Ryan Dahl (Creator of Node.js) is doing an IAMA on Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_creator_of_nodejs_ama/

<comment><USER2> He shouldn't have done it. He's saying some outrageously bizarre technical things. For example, he claims a big advantage of node libraries is their "purity", but it's pretty obvious that he doesn't know what that word means¹. See: [http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_creator_of_nodejs_ama/c1ry524)

He also says he wishes JavaScript didn't have garbage collection, like C. He says, "Too many people ignore the "no garbage collection" feature when designing languages." But javascript's object model really wouldn't allow manual memory management.

The final weird thing is talking about Akka in node, but admits he's had limited success. What I don't think he gets is how the scheduling for actors works. It's actually an alternative paradigm to the callback soup that Node uses.

¹ _When we're talking about a programming language, it's not unfair to ask that we not mix up terms already used in the programming world._

<comment><USER3> You're being voted down because they are not actually that outrageous.

"purity of non-blocking libraries": the context makes it explicitly clear he is _not_ talking about side effects and referential transparency. If I were more mean spirited I might say that you don't understand how to parse a sentence or that words can take on different meanings in different contexts. I'm certain that's not actually true but that is effectively the conclusion you came to in the same situation. Pretty silly right?

If you followed the Node mailing lists you'd see that there are questions about allocating gigabytes of memory with Node, and Ryan has to shrug and say "Sorry, Node isn't for you because v8's memory management doesn't facilitate such use". Also he mentions that he likes to win benchmarks and the GC gets in the way of that. Whether or not winning benchmarks is useful is debatable, but given that constraint it's obvious you don't want GC. He wants _a_ scripting language without GC not JavaScript specifically. Give the guy some credit, he is a C programmer by trade.

Didn't read the stuff about Akka and can't comment on that but after the first 2 criticisms I'm not going to waste my time.

<comment><USER2> > If I were more mean spirited I might say that you don't understand how to > parse a sentence or that words can take on different meanings in different > contexts. I'm certain that's not actually true but that is effectively the > conclusion you came to in the same situation. Pretty silly right?

Ahh so let's just play word games then? Let's just call callbacks "allocators of effect" and functions "parameterized callbacks" and see how clear our writing is. Even if we ignore this gaffe, it implies Ryah thinks the world is struggling under the burden of blocking libraries. "Oh no," our hypothetical wage slave might cry, "this library unexpected uses a thread. Now my job is impossible." It's strange to even claim that a feature in 2011. Maybe Node's needs a Paul-Tyma-figure to come snap them out of their implicit assumption that asynchronous libraries are always faster; they are not.

But what he said wasn't true. You can write loops in Javascript, so libraries could enter into infinite loops which would stop the machine from progressing.

> Whether or not winning benchmarks is useful is debatable, but given that > constraint it's obvious you don't want GC. He wants a scripting language > without GC not JavaScript specifically.

He was _not_ asking or direct allocators and deallocators, if you read the quote, he was talking about removing memory management entirely. I'm not sure how Node's functions could lexically close over anything unless you start introducing a lot of new notions that current node programmers don't care abut.

> Give the guy some credit, he is a C programmer by trade.

I want to. I really want to. But then he writes blog posts like this ([http://antirobotrobot.tumblr.com/post/5109182039/overlapped-...](http://antirobotrobot.tumblr.com/post/5109182039/overlapped- i-o)) and severely undermines my confidence in him. When he was just playing around with a side project I thought it was a cool hack. Now that he's got a corporate backer it's a little surprising he isn't bothering to up his game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Content-free so far. (7:11 PM east coast)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, perhaps I should have waited until he answered a few more questions before submitting this.

<comment><USER4> It is not your fault. Thanks a lot for posting that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_creator_of_nodejs_ama/c1ryf6d)

Q: What are your favourite tech sites? (hacker news, /r/programming, etc.) A: hacker news

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not a IAMA here?

<comment><USER7> It's not part of the culture I think. IAMAs are a reddit thing. My educated guess is that if it was a less notable person, it would be downvoted and flagged into oblivion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> IAMA?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's basically a chance for people to ask other people questions e.g. "I am a fireman, AMA (ask me anything)"

It originates from here: <http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/>

<comment><USER9> Not to be pedantic, but I saw AMAs on 4chan long before I saw them on reddit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I didn't know that. I stand corrected.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stephen Hawking AMA - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3eret9/science_ama_series_i_am_stephen_hawking/

<comment><USER2> My question [1] (because I thought some people here might want to weigh in on this too):

There are many different possible interpretations of "more human", e.g.:

* More like humans in all respects * More beneficial to (all) humans (for some value of "beneficial") * Having more of those characteristics of (some but not all) humans that we consider "positive", like kindness and compassion.

Of course, there are other possibilities. This list was meant to be illustrative, not exhaustive.

Depending on the definition of "more human" that one chooses, the results can be radically different. For example, on the first definition of "more human" we would end up with AI that can fall in love, or get angry/jealous/depressed. On the second definition we could end up with AI's that decide that what is "beneficial" for us might be different than what we ourselves think is beneficial (much like a parent might make a different decision for a child than the child itself would make). On the third definition we have the burden of defining exactly what those positive characteristics are. For example, does "patriotism" make the cut?

So my question to you is: what exactly is it that you really mean when you say you want AI technology to be "more human"?

\---

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3eret9/science_ama...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3eret9/science_ama_series_i_am_stephen_hawking/cthudp0)

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea of the 2 part AMA. The way these things always go for me, is I see a link to one i'm interested in. However its 4 hours too late, and I missed being a part of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm wondering why they aren't using the contest mode.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean by contest mode?

<comment><USER6> Top-level comments are sorted randomly. Scores are hidden from non-mods.

It's best used for voting contests (hence the name), which this basically is considering the replies come at a later date.</comment></comment></comment>


Will PWAs Replace Native Mobile Apps? - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/12/pwa-native-mobile-apps/ <comment><USER2> So one thing that always comes up in relation to PWAs is the "Add to Home Screen" functionality. Literally the only time I've _ever_ used that button is when I was testing the headers involved for a client project. Am I an outlier? Do people use that feature?</comment>


Iran Deal: EU to shield EU companies from re-imposed US sanctions - <AUTHOR> https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/49155/iran-deal-eu-shield-eu-companies-re-imposed-us-sanctions_en <comment><AUTHOR> The money quote is in the second paragraph.

"In addition to shielding EU companies, the Blocking Statute forbids EU persons from complying with the US sanctions, unless exceptionally authorised to do so by the European Commission."

This, it would seem, will put many companies in a catch-22. They can comply with the sanctions -- and be in violation of EU law. Or they can ignore the sanctions -- and risk court action in the US, up to and including arrest.

The statute builds on a previous resolution re. the Cuba sanctions, which didn't have catastrophic consequences -- but this one is significantly broader. We will see, I suppose, how much the escape clause gets used. Either way this exemplifies a continuing worsening of US-EU relations.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately it is pretty clear that the EU Commission will lose this.

Daimler, for example, has already stopped all activities in Iran.

It's a shame, really. I wish our governments would put real pressure on companies to resist America.</comment></comment>


A teenager discovered a new planet on the third day of his NASA internship - <AUTHOR> https://m.sfgate.com/news/article/A-teenager-discovered-a-new-planet-on-the-third-14966111.php <comment><USER2> Usually who ever is in charge of the lab gets the credit for any discoveries. You never hear much about undergrads making discoveries because the professor's name goes on the paper.

I wonder why this article keeps appearing everywhere. I'm not sure why they're allowing the student to get the credit. Maybe it's a feel-good-encourage-STEM piece.

<comment><USER3> I think it would be very unethical for an undergraduate who contributed to a research effort not to be listed as an author.

normally the professor's name goes last on the paper, and the convention is well understood that being last author means they functioned in an advisory/funding role and may not have done much of the actual work.

there's plenty to be cynical about in the world of scientific research but it's definitely not the norm for professors to claim sole credit for work done by their students or employees.

<comment><USER4> Most of the stories I've heard from people I know who used to be in the sector (mother, brother, ex-wife, friends...) don't match your perception. This is in Europe, but still: credit is hard currency in that world and people can be pretty cut-throat about it.

<comment><USER3> People can be cutthroat about trying to get their name on papers to which they contributed little, and they may be reluctant to discuss work too openly with others lest the discussion be construed as a collaboration which would require coauthorship. But I think leaving people off the paper who made some contribution is really frowned upon at least in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone at home wants to discover new planets (without the need for a NASA internship) there has been a citizen science project running for several years [1]. It uses TESS data (I believe Kepler data was used before TESS) and is essentially the same as what the intern has done

I'm mystified why this story is getting spammed so far and wide? Is this a recruiting advert?

[1] [https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/nora-dot- eisner/planet-h...](https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/nora-dot- eisner/planet-hunters-tess-mobile/classify)

<comment><USER6> > I'm mystified why this story is getting spammed so far and wide? Is this a > recruiting advert?

It ticks all the boxes of becoming a viral story:

\- "A teenager discovered a new planet on the third day of his NASA internship"

\- "Teenager" > relatable to people who share most on social media

\- "discovered a new planet" > woah, aliens/space

\- "the third day of his NASA internship" > Wow, what a accident/savant

<comment><USER7> Don't forget "teenager discovered" -> special skills not needed / anyone can do it / "I" could do this too.

<comment><USER8> Can somebody clue me in on the cynical overtones of this thread?

