pointless stuff.

Not explicitly stated, but apparent from comparing the suggested approach to the original one, is that you can't always just leave this stuff to the last minute, when you've had the profiler tell you what's a bottleneck and what isn't. The requisite changes might have far-reaching consequences, and so it's worth giving a bit of thought to performance matters when you start and things are a bit more in flux.

A bit of domain knowledge also won't hurt. I bet if this function were ten times worse, but called "PostDeserializeFromDVD", it wouldn't attract very much attention.

<comment><USER9> > but that's no excuse for just pissing away cycles doing pointless stuff.

Yes there is - maintainable code, programmer time and effort. What are you worried about, a large power bill due to your cpu doing what is supposed to be doing?

On an unrelated note this kind of attitude is the first thing I test for during a programmer interview, and is my strongest case for eliminating potential candidates. I made the mistake once of letting one through - <USER2> first task was a relatively straightforward modification to a large C program. A week later I was a bit worried he hadn't reported back done, so I went to check up on him and it turns out he was busy changing _every line of code_ to adjust formatting and variable names, not to mention these kinds of pointless micro-optimizations. And he hadn't even checked in once, he was saving the checkin itself for another multiple day effort. Sigh. I tried using the "premature optimization is the root of all evil" line on him to get my point across (and see if he had heard of it), and it was when I saw his eyes flare up in anger I knew he had to go. Sad really because he was otherwise quite bright.

Now I basically put C++/game programmer applications in a "special pile" to be considered as a last resort. I just dont need this kind of arrogance and cowbow mentality wrecking the place. Its like sending a bull into a china shop.

<comment><USER8> If performance is a requirement, it's a requirement, and you need to bear it in mind. And working in games, it usually is. Virtually every project has problems with performance, and dealing with the issues properly at the end of a project can be very hard. By that point, the code is usually insufficiently malleable to be safely transformed in the necessary fashion, and there's a very good chance that you'll introduce new bugs anyway (or cause problems by fixing existing ones).

So, armed with a few simple rules of thumb about what is particularly expensive (let's say: memory accesses, branching, indirect jumps, square root/trig/pow/etc., integer division), and a bit of experience about which parts tend to cause problems that can be rather intrusive to fix (and object culling is one of these), one might reasonably put in a bit of forethought and try to structure things in a way that means they're relatively efficient from the start. Better that than just producing something that's likely to be a bottleneck, but written in a way that means it is never going to be efficient, whatever you do to it, without a ground-up rewrite. And that's the sort of approach the slide deck appears to be advocating.

Seems uncontroversial, to my mind. Some (and I'd agree) might even just call this planning ahead. Seems that when you plan ahead by drawing up diagrams of classes and objects, because you've been burned by having people just diving in and coming up with a big ball of spaghetti, that's good planning ahead. But when you plan ahead by trying to ensure that the code executes in an efficient manner, because you've been burned by having people come up with slothful code that wastes half its execution time and requires redoing because of that, that's premature optimisation, and a massive waste of time.

As with any time you make plans for the future, sometimes you get it wrong. Ars longa vita brevis, and all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On the face of it this is a nonsensical problem; a 10Gbps ethernet connection is not going to need 10M concurrent tcp connections; ethernet + tcp/ip protocol overhead is approx 4% (62 bytes overhead from 1542 bytes max per packet, no jumbo packets over the wider internet yet), the average UK broadband connection is now over 12Mbps ([http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2013/03/14/average-uk-broadband- sp...](http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2013/03/14/average-uk-broadband-speeds-hit- double-figures/)), that gives approximately 800 connections to fill the pipe. Even at a paltry 1% bandwidth usage per connection and 4x10Gbps adaptors in the server that is still 320,000 connections, I have done 150k connections on a high end desktop Linux machine. Available memory (4kx2 socket buffers; you do want connections to be as fast as possible no?) and bandwidth will be a limit to the number of connections long before you get to 10M connections. You are far better off buying multiple machines (redundancy) in more than one location (even more redundancy) before heading off to load yourself up with technical debt that could choke a zoo full of elephants.

The Linux kernel has come a long way in the last few years with improvements to SMP scaling of sockets, zero copy, and large numbers of file handles; make use of it! The level of technical skill being applied to fix kernel problems is probably more expensive than you can afford.

<comment><USER11> There are usecases that use minimal to no bandwidth but a lot of connections. IMAP-IDLE comes to mind as a premier example. Essentially anything that requires "push" capability these days relies on open connections, other examples are websockets and instant messaging. Also the number of concurrent users is on the rise because of the always-on nature of cellphones. While 10M sounds bit far fetched today, I think that using available bandwidth as a measure for connection count is misguided.

<comment><USER10> UDP, or better still SCTP, would be a far better protocol for this use case; having said that there are legacy issues with NAT, protocol support (e.g. IMAP, websockets). Having said that multi-homing is coming down the pipeline, the real pity is that the devices that could most benefit from it, mobile computing, largely refuse to support it; i.e. iOS and Android. Maybe pushing the firefox guys to support SCTP on their OS / websockets implementation would force the other parties to the table... Maybe a user space implementation on top of UDP would be the way to go.

<comment> qu4z-2 I think the problem with UDP is all the people who think that NAT is a perfectly valid firewall/use case and not a hack.

<comment><USER10> Agreed a serious "real world" problem. having said that people are working on it. I have a search around earlier and found there is a draft RFC for the UDP encapsulation of SCTP ([http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-sctp-udp- encaps-...](http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-sctp-udp-encaps-14)), this combined with a soul destroying use of a zero data payload keep alive to fend off NAT stupidity, and maybe a server side end point abuse of port 53 to keep "Carrier Grade" NAT quiet might be the trick. All this should work on mobile platforms.

In general doing this "properly" is an exercise in icky compromise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well,

       sorry to say I don't buy the "Unix was designed as a phone switch control plane" nonsense at all. Here is Dennis Ritchie:

"From the point of view of the group that was to be most involved in the beginnings of Unix (K. Thompson, Ritchie, M. D. McIlroy, J. F. Ossanna), the decline and fall of Multics had a directly felt effect. We were among the last Bell Laboratories holdouts actually working on Multics, so we still felt some sort of stake in its success. More important, the convenient interactive computing service that Multics had promised to the entire community was in fact available to our limited group, at first under the CTSS system used to develop Multics, and later under Multics itself. Even though Multics could not then support many users, it could support us, albeit at exorbitant cost. We didn't want to lose the pleasant niche we occupied, because no similar ones were available; even the time-sharing service that would later be offered under GE's operating system did not exist. What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form. We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication. "

Unix was designed for people, not for Bell System Switches: <http://cm.bell- labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html>

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the original source is easier to read: <http://c10m.robertgraham.com/p/manifesto.html>

</comment><comment><USER14> > The problem with packets is they go through the Unix kernel. The network > stack is complicated and slow. The path of packets to your application needs > to be more direct. Don't let the OS handle the packets.

Why don't you focus on simplifying the network stack instead?

The stack is complicated and slow for a reason: it takes care of many things. I will believe that you can do better when you provide the same amount of functionality (QoS, firewall, probing, tracing). If you say that you can do without all these additional features, why don't you go and optimize the stack so that the most basic code path is smaller and faster?

<comment><USER15> If you have one specialized need (i.e. one _specific_ path for packets to travel), then it is just as valid an approach to trash every other path.

To turn your own question around: Why bother trying to optimize a stack that contains a _lot_ of stuff you don't strictly need? The talk doesn't deal with general-purpose servers that perform multiple roles; it says "if you have a singular role, here is how you hyper-optimize to support that role at a huge scale."

<comment><USER14> > If you have one specialized need (i.e. one specific path for packets to > travel), then it is just as valid an approach to trash every other path.

You only have one specialized need at the very beginning. Then you start seeing the need for "just another little feature". And soon you will start replicating big parts of the network stack. Call it Greenspun's tenth rule for the network, if you want.

Also, most of the time, what you "just need" happens to be also the common need of many other users out there. Joining forces to fix a single code path is a much better investment than redoing things in userland for the sake of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well of course it is the problem. The kernel does lots of other stuff.

If you were to ask someone to build a vehicle that can go really fast you might end up with a car. But ideally you'd really want a rocket.

I'm sure that there are systems out there that serve web pages with only bare metal. Where the "kernel" exists only as an architectural stub. Why shouldn't the NIC serve web pages directly?

<comment><USER17> For example, there are systems that do video streaming directly from NAND- memory to NIC, bypassing the kernel to ensure high throughput (say, multiple 100Gbps optic links) and no jitter - linux handles the control part (data management, initiating new streams, etc), but the data part is outside of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Embedded programmers have been scheduling I/O like this for decades as well. A thread is a lot on an embedded kernel.

