The life and death of Buran, the USSR shuttle built on faulty assumptions - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/09/the-life-and-death-of-buran-the-ussr-shuttle-built-on-faulty-assumptions/ <comment><USER3> The USSR should be commended on not throwing as much good money after bad as the US did w/ the Space-Shuttle Program, which was built on even worse faulty assumptions re: cost, reuse, safety, launch frequency, etc.

> When all design and maintenance costs are taken into account, the final cost > of the Space Shuttle program, averaged over all missions and adjusted for > inflation, was estimated to come out to $1.5 billion per launch, or > $60,000/kg (approximately $27,000 per pound) to LEO. This should be > contrasted with the originally envisioned costs of $118 per kilogram > (approximately $53 per pound) of payload in 1972 dollars ($1,400/kg, > [approximately $630 per pound] adjusting for inflation to 2011)

> The launch rate was significantly lower than initially expected. While not > reducing absolute operating costs, more launches per year gives a lower cost > per launch. Some early hypothetical studies examined 55 launches per year > (see above), but the maximum possible launch rate was limited to 24 per year > based on manufacturing capacity of the Michoud facility that constructs the > external tank. Early in shuttle development, the expected launch rate was > about 12 per year. Launch rates reached a peak of 9 per year in 1985 but > averaged fewer thereafter.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_program)

<comment><USER4> Damn straight. They built a _better_ shuttle, then had the common sense to realize the idea was silly.

They were right about the Space Shuttle and the US military too; much of the design of the Space Shuttle was influenced (compromised) by the DoD so that the Shuttle would be able to get into polar orbits for military missions (such as launching US spy satellites, and stealing Soviet spy satellites). These design requirements forced them to design a shuttle with dimensions that were not optimized for the missions the shuttle ultimately carried out.

One of the problems with the ultimate design is that the Shuttle stack relied in part on the SSMEs to get into orbit. This meant that the fuel tank/SRBs were worthless for anything other than getting the Shuttle into orbit, while the Energia from the Energia/Buran combo would have been useful in its own right (sadly the Energia was discontinued with the Buran).

As for the Russians "ripping off" the Shuttle, I think the Encyclopedia Astronautica article for the Energia engines is interesting: [http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0120.htm](http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0120.htm)

<comment><USER5> > One of the problems with the ultimate design is that the Shuttle stack > relied in part on the SSMEs to get into orbit.

In addition, the SSMEs were only reusable in principle; in practice, they were rarely reused, and unit cost was very high.

> while the Energia from the Energia/Buran combo would have been useful in its > own right (sadly the Energia was discontinued with the Buran).

The engines used for its boosters, however, are used in modified form in the Zenit (RD-171, like RD-170 with extra axis of movement) and Atlas V (RD-180; size-reduced version) rockets, and will be used in Angara.

<comment><USER6> >>In addition, the SSMEs were only reusable in principle; in practice, they were rarely reused, and unit cost was very high.

They were reused and were extremely efficient with a much higher unit cost than the equivalent energia stack main engine. The Soviets intended to design a carrier shuttle with reusable engines just like the US Shuttle but abandoned the effort due to reliability concerns.

That is the whole point of the space shuttle design in any case. If you can't reuse very powerful main engines that can be made to be very efficient there is no point in using a shuttle-truck design in the first place.

> while the Energia from the Energia/Buran combo would have been useful in its > own right (sadly the Energia was discontinued with the Buran).

The energia was suboptimal for launching very large items due to its requirement that payloads have to carried on the side. This increases the weight due to atmospheric shielding that cannot be jettisoned and, more importantly, means a third stage cannot be used for efficiency. Every payload also has to be able to deploy itself into the correct orbit which requires custom development for each launch payload. So while energia was powerful it was very expensive as a standalone launch platform and never would have seen much use and consequently was never seriously considered as a future development platform.

The soviets would have done better just to develop a lh2/lox successor to the failed n1 rocket in the first place; especially if they didn't think the shuttle was going to be economical. Instead, they developed a sub-optimal launch vehicle that was itself based on a flawed concept and they had every intention of running the program out to the year 2000 even with a handful of launches scheduled and development costs that were already higher than the US shuttle.

<comment><USER4> Part of the problem with reusing SSMEs was that they burned hydrogen and hydrogen embrittlement basically ensured that any sort of fast or cheap turn around with SSMEs was impossible.

Hydrogen is a pain in the ass to work with if you want a reusable rocket. The Space Shuttle was really only nominally reusable, the engines had to practically be rebuilt every time to make sure everything was alright (the SRBs were hardly any better, though at least they were simpler.) _(Really, hydrogen is just a pain in the ass in general though. It isn 't very dense and needs to be kept much cooler than LOX to boot (requiring all that foam on the external tanks), which is why the Shuttle external tank had to be so goddamn big. The massive efficiency of LOX/LH2 are somewhat mitigated by these factors.)_

 _If_ SpaceX can get their F9R working well, that will likely be the first properly reusable rocket (first stage anyway). Those will burn RP-1 which won't suffer from hydrogen embrittlement.

The Soviets would have been better off continuing to neglect LH2/LOX and focus on the fuels they did best with (basically what they have done ever since they discontinued Energia). Also, while the Energia _would_ have been suboptimal for non-Buran loads, it still would have been the heaviest lifting rocket they ever had, able to put 32,000kg into TLI (compared to the Saturn V's 47,000kg and the N1's never realized 23,500 kg). The Shuttle stack wasn't merely suboptimal for that sort of thing, it was worthless.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, the SSME's were never as reusable as projected but their efficiency helped to mitigate somewhat the massive cost in weight of the shuttle. If you are committed to a shuttle design you might as well choose a very efficient partially reusable engine over one with RP-1 or a less efficient lox/h20 engine with lower total costs. That isn't an argument in favor of the shuttle just a reasonable design choice.

>>The Soviets would have been better off continuing to neglect LH2/LOX and focus on the fuels they did best with (basically what they have done ever since they discontinued Energia).

I have to disagree with this. The soviets began developing LH2/LOX technologies immediately after the N1 failure for the same reason that the Saturn V used LH2/LOX as an upper stage fuel: it is hard to make the math work for massive rockets that only consume RP-1. The weight penalty on the upper stages is just too large to be cost effective. You might as well pay the cost of LH2/LOX development if you intend to launch super heavy payloads.

>>Also, while the Energia would have been suboptimal for non-Buran loads, it still would have been the heaviest lifting rocket they ever had, able to put 32,000kg into TLI (compared to the Saturn V's 47,000kg and the N1's never realized 23,500 kg). The Shuttle stack wasn't merely suboptimal for that sort of thing, it was worthless.

If the criteria for deciding between SLS/Buran-Energia is which one can launch the most payload then, yes, you would choose Energia. This wasn't an intended benefit of Energia and was simply due to reliability concerns about reusing rocket engines(especially with fuel sources that the Soviets didn't have experience with).

It is hard to evaluate the cost of reusing Energia technology and developing a new booster that would be more optimal going forward. If the Soviets had the money and the political foresight to cancel Buran they might have been able to do it and use Soyuz and Energia together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the remnants of the Buran to this day is an ancestor of its programming environment -- DRAKON. It is a visual programming language. Unlike others, it seems this one has had quite a bit of thought put into it.

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

I don't think it is enough to make it popular, but it is nevertheless an interesting niche. There is a small community still building and exploring it.

There is a DRAKON editor, with target languages like Javascript, Erlang, C++ and others. Here is the DRAKON editor program:

[http://drakon-editor.sourceforge.net/](http://drakon-editor.sourceforge.net/)

EDIT: (adding some interesting translated tid bits from Parondjanov's writings)

If you happen to speak Russian it is also quite an interesting read to go over author's (Parondjanov) writing on programming in general:

[http://drakon.pbworks.com/w/page/18205516/FrontPage](http://drakon.pbworks.com/w/page/18205516/FrontPage)

He talks about visual programming languages. He defines provocative terms like "intellectual terrorism" and how information overload (he calls it "information stress") is akin to terrorism for the minds of workers tasked to tease out the solution to the problem. It often stems from an impedance mismatched between old methods of solving problems and processing information and the new type and amount of information available. Mind you this was written in the 80's before big data. His environment was building tools to write the avionics system for Buran. Many of the engineers involved were not computer scientists, there were mechanical, chemical, airspace engineers. He was probably wondering how to get them to program better and how to make the whole process more efficient and less stressful for them.

<comment><USER8> i have never seen this programming environment. its a fascinating concept which resembles the Scratch project out of MIT.

modern scripting languages make iterating software much simpler. however, there are times when i feel having a drag and drop gui such as this to assemble complex operations would be really helpful. i know of modeling tools such as UML are used in the planning phase. but wouldn't it make sense to have a high level overview of your software? is there anything like this for python, javascript, or ruby?