<comment><USER9> Scientifically illiterate media tends to occasionally treat fairly mundane work as exceptional when performed by a teenager. Particularly if they're from an underrepresented group. It's frustrating to read about such exaggerated accolades.

But laymen eat this shit up.

<comment><USER8> While I follow this explanation and agree with it outside any other context, I usually find that this position is actually more negative/harmful/self- gratifying on par than that particular flavor of misleading writing is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think that a discovery is made by everybody who enabled the collection and analysis of the data, not just the person who happens to stumble upon it during a routine processing of the data.

(Now it may be that I missed it and the intern did something special that prevented this discovery from being otherwise overlooked. )

(And of course none of this is meant as a jab at research interns, it's honest, fun work and a great way to learn!)

</comment><comment><USER11> What is the point of this article? I've seen it on a few mediums, publications, the morning show.

Isn't there a whole set of enthusiasts looking at snapshots of the entire sky to see if changes or orbital patterns represent planets or other things for categorization?

It just seems like that is being ignored, and its also an aberration to elevate this action as interesting.

It has nothing to do with who gets the take credit for it. That's a red herring to the whole discussion.

It could have just as easily been another headline about "planet found in habitable range" with a random artist illustration. But honestly, maybe this way is more effective since the PR engine is going on overdrive. Its just weird to read.

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems that the framework used to discover the planet is, in basic terms, to follow trajectories of what is visible (stars) and identify anomalies that end up being planets. My doubt is: Couldn't this be made in a massive way using software? To identify the anomalies and the identify them (as planets or other things)?

</comment><comment><USER13> In the course of his lifetime, every man should plant a tree, have a son, write a book, discover a planet...

</comment><comment><USER14> The whole article is described in one sentense, you can save the click. Discovered, and what?</comment>


US prosecutors move to cash in on $8.5M in seized Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.apnews.com/3f8db32f3762431ea28fbf50b82ff2cd <comment><USER2> With the recent series of news on bitcoin, it seems like the media and gov is increasingly painting a picture of Bitcoin as a thing for selling drugs, people and terrorism. Bitcoin maximalists will cry victim but it's no use, everybody is HODLing, nobody is buying pizzas or taxi with it. Why would you with the ridiculous security, transaction costs and slow speed?

Knowing that anything that was remotely used to aid terrorism in the past has resulted in the hammer flying down as they did with LibertyReserve.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/net-us-cybercrime- libertyres...](https://www.reuters.com/article/net-us-cybercrime- libertyreserve-charges/u-s-accuses-currency-exchange-of-laundering-6-billion- idUSBRE94R0KQ20130528)

You don't even need to have terrorism, after 9/11, money laundering has only one purpose in the official's minds.

I think if you are operating a cryptoexchange, blatantly breaking the rules thinking oceans will protect you is a critical mistake, one which never seems to deter people from being thugs.

<comment><USER3> « _everybody is HODLing, nobody is buying pizzas or taxi with it._ »

Every single Bitcoin submission, an HN user like you will say this. But it's not true. Payments in bitcoins are sharply increasing. BitPay alone saw their payments volume grow by 328% yearly: [https://blog.bitpay.com/bitpay- growth-2017/](https://blog.bitpay.com/bitpay-growth-2017/)

<comment><USER4> Payments with bitcoin are too expensive to be practical. Hell, with credit card perks, credit card companies pay YOU to use their payment method. Crypto is the other way around.

<comment><USER5> Credit card companies aren't really paying you to use their cards. You're still paying the fees; it's just that they're being collected by the merchant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some merchants do offer discounts for going the debit/cash route. It's usually in the 3% range and negating the 2% cash back popular credit cards provide, the 1% is rarely worth it to lose the consumer protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like how the dirty coins are now magically clean, thanks for washing it for us, marshalls!

best bitcoin next to the ones that come straight from miners

<comment><USER7> Not a ridiculous point. I wonder if certain bitcoins could eventually be worth more than others simply because the chain of custody has gone through an official source.

<comment><USER8> Bitcoins don't actually exist as separate entities, all that exists is a record of who transferred what amount to who.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He plead not guilty and they already selling his forfeiture? Shame on them!!

<comment><USER10> If he wins I guess he can get the $8.5M.

<comment><USER11> What happens if the value of BTC goes up or down though during that time though? What will he be entitled to?

<comment><USER12> $8.5 million. Note that he isn't contesting the sale.

<comment><USER13> Hypothetically, assuming he did contest the sale and Bitcoin went up, they would have to give him back the amount of bitcoin that they sold, since technically Bitcoin is an asset and not a currency in the eyes of the government, correct?

<comment><USER12> I don't think so. If he contested it there'd be a hearing on the motion and either judge would allow the sale to go forward or he wouldn't. If the sale did go forward, and the defendant won at trial, he would still only get the $8.5 plus interest, regardless of what bitcoin prices did in the meanwhile.

I'm not sure what the legal standard is for this motion though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some more money for the war on drugs. Perhaps they'll win that war some day.</comment>


Calvin & Hobbes Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/

<comment><USER2> I run the Cool Calvin and Hobbes Collection - <http://calvinandhobbes.me> \- and as one of the very early fan sites have seen many C&H fan sites come and go.

For most of the past 15 years, the most popular C&H site was Martijn Reemst's site which was truly comprehensive. Sadly that was taken down a few years ago because it featured a search engine. The same thing happened to S. Anand's fan site once they offered a search engine as well.

From what I have observed, in the late 90's Universal Press Syndicate was quite aggressive in pursuing C&H fan sites and getting them shutdown. However from 2000 onwards, they have taken a much more relaxed (enlightened?) approach with few C&H fan sites being pursued for copyright infringement. In fact, the only sites that I know that have been shutdown are those that have run search engines.

I've long been tempted to add such a search engine to my site as I've already got it all coded up and indexed already, but I'm quite fond of my site since it was the first website I ever created (and what started me on my IT career) and so don't want it shutdown.

<comment><USER3> It looks like he already received a cease and desist request:

      Someone at AMU got in touch with me; a C&D was (is?)
      headed my way, but they seem open to finding a better
      solution, which is AWESOME. You may see some changes here
      in the next few days/week, but hopefully it will be in the
      best interest of everyone!

(Click the "A note from Michael, the creator" link on the site to read the full text.)

<comment><USER2> I also just noticed that Marcello's site is now unavailable. Marcello had downloaded the entire collection of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips from the gocomic site and made it available for download on his site. I've been surprised that it's lasted for so many months without any C&D notices being sent.

However, Michaels' search engine mentions Marcello's website as the source of the images and it looks like that has drawn the attention of the AMU lawyers (unless it's simply overloaded from demand).

I wouldn't be surprised if the script on scribd is taken down soon either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There used to be another search engine by S. Anand, but it was taken down because of copyright bullshit (<http://www.s-anand.net/calvinandhobbes.html>). Wonder what will happen with this one...

<comment><USER5> Here's his post about taking down the site: [http://www.s-anand.net/blog/the- calvin-and-hobbes-search-tak...](http://www.s-anand.net/blog/the-calvin-and- hobbes-search-takedown/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neat. An empty query brings up every strip:

[http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/search.p...](http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/search.php)

<comment><USER7> Your comment certainly contributed to bringing down the hosting.

<comment><USER6> _Shrug._ I think bad code had more to do with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This would be awesome if the website hosting the strips was actually up. Poor little sad broken image icons...

</comment><comment><USER9> I love Calvin and Hobbes but Watterson famously does not like these sorts of derivative works. Still, awesome service.

Service appears to be struggling to stay up.

<comment><USER2> Bill Watterson objected to derivative works - ie C&H baseball caps, cartoons, fridge magnets, bumper stickers, colouring in books etc.

A search engine isn't a derivative work (at least in the way that Watterson dislikes). The objections to the search engines come from the publisher under the guise of copyright infringement. I would assume that whilst they can turn a blind eye to a fan site with the occasional infringing comic strips, they can't turn a blind eye to a search engine which contains the entire script of C&H.

<comment><USER10> If that is so then what is with all the urinating Calvin stickers? Every time I see one I feel like my childhood is being wizzed on.

<comment><USER2> Those stickers are derivative work - unsanctioned and thoroughly frowned upon derivative work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, great idea with the Search engine. Hopefully it can stay around for a while.

I've got a C & H fan site up at <http://dontknockmysmock.com>. It gets pretty low traffic and so far I haven't gotten any notice to take it down.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice. I did a quick search for my favorite strip and it came up as the first result:

[http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/search.p...](http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/search.php?phrase=hammer)

There's lots of quotable stuff in the Calvin & Hobbes universe. Nice to see there's finally a way to find it.

Need one of these for Bloom County next.

<comment><USER13> Here's my fave: [http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/search.p...](http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/search.php?phrase=cynically+manipulate)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like how the search engine made by Bing :)

(Click on Why? to find out)

</comment><comment><USER15> Might just be me, but in IE I get an auth login that never goes away...had to go through Task Manager to kill the browser.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can't be the REAL C&H search engine: I tried typing in "Bill Watterson" in the box and got NO search results. Seriously? If there's one query to get right, it's that one.

<comment><USER2> Not really - the search engine is to search the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. The strips never make any mention of Bill Watterson, so the fact you got zero results is completely accurate.

<comment><USER17> To split hairs, I imagine his signature could be found in most of the comics...