<comment><USER19> The point about statically allocating "huge pages" aligns with my experience as an embedded programmer as well. Dynamic allocation is simply a no-no on those systems.

<comment><USER18> Usually because of the runtime - locks, garbage collection strike when you can't afford it (realtime buffering).

So my approach is a heap-cache usually. Calculate the log2 size, choose a heap bucket, if its empty THEN go to the heap. Never frees so never garbage collects (neither does single-large-allocation so no loss), just relinks freed blocks on the cache bucket by size for simple reuse. It soon comes to a working-set and never takes longer than a critical-section and link/unlink, at least once it settles down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> a different version of the same presentation, a more "class(y)" one...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFvnPAIo4F0>

</comment><comment><USER21> Anyone can recommend a good place to start reading about *nix kernel for non- programmers? Or any other programing concepts that are being referred in the post? I'm pretty green sysop guy and want to try and understand better the post (currently I'm getting maybe 10-20%)

</comment><comment><USER22> Here is an interesting concept that thinks 'outside the box':

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq1vDG-st1k>

<comment><USER23> Interesting how similar this is an advanced 4G cell network. In previous generations of networks there was always a "controller" node taking care of the handover between the cells. This of course didn't scale very well when there was a spike in traffic usage. So in 4G cell networks there are no controllers and all handovers are done via the cells instead.

Interesting to see this thinking applied to something slightly different, thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This presentation hints at one possible implementation of this, specifically for VoIP/RTP.

[http://www.cluecon.com/presentation/building- conferenceivr-p...](http://www.cluecon.com/presentation/building- conferenceivr-platform-nodejs-sipjs-and-webrtc/)

I would love to see actual working code for IP/SIP/RTP in node.js using packet sockets, if anybody knows of an open source project.

</comment><comment><USER24> If this became a real problem, wouldn't the pragmatic solution be to distribute the load across multiple machines? I fail to see how handling 10M connections on a single machine has any merit, taking into account reliability for example, apart from being able to brag about it.

</comment><comment><USER25> writing custom drivers for each NIC is a blocker. Could 10M be achieved with raw sockets?

<comment><USER26> libnetfilter_queue for rx, raw socket for tx.

That was going to be the basis for a project to handle large numbers of concurrent connections. Still on the drawing board though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What should be I doing to handle thousands of quick and short lived connections?

</comment><comment><USER28> Where are people getting these super cheap servers?

</comment><comment><USER29> First of all, what a disorganized article. Who the hell edited this?

Secondly, the article surmises that the kernel is the problem, which seems right. Then it makes a leap to state that _the way to do this is to write your own driver_.

Who said? I certainly don't agree. You are still running a multi-user kernel, but you've now sacrificed its stability by running a parallel network stack. Linux wasn't written to work in that way and it's hard to know what you're getting into when you subvert your OS in that way. This article would be much better if it talked about other options out there. For example..

Why not take out the middle-man entirely with something like OpenMirage (<http://www.openmirage.org/>)? Get rid of the lowest-common-denominator performance you get using a general-purpose OS and make your application the OS. Link in whatever OS-like services (network, filesystem, etc) you may need. Talk to the hardware directly without going through a middle-man and without ugly hacks.

<comment><USER30> Well, he's mostly suggesting using a user-space networking stack provided by your vendor (Intel's DPDK). But writing your own userspace driver from scratch is actually very simple -- I've done it for Intel's 1Gbps and 10Gbps cards before the DPDK was made publicly available. We're talking ~1000 lines of user-space code, and less than a month of work. Writing your own userspace networking stack is of course more complicated, depending on exactly which level of protocol support you need. Supporting say ARP or EtherChannel is trivial, while a production quality and interoperable TCP stack will be man- years of work.

But having written systems doing 10M TCP connections at 10Gbps, I strongly believe that you want to relegate the kernel into the role of a management system. Having the system split across the kernel and user-space will lead to unacceptable performance, pretty much no matter where you split things. And having the full application in the kernel would be a nightmare for development, debugging, and deployment. (And I sure as hell am not going to choose a pre-alpha research project over Linux as the base of telecoms systems.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just found another iniciative about userspace tcp/ip stack that looks somewhat promising - <http://www.openonload.org>

Presentation - <http://www.slideshare.net/shemminger/uio-final></comment></comment></comment>


The End of the World, as told by Instagram's #endoftheworld #december21 Photos. - <AUTHOR> http://instadoomsday.com/home

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the world ending in 9 days?</comment>


Would-Be Engineers Hit Books the Hardest, a Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/education/college-student-survey-shows-balance-of-work-and-study.html <comment><USER3> I haven't got a big thesis here but I'm skeptical of the notion that study can be _hard_.

Bringing your mind gently back to a topic again and again (until thoughts arise which make it clear, or giving up if they don't) isn't intrinsically hard in the sense that shovelling coal is hard.

What seems to make it hard is the belief that learning hurts, and fearing about one's future, which comes largely from the legacy of being continually graded and assessed at school (as if knowledge could ever be measured!)

Fearing that study is hard seems to make it hard. And this makes it easy to be distracted by other interesting ideas upon which one _isn't_ being assessed. Also drinking, partying, and other typical student pursuits (which are in fact quite straightforwardly boring if you try to take them seriously).

The intellectuals and scientists that came up with the knowledge in the first place didn't find it hard. They were essentially determined to have a good time. Fortunately nobody was there at the time to check whether they were doing it right.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does all the study do much for you engineers when it comes to your careers?

When I was an undergrad (warning: liberal arts majors), I had a lot of friends who were engineering students. I asked one if all the study was all that relevant. He said once he was in the workforce, he wouldn't need to have every little thing he learned memorized because he'd have manuals to consult and pull off the shelf when he had a problem he couldn't solve on his own. Another engineering friend seemed way more energized by the assignments where he had to come up with an actual solution to a real problem, in contrast to cramming all night for some horrendously difficult timed test.

So is all the ceaseless studying of engineers really just an effort to weed out those who are not diligent?

<comment><USER5> No, it is important for you to get a good grasp of the fundamentals. Even if you consult references, like everyone does, without a strong background in the material you will have trouble applying what's in that material.

When I say "fundamentals" it really covers almost the entire engineering undergraduate curriculum. There is so much you need to know in engineering before you can start doing anything of value in the "real world". Most people learn those things in their first few years on the job or in graduate school.

<comment><USER4> Certainly I agree that one cannot succeed in one's field without deep knowledge of the fundamentals. I just wonder if constant cramming for exams is the best way to attain that knowledge, in place of exercises that actually attempt to apply knowledge as it's learned.

And I'm willing to acknowledge that perhaps I'm not giving enough credit to contemporary engineering curricula, in which much of that 'study' time might be devoted to problem-solving exercises in place of preparing for tests of one's memory.

<comment><USER6> In my experience, none of the class I (an EECS major) or any of my engineering friends take involve much memorization. The involve understanding a few concepts _very_ thoroughly and being able to creatively solve problems that combine these ideas in really weird ways.

In fact, all of my classes allow at least one sheet of notes to all the exams and I've even had one class that was entirely open-book. Additionally, the graders tend to be rather forgiving for details--thinking consistently is more important.

Even though an engineering degree might be harder and involve more work than something like Political Science or History, the latter two require much more reading and memorizing.

<comment><USER7> Nevertheless, unless your school is a lot different to the one I went to, there is certainly a lot of memorisation that can be done. You can rote learn the technique for solving a particular problem, just grinding through the steps, without ever really understanding what you are doing. You'll get good scores in most tests, as the tests tend to resemble the practice exams that you no doubt did, but you won't be much use in the real world.

But this doesn't always hold. I remember one class where all of the practice exercises on op-amps were done using an idealised model of the op-amp, without having to worry about things like resistance/capacitance in the op-amp. Then on the day of the test, the professor ran a whole series of questions using op-amps with more realistic characteristics. A huge percentage of the class crashed and burned, because they had just rote learned solutions to problems, but the problems in the exam did not resemble the practice problems. It did however resemble the material that had been taught in class. Those that put more emphasis on understanding what the lecturer was saying than on how to do tutorial problems aced the test. We ended up with a bi-modal result - <USER2> either got about 95% for the test (if you understood the principles, the questions were actually very easy), or you got about 15% if you had just learned how to do the practice problems.

The thing that really made that test stand out for me was what it meant in the real world. I went to a military academy, and after graduation we all had to work in uniform for the next 5 or so years, so you got to see how the engineers that got 15% and how the engineers that got 95% in that test fared. It turns out that those getting by on memorisation turned out to be terrible engineers, a fact that I found quite frustrating whilst getting my degree, because their tactic actually worked exceptionally well for most exams. There were only a couple, like the exam I mentioned above, that really cost them dearly.