<comment><USER9> While completely commercial, Ventuz is a worthy note in software that somewhat follows this concept - [https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4007/4418935939_6b3471b34b_o....](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4007/4418935939_6b3471b34b_o.jpg)

For a much longer list: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Soviet technological development was a very weird universe. They had a lot of very talented scientists and engineers and were certainly capable of coming up with many novel innovations on their own. However, within the communist soviet system politics ruled everything. Whether or not a project would receive support was utterly dependent on political factors, which could be affected by prior success of course, but not always. Soviet leadership put a heavy emphasis on espionage in guiding technological development, sometimes without much critical thinking. This goes back to the days of WWII spying on the Manhattan project and copying of captured B-29's into the nearly identical Tu-4. But you see many other projects in the same vein, such as the Tu-144 (Concordski) and of course Buran.

The fascinating thing about Buran is that the Shuttle was built with a really very bizarre set of functional requirements that imposed steep demands on the design of the vehicle but which turned out to be mostly useless in a practical sense and were not actually meaningfully used during the lifetime of the vehicle. For example, the large wings on the Shuttle give it a very high cross-range flight capability during re-entry, but that was only a requirement because it was thought that the Shuttle would perform a particular kind of military mission. A polar launch which would deploy a satellite, or perform other activities, in one orbit and return to the launch site. Such missions never materialized, and such missions were unlikely to be valuable to the Soviets at all. And yet that requirement dictated the size of the wings which forced the frame to be larger and heavier, which reduced the payload, and which created a larger area that needed thermal protection (an issue which contributed to the loss of Columbia, for example), and so forth. A clean sheet design without such a requirement should have had much smaller wings and thus be a more capable and more reliable design, but Buran copied the Shuttle too closely and ended up with all of the faults of the Shuttle design without a good reason for them.

<comment><USER11> Western media is used to accuse Soviet system in technology copying. However sometimes the accusations go a little bit too far. Particularly in the aerospace area it would be naive to deny the Soviets their prowess - <USER2> Buran, which differs significantly from the Shuttle (see the article above), with Tu-144, which flew before Concord, not to mention today's half-broken Soviet-era technology which manages to lift about half of world space payloads to orbit and provides West with rocket technology - RD-180 for Atlas, NK-33 for Antares etc.

<comment><USER10> I picked my examples carefully, every single one is an example of a determined Soviet espionage operation.

That doesn't discount Soviet prowess in technological innovation, but it's still very much the truth.

As I mentioned, the Buran has many close similarities to the Shuttle. It has many differences as well but the shocking thing about the similarities is that they don't make any sense except in regards to attempting to copy the Shuttle.

Regardless of the capabilities of their scientists and engineers we know that the Soviets were obsessed with copying as much western technology as possible.

<comment><USER5> > It has many differences as well but the shocking thing about the > similarities is that they don't make any sense except in regards to > attempting to copy the Shuttle.

The major similarity is the physical configuration of the orbiter, no? This was, indeed, a deliberate copy; cut down on the aerodynamic testing required. Most other details of the system were really quite different (particularly the engines; outboard solid fuel and internal reusable hydrogen for the shuttle, with a separate tank, outboard kerosene and external expendable (though with reusable designs studied for a future upgrade) hydrogen for Buran).

> Regardless of the capabilities of their scientists and engineers we know > that the Soviets were obsessed with copying as much western technology as > possible.

There isn't really that much of that going on in Buran. Again, the booster engines are an obvious example; the US had largely abandoned building efficient kerosene engines (they're very expensive to develop) by the time of the shuttle programme.

<comment><USER11> To choose the shape, the easier path was taken: this one works, so let's safely do the same.

That doesn't mean that the choice wasn't analyzed and justified, not that aerodynamic testing wasn't done - for examples, picture here - [http://buran.ru/htm/history.htm](http://buran.ru/htm/history.htm) \- show the evolution of the overall architecture, where the Shuttle scheme was just one of the considered factors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The coolest thing is how the first (and only) voyage, including the landing, was completely automated.

Its one thing to drop an unmanned capsule into the ocean, quite another to land it on a runway. Of course, drones do it all the time these days. But this was 27 years ago.

<comment><USER13> Aren't drones (at least the more sophisticated ones, akin to modern fighters/bombers) 100% remotely controled by human pilots?

<comment><USER4> Probably to a similar extent as airliners these days, though without the pilot actually sitting in it. They can take off and land themselves, though they still have a human sitting around (probably reading a paperback most of the time.)

<comment><USER14> Are we talking drones or passenger aircraft?

Passenger aircraft definitely don't auto takeoff and don't really use auto land. See [http://www.boston.com/community/blogs/askthepilot/2013/03/th...](http://www.boston.com/community/blogs/askthepilot/2013/03/the_five_most_annoying_myths_a.html) and [http://www.askthepilot.com/cockpit- claptrap/](http://www.askthepilot.com/cockpit-claptrap/)

<comment><USER4> Autolandings may or may not be common in airliners, but my understanding of drones is that _" The pilots are flying the plane through the automation"_ is in strong effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _" Orbiter OK-2.01...was dismantled and sat gathering dust at the Tushina factory near Moscow for years until 2011 when it was reportedly moved to an aviation museum in Germany for restoration"_

I just walked through this Buran model a few months ago at the Technikmuseum in Speyer, Germany. It's really there.

[http://speyer.technik-museum.de/en](http://speyer.technik-museum.de/en)

<comment><USER16> No, it's not. The one in Speyer is 0.02 OK-GLI, forgotten and found again in Bahrain (which is a whole story by itself).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK-GLI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK-GLI)

(BTW: living in Speyer is very cool for tech-freaks: every once in while, they bring in a new plane, or a submarine...)

<comment><USER15> Wow, really? Thanks for that.

And yeah, the Speyer museums are totally amazing. What they did to that B747 just blew my mind.

<comment><USER16> The local story (in short) actually is: The director of the museum saw a documentary about a plane graveyard in Bahrain that was aired next to the Formula 1 race there. He saw the Buran in the background, contacted the relevant people and got one short after :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >This should be contrasted with the originally envisioned costs of $118 per kilogram (approximately $53 per pound) of payload in 1972 dollars ($1,400/kg, [approximately $630 per pound] adjusting for inflation to 2011)

Please check these figures. Whatever measure of inflation i try i can't see 12x inflation from 1972 to 2011. It was more like 4x.

Launch rate - correct, problem was Air Force which first dictated the oversized payload capacity and even more oversized payload bay dimensions, and a huge cross-range capability (to enable single-orbit missions), resulting in a system too big and expensive for anything else, then pulling out resulting in vastly lower launch rates. So Shuttle was commercially doomed long before its first flight. U.S. would be better off flying it a few times to prove it works, then getting back to drawing board to design something fitting the market better. Reusable launch systems have been, and still are, realistic, it's only epic fail of Shuttle which make it look too toxic to anyone to try (just like failure of GM EV1 delayed electric car revolution for a decade - nobody dared to try, engineering and business failure of a particular project was mistaken for the whole idea being bad).

</comment><comment><USER18> The legacy of Buran/Energia lives on in the most powerful operational rocket engines ever created, the RD-170 family. There were four of these engines, each in one of the Buran boosters. One engine has four chambers. The RD-171 derivative is still used in Zenit launched from Russia and from a sea platform by Sea Launch, and the RD-180 derivative which is basically a half engine with two chambers, is used in the American Atlas V.

No other country has replicated the oxidizer rich staged combustion used in these high thrust efficient lox-kerosene engines. The materials technology is especially challenging because of the high temperature oxidizing gases in the turbine. For example SpaceX's Merlin gas generator engines look decidedly fifties compared to these.

The RD-0120 hydrogen engines on the base of the hydrogen tank were quite a feat as well, a Russian SSME. That technology was abandoned. The European Space Agency did some tests with RD-0120 back in the day.

(The article got the name of the booster engines wrong.)

</comment><comment><USER19> I find it interesting that something that looks so similar to the shuttle (at a glance) is actually a completely different design & configuration (how/where thrust is generated).

<comment><USER11> That's the same with all planes, ships and cars in general. At a glance they all look the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is a cool screensaver about Buran:

[http://buran.ru/htm/scr_en.htm](http://buran.ru/htm/scr_en.htm)

</comment><comment><USER20> "Faulty assumptions" seem to be a thing with the soviets...</comment>


Bill Gates on Tropical Diseases, Trump and Brexit - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGUxIM0RwAc <comment><USER2> One could imply both Trump and Brexit are a tropical disease.

</comment><comment><USER3> Commas are the difference between:

      Unable to eat, diarrhea.
      Unable to eat diarrhea.

Please use them.

<comment><USER4> What is this in reference to, the title? That's perfectly acceptable. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma)</comment></comment>


Hubble captures vivid auroras in Jupiter's atmosphere - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1613/ <comment><USER2> Note: the dramatic photo is a composite, of Jupiter in visible light and its auroras captured in UV.

<comment><USER3> Nearly every photo of space you see, especially from Hubble, is usually a composite, falsely colored, or otherwise altered in ways that bring out the important features of the photo. Note that the idea of "true color" for these sorts of astronomical photos is itself a bit ill-defined.

Here's some information about the kinds of manipulations that might go into these photos: [http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of...](http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/)

<comment><USER4> >Note that the idea of "true color" for these sorts of astronomical photos is itself a bit ill-defined.