<comment><USER2> To split it even further, he only signed his strips as 'Watterson' and so a search for 'Bill Watterson' or 'Bill AND Watterson' should return zero results :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> about the fansites and the copyright, why don't the webmasters do that on stuff like onioncat ?</comment>


"I paid $25 for an Invisible Boyfriend, and I think I might be in love" - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01/22/i-paid-25-for-an-invisible-boyfriend-and-i-think-i-might-be-in-love/ <comment><USER3> This article was great. I especially liked:

       "Oh my God," I thought. "This total stranger, whoever he or she is, thinks I cry myself to sleep while watching public television and texting a paid fake boyfriend I named after an actor."

To all you folks saying this is really sad, or wrong, this is a novelty. It's like the digital equivalent of a gag gift. It's a great conversation starter and really very funny.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it's not as much about social proof as it is about feeling protected and cared for. The marketing strategy ("social proof" over "feeling lonely") let the users benefit from the service without feeling shame: loneliness is unfortunately still considered some kind of stigma.

Invisible Boyfriend might be the polar opposite and complement of prostitution: the first simulating the love between a protector and his protégé, the second providing a sex partner. I'm not implying any moral fault, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this a "Black Mirror moment"?

[http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/31/7471901/i-cant-stop- compa...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/31/7471901/i-cant-stop-comparing- everything-to-black-mirror)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, this made me think of a first step towards "Be Right Back"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of the autistic kid whose only friend is Siri

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-j-cameron-phd- bcbad/an...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-j-cameron-phd-bcbad/an- individual-with-autism_b_5534741.html)

<comment><USER8> I love that story. His friendship with Siri is more genuine than the relationship offered by this service - if one-sided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Virtual girlfriends have been popular in Japan for years. Love Plus (2009) for the Nintendo DS was the first to catch on. There are now many others. Some text and send you pictures of what they're doing. You can send your virtual girlfriend presents on-line, which costs real money.

Now in beta, an Oculus Rift virtual girlfriend.

<comment><USER10> > You can send your virtual girlfriend presents on-line, which costs real > money.

Pure profit. In App Payments for the lonely. Not sure how I'd feel if I was making money off that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This makes for an interesting thought experiment, particularly when you compare and contrast it with the concept of the "waifu" (loosely, an animated character from Anime or videogames people associate as being their significant other).

One is a coping mechanism for handing external pressures, the other internal. I wonder how healthy either can be in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER12> Reading this all I can think of are the "ractors" in Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age)).

<comment><USER13> I'm reading and loving that book.

Of all the technological wonders of the setting, "ractors" are what amazed me the most. It's the perfect interactive experience, a full-time "Wizard of Oz"[0].

Maybe we can see something of the kind in the following year with the advancement of VR thechnology..

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment)

<comment><USER14> The first third or so of the Diamond Age is one of my favorite things I've ever read. It's full of great ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pity it is wasted on sham romance. If something like this took the form of a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer it might be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminded me of "The Entire History of You" from Black Mirror[1] tv series (I really don't feel like calling it that way, it's more like a separate movies). I highly recommend it.

I wonder how long it takes before those lower(st) paid jobs for those that are not specialized in anything will be in something like mechanical turk. Especially in this example it's visible that those can sometimes require somewhat local workers, so they may spread outside countries with lowest cost of living.

<comment><USER17> Funny, it reminded me more of the episode "Be Right Back".

<comment><USER16> Oh, right! Sorry I didn't remember the title and checked wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article remembered me again that Psychology is something really interesting. No matter how strange all of this can appear to us looking from an outside view, this is how our brain works. If you know how psychology works you are able to create new business around of it. After reading it I wonder about how much, strange or not, psychology demands people have.

</comment><comment><USER19> _The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun._ ~ Ecclesiastes 1:9

George Glass: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2egRZia504](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2egRZia504)

</comment><comment><USER20> 5000 users signed up in a day and it's $25 for 100 text messages in a month. That's bank.

<comment><USER21> Depends on the definition of "signed up". 99% of them may have signed up for the free 10 text message trial. Without knowing the conversion from signup to paid, retention rates, and so on it could be either wildly profitable or losing money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is a similar appeal to conversing with a self-learning chatbot (thinkingai.com, etc). Not as consistent at times, but similarly intriguing how "easy" it is to trick you into believing you had a "real" relationship.

</comment><comment><USER23> OH YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!! I built something like this a long long time ago as a quirky project for my CS class at Columbia. When I pitched the idea to my buddies, they thought it was stupid and that my prof would have given me a shitty grade. So I scrapped it and submitted another project instead. I had 3 bots hooked up to the Facebook API on April 1st and it was so believable that my girlfriend thought I was cheating on her. One time she said "who the hell is this Rachel??" and would not let me leave the room until I told her who she was. I eventually confessed and she thought it was a hilarious idea. Too bad I got too busy with other shit that I put the project away on the side burner. Now I'm thinking about pulling it out again..........

</comment><comment><USER24> $25/month for 100 texts? Talk about easy money... I need to start a company.

</comment><comment> SG- Basically virtual escorting as a service (not all escorting is sex, some of it is just companionship). For now there's no sex involved but with how easy it is to connect people nearby you could easily see this type of service expand in markets where it's legal.

I could see nude selfies being sent too down the road (again a different service, not exactly this one).

<comment><USER25> > I could see nude selfies being sent too down the road (again a different > service, not exactly this one).

That's called instagram.

<comment><USER26> Uhh no, it's called snapchat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> People used to look at me weird when I explained how I was paranoid that someone was routing all of my conversations between multiple people, in an effort to cluster intelligence and intellectual contributions without any participant knowing what they were contributing to.

Take that, therapy. Yes, the paranoia was somewhat imaginative, but it was an exaggeration of something that actually can be mechanized. The people I explained this to didn't believe me that you could create chat streams this way.

<comment><USER28> Interesting. I've always been interested in building such a system.

<comment><USER29> Unfortunately, it was already built. And what came out of it was Anonymous.

Ever hear of 4Chan?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is so cool...I built a large part of this, and now it's everywhere!!

</comment><comment><USER31> "The man on the other end isn't imaginary. He's a real human person"

And a real hero? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DSVDcw6iW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DSVDcw6iW8)

</comment><comment><USER32> This really reminds of the 30 Rock episode about porn for women: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGcRz9jJJCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGcRz9jJJCU)

Edit: before anyone questions it, I am not saying that in any derogatory manner. Just a similar concept in a way, though obviously this has very different value proposition.

</comment><comment><USER33> Ryan, or Susan? I like that Ryan is a composite of many Turkers, but don't see why he should be played only by men. In fact I bet women would be better overall at text-flirting with other women.

</comment><comment><USER34> What happens when mum want's to meet him/her?

<comment><USER35> That's where my new service, visibleboyfriend.io, comes in. We lease premium models, in both male and female forms, to accompany you to business meetings, family dinners, government functions et cetera. Our models have all been vetted as being 'significantly more attractive than anyone you could probably hope to date' by an independent council of data scientists and casting agency magnates. We also train our models to be conversant in various worldly topics, ranging from literature (Byron is especially popular these days) to art history to economics and politics. Email me for more details and to sign up for our beta: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER36> Should have committed to the bit and registered that domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > the service has also seen a surge in interest from people in conservative > countries, particularly in South America and Europe, where the stigmas > against being single or LGBT remain pretty strong.

Uhm this is odd, I don't know about South America but Europe? Here in Sweden LGBT people are even allowed to marry in church before their god [http://www.upi.com/Top_News/International/2009/10/22/Church-...](http://www.upi.com/Top_News/International/2009/10/22/Church- of-Sweden-to-conduct-gay-weddings/UPI-59671256256299/)

<comment><USER38> I think the key phrase in that sentence is "conservative countries". Much of Eastern Europe still doesn't permit gay marriage, for example. Here's a good map: [http://www.freedomtomarry.org/landscape/entry/c/internationa...](http://www.freedomtomarry.org/landscape/entry/c/international)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't understand how their business model could scale, i.e. how they would be profitable, if indeed, they have real person(s) responding to multiple women (or users who've designated themselves as a woman :).

Let say 1 "real human" is responding to 10 women at the same time, the membership income from these 10 users (not accounting for software, hardware overheads even) = $25 / month X 10 paid users = $250.

If this "real human" is located in US, even taking a minimum wage of $10 / hour and assuming he/she works 160 hours a month ( 8 hours per day x 5 days a week x 4 weeks a month), the cost of having this "real person" on the payroll = $1,600 per month!

$250 - $1,600 = - $1,350. i.e. they would be losing over 1K per every few users if this is how they are doing it.

Unless, of course, the "real human person(s)" responding to multiple women are located in India / China and work for $1 a day or something like that.

Or maybe they are using Machine Learning or some sort of Artificial Intelligence, to come up with "Cute" Texts and responses based on the User's selected preferences and his/her past Texts to this "Invisible Boyfriend".

Only in the last case does it makes sense. But then, they'd be guilty of "false advertizing" if they claim that a "real human person" is at the other end responding...

<comment><USER40> You are off by a couple orders of magnitude on the number of people that a real human responds to. They get paid a few (Say, 5) cents for each text, so, to earn around $10/hour, they would need to send 200 texts/hour (which is pretty easy/trivial if you are doing this full time). Each package includes up to 100 texts/month, so, that is 1 real person per two customers/hour, or 16/day, or 320 customers/month per customer representative.

Looked at another way - one customer representative can support two customers/hour (in aggregate, obviously they don't send all their texts to one person in an hour). The customer representative gets paid $10/hour, the two customers pay $50/hour.