So, be aware that even if you aren't going down the memorisation route (and I agree with you, engineering _should_ be all about deriving from principles, not memorising tricks), there are others around you that are not doing this. You'll meet those people in your professional life afterwards, and they won't be able to engineer their way out of a wet paper bag, but they will have the same diploma hanging on the wall as you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Politics necessarily creates divisions - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/2014/04/03/politicsNecessarilyCreatesDivisions.html <comment><USER2> Dude, Winer. You used to be a pioneer. Go back to doing that, rather than trying to ride gravy trains by commenting on the latest controversy.

We _really need_ stronger tools for discussion to make tectonic changes in political culture, and we're almost certainly going to have to depend on innovation on the Internet to build those. Help us do that. If you're not trying to reinstate Eich, there is no point to your post as, for serious, evidenced by the reason you had to turn off comments.

<comment><USER3> > We _really need_ stronger tools for discussion to make tectonic changes in > political culture

One of the primary purposes of all political structures is to prevent tectonic changes, especially to themselves. This concept is nearly incoherent; a political culture where tectonic change is easily accomplished is better described as a lack of political culture.

<comment><USER2> Right now our political culture can be described, for instance, as "Money is speech." Changing that would be tectonic.

It's not our systems of governance that this would necessarily change; it's our political culture.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on InsightOutpost.com - <AUTHOR>

Hello Fellow HNers,
Insight Outpost is a site that I developed in collaboration with its founder, Mike Neiss.  I/O is a social writing forum for you to share your creativity with the world.  Registered users can easily submit their writings for others to read, vote, and comment on.  Our goal is to create a smart and fun community where anyone, regardless of experience, can submit their writing and get quality feedback on.  The site was born out of the experiences of Mike and his attempt at writing a satire piece.  Here's the full story - http://bit.ly/cuChF2.
We would love any and all feedback you may have on the site.
http://insightoutpost.com
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> And since this IS a technical community, here's some other points of interest:

\- Built with Django, jQuery, and Git (hosted on CodebaseHQ)

\- MySQL

\- Served up by Apache on Ubuntu Karmic

\- Hosted on AWS

\- Fabric for deployment

</comment><comment><USER2> Great use of Django, seems like you are a real pro! Are you made any other sites, would love to check them out?

<comment><USER2> Ooops *Have you made any other sites?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clicky click - <http://insightoutpost.com></comment>


Ask HN: Any space for a micro-website for portable discussions. - <AUTHOR>

To start off, this idea competes a bit with Gmail, Facebook, quora, etc. The idea is trying to improve on online communication at a very fundamental and disruptive way.
The problem. Current technologies are not made for discussions. Mail is too slow, and not dynamic. Built keeping in regard the 1970s architecture. Chat(Gchat) is too temporary. It is more for casual chit-chat rather than proper discussions that would happen in say, office boardrooms. Facebook is for social, and is not a good medium to do intellectual discussions. Also, it is limited to facebook friends. Even Gchat is limited to people who share a certain level of comfort. I also don't have the email ID of everyone I want to discuss with. Twitter is too short. Its more like advertising than proper discussions.
The solution. Thus, I have an idea of making a website which would allow you to discuss with anyone, people in or out of your friend list, google contacts. The discussion would be private. A small flick of switch could make this public, which then would make this website to discussions what quora is for questions/answers.
Quora has been an inspiration for this idea. It is the first time in the internet that I have had access to knowledge: solid knowledge based on experience. The thrill of being able to talk to celebrities and experts inside a well-defined context is amazing.
The discussion thread would be searchable, reference-able, permanent, and yet dynamic. There would be no page reloads. Discussions online should be as fluid as if face-to-face. This could be done by using frameworks like meteor.
Any discussion on this? ;) :) <comment><USER2> Be careful of the uncanny valley between "too slow" and "chit-chat".

There's room in the world for "chit-chat": an online conversation that happens in real-time and consists of rapid exchanges of short sentences and sentence fragments. Google Chat, AIM, et cetera are fine for that.

And there's successful media that involve exchanges of whole paragraphs, but not in real time. This is email, Stack Overflow, HN, et cetera.

But, in my experience, there's not a lot of in-between. My own native medium is the paragraph. If I'm lucky I can, with effort, condense something insightful into a sentence. But often, in an IRC or AIM-style live chat, by the time I've finished typing that sentence the conversation has moved on. It just takes too long to compose.

The antidote for that is to stick to short fragments, follow the rhythm of the conversation, don't say anything too tricky or controversial that will require a lot of exposition and framing, and defer longer-form discussion to a different medium, like the blog post or the email. In other words: If the medium is dynamic, "chit-chat" is the natural result.

Most people just aren't good-enough typists or writers to conduct a rapid-fire real-time textual exchange of substantive sentences and paragraphs. If people could watch me compose HN posts in real-time I'd never post here again. It would be infuriating to watch me and even more infuriating to be watched: I type things that are clumsy or flat-out wrong, then I read them in horror, then I delete them. Welcome to writing. That's how it works, for most people.

None of this is meant to discourage you from trying to build a hosted service for private-to-semi-public, limited-participation, limited-time threaded discussion. It's a thing I've wanted myself and have thought about building. But don't get so caught up in the glamour of real-time that you simply reinvent GChat or Skype or AIM. You may have a shiny new asynchronous real- time hammer, but it still isn't the right tool for driving a screw.

</comment><comment><USER3> You keep talking about products and features and tech stacks. Can you try to express this idea in terms of people?

If you can fill in the sentence "James would rather be at his son's baseball game, but he can't, because he needed to get an answer about X from Cindy, but he couldn't, because of Y" and you solve Y and get James an answer then there is probably space for a business here.

<comment><AUTHOR> James could buy a mobile? And then go the baseball game and participate in the discussion from his mobile, maybe even use the touchscreen to draw diagrams on the virtual whiteboard.

If he was using GChat, him loggin off would have put an end to the conversation.

If he was using GMail, they were probably just sending each other big mails, like what was conclusively decided after today's meeting, and that could wait.

<comment><USER4> I think you're missing Patrick's point?

You could describe an alarm clock as a mechanical device which steadily advances its state with passage of time, and for which you can set a trigger to start making mechanical noise at a certain pre-set state.

Or you could start off with "Joe, a young adult, is having trouble appearing on time for his white collar job, which he want sto keep and succeed in, but can't because health problems/kids/partying are keeping him awake at night, so he can't reliably wake up in the morning. This device will make him get up such that he has enough time to get into the office and be a good employee in the eyes of his boss".

Closer to home, hacker news is not a visually desaturated lisp-coded online forum thingamajig, hacker news is a place for tech/business hackers to meet and talk shop. Quora is a place for knowledgeable people to make a measurable, satisfying difference by spending 5 minutes to answer a question.

Who are the people with the problem? What is the problem? You won't get traction without solving these questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, I had the same idea (give or take) except I couldn't figure out how to make money on it. If that's not your goal, then the idea makes for an excellent open source project.

Also, you might want to have a look at <http://dialog.gs> \- a beautifully designed flop that is. Guy was using the same position as you - small, portable, disruptive, fits between the chat and the email, etc. It appeared to have flopped because he couldn't get people on it, which is something to think about.

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess Branch is trying to do this already. <http://branch.com/>

<comment><USER2> A pity about their clueless home page. _Please tell me what you're going to give me in exchange for my email address._

I understand the importance to a business of reaping the email address up- front. But there needs to be a clear _quid pro quo_. For all I can tell from the home page, I'm signing up for Amway, and the next message I get will be from one of my dear cousins trying to shame me into buying some overpriced soap.

So can anyone here tell me what Branch is about?

<comment><AUTHOR> You could check out bulletin.branch.com for some context.

This serves as a demo of what they are trying to do. <http://branch.com/b/obvious-and-branch-partner-up>

<comment><USER2> I hit that link before griping. [EDIT: the bulletin's root link, that is, not the deep link you provided - thanks for that.] I was _that_ kind, at least.

It links to a blog. This margin is too small to contain my full lecture about why you do _not_ want to introduce your product to the world via a blog, but here's the condensed version: The top of the Bulletin is an out-of-context article about Twitter integration with the Mystery Product. Then the next half-dozen entries are beautiful photos of people being hired to work on the Mystery Product. Then I got bored with scrolling and gave up.

I'm not going to _hunt_ for your call to action. If I wanted puzzles I'd be training on <http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, inviting people would seem to be the first difficulty.