Why? Because of Relativistic Doppler Effect?

<comment><USER5> Astronomical cameras don't capture color information in the sense that our eyes or consumer digital cameras do. They are "black and white" only detectors. To get color information, several images are taken with different filters in front of the detector. Afterwards, those images can be stacked and each layer assigned a color to create a composite image.

Making this a "true color" image that exactly mimics what your naked eye would see ranges from difficult to impossible (like in the case of UV data). It's also unimportant, because we mostly use color images as a visual aide (of course!). The "science" is in comparing and contrasting the individual "color" images.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly how CMOS/CCD image sensors (used in digital cameras) work [0]. Each "sub-pixel" is just a photocell which detects light intensity. A bayers filter on top of the sensor array filters light colors so different "sub- pixels" detect colors (light intensity of different parts of the visual spectrum) [1]

Enthusiasts sometimes remove the filter to get higher optical resolution or better contrast B&W images. You can even buy consumer cameras with this feature off the shelf [2]

NASA is doing the equivalent of instagram filters, making photos appear more appealing to the general public. NASA says (via. Space.com [3]):

"Creating color images out of the original black-and-white exposures is equal parts art and science," NASA said.

For example, Hubble photographed the Cat's Eye Nebula through three narrow wavelengths of red light that correspond to radiation from hydrogen atoms, oxygen atoms, and nitrogen ions (nitrogen atoms with one electron removed). In that case, they assigned red, blue and green colors to the filters and combined them to highlight the subtle differences. In real life, those wavelengths of light would be hard to distinguish for humans."

In other words, ignore the colors.

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

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

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

[3] [http://www.space.com/8059-truth-photos-hubble-space- telescop...](http://www.space.com/8059-truth-photos-hubble-space-telescope- sees.html)

<comment><USER7> > In other words, ignore the colors.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "ignore". The colors, though somewhat arbitrarily chosen, do convey physical information. It may not be a "what your eye might see" image, but it does tell the viewer about the relative emission from hydrogen, oxygen, and singly-ionized nitrogen (for the Cat's Eye Nebula). So, the coloring isn't something that could be ignored.

One way to describe those types of images is "representative color".

<comment><USER6> "Cat's Eye Nebula ... In real life, those wavelengths of light would be hard to distinguish for humans."

The context of the my comment was how the photo compare to the naked eye.

I used to take IR photos for fun (consumer camera with IR filter replaced with visible light filter), and used thermal and night vision technology at my job. They all relay useful information, but are not photo-realistic in anyway.

An IR photo of Earth for example, useful but not photorealistic.

[http://bobqat.com/Essays/disteyes/color- ir.jpg](http://bobqat.com/Essays/disteyes/color-ir.jpg)

I imagine the Cat's Eye just looks like a bright cloud :)

<comment><USER7> > The context of the my comment was how the photo compare to the naked eye.

I agree that is true for your example of the Cat's Eye nebulae. I guess my response was to my (and presumably other's possible) mis-interpretation that "ignore the color" was aimed at color astronomy images in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am _so_ happy HST's mission was extended for another few years [0]! I would have funded a Kickstarter to keep it going, to be honest. If there's one thing Hubble does well, it's that it capture the hearts and minds of muggles like myself. HST is an amazing piece of machinery.

[0] [http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-extends-hubble- space-...](http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-extends-hubble-space- telescope-science-operations-contract/)

<comment><USER9> That would have to be some kickstarter :) The operating costs of Hubble are about $100M/year.

<comment><USER10> According to the linked press release it will cost less than $200 million for an additional five years, so the cost is less than $40 million/year.

<comment><USER9> I read elsewhere it cost $98M/yr recently, so it might be that this extension isnt maintaining the full capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The timelapse is pretty cool! [http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1613a/](http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1613a/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Would you have been able to see these auroras with the naked eye?

</comment><comment><USER13> Looking forward to seeing this reposted on new age forums, as "Hubble Captures Jupiters Aura".</comment>


This Is PHP Framework Written in C. It Is Simple, Fast, Standard, Security - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yulonghu/asf <comment><AUTHOR> A PHP framework written in C that focuses on API development. Asf aims to shorten project development time, address the framework's performance costs, regulate unreasonable development, and encounter security issues. Asf continues to make complex things simple.

</comment><comment><USER2> What problem is this framework trying to solve? Not trolling, just trying to understand the scenario where this is the no-brainer, gotta use this framework.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your question. It has already been answered. (As above)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of Phalcon [https://phalconphp.com/en/](https://phalconphp.com/en/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Many differences</comment></comment>


Spas: Simple PHP Application Servers - <AUTHOR>

I think I'm working on something somewhat unique in the PHP world.
https://github.com/cameronjacobson/Spas
Before I get too far I'd love to get some feedback from some expert PHP devs.  Familiarity with Symfony2, Silex, and the Event package are ideal.
All examples/* seem to be working appropriately (with basic testing so far), and I'm definitely aware of and trying to be cautious in terms of the potential for leaky global application variables. <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry. Here's a good link that should help you get started: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_server](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_server)

Since this is in early stages, I would say that if it's not clear after looking at the examples/* files this project may not be for you... (yet) :)

</comment><comment><USER2> what are you trying to accomplish? ie. What problem are you solving? Sorry, its a little unclear.</comment>


Uber Air's plans for 1k-strong Melbourne helicopter fleet - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-28/uber-air-plans-for-1000-strong-melbourne-helicopter-fleet/12007092 <comment><USER2> "Uber is unlikely to be the applicant for the airworthiness certificate that permits an aircraft to take to the air, meaning pilots could be responsible for safety and maintenance of the helicopters, just as drivers in the Uber network operate now."

<comment><USER3> Can't speak for the states, but in Australia there's already a massive shortage of helicopter pilots. It's incredibly prohibitive to get commercially licensed. Many do years of work for free to get the required hours up. A private license is fairly simple to get for anyone keen enough.

Wondering if Uber is planning to allow privately licensed owner operators to do this as they do with cars now?</comment></comment>


System requirements - <AUTHOR> https://www.chase.com/digital/resources/privacy-security/security/system-requirements <comment><AUTHOR> The TLDR on this is -> I tried to login to my Chase account today, I've been a customer for over a decade or so and this wasn't an unusual occurrence. It kept redirecting me to use the Android/iOS app or check the system requirements. I tried a couple times, I even used a different browser. Lo and behold I found out that they don't support my operating system for some reason (I use FreeBSD) and they also don't support Linux. I'm tempted to close my Chase accounts but I kinda like getting Amazon points. This reminds me of the 1990s...

I should add, installing a user agent switcher lets me login, so they're just being rude.

<comment><USER2> The browser is the platform. It's very surprising to see a Fortune 20 company making this a requirement in 2019?

<comment><USER3> Generally that means they are more likely to do something this bone-headed, not less. Especially if they are a bank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am still able to log in to my chase account with Firefox on Debian. I don't have any user agent switching going on.

</comment><comment><USER5> All they are saying here is "these are the browsers/OSes we can offer support for, and that we test our site with". I mean they specifically say:

> Some features and functions may not operate properly with unsupported > browser versions.

I don't understand why folks are so surprised this works elsewhere, or why anyone is getting super upset about this. If they were filtering based on user agent and explicitly _preventing_ it from working for you when it otherwise probably would, _then_ I could see the issue (ahem Apple icloud, anyone?). But this isn't that.

<comment><USER6> I don't think anyone posting that it's working for them is surprised. Many were refuting the original title, which claimed that Chase had banned non- Windows and non-macOS users from logging in.

edit: punctuation

<comment><USER5> Ah the title changed? That makes sense, then. I only saw it as "System requirements".

<comment><AUTHOR> yep, I posted with a different one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I looked briefly but wasn't able to find a posted reason for the requirements. Are you aware of why these requirements were put in place?

What an odd thing to see from a webpage in 2019.

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked, it appears to be "management is braindead" so I don't have a lot more than that. I've also tweeted at them so we'll see what they come up with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was able to log in with Firefox from Linux, no user-agent switching.

A similar claim was made against Apple recently.[0] In that case the redditor was able to log in at a later time. Maybe you triggered a false positive in their security checks.

edit: Chase has had this "ban" against *nix in place since 2016 [1].

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/atc0av/apples_apple_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/atc0av/apples_apple_id_management_site_blocks_linux/)

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20160731113350/https://www.chase...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160731113350/https://www.chase.com/digital/resources/privacy- security/security/system-requirements)

<comment><AUTHOR> I used the site a few months ago, this is a recent change. IE: I login and pay my credit card regularly...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the "Required operating systems" (Windows / Mac OS X) is really true. Just checked again with my Chromebook (Chrome OS 72) and it worked fine, as it has been.

</comment><comment><USER9> The linked page includes Mac OSX Yosemite as an option, and I've logged into Chase with a Mac for years. This title doesn't sound correct...

<comment><USER10> What's the difference between OS X and OSX Yosemite?

<comment><USER11> OSX was used originally to just describe version 10, a big change to the OS which broke backwards compatibility. Now its used loosely to describe any version above 9.