Pretty good business model.

<comment><USER41> > they would need to send 200 texts/hour (which is pretty easy/trivial if you > are doing this full time).

Context switching would take a while. You can't just reply with random phrases a-la Eliza[1] . In the article, the "boyfriend" responds to a specific question about Downton Abbey. Sure, in this instance the responder may be a fan of DA; but in the general case, it'll require more than 18 seconds (@200/hr) to just type up an intelligent, context-relevant response.

<comment><USER40> It turns out they watched Downton Abbey, in which case it's a 15 second response. If they hadn't watched Downton Abbey - also 15 second response.

And, from reading the script - it's apparently the case that the same CSA will get scheduled in for short periods of time with the same customer - able to maintain a thread, and presumably, all the CSAs have the thread available to respond.

<comment><USER42> > all the CSAs have the thread available to respond.

That's the catch: they have to read the full thread and then respond... in 18 seconds on average! That is a lot. I can barely read a decent-sized paragraph in 18 seconds; and the average typing speed of a _professional_ is 50 - <USER2> wpm; which means even a 10-word response will take around 10 seconds to type. So you have 8 seconds left to grok the entire context and form a coherent response! And do this for hours at an end.

<comment><USER40> Yes - I concur that if there is a context switch - you'll run into some performance issues, good point. This suggests then that the system performs best when people are doing back-and-forth on a single thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Funny to see this here. My business partner did the design and I'm friends with the team.

I can't say that I feel much for the business, but I've been continually impressed by its ability to generate press. People _love_ talking about and debating this concept, and I can't say that I've been completely free from it.

That being said, this is currently probably the most covered startup from Saint Louis. While it is nice to see a startup from this ecosystem getting this amount of press attention, it's disappointing at the same time. I know a lot of people working on very ambitious and difficult problems that would kill for a tenth of the amount of attention that Invisible Boyfriend and Invisible Girlfriend get.

<comment><USER44> I just learned about this today. This is the greatest marketing concept since "million dollar homepage." My life is a failure for not having thought of this.

<comment><USER42> > My life is a failure for not having thought of this.

Actually, I did think of this, many times. But my biggest bottleneck was: how will I scale up the replies? I could handle being a "boyfriend" for, say, 10 women. But any bigger, and I'd need help. I considered MTurk, but thought that quality control would be an issue. (What if the MTurk guy really starts hitting on the woman, they exchange numbers and then he starts stalking her?). Anyways: after considering all the messiness, I gave it a pass.

<comment><USER45> _Anyways: after considering all the messiness, I gave it a pass._

There is a lesson here. "Computer people" have a real aversion to simply scaling up a business by using humans to do things. Sometimes that simple answer (hire a bunch of people to do stuff) is the right answer, provided the economics of the business work.

<comment><USER46> What? discardorama was merely wrong - the real service DOES use the approach they considered!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's inspiring but I have a question: People always think they can describe what they need (a perfect boyfriend?) But in fact not. "Perfect" things get boring very quickly, especially when you know it's designed.

</comment><comment><USER48> >>"That rapport you feel with Ryan may actually be six or seven Ryans," Homann explains.

Or Rhondas. Women know what women want from a fake boyfriend service. What subterfuge is needed to fool the parents, what parents expect, etc. The text exchange about Downton Abbey makes me suspect that their staff are, at least partly, female.

<comment><USER49> Women and men have distinctly different energies, even over text-based mediums. While this wouldn't necessarily stop them from doing this, it's not how I'd design the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Gee. Thought this might only happen in a 'Black Mirror' episode.

</comment><comment><USER51> Invisible Girlfriend Monthly Subscription: $24.99/month

100 texts 10 voicemails 1 postcard

...

I think 100 texts is a bit low for $24.99/month. The postcard option is very nice, so are the voice mails however.

But how do the voice mails work? Will it be the same voice every time?

<comment><USER52> 25 cents for a "culturally and emotionally attuned" response seems fairly reasonable to me. It comes out to something like 100 seconds per response just to match minimum US wage.

<comment><USER51> It's good for long messages. However, I could see someone go through the 100 SMS very quickly in a "conversation" where the imaginary person has to answer a bunch of short texts like "yes", "and you", etc.

I've tried the free trial, which is 10 SMS and went through them in half an hour or so (and that's because they don't reply very quickly). Haven't even got to the parts that I customized, I was still at "Hello there, how are you!", "Did you have a great day?" "Oh, and your?".

That's 4 SMS a day or so. At this point, I would simply use a chatbot, since they are fine with the basic conversations that I would manage to get to in 4 sms.

I guess you could have two 50 SMS conversations a month, but even then, good luck fooling someone into thinking this is your real lover.

The only plus I can see is that you can have someone tell you "Alright, if she is really your girlfriend, ask her something only your close friends know about you" and "she" would manage to answer.

Not very convinced about the service.

<comment><USER53> _' I could see someone go through the 100 SMS very quickly in a "conversation" where the imaginary person has to answer a bunch of short texts like "yes", "and you", etc.'_

Reminds me of the Argument Clinic sketch.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y#t=79](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y#t=79)

<comment><USER54> No it does-- er, nevermind. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Lets call it BaaS. Boyfriend As A Service.

<comment><USER56> IaaS: Intimacy as a Service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> No offense, it just creeps me out. Then again I do know people whose only friends are in MMOs and that provides visual stimulation as well.

</comment><comment><USER58> I wonder what would happen if you signed up for a boyfriend and a girlfriend and had them talk to each other

<comment><USER59> So uh, there are attractive girls on Fiverr that will pretend to be your girlfriend on Facebook for a month (friending, n posts/likes on your posts per month, etc) for five dollars. I paid two of them to "fight" over me just to troll my friends. It turns out this piques interest in other women :-P

This is why I don't use my real name on HN.

<comment><USER60> That's pretty genius actually. Women definitely tend to be more interested in men who are being sought after by other women.

<comment> bra-ket same with VCs

<comment><USER61> I sense a business model here.

<comment><USER59> What have I done

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Not surprised that it works, it looks like something fun to do on both sides. In fact, i believe people who love romance would sign up for a free service like this on both ends. (Since their niche is people who dont want to have the actual relationships, they could easily pair up their users with each other as pure conversation partners).

The sad thing is the reason that this app exists. Has it become so taboo to be single that you have to pay to hide it?

<comment><USER63> The really sad thing is that by using something (like this) to veil singleness, one cuts off any genuine interest from a genuine person. Few will initiate a date with someone texting their (unbenownst virtual) "significant other".

<comment><USER49> Thats really not how dating works, at all. Competition spurs attraction, not the other way around.

<comment><USER64> The latter half is true, I think.

But I'd say there's a significant chunk of folk* who will not hit on people they know are in a relationship. In the first month of your subscription this probably won't have an effect, but by the sixth month...

\----

* This is obviously very cultural - who and where you are can change this a lot in either direction I imagine.

<comment><USER65> There's a significant chunk of folk who will not hit on anyone at all because they have no confidence or social skills. We get along just fine without them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Discussion on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/2teai9/i_paid_25...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/2teai9/i_paid_25_for_an_invisible_boyfriend_and_i_think/)

</comment><comment><USER67> This sounds like the premise of a Black Mirror episode =)

</comment><comment><USER68> Perfect example of ProductHunt traffic..

</comment><comment><USER69> I try to explain this the first time I took a Myers-Briggs.

"You're an INTG. Get together with other INTGs, read the descriptions... See, isn't this you?"

<comment><USER70> I will say, that as much as Myers-Briggs exploits the Forer Effect, that I did notice a few trends, e.g. that I cannot _stand_ folks in one particular group (and no doubt they cannot stand me, either!). And it did seem fairly good at distinguishing extroverts from introverts (assuming arguendo that such a distinction is meaningful).

<comment><USER69> Most personality classifications have some bases and some value, but this particular exercise really turned me off.

I'm ok with saying "this is an attempt at classification, it's an extra data point", but I'm not ok with resorting to scammy techniques, if anything it tells me that the classification can't stand on its own and has therefore very little value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Attached to a text message? WTF (Recursive).

</comment><comment><USER42> For $25/month, I wonder how the economics of this work out.

Say they pay $0.05/text (to the MTurker). In about 500 texts, the budget will be used up. That's about 15 texts/day; that's not a lot for today.

<comment><USER72> That plan included 100 texts per month (last paragraph of the article).

<comment><USER42> Dammit, I somehow missed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I wonder why they have the silly 2 + 3 = ? thing in their form at the bottom of the homepage.

It's text/html, so it can't be anti-bot and seems like pointless for a human... Does anyone else know the logic behind that?

<comment><USER74> I don't see the field you're referring to, but I'll try to answer with a best guess anyway.

Most web spam bots fall into two categories:

1\. They target a certain web software package (such as WordPress), for which they know the HTML layout and the range of possible CAPTCHA challenges.

2\. They try to fill out every HTML form they find blindly, using heuristics based on the names of form input elements.

To defeat both, all you need to do is to write a custom HTML form by hand (which defeats category 1), and add a simple CAPTCHA challenge (which defeats category 2).

<comment><USER73> Thanks. But that challenge is so trivial to defeat by simple pattern matching with zero cost that the cost of adding code to a bot to break this type of challenge seems negligible.

PS: it's a the bottom of the landing page (not signup)

<comment><USER75> If a negligible cost is a high enough cost, then why do more?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> It's surprising how many people are dateable once you remove looks from the equation.