Consider this: I want to chat with certain people about a certain topic (such as a product feature at work). I want it archived but only visible to the participants unless I add someone later or make it public. I want a url that acts as an invite and a convienient way to invite someone, in which they receive an email. I also want to be able to pre-invite people ( a group) and then I could paste a link in our Skype chat that everybody in that group gets auto-added to this chat. When I'm done I want to be able to have the URL be a wiki, with export as HTML or Markdown. I want it to support Markdown. I also want to be able to promote a chat message to a post and have it appear expanded and formatted in the wiki.

</comment><comment><USER8> G+ meets almost all of your criteria, only thing it's missing is the ability to toggle discussions public or private after the fact, but you can at least control that aspect when creating the conversation.

<comment><AUTHOR> G+ is surely the closest thing to what I envision. Yet, I am not convinced.

I once tried 'chatting' with my girlfriend on google+ using a private channel. The fear of some error happening, and our messages being accidentally shown to public was too much, and we switched back to chat. Google+ us social and public. Not technically. But that is what they are trying to be, and advertising to be.

<comment><USER9> I have had private chats using G+ posts and I attest that they never turned public. Once you make a post, you can't change it's visibility. You can only delete it, or lock it down - comments or reshares.

Though I think gPlus + Wave would be the ideal such environment for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think there is space (one thing for me working in your favour is that i don't _want_ to sign in with my gmail or facebook.. i want a separate account, if any), but traction is a major problem- if it feels like a ghost town, no one is likely to use it. Getting over that initial hurdle will be _huge_ , especially since you can't really gamify it like quora / so, and no advertising or social proof benefit like FB / twitter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. A few questions.

Why do you not want to sign in with gmail? I had imagined a gmail password- less signup. There would be only one field: your email ID. The login would then cling on to your computer, unless you want to use the website from another computer in which case, you can enter your emailID again, and you're back.

I think an easy sign in is the most easy way to avoid ghost towns. The way I'm avoiding the ghost town effect is by asserting that this is not a social website. The next time you want to have a discussion with bob and harry, you could just add their emailIDs to the discussion, or paste the discussion link on them. They would click on it, click 2 more buttons to sign in, and voila: They're in the discussion in a flash. The next time they visit, they will have their dashboard with the previous discussions they made.

The point is, you don't need thousands of users to be in town, to enjoy this town. Only when I have MANY users, will I then roll out a public discussion feed. Till then, its only micro-site tool to help you talk with the people you know in a better way.

<comment><USER10> I don't want to use gmail because i don't want to have a global online identity. But it depends on what you see as the primary use case (corporate? technical? casual?). Optional gmail is fine. If it's all private then maybe i'd be OK with it, but it doesn't seem like this is your long-term goal. I'm not certain how the security would work with what you are describing, i guess it requires you to be signed in to gmail constantly, but password-less option sounds good. Friction must be extremely low. Outside of gmail, make sign up just username /password.. avoid the sign-up email if you can. Think about if you really need someones email.

You will of course have to make this 100% perfect and have a lot of great ideas (but those can grow organically later) to get very far with this, IMO, but i wish you luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to see the chats be destroyed after a given period of time. People change, but their chats online don't. That's the current problem.

\-- also chats can't be logged by search engine, so either blank out, or use robots.txt (ideally both)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is Friendfeed rediscovered. It's a bit disappointing that Friendfeed is on the death row after Facebook "aqcuhired" Friendfeed.

</comment><comment><USER13> So... IRC?

<comment><AUTHOR> A valid question. IRC, however is old technology. There are permanency issues. Unless I have a client configured which saves logs, I can't see old discussions I had.

But, I think you do get the idea. IRC is solving the use case I plan to solve with modern technology, and by getting rid of some of its culture. I don't see any corporate meetings happening on IRC. I don't see startups discussing ideas in IRC. Nicknames, bots, strict environment, lack of ease-of-use and design, mostly limited to technical topics, no idea of multiple topic discussions(from quora). Just few of the many things here IRC stops behind to serve this particular use case.

<comment><USER14> What about Campfire then?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah. I see the words "Plans and Pricing" and "30 day trial" on their landing page.

<comment><USER15> Ok, I'll play: Convore?

<comment><USER16> It's gone, replaced with grove.io apparently, which costs money (30 day free trial, 10 bucks a month cheapest tier).

<comment><USER15> Right, but Convore existed and died. One explanation was "it wasn't actually popular or necessary". It would seem useful if not actually important to figure out how this is different from that service, given that that service had strong backing and even had a temporary working community surrounding it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> <http://namesake.com/> might be what you want

</comment><comment><USER18> Are you talking Campfire with room per discussion topic?

</comment><comment><USER19> Google/Apache Wave?

<comment><AUTHOR> The world is probably still not ready for that, maybe it will never be. Wave is too confusing. I'm still following a linear discussion model, such as seen in facebook comments. Just that here, they will be more permanent, and not casual.

The novelty of this idea is that you would be able to use this platform with just about anyone. Your email ID would be hidden, but not your name and pic(gravatar or google).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Discussions online should be as fluid as if face-to-face."

IMHO, (or maybe "for my purposes") discussions online have been plenty fluid ever since the forum was invented. Beyond that, the quality of discussion depends on the people in it.

Also, (quality) discussion is content, and the big feature of real-life conversation is that there are either no middlemen, or middlemen who get dumped in a snap when they make shenanigans. That is a minimum requirement for anything worthwhile on the web, too, where resources are even easier to come by. If there was a single site where all discussion took place, that in itself would be reason to boycott it. My advice would be to make (or improve) apps and protocols, not websites.</comment>


Django Advent - Messages for the rest of us (Feb 10, 2010) - <AUTHOR> http://djangoadvent.com/1.2/messages-rest-us/ <comment><USER2> Nice improvements. I'm really excited by all of the recent activity happening in Django, it's REALLY taking off!

Sounds like Django Advent will allow someone to write a Django-based CRM system. among other things.

<comment><USER3> Point of clarification: I believe Django Advent is the site that is hosting articles about the forthcoming Django 1.2 features (like messaging in this particular post), and is not the name of a feature within Django. (Even though the title of the post and its context on HN might make it look as though it is).

<comment><USER4> Actually, we (Django) are moving to a release schedule based around the church calendar. I'm looking forward to the three-day release cycle for Django Easter, and all the i18n work we'll get to do for Django Pentecost.

<comment><USER5> When I first saw a link to Django Advent, I figured it really was a countdown calendar to the Django 1.2 release.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Uber Is Changing Life for Women in Saudi Arabia - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3048461/app-economy/how-uber-is-changing-life-for-women-in-saudi-arabia <comment><USER2> _(Before Uber came to the country—it currently operates in Jeddah and Dammam, in addition to Riyadh—women relied on private drivers (if they could afford them) or [limo companies]_

If Saudi is anything like other Middle Eastern countries I have visited, taxis and motor rickshaws are very common.

Of course the elephant in the room is that neither Uber, nor taxis are a real solution to the driving prohibition. So I wouldn't go overboard patting Uber on the back.

<comment><USER3> Saudi is not like other Middle Eastern countries. Taxis may exist, but the limitations placed on women are far more extreme in Saudi. The rest of the Middle East are varying levels of liberal around women, with the UAE not having any legal restrictions on them, Oman having only social regulations (somewhat strict, but only for natives) on women's outfit and segregation from men in public, etc.

Availability of taxis is less of the issue here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like Uber's PR team is stepping up their game. Yesterday it was how Uber is improving service to New York Boroughs.

<comment><USER5> less PR-ish article on the same subject:

"[http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-saudi-women- ri...](http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-saudi-women-rideshare- apps-20150507-story.html#page=1")

mentions an important point for the popularity of the taxi-hailing apps:

"And she didn't want to deal with the negative comments she would face if she tried to hail a cab in the conservative kingdom, a woman using public transportation on her own is often seen as lacking morals."

...

"... no one can tell she isn't using a private car."

Another interesting point :

"There is no law prohibiting women from driving in Saudi Arabia, but there are fatwas, or religious edicts issued by conservative Muslim clerics. As a result, the government won't grant women licenses."

<comment><USER6> I thought part of the difficulty with taxis was being in a car alone with a non-family member male?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this a good thing? I'm usually the one defending Uber here, but I'm not hugely a fan of them operating in Saudi Arabia.

Greasing one of the stickiest wheels in a tar-covered regime is hardly what I call a humanitarian effort. Saudi Arabia's oft-brutal [1] maltreatment of women has nasty secondary effects on their society, and this is lifting one.

[1][http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiar...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/8952641/Saudi- Arabia-execution-of-sorcery-woman-condemned.html)

<comment><USER8> Sure, this is lifting the effects of Saudi Arabia's awful gender relations on their society... by making out substantially better for the actual _people_ disadvantaged by that system. I find it very hard to see any downside that compares.

