Hitting 300 SimpleDB Requests Per Second on a Small EC2 Instance - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/hitting-300-simbledb-requests-second-small-ec2-instance

<comment><USER2> """This seems horrible design to me. """

Have you actually read the code? I just did and there is barely any thread- related code in the example. It's mostly code to push and pop stuff from a queue.

Personally I would turn this into a little Java/AWS framework whose API is based on a high level queue object to abstract away the communication with SQS. Probably simply modelled after a java.util.concurrent.BlockingQueue and configurable through Spring so that it becomes a nice reusable component.

Then it gets totally simple and interacting with those (remote) queues will not be any different than with one kept in memory for example. Since it is all thread safe it will be a no-brainer to create a simple workflow where you take stuff from one queue and put it in another.

I seriously don't understand why people are so afraid of threads. All you need is a good and well tested abstraction for common patterns.

<http://www.javaconcurrencyinpractice.com> is probably a good start for Java people with the threads-are-evil mindset.

S.

<comment><USER3> I agree.

Then again, most of the people that I've met who share the threads are evil mindset write bad code and can't manage requirements, like a certain project manager I had who was full of "trivial" last-minute requirements...

I suspect that there's a relationship there. :)

<comment><USER2> Most people I meet that have the threads-are-evil attitude are Python or Ruby coders who have never experienced a rich runtime where stable concurrency is actually possible :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The architecture uses two thread pools: one to run queries and one to get record values. Applications must carefully tune the number of threads in each pool so the queries to overwhelm the gets. Using a query thread pool with 2 threads and a get thread pool with 32 threads it was possible to perform 300 TPS on a small EC2 instances. "

This seems horrible design to me. Surely it must be possible to make it asynchronous and event driven - getting rid of the need for threads?

<comment><USER2> What is the problem with threads? I keep hearing that they are so difficult to work with but yet people ar successfully building very high performance Java applications that take advantage of many CPU cores. Simply by using the proven patterns and concurrency abstractions available to them.

<comment><USER4> Having more threads than you have CPUs is just sloppy inefficient overcomplicated programming :/

If you have control of all the pieces, and don't need to interface to things that block, there's no reason to use more threads than cpus IMHO.

<comment><USER5> Avoiding >NCPU threads is basically doing your context switching explicitly in code, rather than letting your OS and/or VM handle it.

[http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2008/02/kill-myth-please- nio-...](http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2008/02/kill-myth-please-nio-is-not- faster-than.html)

Seems it isn't necessarily more efficient in many cases.

<comment><USER4> It's certainly more tasteful IMHO, which should count for a lot. Spamming the CPU/OS with thousands of threads is just ugly. How can it not be? Networking should be event driven. It's like having a thread for each pixel on the display or each button...

<comment><USER2> You speak in emotional terms like 'Tasteful' and 'Ugly'. Which makes a technical discussion about threading really difficult.

<comment><USER4> Well in technical terms, using threads can never be as efficient as not using threads. It can be equal, but not better.

A lot of these things _are_ a matter of taste though. If you think it's a thing of beauty to create 5,000 threads, then good luck to you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 300 requests per second is pretty slow for database queries, isn't it?</comment>


One reason I wish JS had goto - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/skulpt/browse_thread/thread/943e7d3ff3960788

<comment><USER2>
        typedef struct State
        {
            int state;
            int num;
        } State;

        int f(State* state, int n)
        {
            if (state->state == 0) {

                // initial call

                state->num = 0;

                if (state->num <= n) {
                    state->state = 1;
                    return state->num;
                }
            }

            if (state->num < n) {
                state->num++;
                return state->num;
            }

            return -1;
        }

And technically you're using 'state' as though it is initialized to '0' anyway, so you might as well do the same for 'num' that changes the code to:

        int f(State* state, int n)
        {
            if (state->num < n) {
                return state->num++;
            }
            return -1;
        }

Or am I missing something ?

edit: that's what you get for coding before morning tea ;) edit2: shortened first code a bit further edit3:

In javascript this is the closest that I can get to your python example:

      <script languge='JavaScript'>

      function f(s,limit) {
        if (typeof s.num == 'undefined') {
            s.num = 0;
        }
        if (s.num < limit || (s.num == 0 && limit ==0)) {
            return s.num++;
        }
        return -1;
      }

      g = {};

      while ((t=f(g,10)) != -1) {
        document.writeln(t + "\n");
      }

      </script>

So that's one line extra to declare the variable holding the state for the generator. The 'undefined' trick is pretty gory, but it does do away with the 'location' variable or a need to initialize it.

I take it that this does not generalize to your use case though, it is just a 'special case' solution for the python sample you gave, do you have a more complicated sample for a generator that would fail using this simplistic scheme ?

Interesting thing you have on the go there, if you succeed in making a fully compatible in the browser version of python I think a lot of folks will be really happy, it would be the ideal learning tool, especially if it would have access to a canvas to draw on.

That would be a really nice environment for kids to learn how to program.

</comment><comment><USER3> Given the Python example in the article:

        def f(n):
            num = 0
            while num < n:
                yield num
                num += 1

what's wrong with:

        function f(n) {
          var num = 0;

          return function () {
            if (num < n) {
              return num++;
            }
          }
        }

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the type of thing you don't need goto for, if you have first class continuations, or properly optimized tail recursion. Continuations would allow you to write your own control structures in much the same way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yeah but then you'd have to deal with raptor attacks <http://xkcd.com/292></comment>


The HEY stack - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1275901955995385856 <comment><USER2> I think you ruined the thread by submitting so short. You should have enlisted some of this :

The HEY stack: \- Vanilla Ruby on Rails on the backend, running on edge \- Stimulus, Turbolinks, Trix + NEW MAGIC on the front end \- MySQL for DB (Vitess for sharding) \- Redis for short-lived data + caching \- ElasticSearch for indexing \- AWS/K8S</comment>


Show HN: Yet another Hacker News Reader for Android. - <AUTHOR> http://jamhedd.blogspot.cz/2014/06/yet-another-hacker-news-reader-httpsplay.html

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have any suggestion please don't hesitate to let me know :)</comment>


Flutterwave (YC S16) is building digital payment infrastructure for Africa - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/08/flutterwave/ <comment><USER2> Hi everyone - my name is E (co-founder, Flutterwave) - Happy to answer any questions :)

<comment><USER3> Hey E, I've lurked on HN for how many years without posting? But felt compelled to give kudos to someone doing something that has been a pain point for folks like me doing tech startups in Africa - how to get paid. I remember when we first started Topup Genie in 2009. We had to pay GTBank/Interswitch N150,000 of which we were able to get N75,000 waived just to begin to accept payments AND pay them a percentage of our income. 5 years ago in 2011, we built the payment piece of Topup Genie out as a service so other people didn't need to pay the N150,000 to integrate, but rather could just ride on ours for a flat N5 fee per transaction.

What Flutterwave is doing might seem so basic in the US or Europe, but I know how many of us have had to pave the way for a Flutterwave to emerge.

What are the plans for rolling out pan-Africa?

<comment><USER2> Yep and I am excited that the work folks like you did in the early days isn't going to waste. We've been built on your soldiers. We have already rolled out in Nigeria and Ghana. We are currently testing in Kenya as well and are looking to do even more in other African countries.</comment></comment></comment>


What Is Comcast/Xfinity WiFi Code Injection Doing? - <AUTHOR> http://josephpcohen.com/w/what-is-comcast-xfinity-wifi-code-injection-doing/

<comment><USER2> This sounds like a Front Porch appliance - 'PorchLight/7.0.1406.154 Server'

[http://www.frontporch.com/](http://www.frontporch.com/)

I built a similar system several years ago, and modified the html directly using kernel modules and a non-blocking proxy. These JS based systems like front porch are pretty easy to build, and often give crappy performance since they are using blocking proxies.

</comment><comment><USER3> So what is it doing?

<comment><USER4> Seems to load an image from a server. Maybe for identifying the user?</comment></comment>


Responsive.is - <AUTHOR> http://responsive.is/ <comment><USER2> This site seems to display two separate vertical scrollbars, one for the page and one for the iframe within the page. Attempting to scroll only affects the page scrollbar, making it difficult to scroll down in the iframe.

<comment><USER3> Put your mouse inside the viewport and try again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very stylish, but I think this site: <http://mattkersley.com/responsive/> wins in terms of usefulness.