Each point version of OSX has a codename, Yosemite is v10.10. The latest version 10.14.x has the name Mojave.

Apple recently rebranded OSX to macOS, possibly to have a version number higher than 10 some day.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#Mac_OS_X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#Mac_OS_X)

<comment><USER12> > Apple recently rebranded OSX to macOS, possibly to have a version number > higher than 10 some day.

that may be, I figured it had more to be in line with tvOS, watchOS, and iOS. having somethingOS for everything except for one being OSsomething just seemed oddball enough for them to want to bring it in line.

In theory you could have 10.1234567890 for a release and retain OSX if that was the concern. I think everyone would hate them for it, but I don't think there's anything preventing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pretty sure this is only to point out that they don't support Linux.

I really can't see any company say that they support "Linux" for their website with all the different flavors out there. Probably the best they can do is support some versions of Ubuntu but even that could incur a large cost. Or like most websites, not specify an operating system and let the browsers do what they do best.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am able to login with Firefox 64.0.2 on fedora. If they are doing user-agent filtering, they either don't target me, or they backed it off due to the hitrate.

<comment><AUTHOR> likely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This typifies my most common use of VirtualBox.

[https://www.virtualbox.org](https://www.virtualbox.org)

</comment><comment><USER16> This seems like it might have been a bug. Yesterday I saw this issue on Chrome + Linux and am now able to log in.

</comment><comment><USER17> So, in other words, Chase is no longer offering a web presence. Good to know.

</comment><comment><USER18> also affects android?

<comment><USER12> presumably iOS as well, though in both cases they have native Chase apps which they'll push you towards.</comment></comment>


Someday we will all program in Python - <AUTHOR> http://davidbau.com/archives/2009/05/22/your_compiler_vanishes_in_a_puff_of_logic.html <comment><USER2> The only reason to write in a language like C or Java today (over Python) is speed. And there are a very limited number of applications that require that sort of speed. There's no question that Linux should be written in a low level language, or a high-performance chess bot. But I'm incredulous when I see anyone write a website in even the relatively high-level Java.

So, the author is right that we're getting more Pythonic, but he's wrong to say we'll all write in Python some day. Some day, something like Python will be the fast low level language, there will be new slower languages that are easier to use than Python, and C will be a memory. The evolution of programming languages will never end, not in our lifetime certainly, and probably not as long as we walk the earth.

I must say though that I pray for more convergence. It annoys me to write code in JavaScript and Python, having to remember subtle differences between the two as small as capitalization of true and False, and tricky pitfalls like the scope of a variable declared in an if block.

It does seem an unnecessary burden for me as a web developer to have to know a handful of languages. You can hardly make a website today without knowing HTML, CSS, Javascript, Python/Ruby, and you better know your SQL too. Then, let's talk APIs.

<comment><USER3> _The only reason to write in a language like C or Java today (over Python) is speed. And there are a very limited number of applications that require that sort of speed_

You probably mean a very limited number of web app frontend code. That may be true. But I think you underestimate what is being done with software.

With a language that is 200 times slower than C or Java you can't do any data analysis, graphics or image processing, machine learning, algorithmic optimisation, financial software like trading, pricing and risk management, embedded systems, bioinformatics, simulation and a whole lot more.

You're basically excluding yourself from doing anything that mankind couldn't do before. Progress it's called. Most AI tasks require massive computational power. But even just things like pickling a Python object is too onerous for Python itself. I don't think that's good enough.

<comment><USER4> Can we at least all agree that no one should be writing anything in a shell scripting language any longer?

I'd be happy with just winning that battle.

<comment><USER5> Why are you against shell scripting languages ?

<comment><USER4> Because I have seen the horrors that they wreak in a production system where they are responsible for mission critical logic.

The horror. The horror.

<comment><USER5> Could you give examples of it ? You could also write horrible python or ruby code.

<comment><USER4> I don't feel comfortable posting code from my employer here, sorry. But let me address your counter-argument on its own: Saying you can write bad Ruby or Python is a turing tarpit argument. You can write bad code in any language, but I've seen a lot more bad shell script code than I've seen bad Python. Add to that that shell scripting languages are very irregular and I can't see why anyone would use a shell script for something that they actually relied on that was more complicated than invoking a few commands in sequence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought the second comment was interesting:

>I believe the flaw in the argument is that the higher-level languages are actually _more_ constrained, because they have made too many broad promises and are unable to tell when they can violate them without ill effect, even though it is obvious to the programmer. We might think that your example above would be a perfect case in which we could parallelize the loop... but what if sum() had side effects, such that it would produce the wrong result if not evaluated in order? What if sum() didn't have any directly detectable side effects, but called another function which called another function which did... sometimes, from code in a runtime eval? The compiler has no way of knowing this, so it has to assume the worst, and this is why it ends up being unable to make all the optimizations that one thinks it "should" be able to make. The human looks at it and says "duh, it's called 'sum'. If it has side effects, I'm going to smack somebody up the side of the head" and proceeds to optimize in the expected ways.<

<comment><USER7> Which is exactly why Fortran compilers are still faster than C++.

</comment></comment><comment> b-man I think it is funny that the guy went and said something correct like this:

"In an ideal world, high-level languages like Python would replace all other programming languages."

That includes smalltalk, scheme, clisp, and every marvelous language not yet invented.

But then he goes on and says something very closed minded like

"Someday we will all program in python."

As if python got everything correct, and we have a perfect map of how humans think with it. The arrogance.

<comment><USER8> The last part didn't seem entirely literal to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Or how about in Clojure?

(map (partial reduce +) (partition 7 7 daily))

Edit: Possibly that should be partition-all from seq-utils to sum the remainder days if the length of daily isn't divisible by 7.

<comment><USER10> That's pretty unreadable for someone who doesn't know clojure.

<comment><USER11> That could be said for any language. It's just that the first language someone usually learns borrows more from algol than from lisp. This leads to the idea that Python/Ruby/PHP/Javascript are easier to learn than Clojure/Common Lisp/Scheme.

<comment><USER12> Python/Ruby/PHP/Javascript _are_ easier to learn because most people already know a similar language. Just because it seems unfair doesn't mean it's not true.

<comment><USER13> Python and Ruby do one particular thing right that Smalltalk didn't:

Operator Precedence for Algebras.

Implementing an Algebra is a very important thing for a language to be good at. Being able to use algebras without having to switch mental gears is a good thing for scientists, mathematicians, and technical people of all stripes.

IMHO, the ability to easily implement your own algebra is a hallmark of a great language. Having that with the operator precedence is a bit of very justified syntactic sugar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some day we will stop writing COBOL.

<comment><USER14> 2012... the year COBOL died!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _weekly = [sum(daily[j:j+7]) for j in range(0, len(daily), 7)]_

While I appreciate the general sentiment that high-level languages will take over the world, there is very little that's new in this article and I am not impressed by the showpiece Python code from the article. For loops are the future?

<comment><USER16> Well I guess the list comprehension and list slicing features in the above example are more interesting than the for loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _The less the programmer says, the more flexibility the compiler has to speed things up._

I seriously doubt it. The more the compiler knows, the more it can optimize things.

What it's "daily" in this example? It could be anything. The only thing the compiler knows at compile time is that it should generate some lookups searching and calling the functions "__iter__", "__slice__", etc... Put that line into a function which receives daily as a parameter and it could mean something different _at every single invocation_. Human beings, looking that code think know what it does, while in fact don't have a clue. The equivalent code in clojure someone has wrote only is really equivalent under some very specific assumptions.

I know, I know, at runtime you could gather all kinds of interesting data to optimize things. But, that's not easy nor cheap and, sometimes, iterating over an array, it's just iterating over an array.

<comment><USER14> Also... The more the runtime knows, the more it can optimize away (JIT).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unfortunately, it will take a long time for all the web dev to switch (from PHP) to Python. Lazyness is stronger than any high-level language feature or development speed. I've long given up trying to convince my clients to switch for a python-friendly host. Imagine: i still have some clients running their website on PHP4.

</comment><comment><USER19> So true.

[edit:] if only... Amend to: some day, we will program as efficiently as possible, and software will do most of the annoying housekeeping.</comment>


Interview: Toluu Founder, Caleb Elston - <AUTHOR> http://knightknetwork.com/2008/04/11/interview-toluu-founder-caleb-elston/

<comment><AUTHOR> Much like my recent experiences with TipJoy, Toluu really listens to it's users and work hard to improve the service. This is even more amazing since Toluu is just a side project.

Toluu is an RSS sharing and suggestion tool in private beta. Invites are available if you want one just leave a comment on the post. I'll check back here as well if you would rather request an invite in this thread.</comment>


DNS Cookies – Identify Related Network Flows - <AUTHOR> http://dnscookie.com <comment><AUTHOR> Someone linked this on a great thread about how dns can leak info.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828769](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828769)

The parent thread is really interesting too.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702)

</comment><comment><USER2> It's fun when you check the front page of HN and see your work :).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm bummed it didn't stay there longer, not just for my own karma :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> OK, now please tell me how do I block it?

<comment><USER2> \- Never allow any part of the computing systems you use to cache anything.