<comment><USER77> For most people, looks ARE part of the equation. It's like removing Pi from an equation. I wonder what's going to happen when science makes looks whatever we want, like hair color.

<comment><USER78> Two people that have had surgery to look beautiful are going to marry, fall in love and start a family. And then be really surprised when their baby comes out fugly.

<comment><USER79> He meant genetic engineering of adults. Inheritable.

<comment><USER80> Adult genetic engineering would not be inheritable. Your gonads produce variations of genetic material based on their own blueprints (which come from you parents, not your genes).

See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germline](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germline)

[http://www.nature.com/news/a-slippery-slope-to-human- germlin...](http://www.nature.com/news/a-slippery-slope-to-human-germline- modification-1.13358)

[http://www.dnapolicy.org/pub.reports.php?action=detail&repor...](http://www.dnapolicy.org/pub.reports.php?action=detail&report_id=3)

<comment><USER81> What.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I see an additional service waiting to be sold.

<comment><USER83> A virtual counsellor? Psychiatrist?

Does this represent a messed up person or a messed up culture?

<comment><USER28> Probably he meant an actual "partner", meaning tricking yourself on purpose to a certain degree.

Even if you are talking to multiple people you could imagine keeping tracks of your key facts and interests, maybe use data mining from actual conversations to auto-suggest answers, automatically check out your social medias etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> saiya-jin all I see is a fear (of being alone, whatever might be the reason) and weakness (to face reality, to stand to annoying people around etc.). You wanna be alone? So be, and be proud of it, no small lies all around you. Or way more realistically, you wanna partner? Well get the hell out of your stupid phone and meet real people. It ain't easy, but nothing really important in life is...

<comment><USER84> I would suggest reading the article instead of just the title before responding

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I found it so wrong...

Sentiments are real, I don't think anybody should play with other person feeling...

Of course the user signed up, and they think that this is what they want, but I honestly believe that nobody want to risk to fail in love for a nobody...

<comment><USER86> The concepts involved in the article are confusing attraction with love.

Independently of how arbitrary attraction and love are, there's certainly a difference between them, depth being the divider.

With this in mind, the "falling in love" the author is talking about, which may also apply to the crowds using such service, is the equivalent of a teenager "falling in love" with, say, Tom Cruise.

Although of course, services like this pose a "risk" of falling in such state, there's nothing really "wrong" (in the "damaging" sense of the term) with it.

<comment><USER87> I don't even think it is attraction, just a person (like most) who craves additional acknowledgement and attention because it is a powerful feeling.

I have seen people go out craving attention and not being satisfied until they have gotten a hit from someone.

To me it is the same impulse that has people meticulously manage a facebook profile so they can get kudos from practical strangers.

<comment><USER85> People are different, maybe provide a little bit of attention to somebody that have never been loved can go a looong way in my humble opinion.

It is just extremely broad as argument.

I personally feel a lot of attraction to people just because the click well with my thoughts, but I know from experience that this is extremely dangerous and difficult to manage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Reminds me of the movie "Her" about an invisible AI girlfriend. Worth watching!

<comment><USER89> It reminded me of that too, since I read the article to the end.

<comment><USER90> Ha, reading the comments it reminded me of Her too and I was wondering why no- one was mentioning the similarity.

<comment><USER91> Because it's already discussed in the article itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> With some effort, you could get a visible boyfriend for 0$. But yeah, it's hard to overcome laziness.

<comment><USER93> Laziness? If you just enter a relationship just for the sake of having a relationship thats not fair to the other person involved. (Source: been the "other person.")

<comment><USER92> A proper relationship needs effort. Even if all the feelings are involved. The hurdle to start one is especially high, you have to go out there, open yourself up and prepare to get hurt. Now, of course you can say this is a very cold and unromantic way to look at it. It is, yes, but I'm not on HN to romanticise. I'm sorry to hear what happened to you.

<comment><USER93> Duh. Everyone knows relationships take time effort and sacrifice to be successful.

The point is this service is being marketed for those who don't wish to be in a relationship for whatever reason but want to give the appearance of being in one to others. Perhaps they are semi closeted or asexual or don't have the time to devote to a significant other or simply just don't want to give up their autonomy yet (or ever).

If someone starts a relationship for the wrong reason - because they only want to be in a relationship, not because they are in love with the other person - it is not fair. The other person doesn't matter, anyone will do, feelings won't there. That isn't very nice to the other party and just leads to hurt.

This happens all the time. All the time. Especially with marriages.

Not everyone wants to be in a relationship (for whatever reason) and that is fine. That also isn't a very socially acceptable choice. This service is marketing to that segment.

It has nothing to do with laziness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> A perfect application of the Forer effect: humans have an amazing ability to interpret what can apply to anyone as having special significance for themselves.

It's the same reason why horoscopes and fortune cookies work. Stepping back and thinking logically, it's easy to see why their messages might apply to a lot of people. But when you're reading one, you can't help but think, "Ah! It says that I would encounter adversity at work this week, but overcome it! I _knew_ that presentation wasn't the end of the world." And if you're a little lonely or down and need emotional rapport, you can't help but feel a little spark of excitement and connection when that Mechanical Turker claims to like your favorite TV show - especially because the text messages from the fake partner look just like they would from a real one.

No matter how deeply we trust our logical conclusions, our emotional response remains the same. We can't help but feel worthier when we're being praised (even by computers - see the Silicon Sycophants study: [http://pdf.aminer.org/000/307/350/information_requirements_a...](http://pdf.aminer.org/000/307/350/information_requirements_are_human_computers_only_machines_measur_s_rigorous.pdf)), hurt when we're being insulted, and connected when we're being connected with.

<comment><USER95> > No matter how deeply we trust our logical conclusions, our emotional > response remains the same. We can't help but feel worthier when we're being > praised (even by computers ...), hurt when we're being insulted, and > connected when we're being connected with.

I just started playing The Walking Dead. In one scene, after another character saved Clementine from a zombie before I could, the game said, "Clementine remembers that you didn't save her." A very different feeling than failing and having to replay from a checkpoint.

<comment><USER96> I had a lot of similar feelings with Mass Effect series. In this game all the decisions you make permanently reshape the game world, which carries through the first game to second and third. Major and minor characters in the last game may be missing or doing different things based on your actions in the first game. While playing I felt the impact of my steps in even tiny details.

This, + general storyline and execution of the product made it the first game I found myself to be _really_ involved emotionally with. Say, when I picked up the second game and met an important NPC from the first, I literally felt like I've just rejoined with an old friend. By the third game I actually printed out a photo of my character and her entire team. It's crazy how deep a good video game can touch you.

Oh, and I spent 10-15 minutes thinking heavily about morality and consequences just to choose the _right_ ending...

<comment><USER95> Funny you should mention Mass Effect, because I'm playing that for the first time as well. Evidently there's a romantic sub-plot, making it even more relevant to this story. Will I get an Xbox achievement and 25 gamer points if I get lucky?

<comment><USER96> I don't know. I played PC. Also, achievements in a game like ME are stupid and ruin immersion. Turn them off if you can (on PC version I don't recall them popping up in game anyway).

As for romantic subplots - they are very good and the game will totally hijack your emotions through them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I find it sad that she needs an invisible boyfriend ... her friends and family shouldn't be pressuring her and if she's got someone harassing her, will showing him a text really stop it?

Both these scenarios assume she's happy without a BF but the fact that she describes feeling that she might have fallen in love could also mean she actually wants a boyfriend but can't find one. Things are tougher on women these days ([http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/sex_i...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/sex_is_cheap.2.html)).

<comment><USER97> She doesn't need an invisible boyfriend. She's testing it for the article.

In one of her texts to "Ryan" she writes: "Ha, you're better than my real bf".

<comment><USER98> I wonder how OK it is in their relationship to say things like that. That's obviously a joke, but it still comes quite bitter when such phrases are then revealed to general public.

<comment><USER99> No it doesn't, it comes across as a light hearted joke.

Context is important as is apparently a thicker skin.

<comment><USER48> Well, imagine if the gender roles were reversed then. "Haha, you're so much better/funnier/sexier than my gf" would be a disaster to a woman, especially if I spent my day flirting with this fake girl. The hypothetical real girlfriend taking offense at this is 100% understandable. Go ahead and post to /r/askwomen if they think it would be hilarious if their boyfriends and husbands flirted with a fake woman 24/7 and compared her to them. I suspect you won't be getting this libertine and ultra-thick skinned response out of them.

To a guy on the receiving end, its "buck up, pussy" which seems unfair. Men's feelings deserve validation too. Shamefully, the gender dual standard continues even to the younger ultra-liberal crowd who dominate HN.

<comment><USER100> I'm a liberal but probably not the demographic you think.

Compare if the situation was reversed for the following phrase: "Oh, you're so much more dependable than my actual gf." Or "Oh, you're so much funnier than my actual girlfriend". Men would get far more offended than women. Why is that? Why aren't there as many female comedians?

I think that biologically, women value the intimacy and sexual appeal that their mate seeks in them, and are jealous/threatened when he seeks it in others. While men value the respect and sexual availability that their mate gives to them, and are jealous/threatened when she gives it to others. It ultimately goes back to the very real difference that women can have less children simultaneously than men, and therefore men are the first to be sacrificed for the good of the group and polygamy was a very natural state for men who were the ones who risked and died in wars and other adventures to provide for their tribes.