We have that html as a development-only page in our framework, so when developing/designing a site we can go to /responsive and test it that way, very convenient.

<comment><USER5> They're both useful. I prefer the single site at a time when doing development since I'd rather focus in one layout at a time to optimize it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please use meaningful post titles. While surprises are sometimes fun, mystery links make for unnecessarily tedious browsing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sorry, will keep in mind for future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting results:

[http://responsive.is/responsive.is/responsive.is/responsive....](http://responsive.is/responsive.is/responsive.is/responsive.is/responsive.is/responsive.is/responsive.is/bostonglobe.com)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm obviously biased because I have a similar site of my own (<http://areyouresponsive.com>), but I love seeing new tools to facilitate building response websites.

<comment><USER9> It's not really obvious you can edit the target URL. Only the page title suggested I could test some other URL.

Also, the output for <http://mattkersley.com/> doesn't match in any way his responsiveness test at <http://mattkersley.com/responsive/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty awesome. It even works with port numbers, but only if you use it directly in the URL (entering :3000 into the top right address bar doesnt work). <http://responsive.is/localhost:3000>

A bookmarklet would be great too

<comment><USER10> There's also an error in the CSS that prevents the view icons from displaying in that case. "background: url(img/state-icons.png) no-repeat;" needs to be "background: url(/img/state-icons.png) no-repeat;"

Actually, it's once you're looking at a page in a subdirectory of your own server's doc root, for any URL, not just localhost:PORT#.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Argh, this would've been so useful just 48 hours ago at a big client meeting where I presented a dozen wireframe layouts with a responsive design. As a designer, I tried something new by skipping Fireworks and going straight from sketches to laying it out in Bootstrap.

Pros: saved an insane amount of time - a dozen templates instantly became 48 templates because each page had 4 resolutions.

Cons:

* it was awkward to resize the browser window 4 times per page, so this Responsive.is tool would've helped immensely, especially with how it highlights the active window port and allows the rest of the content to be masked but still faintly visible, so the layout doesn't feel cramped because you can see a quick preview of the rest of the content "below the fold".

* the default Bootstrap styling is so plain that it felt like half of the critiques were about the boxiness of the visual design, not the visual hierarchy of the information itself. Themes wouldn't help for this particular client because they're a big giant company that have their own branding anyway.

So prototyping with Bootstrap gave me way more templates in a short of amount of time but it's ugly enough that stakeholder critiques were distracted by it (which is why I usually stick to high fidelity mockups and use wireframes only for internal team collaboration, if at all). More production-ready in some ways (the frontend dev on the team finally got engaged with feedback and is ready for handoff) and less in others (stakeholders won't give real feedback until they see it styled with polish).

</comment><comment><USER12> This is absolutely horrendous in Firefox 7. About 60% of the bottom of the screen is completely black, leaving only about 300px high of contents, in any of the views.

This isn't IE6, it's FF7, which is 5 months old! Screenie: [https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/wmSzaq9yag_BXWSeUCPeel...](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/wmSzaq9yag_BXWSeUCPeelq4LNUUr9uRaBxSpzWMvXQ?feat=directlink)

<comment><USER13> .... True, but it's also not the page that was linked to. Did the page that was linked to work for you?

<comment><USER12> It _is_ the page I was linked to. But responsive.is displays a random website, and this website in particular didn't work. I guess if I had realized it was just a random website perhaps my reaction would have been different.

Edit: For some reason, <http://responsive.is/trentwalton.com> now works fine. A Quirk, perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty cool. I notice site with Bootstrap seems to work. Sites like Google or Yahoo doesn't work.

<comment><USER8> Google and Facebook don't work because they utilize the X-Frame-Options[1] response header to prevent their content from being served in iframes.

[1]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/The_X-FRAME- OPTIONS_respons...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/The_X-FRAME- OPTIONS_response_header)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not looking well in Firefox 11.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is my first attempt prototyping a responsive site - <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/424079/NewAJLI/ajli.html>

Used Skeleton's 12-column CSS framework, which was a bit buggy. Has 4 breakpoints - 960 width, ipad portrait, iphone landscape and iphone portrait. The gray border up top represents where the menu will reside and scale. I'm not thrilled with how we handled the transition to mobile - the varying blocks of text in 'who we are' and the subsequent example need to be more differentiated.

</comment><comment><USER17> When I use smartphone sizes, the black area that reduces the viewport covers the scrollbars. Chrome 17/Windows (wow 17!)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes on mine too chrome 17/mac

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> <http://responsive.is/lessframework.com>

</comment><comment><USER19> I was disappointed to check out the salt surf site, and attempt to checkout and it'd didn't keep my page responsive...

</comment><comment><USER20> I am still not convinced that such layouts are good for mobile pages. For example the bostonglobe page wont let me zoom at all on my android phone. This is ok as long as the default font size is fine for me, but I often encounter websites where I want to increase the font size.

Actually modern mobile browsers can handle unresponsive layouts quite well, often better than some "responsive" Layouts.

<comment><USER21> That has nothing to do with the site being responsive. This is what is responsible for not allowing you to zoom:

      <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, minimum-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Elegant.

What about random or next/previous buttons in the header in addition to the dropdown?

</comment><comment><USER23> This seems like a fantastic way to explain responsive design to clients.

</comment><comment><USER24> Very impressive.

</comment><comment><USER25> Responsive design works wonders for text-based websites like newspapers and blogs. The new Boston Globe sets the bar with it. Doesn't work very well when you're developing dashboard or other data-driven applications. You're going to have to build the mobile app at some point so might as well start sooner than later. In the mean time, responsive design will bridge the gap.</comment>


Can Google really do social? - <AUTHOR>

I had a discussion with a friend who used to work at Google today. We both arrived at the conclusion that Google as a company can't truly make a social product because the people who work there aren't social themselves. (Of course, I am stereotyping and there are outliers in my said assumptions.) We both thought that Google as a company is not built for [1] design, [2] social apps because, as a company, it values opinions coming from the technical, left-brained enginees than right-brained individuals and even institutes a hiring process that picks prospective applicants based on algorithms.
While I believe that technical people are the true innovators of companies in the early stage - and this is exactly what helped Google succeed. At the size that Google is now, it can't rely on a group of employees who are, in many ways, exactly alike.  A company at the current size of Google needs diverse thinking to truly innovate and produce social apps.
In order to make a social product, you have to be living it. There are a million of design decisions  that goes into making an internet product and, without putting your heart and soul into it, the product is not likely to succeed. <comment><USER3> Hmm - I think we need to think this claim through a bit before assenting yay or nay. It's just more complex than this.

First of all - let's take your claim that Google engineers aren't social. What really do you mean by this? Break it down a little. You clearly don't mean that they are complete loners that never interact with anyone. Most of them have families and friends... etc.

So there must be some kind of sense of 'social' that you mean - that Google folk don't match. Now - you haven't elaborated, so I can only speculate. But the first thing that comes to mind to me is perhaps like those 18-19 year old girls that never spend a moment without Facebooking, tweeting, sms'ing, etc to their large cadre of similarly obsessed teenage girlfriends. Theirs is a life of duckfaces in pretty dresses. Yep - those folks are pretty damn social. And if THIS is the sort of social you mean - how many Facebook Engineers do you think match this profile? Zuckerberg himself is not exactly known for his extroversion. Yet he built the most successful social network around. And had he been an extroverted college girl that like to post duckfaces, it's much more unlikely that he would have.

Secondly - their is an implicit assumption behind your thinking that sociality is this kind of static thing built into humans that is not contextually determined by environmental circumstance. But it's not. I wrote a long essay about this - if you want in-depth arguments... please read:

[http://reviewsindepth.com/2011/07/paul-adams-dunbars- number-...](http://reviewsindepth.com/2011/07/paul-adams-dunbars-number-and- the-hidden-narrative-of-social-networking/)

I believe that online social networks will fundamentally alter sociality - <USER2> already has. But to see this one has to be able to think outside the current frameworks of how people relate to one another. This is actually very difficult to do when you're immersed in the current stream of sociality. One actually needs solitude in order to see the potential for new kinds of relationships. And this is a view that I think Zuckerberg himself actually shares, insofar as he thinks that online social networking must push people forward into a brave new world. (not that I necessarily agree with his particular vision).