\- Insist that everything in your life exist in a state of being functionally pure & stateless.

\- Eliminate access to all sources of timing data.

\- Make sure that all tasks are completed in a pre-determined fixed amount of time regardless of resource contention.

There are so many different side channel attacks, and the computing primitives & API choices we have been making for years make it challenging to build secure systems.

Caches are very deeply embedded in the culture of how computing is done. Making tasks take longer than strictly necessary to avoid leaking information goes against our instincts to optimize system performance.

It's going to take a lot of work and cost a lot of money to get software to a point where we aren't playing whack-a-mole with side channels.

More pragmatically, the current implementation of this technique can be dealt with by being very conscious of how much data your DNS resolver(s) are leaking & being conscious of how large the anonymity set is of the userbase of your DNS resolver(s).

If you limit DNS cache times and use blinding computation techniques to limit the identity information your DNS resolver has or retains about you, then DNS cookies can be largely mitigated. If you have faith that 220.127.116.11 is operated in the manner that Cloudflare claims, the measures they have taken go a long way to making DNS cookies unusable.

I also pointed out some additional specific mitigations when I reported this issue to the Chromium team in October 2015:

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=546733](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=546733)

<comment><USER4> What if we designed the resolver to fetch many responses with the caching disabled and then caching _all_ of them? In essence, force it to give you as many cookies as your desired anonymity set size and then sample this local store of cookies when calculating the response for the end client.

<comment><USER2> This would make it harder to build a fingerprint, especially if responses were sampled from a number of independent sources.

The next logical step in the arms race would likely involve fingerprinting systems using more bits than strictly necessary, and using error correcting codes - i.e. treat the sampling as "noise" to be overcome.

It seems both more straightforward and more effective to build recursion paths that you can trust aren't doing any intentional or unintentional caching.

This of course means the performance benefits of caching go away. This has been a theme in computing lately (i.e. CPU speculative execution leaks such as meltdown).

A recursor could be built which only uses each query response once, with prefetching used to reduce the performance impact.

However, the mere fact prefetched responses exist would also leak data.

<comment><USER4> > It seems both more straightforward and more effective to build recursion > paths that you can trust aren't doing any intentional or unintentional > caching.

I agree, but as you say, that will take quite some work and time to happen and will be costly. I was thinking of this as a possible temporary mitigation which would retain some benefits of caching. If it was made adaptive[1], it would also have the nice side-effect of being more resource intensive for those servers that attempt to use tracking.

[1] i.e. only fetch many responses if they appear to vary while doing a smaller number of "probing" requests. Continue fetching more responses for your local sample until they stop varying with some degree of confidence.

<comment><USER2> It would be difficult to differentiate between responses that vary due to load balancing and responses that vary due to active fingerprinting.

Even when a site only has a single physical location, load balancing might be done in part by having DNS randomly return one of many valid IP addresses. E.g. this is a behaviour supported by Amazon's Route53.

Larger sites frequently use a combination of anycast and DNS based routing to get packets to the closest POP. This introduces both (1) difficulty identifying when fingerprinting is occurring, and (2) still more opportunities for fingerprinting.

Most users will find it impossible to control which POP their packets get routed towards. For someone doing fingerprinting, it could be a very useful signal.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but variation due to such load balancing would surely be limited in entropy in practical non-tracking scenarios?

Approaching from the other end, it points towards anycast itself (and similar techniques) being incompatible with hard tracking resistance.

I'm glad to see that Firefox containers already mitigate this by using a separate DNS cache for each container.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In general, publicly visible DNS cookies are set by a DNS recursive resolver. Typically, multiple IP addresses share one recursive resolver. So it seems to me that a DNS cookie has strictly less information than an IP address.

</comment><comment><USER6> If this fingerprinting stays across say HTTP Proxies (or VPN/Tor network) and a regular network, this may be a way to track users especially for ad networks.

</comment><comment><USER7> ELI5 description?

<comment><USER8> The abstract from RFC 7873:

—— DNS Cookies are a lightweight DNS transaction security mechanism that provides limited protection to DNS servers and clients against a variety of increasingly common denial-of-service and amplification/forgery or cache poisoning attacks by off-path attackers. DNS Cookies are tolerant of NAT, NAT- PT (Network Address Translation - Protocol Translation), and anycast and can be incrementally deployed. (Since DNS Cookies are only returned to the IP address from which they were originally received, they cannot be used to generally track Internet users.) ——

At the end of the day, the data can really be any 8 byte set of data for the client part and up to 32 bytes for the server section. Which you could technically use to store anything you want (or the upstream resolver could).

The linked article talks about using it for tracking users, which the abstract ironically says isn't generally possible.

<comment><USER2> I published dnscookie.com in late 2015. I google "dns cookies" and a few other things terms, was surprised that the terminology appeared unused, and it seemed suitable for the concept I was describing.

In May 2016, RFC 7873 was published which also uses the term "DNS cookies".

These two things share a name but have different meanings. The naming collision is an unfortunate coincidence.

<comment><USER8> Oh! Wow! That was a huge assumption on my part.

I had assumed it was the afore mentioned RFC. That explains why the site make no mention of EDNS or OPT records.

TIL...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


International Domain Names Are Coming In 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/10/30/international-domain-names/kcd.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Really not sure what to think about this, I have been following this news for a while now and I don't know how to feel about it.

On one hand, yes, I agree wholeheartedly that the Internet needs a more international growth. There are more than just latin alphabets out there and we should respect those and add them.

But, on the flip side, I am scared about the organization. The internet might get really cluttered. ICANN's going crazy and also planning to just open up any domain extension for registration (.hany, .kloncks, .mash, etc). I, like many others, question their intentions. Do they just want to make money?

What I would like to know is if this move will impact mainstream websites or really just local sites. Because in that case, it shouldn't disturb our organization and instead add value to the internet in areas with non-latin alphabets.

Share your thoughts please :)</comment>


Faster, NASA, Faster - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21lu.html?partner=rss&emc=rss <comment><USER4> I think I speak for every sci-fi fan when I say, while we're not reckless, if NASA said hey, you may die doing this, but either way humanity will be a little bit closer to becoming a starfaring species, we'd be like, hell yeah.

<comment><USER5> Or, failing that (and fearsome moral dilemmas aside) you could just have a lottery open to the public where the "winners" only had a 1 in 10 chance of coming back alive, but if they did, they would be millionaires and heroes. You would need a separate agency just to handle all of the applicants.

Don't even get me started on the nightmare element "reality TV" would bring to it.

<comment><USER6> "Who Wants to Be An Astronaut?"

Hosted by William Shatner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Innovation comes at a cost. One has to be willing to accept failure.

NASA isn't at the moment. I'm not sure any nation is willing to accept high enough failure rates in their space programs to fly by the seat of their pants.

Increasing launching is maybe a start, but until the space program tolerates more failure true innovation might be tricky. High risk high reward work loses in that environment, no matter the lipservice paid towards that work in overviews.

<comment><USER8> NASA missions have proven very innovative - and very tolerant of risk - <USER2> astronauts' lives are not at stake. The various missions to Mars are a good example.

Contrast this to the kind of extreme conservatism needed to operate manned missions, where every mission-critical system needs to be massively overengineered and multiply redundant.

<comment><USER7> From what I understand of the original rover designs they were originally designed to be extremely intolerant of risk and it's only after an intern was dicking around with a robot that actually worked that they saw the light and realized they had to go with the "bump around a bit and see what happens" approach.

Even then, I would argue that NASA's strength is more in finding solutions to extremely constraining problems (i.e. all their big saves) more than it is to finding solutions when nothing's the limit. Though it's not my field and what they do is pretty amazing, so really this is all just coming from me and my armchair here.

I don't really believe you that the missions have been at all tolerant of risk. I see very very little to back that up.

Look at how much of a stink got raised when units were converted wrong and we lost one probe. Do you really think NASA's a risk embracing kind of place?

IIRC the current reaction that particular issue is all schematics involving every single component must be in US units. Sure sounds like a fast and loose environment to me!

<comment><USER8> You may be confusing risk with recklessness. NASA is very careful in how it runs missions (since there are so many opportunities for irrecoverable operational errors), but the actual designs in unmanned missions have routinely pushed past the state of the art.

Using aerobraking shells, landing on Mars with bouncy pillows, catching a returning solar wind probe with a helicopter, shielding a probe within 10 solar radii of the sun... NASA projects are daring in their design even if they are (quite properly) conservative in execution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's interesting is that despite the consevatism, the space shuttle program, I think, has the worst mission success record. They've had what--14 deaths in the past 20 years?

From what I learned on my recent trip to Kennedy Space Center, the Space shuttle program is actually incredibly risky compared to other and past rocket designs. It's got solid rocket boosters that once lit, cannot be turned off. It's got no abort sequence until those SRBs are finished firing. Hell, the rocket itself is asymmetrical and _rocks_ back and forth before liftoff.

Contrast all this with the Soyuz and our very own Saturn V designs. Saturn V I believe had 100% mission success during all our trips to the moon. It's liquid engines could be shutoff almost instantaneously during an abort sequence AND it had a blasting cap on top that would fire if the crew needed to abort during launch. Oh and the rocket did all this while being something like 95% efficient.