<comment><USER9> They're not making it better out of the goodness of their hearts--they're profiting from the situation.

<comment><USER8> Oh sure. I absolutely don't attribute the good Uber does sometimes do to altruism. They're skimming off a cut of that good and making a killing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's definitely interesting to see how a driving service company alters behaviors. In Brazil, almost not a day goes by that Uber isn't in the news where it's common to read about taxi drivers threatening physical assault of Uber drivers, forcing passengers get out of an Uber and into a taxi, and most recently, kidnapping an Uber driver. In another instance, Rio taxis even went on 24h strike (obviously not too well thought out).

</comment><comment><USER11> "We're connecting expats with existing limo companies so that they can come on the Uber platform"

Is it just me or does that sound pretty awful? Considering what I've read about the terrible conditions of migrant workers in the middle east... (job seekers paying huge placement fees, employers taking workers passports, workers living in awful conditions, withheld pay, etc.)

<comment><USER12> I'm not familiar with the way Uber operates there but if they mediate the worker-company relation and sponsor the drivers into the country they might actually be helping here, at least with the placement & passport issues. The worst offenders are probably not going to work with Uber anyway.

I'm generally not a fan of the way Uber operates but I don't think they actually _can_ make migrant worker's treatment in the middle east any worse than it already is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This would only help the wealthy ones though right?

I know Saudi gives it's citizens a lot of cash to splash but supply of Taxis would still be limited and expensive i guess?

In the long term wont this just act as release valve? There will be less pressure for change as people with clout can simply choose not to be affected by the unjust law.

</comment><comment><USER14> So Uber helps the oppressed being oppressed the same and paying more ...</comment>


Ask HN: StackExchange down for anyone on Firefox specifically? - <AUTHOR> It works on Chromium, but on Firefox on multiple machines with a profile with no plugins I get the following:
Secure Connection Failed
An error occurred during a connection to stackoverflow.com. A required TLS feature is missing. Error code: MOZILLA_PKIX_ERROR_REQUIRED_TLS_FEATURE_MISSING
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem. <comment><USER2> Note from the StackExchange Status twitter account (@stackstatus): A new TLS certificate is failing to send certificate status data that's required when using Firefox. We're working with our CDN provider to roll back the change.

</comment><comment> a-fried-egg Yes:

An error occurred during a connection to stackoverflow.com. A required TLS feature is missing. Error code: MOZILLA_PKIX_ERROR_REQUIRED_TLS_FEATURE_MISSING

</comment><comment><USER3> Same issue here, Firefox 66.0.5 on 5.0.0-trunk-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.0.1-1~exp1 (2019-03-12) x86_64 GNU/Linux

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone from SE is looking at this, my machine is:

OS: Archlinux (last updated 2 days ago)

Browser: Firefox 67.0

<comment><USER2> W10 1903 x64, Firefox 67.0 as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> stackoverflow dot com now back up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. I can confirm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, broken OCSP stapling.

</comment><comment><USER5> yes, same here</comment>


Methylphenidate Exposure Induces Dopamine Neuron Loss in Mice - <AUTHOR> http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033693 <comment><USER2> A quick read of the abstract indicates that loss of neurons only occurred in mice at the higher dose (10 mg/kg).

Typical doses of Ritalin in kids (6+ years old) is 5-10 mg per day in two doses.[1] 6 year old weigh about 20 kg (50th percentile) so each dose is ~0.25 mg/kg (5/20). Even if you double the dose, it's 0.50 mg/kg, below the 1 mg/kg where the study saw no neuron loss.

To get to 10 mg/kg, kids would have to take 200 mg in a single dose. I'm pretty sure the side effects would be utterly intolerable even at half of that dose.

It's probably worth following up, but I wouldn't be worried about this finding.

[1] [http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs- supplements/methylphenidate-...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs- supplements/methylphenidate-oral-route/proper-use/drg-20068297)

<comment><USER3> You cannot directly convert mouse to human doses. For this, you need to calculate HED[1] (Human Equivalent Dosage). Using your numbers:

HED (mg/kg) = Animal Dose (mg/kg) x [Animal Km / Human Km]

We use 3 for mice and 25 for human (child)

HED = 10 x ( 3 / 25) = 1,2 mg/kg

In a 20kg kid we have a dose of 24 mg, which is only slightly higher than a normal dose.

[1] [http://www.fasebj.org/content/22/3/659.full.pdf](http://www.fasebj.org/content/22/3/659.full.pdf)

<comment><USER2> That's a fair comment. One can't assume that an equal dose per kg will translate reliabily from an animal to a human.

My only reply is that the BSA method of dose conversation has issues of it's own (referred to in your paper) with regards to drug metabolism.

Also, the focus of the paper is on dose translations from animal to human studies. One would obviously want to be conservative in that regard.

<comment><USER3> You are right. Drug metabolism is key here; that´s why I am not too worried about the results of this study.

I have a child (24kg) with - properly diagnosed - severe ADHD on 20mg daily and the benefits clearly outweigh the potential risks; as with everything in life, nothing has zero risk.

<comment><USER4> Adult here who has taken Methylphenidate for 28 years. I would strongly suggest that weekends and holidays are also days off the medication.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity why do you recommend this?

<comment><USER4> As every one else said, but I will add a couple of notes.

ADD is part of who I am its just not very compatible with current work environments. I don't like to feel drugged all the time and I know that i'm ok with out being medicated.

I have developed sufficient coping skills as an adult to enable me to choose when I need to be medicated and when I don't.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just wanted to thank you for still answering on this thread. Your sharing of your experiences is very much welcome, I've only been on Ritalin for over a month and already feel exactly as you describe it. Still, I'm asking myself if you couldn't also harm your wiring by having this on/off thing going on (I'm currently on 30mg Ritalin LA which presumably is a rather high dosage). I've always been more interested into computers so this brain thing is kind of new to me - a blacker kind of box than it already is so to say :)

<comment><USER4> I would have been kicked out of school with out ritalin so there wasn't much option when I started taking it at 9. You have to judge for yourself as an adult if the costs out weight the risks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is the money quote -- noting that these effects are noted on neurotypcial, and not on ADHD brains and therefore may or may not be generalizable:

These results can only be interpreted in the context on normal brain structure and function, and thus would have direct implications for the illicit/neurocognitive use of MPH. Since the underlying anatomy and biochemistry of ADHD has not been definitively characterized, our findings may or may not be generalizable to the vast majority of humans who are properly diagnosed with ADHD and are prescribed methylphenidate. Nevertheless, this work supports studies [51], [57], [58], [59] that demonstrate that drugs shown to increase the levels of dopamine in the synaptic cleft can contribute to degenerative changes in the basal ganglia.

<comment><USER7> _...the underlying anatomy and biochemistry of ADHD has not been definitively characterized..._

That's an understatement. The same could be said of any "disorder" or "syndrome" the study of which is motivated primarily by commerce in pharmaceuticals. If humanity survives long enough, future medicine will see "ADHD" as lying mostly within normal human psychological variety. Our clumsy efforts at treatment will be seen as prescribing 6" shoe risers to everyone, whether they're 5'1" or 6'3".

<comment><USER8> That sounds sort of dismissive to people who have ADHD. It is a real condition with real effects on people's lives, who get very real benefits from medication. It is not like prescribing 6" shoes to everyone. Of course the type of medication and dosage is adjusted to the patient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So this article seems to point to a neurodegenerative effect of Methylphenidate. I would caution against drawing conclusions from this study as of yet. MP has been used for decades and there does not seem to be a clinically evident effect of this sort.

In order to derive clinical recommendations (like "stop taking ritalin") the potential damage has to be higher than that of all the "side effects" of ADHD, for example violence, depression and social problems. Which currently does not seem to be the case...

<comment> xkcd-sucks Traditional Parkinson's symptoms (problems w/ voluntary movement) only show up after 80-90% of dopaminergic neurons are gone. That's a whole lot of dead cells.

Symptoms of pre-Parkinsonian dopaminergic neuron loss are (anhedonia, depression, psychiatric weirdness without movement disorder) are just beginning to be described, and it's very likely that stimulant use will be shown to cause pre-Parkinsonian symptoms in human populations _once we know what to look for, and after somebody decides to spend tons of time and money investigating it._

Maybe the appropriate clinical recommendation is to exercise caution with DAT ligands, and to use them as minimally as possible?

<comment><USER9> So the mice showed 80% loss after what? One or two years of chronic use? How come people have taken this for twenty years and more and we didn't notice the Parkinson epidemic?

<comment> xkcd-sucks The mice showed a ~20% loss at high dose.