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_zuckerberg_sa...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_zuckerberg_says_the_age_of_privacy_is_ov.php)

If you don't really understand what I mean by saying sociality can be altered contextually - I'll give you one example which always helps me think about it, which I take from my essay linked above.

One intuition that we have concerning online social networking is the 'cheapness' of the connections that we make. We tend to laugh at people that have thousands of facebook friends. We say - but they aren't really 'true' friends. What causes this intuition? Well - it comes from the drop in the economic costs in signalling friendship made possible by online social networking. Sure - going out to dinner signals a greater amount of loyalty than just poking someone on Facebook - but poking is still a kind of signal nonetheless, and it signals a kind of relationship.

If you don't agree - consider how things stood around the dawn of language. In order to signal allegiance to other primates, you had to spend a large amount of time grooming other people in your group. The costs of this were so high - you could only signal to a small number of people. But imagine as a thought experiment that we developed language overnight. Now you could just say to people that you were friends - without having to groom them. And this has a much smaller economic overhead. But imagine how it would have appeared to most primates... It would have seemed CHEAP! Such friendships would have been ridiculed. Only the grooming based ones would have been thought authentic. Yet very important kinds of relationships were able to develop on the basis of language - ones that enabled much larger forms of groups. It enabled institutions that would have been scarcely imaginable back then.

So as I see it - what we are building today in our online communities takes a vision that goes beyond what most people can relate to or understand. And this sort of vision requires extraordinary minds - and such people have typically struggled to get along with the common folk.

</comment><comment><USER4> Social or social network simply means individuals tied by one or more specific types of interdependencies (ie, friendships, common interests, groups etc). At its basic element, such online networks are repositories of "who I know and this is what I want them to know about me". But as a network for socializing, does the average user use these networks to really socialize? Yes (and no), but at the very minimum, it generally entails posting updates on one's life, sharing family/vacation photos, making announcements, all with the intention that the friends/people that we have allowed to share this information will 'click' on your bookpage to read about it (note: strangers can visit but not share some info).

This is a 'one-way' socialization process. So are (technical/introvert) people who are 'not sociable' in real life (as you put it) 'less qualified' to produce a social network than their counterparts? Alternatively, you could argue that the people that actively use such social networks are vain, narcissist, an with an underlying desire to measure their self-worth by the number of friends they have (this is stretching it a little, so no disrespect to those who actively use such social networks). So, the techies/introverts may merely be cautious about posting their info online; it does not entirely disqualify them from making social apps.

As I see it, the medium of social networking should be less 'one-way' socialization and more like being in the same room with all these people. Facebook, for example, seems more like a room full of people who walk around with a whiteboard obscuring their faces and posting all of their personal info on these whiteboards, ie, we really don't know if they are who they say they are. Google+ is no more different – it is the same room, minus the whiteboards (because you've invited friends to join your circle and, thus, share your info). However, the Google+ room is filled specific/private circles, ie, the 'cool/popular kids circle', the 'nerdy/geeky kids circle', the 'rebellious kids circle' – to use a high school analogy =).

I think there are two arguments here: 1) current online social mediums are not conducive to traditional ('two-way') socializing and 2) given a medium that supports 'two-way' socializing, everyone can and will be sociable.

</comment><comment><USER5> Answer: no.

[http://theunderstatement.com/post/11018308302/googles- manage...](http://theunderstatement.com/post/11018308302/googles-management- doesnt-use-google)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's self-reinforcing. The outliers tend to quit.

Trying to bring about change to make things less creepy from the inside was a tremendous failure.</comment>


Ronco Spray-On Usability - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2004/04/spray_on_usability

<comment><USER2> Interesting if a bit old (April 2004?) article... One bit I strongly disagree with:

 _It's not something every programmer can learn. Most programmers don't have any aptitude for UI design whatsoever. It's an art, and like any art, it requires innate ability. You can learn to be a better writer. You can learn to be a better illustrator. But most people can't write and can't draw, and no amount of practice or education is going to make them good at it. Improved, yes; good, no._

You can learn to write, and you can learn to draw. Plenty of people do. And I'm pretty sure that you can learn to design good UIs too.

Sure, having an innate ability for it helps, but it's not a sine-qua-non.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you. More often, what I've seen is that engineers aren't interested in it. It is tedious in ways that are not interesting, often involving working with non-technical people.

Most engineers I've worked with find things like "yes, it really matters that those labels are lined up pixel perfect" to be annoyances at best. We tend to work at a deeper level, thinking behind the screen, so we don't often _see_ the screen.

<comment><USER4> _Most engineers I've worked with find things like "yes, it really matters that those labels are lined up pixel perfect" to be annoyances at best. We tend to work at a deeper level, thinking behind the screen, so we don't often see the screen._

This statement suggests to me that you missed the entire point of Gruber's essay. To whit:

 _This idea, that the hard work of development is in building the underlying foundation, and that the easy part is writing a "GUI wrapper", has been the Linux/Unix way all along..._

 _UI development is the hard part. And it's not the last step, it's the first step._

I'm with Gruber. Good UI is not aligning pixels after the fact. Aligning pixels is to usability as formatting source code is to programming. I abhor the idea that programming is a "deeper level" than usability. In fact, it's the other way around: Usability is a deeper level than programming.

Let me give you an example. Dave Winer had to edit a lot of hierarchal text in the form of Pascal programs. He then got the idea of editing hierarchal text in the form of outlines, and an entire category of software was born. That category was later subsumed by other programs, to the point where nearly everything we use today has some sort of outline editing capability.

UI design was not arguing about which symbols represent collapsed and expanded headlines, or whether the target of dragging an outline should highlight the parent or hilight the space between elements where the dragged outline will go.

UI design was thinking up the idea of editing outlines instead of editing characters and words.

<http://www.outliners.com/>

p.s. That being said, I agree with you as well. Many so-called UI designers don't get Gruber's point either, and they will natter endlessly about pixels and colours and CSS grids while having nothing but tired cliché opinions about the actual mental model and functionality of software.

When a "designer" is really a stylist, it is very tiresome to work with them. Since they have nothing else to contribute, they become infuriating nitpickers over trivia just as you suggest.

<comment><USER3> _This statement suggests to me that you missed the entire point of Gruber's essay._

You are right that I made my point overly trivial. It was supposed to be the extreme case of understanding the importance of UI design: how it looks and works is very important.

I've designed many interfaces, but I am not a designer. Understanding the user, how they use the system, and how the system needs to react to that use is what matters.

You can build a great UI without being pixel-perfect, but, in my experience, engineering teams who fight pixel-perfect will fight the effort that it takes to understand what a great UI for their system is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _These paragraphs ought to be required reading for anyone calling themselves a programmer:_

Oh, I see: the problem is that Linux developers are just so fucking smart that they overlook the problems faced by "dumb users" such as dear old A.T. But everything will fall into place with just a little attitude adjustment.

Well, allow me to retort.

UI development is the hard part. And it's not the last step, it's the first step. In my estimation, the difference between:

* software that performs function X; and * software that performs function X, with an intuitive well-designed user interface

isn't just a little bit of extra work. It's not even twice the work. It's an entire order of magnitude more work. Developing software with a good UI requires both aptitude and a lot of hard work. Raymond acknowledges neither.

It's not something every programmer can learn. Most programmers don't have any aptitude for UI design whatsoever. It's an art, and like any art, it requires innate ability. You can learn to be a better writer. You can learn to be a better illustrator. But most people can't write and can't draw, and no amount of practice or education is going to make them good at it. Improved, yes; good, no.

Conversely, some people who are good UI designers aren't programmers. But the rock stars are the guys who can do both, and they are few and far between.

If there's a glib, nutshell synopsis for why Linux desktop software tends to suck, it's this: Raymond and his ilk have no respect for anyone but themselves.

They have no respect for the fact that UI design is a special talent.

They have no respect for the fact that good UI design requires a tremendous amount of time and effort.

And, most importantly, they have no respect at all for real users. The idea that GUI software needs to be designed for "dumb users" — which is Raymond's own term, and an indication of what he really means when he refers to dear old A.T. — is completely wrong.

Great software developers don't design for morons. They design for smart, perceptive people — people just like themselves. They have profound respect for their users. Show Me the Money

This is not a Mac thing. Well, it is, but what I mean is that it's not just a Mac thing. There are a lot of developers creating good UI's for Windows, for the web, and for other platforms. And, yes, there are even developers creating great UI's for software running on Linux.