I highly recommend you read this: [http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm](http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm)

<comment><USER48> Justifying dual standards with questionable evolutionary psychology, frankly, is just not convincing.

If I found my wife flirting with other men online, be it via a "fake" service - whatever that may mean, its a serious violation of my trust and damages our relationship on a significant level. I don't care what hamfisted biological theories you toss out, its hurtful and disloyal. We're not all Sheldon Cooper.

>adventures to provide for their tribes.

I don't live in a tribal society and I suspect neither do you. I can't have 10 wives or 20 mistresses nor challenge people to honor duels. In fact, the state demands I'm non-violent, have only one wife, and society puts a great deal of pressure on us to stay monogamous. We have next to nothing in common with cavemen and the tribes of old.

I live in a modern society and play by its rules, that includes taking monogamy seriously in my marriage. My wife doesn't get the luxury of being immune from this because she's a woman and my feelings towards monogamy aren't invalidated because I'm a man.

<comment><USER101> I think people cling to these theories in the hope they could explain every facet of human behavior. There's no Grand Unifying Theory of Relationships, period.

Certain people may act a certain way, but if you're choosing a mate, you don't want just _anybody_. Life isn't a popularity contest; you're not trying to capture the imagination of a random person. People mature at different rates, and have different value systems. These forces check our base impulses, and shape us into someone who is more than just the product of our own petty desires.

Worse, reductionism often carries with it an implicit acquiescence to terrible behavior.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 - <AUTHOR> http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=913045 <comment><USER2> As an Android user (and promoter to my friends/family), I'm starting to get worried about Google's approach to the product. Not because of "fragmentation" (which to me is an argument that essentially says "Android isn't going to ever be successful because its too successful now"), but because of the lack of attention it seems to be getting _from Google_.

It isn't just the OS itself-- several of Google's own apps are getting buggier and buggier. Voice worked fine when I first got my Droid a year or so ago, but has had a lot of bugs-- including dialing random numbers instead of the one I wanted. (Just yesterday, I tried to send a text message to XXX-XXXX and it truncated the last digit of the first group and complained that it couldn't send a text to XX-XXXX. Nothing I did could stop it from doing this except using the web-based version). Google Listen has stopped refreshing for huge numbers of people, and my wife's new Galaxy S won't even accept subscriptions. Not a word from Google on either issue, even though both show up in searches for the problem.

I had to install Launcher Pro to get any kind of performance out of my Droid, and even then it occasionally locks up on the home screen. Sometimes calls come in and the touch interface freezes, which means that I can't answer the phone. The Droid also will occasionally decide that there is no data connection when it has full 3G service according to the indicators.

I don't use it, but the stock SMS app has apparently has its own problems too-- at least Google has acknowledged those and is working on a fix, but as a whole, Android has gone from less technologically interesting (no wi-fi hotspots, etc) and stable to exciting and really buggy. Combine that with this kind of politicking, and I'm getting less and less enthusiastic about Android every day.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, Listen isn't an official google project, it's a 20% project, and the devs that started it probably just got bored with it, and/or busy.

[http://groups.google.com/group/listen- discuss/browse_thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/listen- discuss/browse_thread/thread/25dd76e88b506098/002c1d3a15eea7d9?lnk=raot)

<comment><USER4> I don't think that's relevant. Most Android users have no idea it's a 20% project. It's an app that's available on their phones.

<comment><USER5> Agreed! I hate it when people pull out this excuse. If google is going to offer a basic app/service on their phone, they should be behind it. Period.

I ended up buy DoggCatcher and I'm pretty happy with it. The UI is a little clunky and confusing at times, but it gets the job done and has the features I need. And, it works in all the areas that it should. It was $6.99 and I can say it was the best purchase for my phone.

[I am not affiliated with them in any way.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This might be plausible, but it can't possibly be confirmed which makes it no better than speculation. I'm as frustrated as the next guy that my Captivate is still running Eclair, but stuff like this doesn't really get us any closer to a solution.

When both carrier and manufacturer neglect to offer explanation or consideration for their collective failure to deliver, they must collectively be held responsible. This means switching carriers when possible and buying from different handset manufacturers. This approach has teeth, but only in large numbers. That's why it's so important to set this silliness aside and focus on real and tangible things the average consumer can do. Focusing on fantastical stories of employees clandestinely posting anonomyous accounts of shady contract terms makes for great drama, but still leaves us without resolution. And quite honestly if it took this story to urge you to action then you weren't all that disappointed in AT&T and Samsung's failure in the first place.

<comment><USER7> Summaries of Android upgrades by manufacturer and carrier:

<http://blogs.computerworld.com/17649/android_upgrades>

[http://blogs.computerworld.com/17650/android_upgrades_carrie...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/17650/android_upgrades_carriers)

tl;dr, Your best bet for upgrades is a high-end HTC phone on Verizon. If you go with Samsung or AT&T, you're out of luck.

<comment><USER8> Surely your _best_ bet is an unlocked phone running vanilla Android, rather than any carrier-customised variant? Every carrier customisation has to be ported to the new version each time the OS gets upgraded.

<comment><USER7> I agree. Though the only unlocked vanilla android phones I know of are the ones from Google. Good devices, but limited selection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gee, I'd kind of liked Samsung because they seemed to focus on delivering good technology at a good price. I'd figured they perceived themselves as something of an underdog in the past (perhaps relative to the Japanese tech industry).

This makes it seem like they're hiring Marketers and MBAs who think the best plan is to try to squeeze as much as they can out of their contract customers (the cell carriers) rather than put as much Samsung awesomeness as possible into the hands of actual happy users. Short-term thinking never gets old.

Maybe it's time to look at HTC.

<comment><USER10> In fairness to Samsung they do incur non-trivial cost doing this.

Imagine this situation Verizon says, "Our Samsung Galaxy S phone must get 2.2" while Sprint says, "No need". Should Sprint have to pay for what Verizon is getting?

The issue is that you're going to pay, whether its Samsung or HTC. Some companies will build the price into the phone, others will price it in some other way (or some companies could eat the cost -- but that's probably not sustainable).

Charging directly to the end user seems like the best way to do it. If I want 2.2, then I should pay for it, and if I'm happy with 2.1 why should I pay for other people to get 2.2? But short of that, charging the carriers makes sense.

<comment><USER11> The biggest downside I see is that it will shackle Google's ability to move the platform forward. For example 2.3 is reported to include some major improvements for low latency audio. As a game developer how do you handle this? Just ignore this 2.3-only feature and target 2.1? Or do you build a 2.1 and 2.3 version? 2.2? 3.0? 3.1? Unfortunately we're talking about these phones being around for another 2-3 years at minimum so realistically you might be asking a developer to support 2.1 3 years from now? That's going to be a really tough sell. The other issue is security. Leaving all those old versions out there with little or no post-release updating is just begging for trouble. (and let's not forget about bug fixes -- no one wants to suffer 2 years working around an annoying bug. They simply won't buy another Android phone after a bad experience like that)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting how this works in the Dutch market: the Galaxy S phones aren't carrier-branded here (they're all called Galaxy S). On phone sites, you can select the phone first, and then choose for a contract from any of the 3 main carriers. It also means that when Samsung ships an update, you can use that update for your phone, whichever carrier you're on.

Samsung released Froyo in November, and you can install it on any Galaxy S phone bought here. The update isn't over the air though; you have to connect your phone to your pc, and which auto-updates it. In any case, the carriers have nothing to do with this update so any delays are purely Samsung's fault.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been planning to give up my iPhone for a 4G VZW Android, but it's easy to take a direct update channel for granted.

 _So, iOS 4 has 90 percent share amongst iOS device owners. What about Android 2.3? 0.4 percent, as of a couple weeks ago. Yes, that's zero point four percent.

But for the sake of this being slightly more fair, let's compare iOS 4 to Android 2.2 — an OS which came out well before iOS 4. The adoption rate there? 51.8 percent. That's still pretty pathetic._

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/ios-android-breakdown/>

</comment><comment><USER14> This is rather heinous. A fee is definitely understandable but a per-device fee is really outrageous. I don't know how carriers were willing to agree in the first place. If they collectively bargained against this before even carrying the phone they probably would've had much more luck.

Although I'm sure Samsung has every right to charge however much they want, perhaps Google could step in and remind them that if they Samsung wants to be greedy they can always use Bada

</comment><comment><USER15> I own an Evo 4G (Android 2.2) and my wife owns an Epic 4G (2.1). I have noticed no difference in their usability at all, aside from a few hardware- specific quirks. I'm somewhat indifferent to the Android dot-releases, and am not seeing much in Gingerbread that I care too much about, either, aside from the improved task management.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a very unhealthy trend for Android. Development will be much more costly and difficult if the user base is split across many different API levels. This article contains some insight (if you can get past the bs title...): <http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/ios-android-breakdown/>

</comment><comment><USER17> Impromptu poll: Who really thinks a diatribe like this from TechCrunch can make Google or their carriers do anything different?

</comment><comment><USER18> Just bought a Vibrant last week. After all the reported issues...I'm on the fence on whether to return it. It's a beautiful phone and _seems_ faster than my Droid 2...even running Eclair. Still, the GPS is weak to non-existent at times, and although I can upgrade the phone myself I'd rather have an official version. Ugh.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some galaxy S handsets have Froyo (see [http://pages.samsung.com/ca/froyo/English/?pid=ca_home_subba...](http://pages.samsung.com/ca/froyo/English/?pid=ca_home_subbanner2_froyo_011111)) others don't, like my Epic 4g. Is it really politics or QA challenges; no official word has been forthcoming.