At the low dose, the mice showed no significant loss _but were vulnerable to a sub-threshold dose of a toxin_ and toxin+MPH mice showed a ~20% loss.

This is in figure 1, and in the discussion. Exactly what behavioral effects result from a 20% loss of DA neurons is still an open question.

So, the clinical implication is that people on methylphenidate might be vulnerable to things (rotenone, heavy metals, etc) which aren't toxic to "normal" people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Methinks excess dopamine in the brain can get metabolized directly by MAO into DOPAL which, if ALDH2 is busy, can cause superoxide formation and cell death.

"Both the accumulation of DOPAL and the enhancement of rotenone-induced toxicity were abrogated by inhibiting the formation of DOPAL with the MAO inhibitor, clorgyline. These observations suggest that the MAO-catalyzed formation of DOPAL and its accumulation by various mechanisms may be important processes that aggravate the neurotoxicity associated with mitochondrial dysfunction."

[http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/59/2/125.full](http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/59/2/125.full)

So this is why MAO inhibitors are neuroprotective. They prevent this reaction.

</comment><comment><USER11> Are there any similar types of research being done for Modafinil? I've recently been prescribed a "therapeutic" dose of Ritalin (I reacted severely to the lowest regular dose of Concerta) but have not started taking it. I'm wondering if this is as bad as it sounds as my technical reading comprehension skills are not that astute.

I was using modafinil before with some success. The only problem was that my sleep patterns were all over the map and getting regular good sleep was becoming difficult.

<comment><USER12> I'm also interested in long-term studies on modafinil. Please let me know if you find any.

As for the sleep patterns, I've found sporadic use of melatonin to be quite helpful:

[http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin](http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For anybody returning to this thread, here are some other discussions around this study I found on the web (thank you duckduckgo :)

[http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/61161-methylphenidate-n...](http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/61161-methylphenidate- neurotoxic/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/1yd5bf/methylphe...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/1yd5bf/methylphenidate_neurotoxicity/)

[http://www.plosone.org/annotation/listThread.action?root=539...](http://www.plosone.org/annotation/listThread.action?root=53905)

[https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-long-term-effects-of- Adde...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-long-term-effects-of-Adderall- Dexedrine-or-Ritalin-use)

\---

And some studies suggesting other adverse neurodegenerative effects of MPH as well:

"Methylphenidate treatment induces oxidative stress in young rat brain"

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006899306...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006899306000606)

"Methylphenidate induces lipid and protein damage in prefrontal cortex, but not in cerebellum, striatum and hippocampus of juvenile rats."

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22968482](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22968482)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is anecdotal, but rodents I know never have a hard time focusing or providing requisite attention. I think that ADHD is over-diagnosed in this population. OCD, on the other hand, is prevalent, but actually beneficial for the rodent lifestyle IMHO.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps if you had finished with "sedentary lifestyle" or "consumption lifestyle" you wouldn't have been modded down so far? What do I know, I'm just another un-diagnosed aberrant.

<comment><USER8> I think he means the rats they did the study on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if Adderall, Vyvanse, and other ADD medications are chemically similar enough to Methylphenidate that they would exhibit a similar effect.

<comment><USER8> Brand names are Concerta, Methylin, Ritalin, Equasym XL. I believe Adderall and other ADHD medications are similar in. I thought it was even in the title, but possibly the mods changed it. Watch it lose traction because no one knows what "Methylphenidate" means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Flagged for exaggerated headline, only demonstrated in mice now, which react differently to many stimulants.

<comment><USER17> Maybe I've missed something but where is the exaggeration in the headline 'Methylphenidate Exposure Induces Dopamine Neuron Loss in Mice '? You mean it doesn't and they're wrong?

<comment><USER18> It could be that HN mods altered the headline by the time you saw it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does this come as a surprise to anyone?</comment>


Ask HN: Consultants, do you have an experimental "labs" effort in your budgets? - <AUTHOR>

Obviously, in consulting, the billable hour/day/etc is the almighty metric. Have any of you implemented a "labs" concept to allow employees to experiment with new ideas/tech? If so, how have you managed it? (e.g. % time ala Google, etc.) <comment><USER2> I have worked for two consulting firms. Neither of them had any budget for work that wasn't billable directly to a client.

At the first, Medior Inc. of San Mateo (later acquired by AOL), I invented a novel, lossless bitmap compressor as a result of our running out of space for the "assets" on a multimedia CD-ROM.

However my invention was purely conceptual. I needed time to actually implement it, as well as to design the file format.

I had quite a hard time convincing the management to let me do that. Eventually they came around because they realized the expense of my time could qualify for the US IRS Research Tax Credit (not a deduction, credits are better).

However, they gave me precisely three weeks. While I did get my code to work really well, I could have gotten it to work a lot better, had I been given more than three weeks. For example I only supported 8-bit images. It would have been straightforward to handle 24-bit, but Medior didn't give me time to look into that.

I myself am a one-man consulting firm. I spend a lot of my own time on "lab" work, that's not billable to a client. I regard that as a good use of my time.

Working for a larger consulting firm has its merits, but I'm not so sure I'd ever want to work for another one, for the specific reason that my value to my employer, is regarded as whatever hours they can bill to our clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your insights. We're considering this in my current company and I assumed it would be tricky.

<comment><USER2> I can see the point of not wanting your coders to totally bail out of a customer job when your firm needs to make a milestone, or when your client needs a deliverable so _they_ can pay their bills.

There should be some way to structure and budget at least _some_ employee time that does not go directly towards client deliverables. Consider that my compressor was used in many subsequent projects for clients; we were also able to bid on jobs that would otherwise have required too many assets.

So in reality, my three weeks of work ultimately resulted in billable hours to clients, but not at the time I performed the work.

One more thing - these days it is quite rare to perform on the job training. That's a huge mistake.

At the very least, purchase a corporate technical library, like the O'Reilly and Addison-Wesley books for each of the technologies you use. Also encourage the employees to actually read them.

Consider that I once worked for a hedge fund that had at least one hundred man-years of C++ source code. However their real-time online trading system was always falling on the floor, thereby costing them tens of millions of dollars per year. When I hired on, they emphasized the importance of reliability.

But when I visited to integrate my code - I worked remotely - their head coder pointed at something in my source then asked "What's that?"

"It's a C++ initialization list."

This led to me spending a couple hours teaching the guy who ran their entire development shop, some of the very most-basic concepts in C++. For him not to know what a C++ initialization list was, was like it would be for a Perl coder not to know what a regular expression is.

Lots of coders are able to get jobs, and even produce acceptable code without knowing a whole lot about their craft. That is to be expected, I wasn't born with my degree in Physics. Encourage your people to learn. They will be happier, and your firm will prosper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'll clarify that my question is more related to a team of consultants, not necessarily a microISV. Also, what benefits have you seen from this effort? Could be direct financial gains, employee morale boost, anything!</comment>


Rethinking mail delivery - <AUTHOR> http://waterstreetgm.org/rethinking-mail-with-smartmail/

<comment><USER2> Denmark has something called "Døgnpost" (literally "around-the-clock-mail"), which is sort of an all-purpose postbox. When you order stuff online you can have them delivered to your local Døgnpost. As soon as your parcel arrives at the Døgnpost you receive 2 PIN codes via email or SMS, and when you ring in those codes at the Døgnpost automat, a small door will open and you can take your parcel. It's almost frustration free.

Here's an example of a Døgnpost automat: [https://foursquare.com/v/d%C3%B8gnpost-2861/4d8b5d4bbc848cfa...](https://foursquare.com/v/d%C3%B8gnpost-2861/4d8b5d4bbc848cfa1facee2b)</comment>


Why the Dutch oppose windmills - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21656730-wind-energy-once-powered-netherlands-not-anymore-dutch-quixote?fsrc=nlw%7Chig%7C2-07-2015%7CNA <comment><USER2> The energy situation now is:

\- A legal requirement to cut CO2 emissions

\- A ban on building new nuclear plants as well as a commitment to close the remaining one

\- A moratorium on building windmills because they scare birds and pollute the horizon

\- The largest supply of natural gas in Western Europe, but an increasing limit on exploiting this because shifts in ground level are causing cracks in people's walls.

\- A ban on fracking

\- There so notoriously little sunshine that people refuse to take solar power seriously, even though it seems to be working just fine in Germany.

Different groups want opposing things. The energy situation would be fine if environmentalists would allow the construction of more windmills and nuclear plants, or if the CO2 reduction target was dropped. You can't have it both ways.

The people in Groningen would probably be fine with continued exploitation of the gas wells if the profits were spent there, but the money is needed by the national government to meet the EU's budget deficit requirements. Now much of it will remain in the ground while we buy Russian gas.