But the undeniable truth is this: successful open source software projects tend to be at the developer-level, not the end-user level. E.g., successful open source projects have programming interfaces, not user interfaces. Apache, Perl, Python, gcc, PHP, the various SQL databases. The list of fantastic open source developer software is long.

The list of fantastic open source GUI software is short. This is not a function of chance.

The open source revolution has done nothing to change the fact that the best- designed, most-intuitive user interfaces are found in closed-source commercial software.

I'm not saying all commercial software is well-designed, nor that all free software is poorly-designed — what I'm saying is that software that does provide a well-designed, intuitive interface tends to be closed and commercial. The bigger the software, the more likely this is to be true.

The most obvious explanation is that the open source model does not work well for producing software with good usability. Everything in Raymond's article hints at this truth. (Not to mention MPT's aforementioned essay, which addresses this directly.)

Good user interfaces result from long, hard work, by talented developers and designers.

</comment><comment><USER5> There at least one glaring flaw in his argument. He implies you can't bolt a good UI onto open source software after finishing the core functionality, yet the article revolves around CUPS which Apple themselves took and bolted a good UI onto. Strangely he makes no mention of this fact.

Apple also hired the author and now own the copyright to CUPS which is still Free Software (<http://www.cups.org/>). It's worth noting for those who weren't early adopters of Mac OS X that printer compatability sucked pretty hard before the adoption of CUPS since Mac OS X was both new and unpopular at the time. Is it technically "usable" if it doesn't work? Apple clearly saw the benefit of jumping on the bandwagon of an open standard, and this let them concentrate on other things like the UI. The same could be said for much of Mac OS X.

Both the positive OSS examples he mentions, Firefox and Camino, were likewise primarily GUIs bolted onto the Mozilla core after the fact.

Gruber is mostly right about usability being hard and about it being a skill but he generally doesn't get Open Source, nor Free Software, nor Unix even though Apple now dabbles to varying degrees in all these things. And his lack of insight shows. How many hackers would agree that "More often than not, you get what you pay for" holds true for software.

But the 20:20 hindsight award goes to the second last paragraph: "It's easy to ridicule the estimated 2006-or-2007 ship date for Longhorn, the next major release of Windows. But do you doubt for a moment that Longhorn will provide more improvements from Windows XP than desktop Linux will gain during the same period?"

<comment><USER4> I agree that you can find a way to bolt good UI over anything, much as we've done amazing things with the "stateless" web. But there is a large truth underlying his argument, which is that you will have much better results if you design for usability first not last, and also that the amount of work required to make good usability can be an order of magnitude more than the amount of work required to build a raw API.

My big takeaway when I first read it was that you can't think that 80% of the job is the implementation and that the UI will be 20% of the work to be done after you hammer out its functionality.

<comment><USER5> That the UI is important and hard work a standard opinion for Gruber and Apple fans generally (myself included).

This particular article is about how Open Source software cannot achieve this, mostly due to limits placed on it by Gruber's own stereotypes. Why can't it be commercial? Why can't it hire UI guys with training and insight. In fact it does both these things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My take is this: The general culture for Linux is that there are and should be more than one way to do it, versatility is encouraged and that placing significant emphasis on one way over the other is frowned upon.

Given that this attitude is pervasive amongst all aspects of Linux, this is like a sausage enthusiast trying to get his neighbor excited about his vacation photos from a kill-floor when the neighbor just wanted to stop over and have a wurst.

</comment><comment><USER7> "But do you doubt for a moment that Longhorn will provide more improvements from Windows XP than desktop Linux will gain during the same period?"

If I were reading that at the time the article was written I would probably be nodding my head in agreement. But I think the latest Ubuntu is generally much more usable than Vista.

My 70 year old mom is sick to death of Vista, I'm going to be installing Ubuntu for her in a couple weeks, so I guess I'll get the chance to find out if I'm right.

</comment><comment><USER8> _In what world does the "archetypal nontechnical user" have two computers connected by Ethernet?_

Ignoring the difference between Ethernet and 802.llb/g/n, this was commonplace even when the article was written. Dad has a printer hooked up to his desktop. Aunt Tillie borrows Mom's laptop to look up a recipe on foodnetwork.com. Voila, two computers connected over a local network, and Aunt Tillie wants to print out her recipe on Dad's printer.

</comment><comment><USER9> In regard to the printer sharing problem, it's pretty much solved today thanks to zeroconf (marketed as Bonjour by Apple). It makes addressing computers and advertising services in the local area network much easier. I wish more developers would take advantage of zeroconf.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was disappointed that the only reference to Ronco was the title.

Can we make turkey jerky now?</comment>


Unexplored Areas in Data Compression - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@duhroach/unexplored-areas-in-data-compression-c256f70ba0c7 <comment><USER2> `Entropy is a broken measurement. The fact that [0,1,2,3] and [0,3,1,2] have the same entropy value is annoying...' This is incorrect. There is no concept of entropy for a specific finite sequence; entropy is a property of random variables. Assuming a finite string is generated (i.i.d.) from a random source, then one way to estimate its entropy is using the histogram but this is not always optimal. Also several other parts of the article are over- simplified or incorrect.

<comment><USER3> 1\. Entropy is a broken measurement

2\. This is incorrect

3\. There is no concept of entropy for a specific finite sequence

Do you see what you did there? Entropy is limited concept if you want to advance compression beyond certain limit.

General note: There is tendency of commentators to nit-pick blog posts as if being in debate where the goal is to win. It would be more valuable if we would read the article and try to interpret the intended meaning behind them favorably. Of course there are parts that are over-simplified or incorrect. This is just writing in the blog, not fully thought out edited and peer reviewed writing.

<comment><USER4> While I agree with your general comments about the attitude we should have in evaluating/commenting on blog post I have to disagree with the specific critique of the above comment. The favorable interpretation of the article is that the OP understands the basic definition of entropy but didn't realize that it could be extended to other models that account for permutation symmetry. But if you have read about any authoritative accounts of information entropy (Shannon's 1948 expository article, which discusses permutation invariance, is an example) you would be aware that it is more generally applicable.

Entropy is a famous concept, but it is also a famously misunderstood concept, and misunderstood frequently enough that I think we should err on the side of being charitable to the critics as long as their commentary is technically sound and focused. The OP could have probably done without last two sentences. Nevertheless, I would like to think that the article could have been greatly improved or possibly avoided entirely if the auothor had consulted AidanChurch818.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a compression issue much closer to my heart that is not being properly addresses: AES-256 encrypted plaintext files. Seriously! If you just figure out the 256-bit key, it would compress well with any compressor - there's a _huge_ class of files which would only need 256 additional bits! Why isn't there any advance on this front? /s

Entropy is not a broken measurement - in fact, it's the perfect measurement (proof: Shannon's source coding theorem and its converse), its only downside is that it is only defined with respect to a model.

If you measure it on the output of one model (permutations) with respect to another model (i.i.d) then, duh, it's wrong. And general permutations are so rare, that they might bug the author but there's no incentive to consider them. Non general permutations - e.g., addition-modulo permutations, often ARE reasonably well compressed by markov/tree/fsmx model algorithms and their delta counterparts. (And they're still too rare to consider on their own).

Kolmogorov complexity is interesting, but it is too vast and complicated to consider as a whole (proof: equivalence of computing Chaitin's omega to the halting problem), other than as a very useful reasoning device. Therefore, like with the halting problem, we focus on specific subsets that seem interesting.

Frankly, this rant reads like "But I don't understand why they don't yet have a car that runs on water". Compression is math, and it's a part of math we understand quite well. BWT, for example, is an amazing algorithm - but if you take a step back, it's just an efficient implementation of a compression scheme that was known before. (IIRC, the last gap in understanding the equivalence was closed by Effros et al in 2002)

<comment><USER6> Well, that's why you compress then encrypt first

Entropy is a good measurement _but it 's not the goal_. The goal is a smaller file size

Yeah, I guess that for 'generic compression' the advances are going to be slow and few. Without any knowledge of the type of file it's only bytes so you have to work with that. Also disk space and network speeds are getting cheaper, so what might have needed compression in the past might not need today (even though compression got much cheaper)

<comment><USER7> > Well, that's why you compress then encrypt first

Just be careful of CRIME-style attacks...