Why NASA abandoned this program is beyond me.

<comment><USER10> The space shuttle does have the ability to snatch satellites out of space and bring them back to Earth. No other craft does this, and this was probably an important feature during the Cold War. NASA doesn't talk much about the military uses of its spacecraft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see a problem with the article: while launching a dot-com or a program is somewhat cheap, testing a new rocket engine concept frequently involves a couple years of work before you can even build a small prototype.

The fact failing integration tests ruins a million-dollar piece of machinery and not infrequently kills a dozen people also doesn't help much.

What NASA does is the impossible, bordering the very difficult. What we see is the artifacts that fall outside the impossible space.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a very good (if unintentional) argument against manned space flight.

There is no way that firing an elaborate terrarium full of large primates into space is ever going to be cheap, and there is no scientific basis for continuing to do it (other than the circular justification of learning more about how space affects the people we fire into it).

<comment><USER12> _This is a very good (if unintentional) argument against manned space flight. There is no way that firing an elaborate terrarium full of large primates into space is ever going to be cheap_

One should only say something like that with some physical principle as its basis, otherwise, it's just pointy-haired boss flying by the seat of one's pants.

Some prominent physicist once published a "proof" of the impossibility of heavier-than-air flight in the New York Times. (One which treated atoms as billiard balls and ignored fluid dynamics.) I think it was Kant who once gave "the chemical composition of the stars" as an example of something we'd never know. Two very smart gentlemen who had good sounding arguments, but a mistaken physical basis. From this thread, I haven't any idea about your acumen nor the basis of your argument.

I think if someone told a subject of Queen Elizabeth, that someday teenagers could idly write a screed, to be read by ten-thousands or millions of others, and effectively pay only a pittance to do so, they'd be dismissed as a lunatic.

EDIT: energy to get a spacecraft to orbit? It's comparable to sending a 747 over the Atlantic.

<comment><USER13> "[E]nergy to get a spacecraft to orbit? It's comparable to sending a 747 over the Atlantic."

[citation needed] I have not done the math, but I find this quite improbable.

The space shuttle has two SRBs with one million pounds of solid propellant _each_ plus more than 500,000 gallons of super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. [http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttl...](http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#14)

The 747-8I has 64,225 U.S. gallons of jet fuel. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#Specifications>

According to [http://www.convertunits.com/from/gallon+%5BU.S.%5D+of+naphth...](http://www.convertunits.com/from/gallon+%5BU.S.%5D+of+naphtha+type+jet+fuel/to/joules), one gallon of jet fuel contains 133.92e6J, so a full fuel load on the biggest 747 is 8.6e12J.

According to somebody google found, the energy to get the shuttle into orbit is 1.17E11J, but that is just the potential and kinetic energy, neglecting the losses due to air resistance, etc. <http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=229835>

<http://xkcd.com/669/>

<comment><USER12> 8.6e12J is indeed comparable to 1.17e11J.

Thanks. I remembered that from a Robert Zubrin book.

<comment><USER13> I agree that 8.6e12J is comparable to 1.17e11J, but the energy required to flying a 747 in real life is _not_ comparable to the potential + kinetic energy of a shuttle, neglecting all losses required to achieve that potential + kinetic energy.

In particular, two million pounds of SRB propellant plus more than 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen is _not_ comparable to 64,225 U.S. gallons of jet fuel.

<comment><USER12> The point is that marshaling energies of that magnitude is actually pretty routine for our culture.

 _In particular, two million pounds of SRB propellant plus more than 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen is not comparable to 64,225 U.S. gallons of jet fuel._

In particular, you are acting as if the fundamental problem is represented by the Shuttle. That's just one particular configuration of one possible solution. What you're doing would be like someone from the early 1900's showing the in-feasibility of the performance envelope of a 747 by quoting the stats of a Curtiss biplane.

Abandon the idea that you _have_ to use chemical propulsion, or that you have to carry your own power, or even your own reaction mass, and you get fantastic improvement.

Here's what you get when you only keep doing the 3rd thing:

[http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/fellows/mar0...](http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/fellows/mar04/897Kare.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why doesn't NASA use Soyuz rockets then?

<comment><USER4> Or fund the development of Skylon:

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

(Altho' arguably ESA or even the British MoD ought to be, whatever anyone else thinks)

<comment><USER15> That is awesome! I had never heard of it before either, which is an incredible shame. I personally think that spaceplanes like this are a great idea and are likely to be the way we finally get into space for real...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems like we would be better off with android-avatars. There is not really a need to send actual humans to just do the kind of early exploration we want to do at this stage.

<comment><USER17> But Avatars shaped like ourselves are still a few decades off, and needlessly complicated to execute. Avatars of our cars have worked out well.

<comment><USER12> As we go further and further out, the lightspeed delay will become a bigger and bigger inconvenience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The author seems to be conflating two very different things both called "launching".

<comment><USER12> I don't think he's actually comparing a company launch to a rocket launch. I think he's likening a development iteration to a rocket launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> See also <http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html> \- "A Rocket a Day Keeps the High Cost Away", written in 1993...

</comment><comment><USER20> This article is waaaay off base. First of all, NASA _is_ trying to get into faster launch cycles, that's the entire point of the whole reusable rocket projects. Second, nobody can complain with the shuttle software defect rate: the last 11 versions had a total of 17 defects (<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html>). _Seventeen_. If anything, the rest of the world could learn a lesson from NASA, especially in the realm of medical technology.

<comment><USER12> I have a couple of friends who worked for NASA, and I've met and spoken with others who worked there. The part of NASA associated with the shuttle _is_ a bit ossified. One of my friends ported the software that tracks the shuttle's trajectory, and determines abort trajectories. He did that either right at the beginning of this century or the very end of the last. In any case, it was very recent, yet the use of _version control software_ was considered a radical and risky move on the part of his group!

<comment><USER21> So what specific problem in NASA's development methodology do you think would be fixed by your favorite VCS? From the few references I've bothered to google the existing development process is heavily regimented - if expensive - <USER3> their record is pretty good.

<comment><USER12> They also have a record of ignoring warnings of problems by engineers, and in the parts that launch the shuttle, ineffective motivation to achieve economies of scale.

As in a lot of government projects, there's an incentive to bill expensively for things regarded as esoteric, hence a desire to keep things esoteric.

My friend also told me about one control, which was something like a 10-key keypad, a commit button, and a nixie readout. It dated from Apollo. You'd send commands by dialing in alphanumeric codes. What was it like when they "updated" it to run on workstations? It was a 10-key keypad with a few other buttons, with an alphanumeric entry field.

I don't necessarily want VCs running NASA. But it's for sure that there's some _ossification_ in that government organization. Maybe it's time for private enterprise to step in?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is an awful analogy because silicon valley has a huge failure rate for companies. Even an established company can fail quite rapidly. Imagine launching the shuttle and 90% of the time it blows up spectacularly. That would not do anything good for the space program.

<comment><USER12> That's not the author's analogy, only a straw man resulting from your misplaced referent. A shuttle launch is not analogous to a company launch. A shuttle launch is analogous to a version or a feature deployment of one particular company.

A company that iterates a lot, and deploys a lot, gets good at iterating and deploying. An organization that preps, launches, and retrieves spaceships a lot gets good at that too.

More effort on proving the null hypothesis is suggested.

<comment><USER8> The parent's point remains completely valid. Rapid iteration only works if you are allowed to fail. In the case of manned space flight, failure means you lose the crew.

<comment><USER12> What straw-man organization is unable to send up _unmanned_ prototypes? Oh, yeah. Must be NASA.

[http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/history/mercury/mercury-unmanned...](http://www- pao.ksc.nasa.gov/history/mercury/mercury-unmanned.htm)

<comment><USER8> If you're sending up unmanned prototypes, why go on to man the missions at all? Save yourself the cost of all that life support plumbing and call it a brilliant hack.

<comment><USER12> Fine, your side can explore space and establish enterprises on Mars with remote-controlled machines. My side will have all of that technology, plus immediate human presence.

We can see who innovates faster.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Entrepreneur Tries His Midas Touch in Space (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/22/business/fi-spacex22 <comment><AUTHOR> > Whether Musk becomes a space industry visionary -- or the latest in a string > of delusional Don Quixotes -- remains to be seen. Doubters call Musk's > vision pie in the sky, a gross underestimation of the technological and > commercial challenges SpaceX will face.

> But Strategic Insight's Kaplan said that "probably a couple dozen > entrepreneurs have tried this in the last 10 years, and they've all gone out > of business. It's easy to say you're building a cheap, simple rocket, but > that and $2 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks."</comment>


Ask HN: Adding a red "don't click me" button on your website? - <AUTHOR> Stupid question I know, but what do you think the results will be?<p>10% CTR? 30%? <comment><USER2> Where are you putting the button? How big will the button be?

Honestly I would guess 75%, depending on the questions above. My thinking is, why would they not want me to click it if they put it on the page?