In my opinion the very concept that a horizon is something that can be polluted is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I think the Dutch landscape is featureless and boring, and windmills are a vast improvement. They look modern, industrious, cheerful.

<comment><USER3> > I think the Dutch landscape is featureless and boring, windmills are a vast > improvement. They look modern, industrious, cheerful.

I recently visited relatives in a German village where in the last few years a bunch of windmills where built. We went for a walk outside the village, and I heard a surprised "oh, those windmills are much smaller than I remember them to be".

Turns out they looked imposing and scary in the beginning because they're of such a different scale than anything else in the area, but they got used to them quickly.

Like the Netherlands it's a relatively flat area, so I guess the effects will be similar (windmills looking huge at first, then perceptually shrinking).

<comment><USER2> They are gigantic, they necessarily tower over everything (otherwise they wouldn't work), but once you take your gaze off the gigantic gray rotating blades against the clouds, and direct your eyes further down, you see [1] or [2]. Then you gaze back up again and think the windmill looks grand and beautiful in comparison.

[1] [https://stock- foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_...](https://stock- foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_2014-1-842411-2_kletsnatte- akker-in-polder.jpeg)

[2] [https://stock- foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_...](https://stock- foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_2012-11-762840-2_moderne- woningbouw.jpeg)

<comment><USER3> They're large, of course.

It's simply a matter of visual expectations: There's this flat land, with tiny houses, some forests surround it. Everything is laid out horizontally more than vertically. Then these vertical spikes appear.

In such an environment windmills can seem frightening at first and feel like they're at least(!) 500 meters high since there's no frame of reference to them in the vertical.

At some point they're simply large (still larger than everything else, but church towers, the former larger-than-everything structures, aren't frightening either - because people are used to them).

<comment><USER2> Are you referring to Northern Germany? It has been a long time since the Netherlands looked like that. It's flat, but the endless "vinex wijken" of identical tiny "rijtjeshuizen" are everywhere. Instead of forests, there are geometric rows of identical Populus × canadensis clones. At the very least I think the windmills fit right in, in many cases I find it makes the landscape look nicer, with an added vertical element and some movement. Vastly nicer looking than a coal plant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have 3 2MW+ machines a few hundred meters from my house and 10's of smaller ones (older models) a little further away. Total impact on day to day living: none.

I wouldn't mind it if they placed more windmills there either, it's not a densely populated area.

So, not all Dutch oppose windmills and renewables at this scale really do make an impact.

<comment><USER2> I agree, I'm quite fond of them. People who claim windmills have no place in the Dutch landscape probably don't like tulips and clogs either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know someone with a windmill close by, you hear it constantly and at a certain time during the day the sun shines on the house via the rotor, when it rotates it's like a cloud goes in front of and away from of the sun, at 1-3 Hz or so. It drives them crazy.

<comment><USER4> They must be extremely close to the machine _and_ the suns path would have to intersect the blades 'just so' for this to happen.

I can see how this would be a very annoying thing to experience, do you know how many minutes per day this line-up causes the problem?

<comment><USER6> Here's a video I found of the flickering: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbIe0iUtelQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbIe0iUtelQ)

According to the video description the windmill is 1000 feet (304 m) away, and is 40 stories (132 m) tall. FWIW in Denmark windmills have to be at a distance from nearest (inhabited) building by least 4 times the height of the windmill (source: [http://naturstyrelsen.dk/planlaegning/planlaegning-i-det- aab...](http://naturstyrelsen.dk/planlaegning/planlaegning-i-det-aabne- land/vindmoeller/afstandskort/)).

This article <[http://www.windpower.org/da/energipolitik_og_planlaegning/na...](http://www.windpower.org/da/energipolitik_og_planlaegning/nabo_til_en_vindmoelle/skyggekast.html>) says that the windmills can cause shadows for up to 4-6 weeks a year. It is computed when this will happen and the windmills can be stopped for that period, although the law doesn't mention this.

I linked the Danish sources. You might want to put it through google translate.

<comment><USER7> Why did they build them so close to houses? That's nuts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I actually have 3 windmills in my back yard (the local industrial estate across the busy through-road)

You never hear them and hardly ever notice them once they are placed.

[https://email@example.com,4.506723,3a,75y,90t/da...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,4.506723,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1s96528239!2e1!3e10!6s%2F%2Fstorage.googleapis.com%2Fstatic.panoramio.com%2Fphotos%2Fsmall%2F96528239.jpg!7i2794!8i2040) < is one of them.

Zoetermeer used to have 3 other windmills about 20 years ago, those were replaced with these.

Only thing i would like is to get cheaper power, that has not happened :|

<comment><USER9> The problem with renewable energy like wind is that it's not nearly as cheap or efficient as, say, coal power plants. That's the trade-off, really.

<comment><USER10> For sure wind turbines are much less efficient than coal power plants at polluting the air. Apart from that, can you explain how could they be less "efficient", when they consume a free and renewable resource (ie, wind)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I often (maybe once a month) buy the Economist in print, because it is a good read, whether or not you agree with all their opinions, and is genuinely global in its scope. I once had a print subscription but didn't have time read an issue each week.

I don't have an online subscription now, which makes Hacker News submissions for Economist articles are a little problematic.

I wouldn't mind knowing why the Dutch oppose windmills.

<comment><USER12> Bottom line (according to the article): The Netherlands is quite densely populated, so every wind turbine is bound to be in someone's backyard. Last paragraph explains that more than 70% of the population is in favor of more wind energy, but many people don't like the face of large windmill parks.

<comment><USER13> Strange, that they call it densely populated, it's quite average for a European country. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_Europea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_European_countries)

<comment><USER14> On the list you linked Netherlands is ranked 8th out of 54 countries. I wouldn't call that "average". Besides, the first seven countries on that list are small. Four are microstates and the other three are British dependencies.

I'd say, for it's size, Netherlands is densely populated.

<comment><USER13> Yes, you are right. Sorry I once again mistaken Dutch people as the ones living in Denmark. Now it makes much more sense, once again sorry for confusion.

<comment><USER4> It's actually a bit different than what you'd get from that table. NL (like most countries) has varying population density. What's not obvious is that NL has a crazy distribution where we have a large chunk (the 'Randstad') that contains a very large portion of the population and a relatively much larger area that is just about empty.

So depending on where you are you can travel for 150 Km and never leave the built-up areas _or_ you can travel for 150 Km and you'll see nothing but grass, cows, the occasional farm and the highway you're on (A6/A7).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The main reason of the rejection is that the dutch government is pushing that through big companies while in germany a lot of individual owners can reap benifit.

Dutch governemnts, especially right winged ones are very paternalistic and dislike individual oportunism where it costs the big and powerful companies.

</comment><comment><USER16> My humble proposal to fix not-in-my-backyard - tax all local governments, give a tax break or even a subsidy to those who have windmills.

This by the way should be the rule for the EU as a whole - some countries are naturally better at producing renewable energy, others have nuclear plants or coal. The ones producing renewable energy should just export it so the ones that cannot or won't will be able to fill their quotas.

</comment><comment><USER17> The wind turbine scam is not that much better than the solar roadways scam. It's a huge nuisance, expense and environmental impact for very little power.

The only reasonable choice is nuclear power.

<comment><USER4> Why do you call wind turbines a scam? They work, they produce significant power, are clean and the machines built since 2000 have spectacular reliability.

The expense is lower per KWh produced over the lifetime of the machine than most other sources of power so I'm not sure where your 'huge expense' comes from (yes, they're expensive but you should not look at the up-front expense without looking at the total power produced over the lifetime of the machine multipled by the average price of a KWh over that time and then each and every windmill installed so far except for a very few that broke catastrophically and a lot of lessons were learned from those instances). The environmental impact is mostly in people's heads rather than something measurable (I should know, I have windmills within spitting distance from my house). Nuisance is a term that would require some explanation as well.

And each windmill may make 'little power' (though we now have machines capable of 8MW!), but in the aggregate they produce significant power.

If you feel the only reasonable choice is nuclear power then you've already made up your mind about this but as a windmill proponent I see a place for both, nuclear (pebble bed, _not_ old style rod reactors) or natural gas for baseline, wind and solar for when it's available.

<comment><USER17> 8MW sounds nice, but a nuclear power plant will easily have 4 orders of magnitude more power output for the same visual impact, and that's around the clock, whether the wind blows or not.

I wouldn't dismiss rod reactors outright, but developing new technology to improve safety and fuel efficiency should of course be a priority. Especially since weapons plutonium production isn't a priority as it was when conventional reactors were designed.