<comment><USER8> wiki: "CRIME ("Compression Ratio Info-leak Made Easy") is a security exploit against secret web cookies over connections using the HTTPS and SPDY protocols that also use data compression." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRIME](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRIME)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a great big unexplored area: Optimising the expression.

I had a hack back in the previous millenium that improved on .tar.gz, compatibly. I think it used find, but the current expression would be:

      tar zcf $(file **/*(.) | sort -T: -k2 | cut -d: -f1)

The use of file is a bit of a hack, but the idea is good: let the compressor compress all of the source code together, without being distracted by dissimilar files. Ditto for other types.

Compressing a byte stream is not the same as compressing the data. Reordering a tar file doesn't change the meaning, and IMO the big, big gap in compression research is to identify such expression transformations.

Compression algorithms regard the input as god-given, but in reality much input can be reordered or otherwise transformed. The order of the files in a .tar could be reordered if the compressor could say anything about what's beneficial; the order of glyphs in a font could be reordered too. That sort of communication between the compression subsystem and the data source could be a very fruitful area of research.

<comment><USER10> Now that's a clever trick. I just tried it on a random subdirectory here (a website source) and it actually made the resulting file _larger_ so it may not always work but the idea makes sense. Wonder why it does not work in this case.

<comment><USER9> Zlib and most others use dictionaries; the dictionary is adjusted as compression (and decompression) proceeds. When the input data type changes drastically, continuing with the formerly well-adjusted dictionary can actually be worse than issuing a flush and starting from scratch.

I saw the same thing happen during the work on RFC 4978 (IMAP compression), which is why that RFC recommends issuing a flush before and after large attachments. A compression state based on typical IMAP chatter isn't good for compressing a random attachment, and one based on the attachment isn't good for compressing the IMAP chatter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And that's all for lossless compression. For lossy compression, there are lots of unexplored areas.

I still like the FrameFree approach to video compression. Motion estimation decomposes sequences of images into a set of layers which move and morph, much like the way 2D movies are converted to pseudo-3D. This is hard, but can be done, and there are several software packages for it, of varying quality. Decompression is done by morphing each layer between keyframes, warping a texture-mapped mesh in a GPU. Decompression can be done to any frame rate, including ones much higher than the original. This approach is often used to generate ultra-slow motion.

(FrameFree was demonstrated around 2006, but the company behind it, Kerner Optical, went bust for unrelated reasons.)

<comment><USER12> How is this different from motion estimate in HEVC?

<comment><USER11> It's not block-oriented. Image components are meshes, and they're filled with textures. Between frames, the meshes change position and shape, and the textures dissolve. It's a full morph.[1][2]

This got to the demo stage, and there were a plug-in and an SDK around 2008. The playback side worked fine, but the compression side was really slow at the time.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHHfNZFuM0g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHHfNZFuM0g) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBfss0AaNaU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBfss0AaNaU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interestingly, all envogue tech of today like ML and Bitcoin converge around this topic. In essence, PoW is just (partly) figuring out the seed of a RNG, which in return is compression at its finest.

Thus, the author has a point in saying "Basically, once we're done w/ statistics, we're done. But this mentality may be one of our biggest faults". Even seemingly random data can be represented by incredibly short descriptions (as in MDL). I'm fascinated by compression since I was a child hacking in x86 assembler.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was expecting this to be an ignorant rant by someone not steeped in the art, and was all ready to puff my chest out and correct someone saying something wrong on the Internet, but actually this is pretty spot on instead ;)

People interested in data compression may like to browse the [http://encode.ru](http://encode.ru) forums, where the experts hang out.

</comment><comment><USER15> Good questions. Especially where all BWT-cousins are. An amazing algorithm that should have spawned more research and variants by now.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not sure if this is good place to ask, but is there some Unix utility to presort files, based on content, to feed them into tar or zip in correct order so they would compress better by virtue of being similar?

I think it would be very useful if tar or zip could do that automatically, and it seems like low-hanging fruit in compression.

Actually, thinking about it, the tool could later in more general fashion rearrange the content _inside_ the files. So it would map each file into blocks of similar characteristics that would then be compressed in correct order across files.

<comment><USER17> I think what you're describing is called the knapsack problem, so I'd guess the answer is no. The best you could do is randomly order the files and compress them, and do that a few times and pick the best ordering.

<comment><USER18> You can do much better than that: you can use summaries or hashes to get a short version of each file and then compare the hashes for similarity. (Much like using perceptual hashes to find similar images.) A tool that does this is 'binsort'. It's O(N^2) IIRC, because of all the pairwise comparisons, but it's usable for up to a few hundred or thousand files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wonder if BWT can be improved (i.e. make it sort better) with a help of extra additional information. So it is not a choice of all (complete sort) or pure BWT but something in between. Maybe group things a bit better (close to a sorted order) but needed a little map/error-correction/otherthing..? to help it decode.

Idea came from seeing Kolmogorov right under BWT's section. Maybe the extra information is a small FSM in a compact representation that works before or after BWT.

Another useful thing in practice is ability to quickly recognize already compressed data. There are enough encoded images, sound and are already fairly compress. Outer compressor can be quicker if it quickly detects that.

</comment><comment><USER20> I tried to add 1 to the first byte of a file, 2 to the second, 3 to the third... and see how it effect the compression rate.

On a small text file that could normally be compressed by 71% the modified file only got 16%.

<comment><USER21> Now try it other way around. Compress with 7zip first, then XOR with known randomness and try compressing again. There is a random number generator X out there for data Y that will let you produce low entropy this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my childhood I had the wishful idea that some sort of "1d" fractal could compress huge amounts of data based on much shorter inputs. Assuming the inputs to the fractal could be computed effectively, which I was fairly sure could only be done by brute force which was never going to be useful.

<comment><USER23> It has been tried with images:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have started to converge on this space from a different perspective -- thinking about how to design a graph database in terms of discrete topology, which has led me to thinking in terms of the holographic principle: "the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region". Specifically, I have been exploring how to use shape to succinctly and uniquely define an object/relation in terms of the composition of its constituent parts in a way that enables fast decomposition back into its constituent parts.

For example, picture a spatial structure resulting from a the prime decomposition ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization#Prime_de...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization#Prime_decomposition)) of all the positive 64 bit integers [0 to 2^63-1]. In this space, the prime numbers are the base of this discrete topology. Picture the trees resulting from all the decompositions, with the roots jutting up into space like peaks in a mountain range. This gives the numbers shape and provides a foundation to anchor more abstract objects representations.

To further illustrate the point, we could define a discrete topology with each unicode character ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode#Code_point_planes_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode#Code_point_planes_and_blocks)) as a base element. Now define an algorithm to decompose strings into its constituent parts. Similarly, we could do the same thing with dates and time, decomposing them into trees, and likewise with geo coordinates in space. Or, we could map all of these structures onto a tree of its binary representation.

Now with these discrete elements as anchor points existing in multiple dimensions, define relations betweens them, and use the elements and relations to compose higher-level objects.

For example, in a property graph ([https://github.com/tinkerpop/gremlin/wiki/Defining-a- Propert...](https://github.com/tinkerpop/gremlin/wiki/Defining-a-Property- Graph)), each vertex can contain key/value attributes, and traditionally when adding a new vertex, a vertex ID is assigned using a sequence generator. Edges are composed of two vertices, a label, optional key/value properties, and an edge ID is commonly assigned using a sequence generator. Each vertex and edge is traditionally stored as a row in the database, and traversing the graph is a process that begins with looking up the "start vertex", looking up its outgoing edges, traversing the outgoing edges to the incoming vertices, and continuing this process while using constraints to direct the traversal and filter out vertices and paths. For large graphs distributed across multiple machines, finding optimal ways to partition the graph across multiple machines is a challenge.

What if instead of identifying each vertex and edge by a meaningless integer, we uniquely define each vertex and edge by a compact representation of its constituent parts, like the cells of a body compose to form a person?

For example, consider the key/value properties in a vertex, such as:

      {type: "person", handle: "espeed", location: "Dallas, TX", age: 38, updated: 20151205112207}

...using our discrete topology, each key/value pair is uniquely represented as a point in space, and the set of points are grouped together in a cell. Multiple cells compose together to form a cell complex ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CW_complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CW_complex)). When the set points are in general position, there exists a unique Delaunay triangulation ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaunay_triangulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaunay_triangulation)).