<comment><USER3> I'm with you on this one, probably a pretty high percentage

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/redbut.html](http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/redbut.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Only one way to find out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Depends on audience and type of site too.</comment>


Hacker Scrapes Thousands Of Public Phone Numbers Using Facebook Graph Search - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/24/hacker-scrapes-thousands-of-public-phone-numbers-using-facebook-graph-search/

<comment><USER2> I'm glad the author of the article made the connection between this and what Weev did. Since this guy is well known and is making this an issue in the press, I expect we'll see this guy in jail soon as well.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for a series on implementing classic Unix tools from scratch - <AUTHOR> This can be blogs, books, or YouTube. I'm working on upping my C skills and have started to reimplement some tools like wc, cat, etc. I'm wondering if there are good walkthroughs out there for some of the more complex tools like sort, xargs, etc.<p>Any further advice on C for the 20 teens is also welcome. <comment><USER2> I have been casually writing Python versions of such Unix tools (not with all the features and options, just the parts that I feel like or know how to do) off and on, for a while now, and often post about them on my blog, when I do write such tools. The union of the sets of posts at these two links:

[http://jugad2.blogspot.in/search/label/command- line](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/search/label/command-line)

and

[http://jugad2.blogspot.in/search/label/python](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/search/label/python)

should have many such posts about versions of Unix command line tools implemented by me in Python.

Also, this tutorial I wrote years ago for IBM developerWorks may be of use, to learn some of the informally handed down but generally accepted principles and techniques for writing such command line tools in C:

Developing a Linux command-line utility:

[https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks- ar...](https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-article.html)

The post is an overview of the article I wrote for IBM, with some background about it, etc. For the actual code in C and the PDF of the IBM article, follow relevant links in the post, to more than one level, as needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your posts are excellent! Thank you for sharing them!

<comment><USER2> Thank you! You're welcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Read the source, but rather than the GNU variants, look at the *BSD ones. They're much more readable.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For future travelers, these are the best resources I've seen so far: [https://learnto.computer](https://learnto.computer) [https://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/](https://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/) [https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr09/cos333/be...](https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr09/cos333/beautiful.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Hacker Tools MIT course Learn to make the most of the tools that hackers have been using for decades. [https://hacker-tools.github.io](https://hacker- tools.github.io)

</comment><comment><USER5> "Software Tools" by Kernighan & Plauger

<comment><USER2> I've heard that book recommended a lot earlier, in various other good books or articles. Would like to read it. But not the original one in RATFOR, rather the second version in Pascal. Just checked on Amazon, there is a copy, but not in Pascal.

Update: Just found a used copy of the Pascal version on Amazon India, ordered it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Any further advice on C for the 20 teens is also welcome.

The book 21st Century C by Ben Clemens is worth a look.</comment>


Map: Every Death on Every U.S. Road 2004-2013 - <AUTHOR> http://metrocosm.com/10-years-of-traffic-accidents-mapped.html <comment><USER2> Nice, but I have an issue with the legend. At first it looks like a heat map so the yellow pedestrian deaths look like more extreme areas than the red driver deaths.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very uncomfortable to look at.</comment>


TinyToCS — computer science research of 140 characters or less - <AUTHOR> http://tinytocs.org/ <comment><USER2> Enlightening _and_ hilarious. Love that the abstracts are now longer than the bodies, and they've retained the LaTeX/PDF submission tradition against all practicality.

My two favorite results both seem relevant to TinyTOCS itself:

* _Towards an Emergent Semantic Web_ "Inductive fuzzy grassroots ontologies form a basis for computing with words. In time they will allow the Web to merge with the Semantic Web." (Edy Portmann UC Berkeley EECS) <http://tinytocs.org/vol1/papers/tinytocs-v1-thompson.pdf>

* _Data Publishing Using Nanopublications_ "The nanopublication model incentivizes rapid, citable data dissemination, interoperability, semantic reasoning, and knowledge discovery." (Mark Thompson, Erik Schultes, Marco Roos, Barend Mons LUMC) <http://tinytocs.org/vol1/papers/tinytocs-v1-thompson.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a tad disappointed by the abstracts associated with each submission; in effect, what's called the body is in fact the abstract and what's called the abstract is in fact the body. Still, an amusing project.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like how the format forces the papers to be about "big concepts." So many cs papers are about 1% improvements in performance due to esoteric minutiae -- which can't be concisely explained. It biases research towards big picture, heavily-compressible ideas.

</comment><comment><USER5> I fear I only have one point I can give you for this project. I would just request that there be a search function and web pages instead of PDF files to make the site more user friendly.

<comment><USER6> The PDF files are part of the joke. They were probably produced with LaTeX too, just like in mainstream academic publications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neat concept. Concise summaries really make browsing for interesting articles easier. Although there is a lot of overlap between 140-character "summaries" and plain old titles, which tend to be about the same length.

I think the body should be allowed to be a bit longer (2 pages?) and include figures, links to source code, etc. I was frustrated by the extreme brevity when I wanted to know more about specific articles.

<comment><USER8> I agree with this. Every time I found myself starting to become more interested in what the article had to say, there was no more. Seemed way too short....

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would find this method useful for some types of college projects when students can spend a few days researching but the conclusions are short(short does not necessary mean poor). I've seen plenty of papers that when you finish reading them you certainly think the author could have written the same in just a couple of sentences. Interesting tool for focusing on a fact and a result.

</comment><comment><USER10> Amusing concept but still hangs on to the print world by organizing articles into volumes and using PDF for the articles.

<comment><USER11> I agree--we definitely opted for a more traditional publication format in this first iteration. We've been thinking of how to fix this and were considering something like HackerNews for publicly-accessible articles (e.g., arXiv). Do you have any other ideas?

<comment><USER12> I would also consider asking authors at the time of submission to explicitly release articles under a Creative Commons license such as CC-BY or CC0. That would enable a lot of fun creative reuses of the works. However some kind of exception may be required for republished works whose copyright has already been transferred to a third party publisher.

<comment><USER11> If you look at the actual papers, they're all under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 already.

<comment><USER13> Why NC? It's overly restrictive and technically prohibits, say, distributing the papers on a website that has advertising revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be great if all academic papers had a 140 word tl;dr version. Would save grad students a bunch of time. (Crack joke about how my phd is taking 2 years longer then expected)

</comment><comment><USER15> TL;DR CS?

that said, I wish twitter was around when I was in school. using twitter has really taught me how to express something very concisely.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hmm, I'm curious where I could find the originals (if there are any).

<comment><USER17> Read the citations. Some of the results are self contained, though. (eg the one from <http://33bits.org/> )</comment></comment>


NatureBox Raises $8.5 Million From General Catalyst & Softbank - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/23/naturebox-8-5-million-series-a/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Startups in this space really need to start popping up more often.</comment>


Sweden's ads ombudsman say "distracted boyfriend" meme is gender discrimination - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/business/sweden-distracted-boyfriend-meme-sexist.html <comment><USER2> It certainly is discrimination if women are just as likely to get distracted by handsome men while with their other AND show it. In which case shame on us for stereotyping men as being more easily distracted by the opposite sex and being less discreet about it. But does anyone believe those two things?

Even so, I would love to see the same meme but with the sexes reversed. It might not be realistic, but it would be funny.

<comment><USER3> The image at least does exist, even with the same woman. [https://i0.kym- cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/309/021/29...](https://i0.kym- cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/309/021/298.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good grief. Laugh--it's funny!

</comment><comment><USER5> So sexual attraction is sexist. Who whould have thought. This is a race to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sweden is such a weird country. I don't think there are actually any Homo sapiens living there.</comment>


The jet engine factory with no middle managers - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/node/37815/print

<comment><USER2> ...did they all get sucked in? "Man, I TOLD my direct report not to stand in front of that thing when I turned it on..."

</comment><comment><USER3> Now - where is the software company that works like this? Does anybody know one?

<comment><AUTHOR> This article is actually an offshoot from the post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=287570>

Fog Creek Software tried to model itself on this company, but as Joel pointed out, it did not really work out 'that' well.</comment></comment>


Hadapt: A platform for data analytics - <AUTHOR> http://www.hadapt.com/

<comment><USER2> A big chunk of map reduce use cases deal with logs, which can be high value to a company. In order to deal with a lot of unstructured data you either need a crap load of rules running on it up front and somewhere to store all that meta data, or a search engine that helps you filter results quickly, and then use those results with map reduce to extract your meta data post-search.

Basically you take ing a lot of data, put it in a search engine, serialize it, build a simple map reduce framework users can code in quickly (with JavaScript say) and then run it as a service.

Sounds like a great idea! :)</comment>


Ask HN: A good book on Calculus? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
After a year-long break I'll continue studying math this fall.
What I want is some refreshment on calculus. Does anyone know something similar to Feynman's Lectures on Physics, just on calculus? Feynman's books were really fucking awesome and I would like a similar fun read for calculus: derivation/integration, series, and multivar (and beyond, if possible but for now this will suffice).
I'm not really looking for "here's a bunch of formulas for derivation: And here's what Taylor serie looks like:". I already know that. I want to know what goes on under the hood, proofs, dissections, analogies.
Similar question goes for chemistry/biology but I think HN is much more math-oriented.
Suggestions? <comment><USER2> You may be having trouble finding things because calculus done with full rigor is called "analysis". The classic introductory-but-extremely-dense text is Rudin's _Principles of Mathematical Analysis_. If you're reading on your own, though, I expect you'll get a lot more out of a friendlier book; my first analysis course was taught out of Strichartz's _The Way of Analysis_.