<comment><USER18> The real problem is that the nuclear power plant will easily have 5 orders of magnitude construction costs associated with it. And historically a 10 times longer construction period. i.e. you have 7 years no power then a 1 GW is added to the grid with nuclear. While wind parks are much more gradual in rolling into production.

This more modular approach to current wind power is also why wind parks tend to end at 300MW nameplant capacity. If you need more power its better to have more tenders for WEPs and benefit from improved technology and economics for the next phase.

Nuclear could be modular and cheap but currently you can't buy modular and cheap nuclear solutions if you wanted too. So you end up with multi year areva construction solutions.

Nuclear power with its current large plants is not easy on the grid either. In the UK wind was really helped because all the pumped storage build to make the 60&70's nuclear fleet cost effective.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google And Apple May Bring Us A Console War We Didn't See Coming - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/06/28/google-and-apple-may-bring-us-a-console-war-we-didnt-see-coming/ <comment><USER2> "It's hard to imagine Google and Apple not delivering a product with ten thousand percent more refinement, so it may be the case the Ouya won't be long for this world."

L O fucking L. Especially in Google's case, their MO is to always throw the half-baked product out onto market, call it "beta" for 5 years, and make it good eventually. That's not bad in itself, but the author has no idea what they're talking about. Apple will start with a small, lacking-functionality ("on purpose") product, have it be incredibly closed, and polish it up for the second release (if any). Judging by their history with Apple TV, I wouldn't count on a homerun here either.

Did Forbes hire a 12-year-old fanboy to write this?

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't Android and Google TV/Nexus Q be Google's foray into this space? Seems about right on schedule for a homerun on their part.

Apple TV doesn't need much to become a huge hit. Open up the SDK and the App Store, allow control of games with iPhone/iPad and with a good performance boost it certainly has potential.

<comment><USER2> Google TV is still a steaming pile (I've owned one for a while now), and Apple TV has no industry support. It's just an expensive Roku with fewer channels/apps. As others have said, Google stands to gain nothing from this, especially when other manufacturers are already making an Android console. Apple could, but they have been rudderless since ol' Steve went.

<comment><USER4> How is Apple TV "just an expensive Roku"? $99 certainly is not a high price point. Not to mention that Apple TV actually costs $0.99 less than Roku 3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well first I would argue that we did see this coming: AAA games make money but so do casual and free-to-play games. Wii established the precedent, and follow on devices such as the Ouya expand the market for console devices for casual games. Also, Roku 2 shipped a version with a game remote and Angry Birds.

My concern is that it is too early for Google to introduce an Android gaming console, without establishing a standard for games to be developed against. The first Ouya's have sold out (to the chagrin of the presale buyers), but customers don't need the confusion of multiple incompatible consoles at this stage. Having a different market application is probably fine, but the developers need to be able to publish to multiple markets and still customize the games for the for the console they are targeting.

I believe that actions taken by Google at this stage could prevent Android gaming consoles from becoming established, and they should be willing to defer to the first mover, Ouya, in order to build an economy of compatible Android gaming consoles later.

<comment><USER6> What's in it for Google?

There's always been a reasonable argument that it benefits Google to have a diverse mobile device ecosystem, in which open standards compliant browsers and apps that can access Google services are a baseline feature. Their nightmare scenario was a world of locked down mobile device platforms with browsers hard wired into proprietary web portals and services that cut them out of the loop.

TV is a different medium though. It's useless as a web browser platform and Google app style services have never worked will on them either. The control interface is just too clumsy. So as a general web and services access platform it's not that attractive.

What TV is good at is video presentation and games. Google's never going to make any money on games, either on mobile or on a TV platform. They do have youtube though, so that's really the only viable route they have towards revenue on the TV.

The problem is, nobody making an Android based TV device has any incentive to include a youtube service on it except Google. If Samsung say produced an Android based TV device, what's in it for them to support a Youtube app? Better to strike a revenue sharing deal with Netflix, Hulu, HBO, etc. They could revenue share with Youtube, but then Google is only getting a slice of the revenue, instead of the whole lot from Google's own TV device.

Google is already getting squeezed out of their own Android ecosystem by companies like Samsung and Amazon rolling their own default apps and services for their devices. On an open Android platform on the TV, that effect would be considerably magnified.

<comment><USER7> Google makes money off the Play Store, I imagine; a TV is a good Play Store client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Um, if Apple makes apps available for the Apple TV and can nail the user experience, they might really have something. A $100 Apple TV with $1-5 games and a lot of free to play would be such a better deal for most consumers than the $500 consoles with $60-70 games.

Also, there is a window for a Steam box to do well too.

OUYA might not be getting rave reviews now, but I think it's going to grow into an interesting niche for sure.

<comment><USER9> Both Google and Apple have an interesting controller too- smartphones. Games running on an AppleTV and controlled via an iPhone seem like a pretty decent concept.

<comment><USER8> The smartphone is not the same as a proper controller with tactile feedback.

<comment><USER9> No it isn't. But it is free. And people have already demonstrated that they're more than happy to use smartphones as controllers, by downloading games and playing them.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, but when you play them you are looking down at the same surface that the game is on. Its different when you are looking up at a different screen. I tried this out a few years back with an ipod touch and a vid cable and I found the games unplayable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it is a little unfair to oversimplify the Ouya to just indicating "people were indeed interested in a cheap console that plays phone games on their TV." In addition, one of Ouya's biggest draws was its openness which Google and Apple will have a harder time competing with than just releasing a cheap console with better polish.

<comment><USER12> You really think many people care about openness? People care about $99 consoles, and $1 games.

<comment><USER13> As someone who purchased the Ouya during their kickstarter, the openness was a huge deal to me. It's the same thing that makes me long for a Valve produced Steambox. Give me something that I can tear apart (both hardware and software) and do my own thing with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My take on this, and maybe I'm wrong, is that Apple and Google have some really cool knives in development, and they're hoping to succeed with them when they jump into the long-running console industry gunfight.

<comment><USER15> Bringing knives to a nerf-gun fight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Google has now set its sights on making its own Android-based video game console. The kicker? This is supposed to be in response to Apple doing the very same thing."

Who knew Apple would ever have an Android-based device?

<comment><USER17> _Zing_

>I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Apple announced their controller standard as well so we will see more and more iOS games come out that support the controller.

I have been saying this same thing for about 2 years now- the age of consoles is almost over. A Sony/MS box is not going to be the thing that delivers your living room entertainment, it will be a mobile device, ipad, or set top box from that same ecosystem.

Disc based games need to die but Sony/MS won't let them quite yet. Android/Apple are coming into the living room gaming arena from a completely different perspective that fits better into the current times. 100% downloadable, integrated with your smart phone / tablet, no more 5 year product cycles, etc. The advantages for being able to just ignore 3 generations of past consoles and come up with something completely new are huge.

Now we just need to see what the Steam Box is going to do.

<comment><USER19> _Disc based games need to die but Sony /MS won't let them quite yet._

No, the gamer demographic won't let them die.

Microsoft had a push in the right direction with the moves they were experimenting with for the Xbox One: unfortunately, they had to backpedal on them because people were too outraged.

<comment><USER20> I disagree. MS didn't explain the value prop well and weren't courageous enough to take a stand. If they wanted to get rid of discs, they should've done so. Discs and downloadable content are two completely different paradigms. It's no doubt that MS wants to go the Steam route, but by mixing the "rules" for downloadable content with physical discs, they made a huge error.

Gamers didn't see the XB1 as a move towards disc-less consoles. They saw it as additional rules to their current disc-based paradigm.

Removing HDDs and optical drives from laptops was a bold and risky move by Apple, but it worked. MS had the chance to show leadership in consoles, but chose to play both sides instead.

<comment><USER18> Exactly. MS failed in the PR battle. Completely and miserably failed. They had a great idea and its unfortunate they caved in so easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Forbes never sees anything coming, or even stuff already here. We should stop paying attention to them.

</comment><comment><USER22> If (when) Google develops the console, they are developing the software for it as well. What is stopping Ouya, Roku or Samsung from integrating this directly into their hardware and circumvent the need for an additional box altogether? This is not a console war between Apple and Google, more competition between Apple and Android since I think again the big winner will be Samsung here. Also its not a war but just a continuation of what's going on in the mobile space.

</comment><comment><USER23> The real market opportunity is games that are fun.

You do not need to realistically model blood and brain-matter splattering or how sweaty arm-hair behaves on athletes in order to have fun.

And it's not a hardcore vs. casual dichotomy, either. Exploitative in-game purchases in casual games are as bad as all the bloody war games.</comment>


NeoKarting Startup Brings the Mario Kart Game in Real Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.neokarting.ca <comment><USER2> The video editing is so annoying. Stop with the effects, just let me see what's going on.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Questions and comments are welcome.</comment>