Use Delaunay triangulation to encode a unique ID for each vertex, and then use the resulting vertex IDs, label, orientation, and optional key/value properties to compose edges. Edges then compose together to form a graph.

Here's the question I'm exploring: Can we encode a graph in such a way that traversing the graph is reduced to a geometric algorithm?

</comment><comment><USER25> Summary: Kolmogorov complexity for compression is completely unexplored.

       Orig wordcount: 1325
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<comment><USER26> But is it lossless?

<comment><USER27> yes! (by definition)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> middle out?</comment>


Ask HN: How quiet should one keep ideas? - <AUTHOR>

How quiet should one keep their ideas when thinking about potential ventures? There certainly is potential for gain by discussing things with others, however there is potential for loss as well. ConnectU and Facebook have been in the press recently and who knows what those 3 lost when Zuckerberg went forth with Facebook?
Would the area of the idea matter? (eg some web 2.0 apps are easy to clone and being early might make a huge difference compared to making luxury furniture that requries expert woodworkers
Is this event the right question to be asking? I would be interested to see the differences, if any, in opinion between those who have started multiple ventures, one venture, and no ventures. <comment><USER2> I think the common consensus of successful entrepreneurs, VCs, etc is that ideas are cheap and it is execution that matters.

Part of the problem with ConnectU is they didn't have an ability to execute their ideas themselves and when they recruited Zuckerberg he was like why am I executing their idea for them and letting them reap the profits? ConnectU didn't fail because they shared their idea. They failed because the executed poorly by not drawing up a contract with the person that was going to be working for them.

I personally believe that you should share ideas with people you trust to get feedback. Then build a v0.1 prototype that you can launch and start getting feedback and improving it.

<comment><USER3> Thumbs up for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are always multiple parts to an idea. You can often share some of the idea to get feedback while not sharing all of it.

Some things to consider withholding are long-term goals, tricky algorithms, novel monetization strategies, and markets you've researched and have confidence are under-served.

It essential you safely expose as much of the idea and the work you do as early as possible so you can learn. But don't let anyone tell you that ideas are worthless or that there aren't people who will profit from good ideas that spill out. There is a reason, after all, that we have a patent system. "Ideas are worthless, its all in the execution" is as much a lie as "execution doesn't matter."

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to have to repeat "Ideas are worthless without execution". Current technologies lets you turn your idea to a product and launch in a very short period of time.

I'm not sure if you are aware of "Lean Startup" methodology but strongly recommend you get aquatinted with some of the principles. Web 2.0 companies like Dropbox, IMVU, Aardvark, KISSMetrics etc have applied these techniques to be successful.

You don't necessarlity need to share your idea with anyone but SHOULD build it and launch as soon as possible, your goal in the first month should not be to get lots of users but validate your hypothesis and collect data on usage (like if your users like your offering and wanting to come back)

I posted this comment on a different thread but re-posting here:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

We launched a product recently <http://sociaholic.com> and applied lean startup principles.

Problem Hypothesis: The existing Twitter to Facebook integrations and apps don't preview links/videos when publishing to Facebook from Twitter, thus by limiting the desirability to click on a link on facebook pages.

Execution: Design to launch along with a video in less than 2 weeks, the goal was to validate our solution has a market. We update your facebook page from twitter in nice way (previewing links, converting @handles, etc)

Validation: Our first week: Over 200 active users out of ~250 signups, conversion rate (homepage to adding twitter account) ~30%. 2% dissatisfied customers (5 out 250 people uninstalled) The product has a much bigger vision and Customer Development is doing wonders and we plan to do this for every step we move forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not versed in the Lean Startup methodology, but I will be doing some reading soon (but after work/gym). I like the concept of "validate your hypothesis" first.

Design to launch in 2 weeks is impressive. It makes me feel like I should set more stringent goals with my projects and reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Keep your idea to yourself, make some actual progress toward making the idea real, then share the initial results with the people whose input you want. Rinse and repeat.

<http://sivers.org/zipit>

<comment><USER2> Maybe someone should have showed the Diaspora guys that article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Chances are someone else if having the same idea as you do. And is talking to others, getting feedback, correcting problems before they arise.

That someone will eat you for lunch.

Another reason to talk about 'good ideas' is that sometimes they're not that good, you just don't know it. Finding out early because of conversations with others will help you focus your efforts on those things that _really_ stand out.

Collaboration is essential for success, ideas can be born in a vacuum but it will need a lot of effort to bring one to market in a way that you can make a profit on them.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think ideas are worthless (ok, not completely) but,

The true important thing is execution. And is VERY hard to get it right.

<comment><USER8> execute what?</comment></comment>


Why can't people in US watch Al Jazeera? - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/28/dahl_al_jazeera/index.html <comment><USER2> Every time Al Jazeera is brought up, people claim that it is anti-semitic, racist, anti-US, etc.

But to that I say: so what? Do you think Americans are that stupid that they won't see antisemitism? Do you think we're little children who can't think for ourselves?

As the old adage goes, "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer". If Al Jazeera is indeed "the enemy", then all the more reason to make Al Jazeera widely available!

Plus: when Al Jazeera started, the staff was almost entirely made up of BBC MiddleEast service people. So while they worked for BBC, they were unbiased; but the moment they started working for AJ, they became biased and completely untrustworthy!!

IMHO, this opposition to Al Jazeera comes from the fact that they (AJ) don't tow the 'company line'. There's a carefully crafted story around which news is reported in the US ("US = good; Middle-Easterners = uneducated religious bigots; Israelis = poor victims who can't do no wrong; etc." ) ; unfortunately for AJ, they refuse to follow this line and hence piss off powerful people here.

And before someone starts putting words in my mouth: I support Israeli people, and want them to live secure, peaceful, happy lives in Israel. In other words: I support the Israeli people, but not necessarily the actions of their government.

<comment><USER3> As I mentioned below, I find it disingenuous that people often use the term 'anti-semitic' when they mean 'anti-Israel', as if any judgement on the actions of the state of Israel automatically implies hate of Jewish people.

<comment><USER4> Not only that. Jewish people are not the only Semites. Arabs are Semites too. The word anti-semitic has totally lost all of its literal meaning, much like the word hacker.

<comment><USER5> This is -- pardon my french -- either the most dishonest or the most uninformed argument that has been made on this topic so far.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's either, just a rant about how natural languages need to MAKE SENSE DAMMIT!

It's a common failure among the half-educated.

<comment><USER4> Heh! I had so far restrained myself from adding to the thread. But it tickles me a great deal to see how just an observation can fuel nay-saying and name calling. I never made a moral judgment and neither am I ignorant of the typical use of the word. But was not aware that such usage ruled out making observations that the well used and common rule of "anti-blah" does not apply in this case. Then I added another example were words sometimes do not mean what they are supposed to mean. Oh the outrage, I wonder were it comes from :).

<tongue in cheek> If usage trumps correctness then English with an Indian accent is _the_ canonical accent. After all there are more who use it. </tongue in cheek>

<comment><USER7> * If usage trumps correctness then English with an Indian accent is the canonical accent. After all there are more who use it.*

I know it's tongue in cheek and all, but I've heard this repeated a few too many times recently, so for the record: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_languages_by_num...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers)

Summary: 226 million "native" speakers of English, plus 90 million with English as a second language. I'd suggest that the canonical English accent is actually American. And whilst it is true that India will probably overtake the US in this regard in the not too distant future, they too will probably be eclipsed by the Chinese (<http://www.economist.com/node/6803197?story_id=6803197>) before that happens.

Regardless, the traditional anglo-saxon countries will hold sway as the main proponents of English for a long time, as aside from the US there is also the UK (60-odd million), Canada(35 million), Australia(20-odd million), New Zealand (5 million), and South Africa (50 million) to throw into the mix, giving a total of somewhere around 500 million native speakers.

<comment><USER4> Whoa! No way India has 226 million "native" speakers of English. It still would be under a quarter million. But upvoted for checking. Tongue was very much in my cheek in my previous comment, so all can rest easy :)

      but I've heard this repeated a few too many times recently

I havent heard it before and that is indeed strange given that I am Indian.