<comment><USER6> Your link is to the Canadian site for phones configured for Canadian carriers. Not to be pedantic, but the content of the link is specific to the business practices of US carriers.

<comment><USER19> You mean we are being screwed over LESS than the US for a cellphone?

Oh damn - here comes the apocalypse, lions lying down with lambs, rivers of blood, oceans of fire - Canadians getting good deals on a cellphone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sadly, this doesn't explain why my Cliq XT (called Quench down here) will be forever stuck with 1.5.

At least until I decide to crack it and do the upgrade myself. As soon as I find a 1.6+ or 2.x image that pleases me.

</comment><comment><USER21> this seems to make very little sense. most of the custom ROMs out there are based on Samsung's leaked 2.2 ROMs. If Samsung really didn't want to send out official updates for 2.2 they could stop the leaks and would kill XDA updates.

Also judging by the updates trickling in, there is still a lot of work being put in by Samsung to makes these ROMs stable. Almost every leaked ROM has issues. lag fixes and gps fixes on XDA seem to be the norm to work around them

</comment><comment><USER22> If this turns out to be true Samsung just lost a customer for life. This is just plain stupid, short sighted thinking.

</comment><comment><USER23> This doesn't bode well for my Galaxy Tab running Froyo, hoping for Gingerbread and Honeycomb one day.

</comment><comment> old-gregg Somewhat related: how/when do we get Gingerbread on Nexus One?

</comment><comment><USER24> The conflicting interests issue is really a problem in the Android space. As has been shown time and time again, vendors really don't want the burden of keeping your handset up to date forever because there is nothing in it for them, aside from perhaps avoiding too much negative press.

Naturally people are going to compare it to iOS, where updates are free and rapidly disseminated. The difference there is that there definitely _is_ something in it for Apple -- they're getting a cut of every app you buy, every song you download, etc. They're a middleman, so it's just a cost of doing business.

I wish we could get to a point where Android updates cost money. I would happily pay $30 or whatever for each major update if it motivated the vendor to have an interest in keeping it up to date.

<comment><USER25> > As has been shown time and time again, vendors really don't want the burden > of keeping your handset up to date forever because there is nothing in it > for them, aside from perhaps avoiding too much negative press.

Then stop locking the bootloader and let me put the latest version of CM on my phone. I'm not going to buy Motorola and I'm not going to buy Samsung. Samsung won't release their kernel modifications for Froyo which are needed by the CM team to get CM7 running on the Galaxy S devices... Motorola is keeping the bootloader (and thus kernel) on their phones restricted. They're also not even close to timely on their updates. My D1 is running Gingerbread fairly stably, especially considering it's ONE maintainer disappeared two weeks ago due to personal financial concerns. OTOH, only one device is running GB from the manufacturer/carrier and that is Google's own phone.

Let me use my damn phone, I'll take care of the updates. I don't know how much simpler we can make installing CM7 and I know there are some/many/random- number people who have gone CM just to get the latest Android version.

<comment><USER26>
      > Samsung won't release their kernel modifications for
      > Froyo which are needed by the CM team to get CM7 running
      > on the Galaxy S devices

Isn't this a violation of the GPL?

<comment><USER27> Not if it's a driver.

<comment><USER28> You mean, not if it's a driver with a GPL-compatible shim (a la nVidia).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great info, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking that this sort of leak really puts the pressure on Samsung and is highly advantageous to the carriers.</comment>


FCC chair accuses Verizon of throttling unlimited data to boost profits - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/07/fcc-chair-accuses-verizon-of-throttling-unlimited-data-to-boost-profits/

<comment><USER2> Isn't he aware that the device neutrality terms (which BTW i don't see as relevant, but he brought them up) dont apply to 4G unlimited plans grandfathered in after a settlement with the.. FCC? New plans have to allow tethering, grandfathered unlimited plans, under the terms of the settlement, don't. However, maybe unlimited plans that aren't on contract aren't covered by the settlement?

</comment><comment><USER3> Next up, FCC chair accuses scapegoat of not providing good enough distraction while he dismantles net neutrality.

</comment><comment> jmac-sjc My guess is that the FCC will win this one, but as trade, Verizon will win a future (important) one they want. That way Mr. FCC will be seen as fair and balanced...

<comment><USER4> I think you're right. If Wheeler's motive is called into question for a future decision that happens to favor telecom companies, he can try to point to this grandstanding.

He used to be a lobbyist, after all - he knows how this game is played.

<comment><USER5> The argument that Verizon is throttling Netflix is more solid. It will be telling if FCC report is damning or not, because there is an even-better 'grandstanding' opportunity.

[1] [http://www.dslreports.com/news/129745](http://www.dslreports.com/news/129745) [2] [http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/17/5913291/level-3-verizon- co...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/17/5913291/level-3-verizon-congestion- netflix)</comment></comment></comment>


Serious Sam 3 punishes pirates with immortal scorpion - <AUTHOR> http://www.shacknews.com/article/71447/serious-sam-3-punishes-pirates-immortal-scorpion

<comment><USER2> Can someone take a savegame after killing the scorpion from original copy of the game and load it into the cracked one?</comment>


Twitter Bootstrap Project - <AUTHOR>

Please pile on the suggestions! New and eager to learn developer here! www.powerliftingbasics.com <comment><USER2> Please finish your website first before coming to hacker news for suggestions. I hit a 404 page.</comment>


Researchers Hung Men on a Cross and Added Blood to Prove Turin Shroud Is Real - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/researchers-hung-men-cross-and-added-blood-bid-prove-turin-shroud-real <comment><USER2> Sounds like my Easter parties.</comment>


How Marissa Mayer Mobilized Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3044281/marissa-mayer

<comment><USER2> > unless Yahoo gets mobile right, right now.

The people getting mobile right are those making dinky little apps and then selling them for a billion dollars or more.

Yahoo is buying apps and websites for billions of dollars, and it is unclear if it has been able to leverage any of these purchases. It is just making others very, very rich.

Google and Facebook can spend billions on acquisitions, and then use them to enhance their already booming business. But simply enhance, not rescue - Facebook did not buy Instagram because it was on the ropes - it bought it because it complemented its existing killer product, and in hindsight was a bargain. And for Facebook and Google, a billion dollars here and there is a small investment.

Yahoo is trying to dig itself out of a deep hole of irrelevance with all these purchases and acquisitions - and I have not heard of many such success stories. In reality, I think I have heard less of Yahoo in the last couple of years than the years previously, and the ONLY times I have heard of it was either on their latest acquisition or something about Mayer. I mean good luck to them, but time is running out.

</comment><comment><USER3> My impression is that the biggest impact MM had since becoming CEO of Yahoo! is the change in perception at the level of Wall Street, journalists, and analysts. " _She must know what to do. She 's been so high in Google ranks_" By no means I'm implying that MM doesn't have a plan and some signs can be seen here and there from a customer perspective: better iOS apps, a budget for Flickr, more users through the acquisition of Tumblr, etc. But at the end of the day, what matters for Yahoo! the company is this:

> In eight of the nine quarters that Yahoo has completed since her > appointment, its display-advertising revenue has seen a year-over-year > decrease.

<comment><USER4> Yahoo is the Kodak of the 21st century. No matter the struggle and no matter the quality of leadership there is only one possible outcome. I would rather put my money into Twitter as there is at least the chance of a different outcome with Twitter.

As an aside Kodak knew what was coming from the 1970s and they still could not stop what happened - it is almost enough to make one think Marx was onto something with historical materialism [1].

1\. [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They need to get software engineers interested to work there as well. Nothing cool has come out of yahoo. They should look at all the new cool open source projects coming out from Microsoft since the leadership change.

<comment><USER5> Also why would I work for a company that is 100% against working from home? It is just a nice perk some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let's not start praising Mayer until she actually turns Yahoo around. It's still in decline, and while she's able to slow it, Yahoo isn't winning again yet. They have a lot of push in the mobile market, but there's nothing attractive to me about Yahoo's suite of apps yet. Even Tumblr, the service that should be seeing some of the most mobile exposure, doesn't appeal to me on my phone as much as Twitter, Facebook, or even YikYak.

Not to mention, I'm concerned about her earlier investments in content creation. Does anyone have any knowledge of how well Yahoo is doing on the video side? Yahoo spent a lot of money on high quality video and video streaming, but mobile users don't have the bandwidth necessary to make use of that service. I think Mayer should look to cut costs by dropping or slimming down Yahoo Screen, unless they can improve the experience for mobile clients.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm waiting for the day yahoo email has 2fa as convenient as gmail's. You don't need to be able to receive a txt for gmail's 2fa. And yes this is an issue for some people. My parents don't have cell phone reception at their home and my uncle doesn't include txting on his cell phone plan.

<comment><USER8> Also, SMSs can easily be rerouted with only a modicum of social engineering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I still go to Yahoo!'s home page on occasion. It is a reasonable way to find interesting things to read for a few minutes. While I don't feel like they stack up to, for example Google, in providing useful services, I would like them to do at least OK financially just as a bit of competition and an alternative. In general, I just don't like the winner take all alternative to a rich ecosystem with many players.

BTW, one thing about the article that has nothing to do with Yahoo per se: their experience that HTML5 is not effective enough for mobile apps. I really hate the pressure to install a lot of apps on my Android phone and iPad. I would like to see HTML5 to be the dominate platform for content and web applications, but that is probably not going to happen.