N.B.: Most everything in either book will be completely new to you. 1st-year calculus courses have absolutely no interest in teaching you what goes on under the hood; there's just no time. But I think the analogy to Feynman's lectures holds up pretty well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like The Way of Analysis is what I need, thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Apostol's Calculus texts (2 volumes) are the best with the supporting theory. I'm more from an engineering perspective, for readers looking for a book from that direction is Kline's "Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach".

Introductory general biology texts have a lot more variation in how the material is presented, but have to cover such an incredible amount of facts that there is actually less effective difference. Some biology texts tend to be more ecologically oriented (Campbell), where others are more cellular and chemically oriented (Curtis), but the difference tends to get lost somewhat with the need to cover everything, and the sheer mass of material each HAS to cover.

You might try Pauling's "General Chemistry" text for a more theoretical treatment in chemistry.

Both Kline's calculus and Pauling's chemistry texts were from the 1960s and reprinted by Dover in the 1990s; you might try checking the Dover catalog to see if there are any more similar reprints out.

</comment><comment><USER4> Michael Spivak's Calculus text:

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0914098918>

</comment><comment><USER5> volume 1 of the best series out there...

[http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-One-Variable- Introduction...](http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-One-Variable-Introduction- Algebra/dp/0471000051)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you'd like to read a refresher on the calculus of multiple variables, I think you'd enjoy Div, Grad, Curl and All That. It's in the same sort of informal style of Feynman's Lectures. It's not rigorous like Rudin, but it gives you a good intuitive understanding of the subject.</comment>


AWS Control Tower - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-control-tower-set-up-govern-a-multi-account-aws-environment/ <comment><USER2> AWS is pushing Organizations/Accounts as something like GCP's Projects and it mostly works, cross account iam works pretty good, so does many other services but sadly this is not reflected in the support subscriptions.

You want help with a problem in your staging account? pay for support, fair enough. You want help with your production? oh sorry, you have to pay again.

<comment><USER3> >You want help with a problem in your staging account? pay for support, you want help with your production? oh sorry, you have to pay again.

In a sense this is a good thing since support is percentage based and you may want a higher level for support for production than staging.

<comment><USER2> You should have the option to pay for the aggregate and get support across all the accounts, it only makes sense, really.

<comment><USER4> If I recall correctly, that only happens at the Enterprise support tier.

<comment><USER5> You pay a minimum of $100 per account for business support - 10% of your bill.

<comment><USER6> Business support has pricing that drops as a percentage as your spend goes up, like Enterprise, but does not allow you aggregate across accounts like enterprise.

It's only 10% for the first $10K. 7% for the portion up to $80K, 5% for the portion up to $250K, and 3% beyond that. (Enterprise has the same kind of %age ranges but cutoffs of $150K/$500K/$1M and the bottom range doesn't really matter because the hard minimum is $15K/mo.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd love it if at a glance I could see all of the AWS resources that I am using that cost me money, across all the regions.

Right now I feel like I would have to poke into every menu option in every region across the entire set of AWS services to find out exactly what I'm using.

The cynic in me wonders if this is not a priority for AWS because they make so much money from forgotten and hard to find resources that are being used and paid for but essentially lost in the interface.

When I saw the new product name I thought "maybe this is it!"

<comment><USER8> Does the billing dashboard not cover your needs? With their billing query UI you can slice your billing data by region, service, etc.

<comment><USER9> The billing API tells you about resources that _have_ charged you, whereas I think the parent comment is talking about resources that are either "active" in some sense where they _will_ charge you at some point in the future for the usage you're accruing (but where this usage isn't metered in a way visible to the billing API until it "commits" somehow); or, worse, resources which are "exposed" in some sense where they _could_ charge you if they received a request, but happen to not have received any yet. (These resources are _very_ easy to lose track of.)

Another way to think of this question is "what is my current _exploitable attack surface_ , against the 'attack' of causing AWS to charge me lots of money?"

<comment><USER10> They do only show what you have been charged, but to my knowledge this is update very regularly. It seems at least next day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks like a public facing version of a tool that AWS uses internally, which is great. Super easy tool to setup and govern AWS accounts, and also access the accounts to which you have access. I always wondered why they didn't sell it to their customers but I guess now they will!

</comment><comment><USER12> Just tried it on our master account:

> You tried to use an account that is a member of an organization in AWS > Organizations. To set up your AWS Control Tower landing zone, use an account > that is not a member of an organization.

Looks like it's only feasible if you're starting from scratch.

<comment><USER13> Have you managed to get it working in the end? I've encountered the same issue.

<comment><USER12> No stopped trying – I'm not too worried as I have a Firefox Containers setup to switch between all the accounts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sorry but I've never felt that Amazon is completely operating in good faith with regards to allowing users to manage their costs. The proof of that is the fact that they _still_ don't have a page where you can see the price of an ec2 instance alongside its stats. I've been wanting to see that for ten years and they still haven't added it.

<comment><USER15> EC2 engineer here.

Pricing is definitely a hard topic, and we can do more to make it easier. However, with regards to your second comment, are you looking for something more than this page [1]

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on- demand/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/)

<comment><USER16> Of course there is [https://www.ec2instances.info/](https://www.ec2instances.info/) or if you are into Azure then [https://azureprice.net/](https://azureprice.net/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love that AWS is starting to care more about providing these services. For context, we have basically been building this for 2 years in our company internally to provide hundreds of "compliant by default" accounts. Every company seems to do it themselves.

What I personally find very frustrating is the lack of being able to migrate any existing organisations into this. I'd love to get rid of some of our account provisioning but this would basically mean starting over with a brand- new AWS Organization which is impossible for us.

It still is quite a hassle to manage many accounts (and resources you need in them) so I hope this service will sooner or later help us with this.

PS: if anyone is over at re:Inforce and wants to talk about anything AWS Orgs & accounts, feel free to mail me (profile)!

<comment><USER18> I also worked on a team that built something similar, and I've seen it done in other companies. With services like this, and others like Transit Gateway, it's getting a lot easier to manage multiple accounts and VPCs. I haven't tried AWS Control Tower yet, but I am hoping it gives easy visibility into all the accounts in one place. With Amazon accounts, once you assume a role into an account, you can't see other accounts without switching back into them.

This is one area where I think GCP got it right. By using organizations and projects within one account instead of having parent and child accounts, it's quite a bit easier to see what's going on. And a parent account has a very different role from child accounts, so it makes sense to treat them as separate things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thank you AWS. In the meantime, if you could offer me just one basic setting that users have been asking for years (hard limit on your spending), it would be even better.

<comment><USER3> How would hard limits work? Do all your ec2 instances shut down? Do your s3 buckets and their data get deleted? Do you snapshots and EBS volumes get deleted? There's no way to pause these things since they still costs AWS money.

<comment><USER20> You don't let people start up the service if it will exceed a cost quota. For ec2 that should be easy since the cost ticks at a constant rate and can be extrapolated in advance, but yeah other usage based services like s3 and network traffic that won't work.

<comment><USER21> >but yeah other usage based services like s3 and network traffic that won't work.

I think this is the major problem. It's conceptually easy to say 'Yeah no more spinning up ec2 instances' or whatever, but the only way to deal with hitting that cap for things like network traffic or storage services is just turning off network access or deleting the files. I can't imagine many businesses are going to go for "hey if you set a cap and you exceed it we fix it by deleting your stuff and taking down network availability." \- that's going to be a total nonstarter in so many situations! But that's what would be required to actually set a spending cap on an account.

That sort of decision really needs to be made by a human as it's happening - is the spike in usage legitimate? Is it your customers driving the demand? Is it unwanted traffic? Is it an autoscaling group gone wrong? etc. etc. etc.

My suggestion is setting up CW billing alarms at several thresholds, to try and stay ahead of this before it reaches that point, with paging on the highest threshold where it's about at the point where you'd consider turning things off. Then you should hopefully be able to take care of unexpected expenses before they're problematic, but also ready to engage someone to make the tough decisions instead of just automatically taking yourself down.

<comment><USER19> > But that's what would be required to actually set a spending cap on an > account.

Nevertheless, that's exactly what people have been asking for several years. See this thread for example (and many others): [https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=58127&sta...](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=58127&start=50&tstart=0)

<comment><USER3> Not really, that thread is asking for a limit on S3 traffic serving (ie: bandwidth used). That doesn't cap the account spend nor does it delete data (and you will continue to be charged for data storage, requests, etc.).

The thread has a limited and reasonable request which is totally separate from account spend limits.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why most golf statistics whiff and how to fix them - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2263079/pagenum/all

<comment><AUTHOR> Links to the rest of the series of articles here: <http://linkbun.ch/0bf9s></comment>