<comment><USER7> :D Yup, I read it wrong... 226 000, not 226 million. Which means that India has a _looooong_ way to go before getting to number one!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For Linux users wanting to watching without using browser + flash, using mplayer + rtmpdump:

      rtmpdump -v -r rtmp://livestfslivefs.fplive.net/livestfslive-live/ -y "aljazeera_en_veryhigh?videoId=747084146001&lineUpId=&pubId=665003303001&playerId=751182905001&affiliateId=" -W "http://admin.brightcove.com/viewer/us1.24.04.08.2011-01-14072625/federatedVideoUI/BrightcovePlayer.swf -p "http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/ -a "aljazeeraflashlive-live?videoId=747084146001&lineUpId=&pubId=665003303001&playerId=751182905001&affiliateId=" | mplayer -

<comment><USER9> just pulled rtmpdump from macports (I already have mplayer, of course) and I can confirm it works on mac too... except their rtmp provider seems to be getting killed right now.

I would recommend switching to Livestation, quality isn't as good, but at least it works (on Linux too).

<comment><USER10> It works fine on my linux box. Is there anyway to adjust the screensize to full-screen?

<comment><USER11> [F11]?

<comment><USER12> The default binding is 'f', iirc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The reason people in the US can't watch Al Jazeera on TV is because it doesn't fit into the US MSM model. Modern US news isn't about news, it's about opinion and entertainment.

I don't know many Americans that watch Fox, but of those that I do know, they wouldn't watch Al Jazeera partly because it's not American (and therefore not trustworthy - with the exception of the BBC) but mainly because of the long form nature of the stories and focus on the news rather than building an emotionally charged narrative.

<comment><USER14> exactly. just like the history channel wouldn't date to show long feature history instead of opinions and repetition of a non-fact theory.

or the discovery showing something scientific, and not red neck soap opera while they chop bikes or trees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> They can. <http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/>

<comment><USER16> Whenever I try, it barely works and usually crashes. Right now, barely works would be a kind description.

The stations I get via cable/sat tv etc don't have scaling problems of this sort. They might have crap coverage and you could argue that is a scaling issue of some sort but.. at least I can manage to watch.

<comment><USER17> There's an alternate feed available from livestation in both SD and HD editions. <http://www.livestation.com/channels/3-al_jazeera_english>

And a RealPlayer live stream, which (as much as RealPlayer sucks) may be a better choice than Flash. But it's pretty low-def: <http://europe.real.com/smil/aljazeera_us_lo.ram>

<comment><USER18> > as much as RealPlayer sucks

No need for RealPlayer. Just get Media Player Classic Home Cinema (<http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/>) and Real Alternative (<http://www.filehippo.com/download_real_alternative/>). With that combination, RealMedia streams have become one of my favorites. You can do the same with QuickTime, by getting QuickTime Lite (<http://www.filehippo.com/download_quicktime_alternative/>).

<comment><USER17> I don't think they do live streams. I'm on Mac, and usually use VLC to watch RealPlayer files, but I couldn't get to the RealPlay live media (.ram files).

<comment><USER18> MPC-HC + RealAlternative can play RealMedia files that VLC (and MPlayer) can't. But this is the best option (IMHO): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2156494>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a large subset of the US population that would distrust any information from an Arabic source.

BBC, Reuters, and Al Jazeera are amazing compared to CNN/MSNBC/FOX.

<comment><USER20> PBS is a better fit to be compared to BBC. You can find low-brow entertainment based news in the UK and every other country with a free media. It's not like you can't access quality news in the US and Al Jazeera has to swoop in and save the day.

<comment><USER21> Which television news network in the US has had better coverage of the Egypt protests than Al Jazeera? I mean, MSNBC and CNN are using the Al Jazeera feed for their coverage in some cases....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. I have cox cable in DC, we get Al Jazeera, and it has been most useful. When the gulf oil spill was happening and we wanted to find out what was going on, I turned to CNN only to get 20 minutes on Katy Perry's freakin wardrobe controversy. Al Jazeera to the rescue.

<comment><USER23> By pure coincidence I have it on in the background right now in Arlington. I have FiOS but I assume Comcast has a similarly wide array of news channels. I chalked it up to the area. I've certainly never had it anywhere else I've lived, up and down the East Coast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's surprising just how good a new source Al Jazeera is.

I wish my cable operator let me subscribe to Al Jazeera in lieu of CNN.

<comment><USER25> In all seriousness, they could generate the news on CNN with an algorithm and it would be immensely better than what they pump out now.

<comment><USER26> CNN isn't generated by an algorithm? I thought they were just scraping twitter.

<comment><USER9> _CNN isn't generated by an algorithm?_

it's called Proprietary Relevant News Generating algorithm also abbreviated as PRNG.

<comment><USER27> It sounds a bit random to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Note that CNN International is a class better than CNN that you watch in the US. They carry less opinion and showbiz and more news and business, although go in-depth only in rare shows.

I used to switch between CNN and BBC in the 90s because of the great correspondent network they both had.

<comment><USER29> I don't get CNN International or BBC News on Comcast, but I do think it's amusing that every time CNN needs real reporting (like when the Egypt story broke), they just cut to CNN International, where at least some level of real reporting is happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Their website is excellent. The recently acquired leaked documents, The Palestinian Papers, are fascinating reading.

[http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011122...](http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/201112214310263628.html)

And I just saw an interview with PJ Crowley about Egypt. There is no US reporter that would ever ask such tough questions as the Aljazeera interviewer. No way.

<http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/01/27-1>

<comment><USER31> 7+ minutes is a long interview. That would be interesting to see, what is the average time guest are given in interviews on different news channel. It that piece it seemed as if Crowley had a message tailored for under 2-3 minutes but as it went longer it became way repetitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> There is an opportunity for Al Jazeera in the USA because the signal to garbage ratio on our local networks has become intolerable.

Most thinkers in this country get their news from the web, but live TV still has it's merits and there is a cavernous gap in the market for quality international news coverage right now.

If Al Jazeera manage to capture some of that market, they could attract a more educated (and wealthier) demographic than CNN, CNBC and Fox. i.e. a more lucrative market for advertisers.

Because they're streaming online, there really is very little standing in their way. If I was a major US network, I'd sit up and take notice.

Al Jazeera reaches over 100 million homes:

[http://english.aljazeera.net/aboutus/2007/10/200852518483043...](http://english.aljazeera.net/aboutus/2007/10/2008525184830438575.html)

It wouldn't take much to become the most popular international network in the country.

Prime time viewers over the age of 2:

Fox News: 2.1 million

MSNBC: 950k

CNN: 483k

CNBC: 303k

HLN: 462k

Source: Nielsen, Jan 28, 2011.

[http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/01/28/cable-news- ratin...](http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/01/28/cable-news-ratings-for- thursday-january-27-2011-piers-tumbles/80643)

</comment><comment><USER33> In Canada, at least two cable operators that I know of offer Al Jazeera as a subscription channel.

<comment><USER31> Yeah satellite (Bell) has it available. I was going to change my channels soon, I might see if it's worth it. I'd also like BBC in HD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The article reminded me of this quotation from JFK: "We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

</comment><comment><USER35> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_English> \-- lists loads of options for watching, from online, to terrestrial, cable, to satellite, to Internet TV.

</comment><comment><USER36> Al Jazeera is freely available over FTA through GlobeCast worldtv. [http://www.globecastwtv.com/America/WhatsOnWTV/FreeToAirOnly...](http://www.globecastwtv.com/America/WhatsOnWTV/FreeToAirOnly.aspx?Encrypted=Free- to-Air)

</comment><comment><USER37> I've had the website on for two days straight, it has hardly even staggered. The coverage is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER32> <http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/>

<comment><USER38> I would like to watch the HD version?

What is this RealPlayer thing? sounds like a virus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Hey Guys, check out our startup Frequency. You can see quite a bit of al jazeera. <http://www.frequency.com/aljazeera>

</comment><comment><USER40> more importantly, why can't people OUTSIDE the US watch hulu?

</comment><comment><USER41> That's very interesting - I assumed it _was_ widely available. I'm in South Africa and have been watching it as much as BBC World News or CNN, more so over the last few months. What I do like about it is that there's a fair amount of actual 'world news' - stuff from countries that are hardly on my radar.