<comment><USER10> I've gone through a phase where I've started deleting native apps from my phone and just bookmarking the mobile web page to my home screen. Not only do I love the battery life but I'm less attached to the apps with their random notifications of things that really weren't important to me.

I'm very impressed with the quality of mobile apps these days and I love the idea of mobile apps being the standard. I can move from device to device as long as it has a standards-compliant web browser.

<comment><USER9> I do the same thing, mostly just using manually installed apps for Fastmail and two games (Chess and Go).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Somehow, I don't see 'mobilization' being their problem. I'd be more concerned about the lack of real revenue streams and slowly bleeding their Alibaba stake dry to prop up their stock. I have little reason to use any of their stuff, let alone pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER12> What awesome things has Yahoo done as a company since MM took the helm? I'm not saying there aren't any, I just can't think of any myself, and I'm guessing I'm not the one curious about what changes they're making.

</comment><comment><USER13> All I know is that my Mother is happy using yahoo email on her first smart phone.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yahoo is dying slowly.

</comment><comment><USER15> fastcompany is a serious publication or do they only do fluffy pieces?</comment>


Is Git more than a version control system? Reimplementing CouchDB with Git+Bash... - <AUTHOR> http://www.ordecon.com/2009/04/22/is-git-more-than-just-a-version-control-system/

<comment><USER2> I've been waiting for this. Ever since:

1\. I learned from Linus that git is a decentralized "content" database that gives identity to different versions of the same content and allows them to be compared and merged. (as opposed to a traditional VCS which is more of a "delta" database)

2\. I learned from Damien that CouchDB is a decentralized "document" database that gives identity to different versions of the same document and allows them to be compared and merged.

I've been wondering just what the difference really is.

<comment><USER3> Git retains its change history, and if I remember correctly, uses the sha hash to verify that no one changed the history. Couchdb retains the change history until someone compresses the db (garbage collect). Its revision history is only used as a means of merging out of sync documents.

In addition, Git makes individual merges in a document, and when there's a conflict, it resorts to human intervention. Couchdb does not make merges inside a document, and will not do conflict resolution. Instead, using a brief set of rules, it picks one version of the document over another.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that, but couldn't you theoretically very easily script git to automatically choose based on prior requirements?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course you could. I guess one of the more important points that are made somewhat subtly by this hack is that you can easily fiddle with the functionality of a simple yet flexible piece of software (git) - that's what the Unix philosophy preaches. You start by taking lots of simple components, that are flexible and do not make assumptions about their use, glue them up together into bigger pieces.

Large homogeneous systems that only provide one functionality are hard if not impossible to extend to make them do just what you want. Unless you want what they do in the first place, which makes the whole customization thing pointless ;-)

But that is self evident, or at least should be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I hope nobody minds this butchery, but I really wanted to finally learn some more about Git and refresh my Bash skills.

It's true that the road to hell is paved with good intentions :-)

<comment><USER5> Au contraire; congratulations on a great hack.

I think a lot of us have had this one cooking in our minds for a while and its great to see that somebody got it Done.

Bravo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Much obliged for your comment. It's comments like this one, and others I have received that drive me to more hacking :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not really a new idea to use a VCS as a document database, other folks have back-ended Wikis and document management systems with SVN, for example. But a nice story regardless, and another nudge for me to really take a closer look at git.

First distributed VCS I heard of was darcs. I have not used it either, but from what I've read about the two, git has some real advantages in speed and robust-ness.

<comment><USER7> Darcs is just different, also when this Git buzz started the Darcs people were wondering why they didn't just contribute to Darcs since their ideas are almost the same (except for some things like the merge algorithm)... they just realized that some people just don't program in Haskell :(

<comment><USER8> Git and Darcs have very different underlying models. Most importantly, Git is content-centric (diffs are generated only as byproducts) while Darcs is patch- centric (any given "version" is just a sum of all the patches that produce it). Linus, for one, feels strongly that this is an important distinction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've built a Git datastore that works in much the same way. I constructed it to interface with Rails in a manner as close to ActiveRecord as I could. I actually ended up basing it on the CouchRest module for interfacing Rails and CouchDB, so there are a lot of similarities.

As soon as I find some time I'll do a full write up for anyone that's interested.

</comment><comment><USER10> Funny that this should appear this morning.

Last night I was thinking about how much I hate existing file managers. How the metaphor was great when you had 2 meg hard drives and a few folders and maybe a couple hundred files tops, but how now it falls apart. There was a project called lifestreams at Yale ( <http://cs- www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.html> ) that had some interesting ideas about allowing you to see your documents as a versioned timeline. Using a dcvs type system as a backend would get you a lot of that plus more, you could explore different ideas for files on different branches. I do however want more...

I want usable metadata like the BeFS had. Where any arbitrary metadata key/value paris could be attached to a 'file', For example, contacts in the BeFS were basically empty files with metadata attached. That metadata included name, address etc. Any application could uses the data, augment it etc. The file manager ( tracker ) could query the data to create live 'searches' that looked just like folders. You could add new types and what not. Very powerful when the filesystem is a database. BeOS ( and now haiku ) kept the traditional file manager around as well. Others have approached this idea, but haven't really gone after it.

What I thought of that I really wanted to see was something like a document- centric database like couchdb that is backed with dcvs like features that operates just like a regular filesystem, i mount it, i can drag and drop content into it, save into it, make it look like a 'normal' fs to existing applications, but all that path info etc is just saved searches on metadata that group information together and you can tag those searches with metadata themselves.

<comment><USER10> an additional thought... then filesystem backups just become a push/pull scenario between different instances. man, i really like this general idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has been on my mind for a while: Does anyone know if DropBox is developed on top of an existing source control system?

<comment><USER12> Running git on top file based storage would also be an interesting project. There is a proprietary commercial implementation of a similar idea from Caringo called CFS <http://www.caringo.com/products_cfs.html>. An opensource version based on git would be nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can Git be made to handle binary files as nicely as [Dropbox](<http://getdropbox.com/>) does?

On [one](<https://www.getdropbox.com/tour#3>) of the pages from their tour, it shows how if you save a 10 MB PSD to Dropbox twice, it shows you a table with a row for the original file and another row for '400 extra bytes' or whatever.

> Dropbox is also smart with how it tracks changes to files. Every time you > make a change, Dropbox only transfers the piece of the file that changed > (also known as block-level or delta sync), making it easy to work with big > files like Photoshop or Powerpoint documents.

<comment><USER13> First off, the "block-level" sync is _exactly_ what rsync is for. You'll probably have better results using that. (<http://www.samba.org/rsync/>) You could track a list of local file paths in git, but sync the binaries themselves with rysnc. (They complement each other well.)

Tracking changes in binary files (which cannot be merged in any reasonably generic fashion) is a fundamentally different issue than tracking changes in text, particularly source code. Git is designed to do the latter. While you _can_ use it to track changes in binaries, merging doesn't make sense anymore, and hashing / scanning big binary files for changes is significantly slower. (A bunch of images generally won't matter, but I wouldn't use it to track, say, video, or large database dumps.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Quite interesting. On a related theme, a lot of people have begun using vcs' (especially git, but also some times svn) as the data-storage backend for their applications, where they would have used a rdbms a few years ago. Eg. [Jekyll](<http://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/tree/master>) etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Git is really nifty. What I like about it is that, when you get down to it, it's amazingly fast. There are many reported cases of people holding their home directories as Git repos on a day-to-day basis.

It's just amazing what a good VCS can let you do.

<comment><USER15> People store their home dir with hg too (I do, many coworkers do), and before the DVCS era people used svn and cvs. This is far from a git-unique thing.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. I've used svn, monotone, hg, and git for this (moving from each to the next over the last three years or so), and they all worked fine. In my experience, the special features of each have relatively little significance for typical operations on home directories.

It's worth picking any and just doing it, though.

<comment><USER16> I have often heard of people putting their /etc in cvs/svn, but I never bothered due to having to setup a repo. That is until I had git at which point it became just a git init.

<comment><USER13> Right. Monotone (an earlier DVCS, inspiration for git), while a really nice system technically, expected you to set up keys for authorizing changes to the repository before you could use it* . It was a little thing, but reducing setup to just "git init" (or "hg init") makes for less friction to putting stuff in VC _just because_...and then you find out it's good for things you would have never anticipated.

* One style difference between the two. See Graydon Hoare's comment here ([http://email@example.com/msg080...](http://email@example.com/msg08012.html)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, um, has anybody tried using this?

Don't have time to set it up at the moment, but I'd been wondering exactly the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't have time to read it now but looks very interesting thinking so I will read it later.

I am using bazaar to do daily backups at some webapp that stores serialized data in files. I was thinking _a little_ about syncing it between servers with bazaar if needed but you seem to go a few steps further. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some things that I find extremely enticing about Git. First of, there's the speed which I already mentioned. The second is how it's designed to be decentralized - and my amazement at this probably stems from the fact that this is the first decentralized VCS that I've ever worked with.

I've been using rsync to keep certain directories of my various computers synchronized, but I think I'll go one step further soon enough: for my Linux computers, I'll keep some parts of my home directory in Git in order to maintain an identical user interface / configuration on those machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thanks for reminding me how paltry my Bash skills are. Yeah, thanks a lot... :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You bastards killed my webhost's MySql instance :-)</comment>