</comment><comment><USER42> There's also an iPhone app for watching aljazeera now. It's a great way to watch it on iPad. Great feed.

</comment><comment><USER43> Isn't the real reason that the number of people who watch cable news is already a small minority of the cable subscribers, and they are already split three ways? Adding another cable news network isn't going to appeal to anyone new.

</comment><comment><USER44> After watching about 45 minutes of inane coverage of Egypt on CNN and Fox, probably because they are controlled by an offshore entity and don't offer a point of view remarkably in line with whatever Washington is putting out.

</comment><comment><USER45> La libertad de información, para decirla y recibirla, tiene que ser ilímite. Los gobiernos, coomo el deEstados Unidos, que temen a la libretad de prensa, algo esconden. +Adelante, se;ores de Al/Jazeera!

</comment><comment><USER46> This seems like a question for Reddit

</comment><comment><USER47> Does anyone have a direct link to a feed that can be loaded up in mplayer or vlc?

</comment><comment><USER48> "Comcast, Charter, Time Warner, Dish Network and DirecTV all passed."

</comment><comment><USER49> What is the point of this article? I've been able to watch Al Jazeera the past few days just fine, and I don't subscribe to any cable company. Why are these old media folks acting like television is still relevant?

</comment><comment><USER50> because americans are afraid of everything

<comment><USER51> Thats why they carry guns. They are even afraid of each other.

Amazing.

<comment><USER52> >Thats why they carry guns. They are even afraid of each other.

They should be afraid, they've all got guns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Well, there seems to be much interesting information missed from the US air waves... :-)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism#Yusuf_al...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism#Yusuf_al- Qaradawi)

In a sermon, which aired on _Al-Jazeera TV_ on January 9, 2009 [...] "Oh Allah, take your enemies, the enemies of Islam. Oh Allah, take the Jews, the treacherous aggressors. Oh Allah, take this profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people. [...] Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one."

Edit: I quoted (from Wikipedia) the content of the TV channel people want to show in the western world. Down voting is for lack of counter arguments?

Edit 2: I think it is really funny that I get downvoted a lot for noting that antisemitic hatred and prayers for genocide are sent on Al J -- the non- English one...

<comment><USER9> cause they get their share of antisemitism from Fox: <http://mediamatters.org/research/200807020002>

<comment><USER53> You defend Al Jazeera's (with other muslim media) airing of antisemitic content -- because Fox News is garbage?

I can't see any other way how criticism of Fox can be relevant to what I wrote. And your argument's logic was worthy of Fox.

Edit: I had a joke (HUMOR PARENTHESIS!) in a comment that "much interesting information was missing". Then I quoted a prayer for genocide of people of another religion from Al Jazeera. I DID NOT A CLAIM THAT THERE IS NO ANTI SEMITISM IN US MEDIA (hardly organized racism at least, it is taboo in the western world). I might also add -- you understood that.

Edit 2: Anyway, it was really funny that you got up voted so much for that -- and I've been down voted in two threads for showing that Al J has extreme racist content...

<comment><USER9> where did I sound like I was defending Al Jazeera's antisemitism?

You claimed that US airwaves lack antisemitism and I refuted your claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I hate to be "Why is this on HN" guy, but why is this on HN?

</comment><comment><USER20> Here's why: <http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/>

"Israel: The ugly truth", "A week of racism in Israel", "An education in inequality"

Notice something out of proportion here?

I know many people are keen to jump on the "Al Jazeera is great" bandwagon, but this level of intolerance is simply not appealing to Americans. Yes, there is anti-Islamic sentiment to a degree among a small portion of Americans, but it doesn't reach the levels on display here. This is a pattern of Al Jazeera's, which makes sense because news organizations do tend to slant their views to fit general trends among the populations of the countries they serve in.

It makes a lot more sense that Al Jazeera is so well spoken of here just because it is a significant shift from what were used to in the feeble mainstream US media, rather than Al Jazeera actually putting a much deeper level of intellectual effort into their news. In reality it's just an illusion that it's something objectively better. As far as the sometimes thorough reports Al Jazeera puts out, people must realize that PBS and NPR are also American news organizations.

<comment><USER55> > In reality it's just an illusion that it's something objectively better.

Why do you say that? They do seem to have a better and broader news coverage.

> "Israel: The ugly truth" ... Notice something out of proportion here?

No. I think it is a well written article. Are you implying that anyone criticizing Israel should be automatically discarded on the basis of intolerance?

<comment><USER20> > Are you implying that anyone criticizing Israel should be automatically > discarded on the basis of intolerance?

You don't seem to have listened. It wasn't about that one article, it was about their _coverage_ of the issue, which is skewed in one obvious direction. And by the way, the article is nothing more than a bunch of anecdotes misrepresented as an accurate representation of the issue (the article itself even acknowledges this but ignores the implications.) When you take instances of violence by individuals and try to assert it's a general pattern, that is hate mongering, plain and simple. Quote from the article:

'Bayu says: "It's obvious that [things] can go to another level. This is what happened in Germany and many other places."'

Look, it even comes with allusions to the comparison of Israel and the Nazis!

>Why do you say that? They do seem to have a better and broader news coverage.

"They do seem" as a claim on it's own has no persuasive power.

<comment><USER56> Jacob, are you in Israel? Would you care to shed some perspective? For instance, are the races segregated? Are children taught to distrust other races? Are they taught all peoples are equal?

<comment><USER20> Just an American here, but there is no racial segregation or systematized racism of any kind in Israel. 'Racism' and 'Apartheid' are just thrown around carelessly at Israel by some critics.

<comment><USER56> You are just making things up.

<comment><USER20> No, everything claimed is easy to verify. Races aren't segregated, racism isn't taught (as in, it's not part of the curriculum.) All races are equal under Israeli law. Your education on this subject had to have been seriously skewed to think otherwise.

<comment><USER17> Segregation doesn't have to be official and in the written law for it to exist.

Segregation is a real fact in every day Israeli life, as I saw in a 2 year stint from '04 to '06. Since we're talking AlJazeera, here's a recent article on segregation and mixed Israeli-Palestinian couples: [http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/201112...](http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/201112912322207901.html)

<comment><USER57> I think it is widely accepted that state-sponsored segregation and institutional racism are wrong, and should be removed.

However, its a lot harder to make the case that it is _wrong_ for people to freely choose to separate themselves into ethnic ghettos in the absence of government controls.

To make a comparison to America, consider an Italian living in a "Little Italy"-style enclave, who believes it would be best for him or her to marry Italian-Americans.

Are they a troubling group? Do we perhaps need UN intervention to ease the tension between them and other near by ethnic enclaves?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Today is the "Day of the Programmer" - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Programmer <comment><USER2> Cheers!</comment>


How doubt grows with knowledge - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/leadership-journal/d5a43bc75e34

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to include how this applies to hiring and causes biases.</comment>


21-year-old computer geek makes £1m with online game (Torn) - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6264082/21-year-old-computer-geek-makes-1m-with-online-game.html

<comment><USER2> There is a slight element of sour grapes in the undertone of many of these comments.

"Its just php scripts", "I could knock that up in a weekend".

These are pretty poor arguments.

Not that many of you care but im slightly surprised at some off the negativity.

What exactly is the difference between people paying him 3 quid and neopets, facebook ( the list goes on ) which sells virtual goods.

One side, comments regularly complain about sites with ads.

Here is a guy, who has an income stream on a website which is not purely ad based. Yet half of you guys are ripping it apart as a simple knocked up site.

I wish I could knock a text-based game up in the weekend, yet we all know there is a lot more to building an app ( yes this would be an app in my eyes ).

As rightfully pointed out, he has somehow found a huge userbase. Tapped it and has made something which gives value ( i'm guessing in the form of entertainment and escapism ) to his users, so much so that they come back everyday.

As for his actual site, I read the article and signed up, took me less than 5mins to leave. Thats just me. His site is shocking and thats polite. Yet it works for him very well.

These are my thoughts I accept I might be in the minority here and most of the people who comment on HN own / run websites which have turnovers of more than 100,000 pounds / month.

Commence downgrading of my karma;)

<comment><USER3> Slight? It reminds me of the reaction to <http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/> \- that site's so simple!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [12 < x < 24] year old computer [geek | programmer | hacker] makes [$500k < y < infinity] with [Facebook game | iPhone app | social network]

Don't you guys just love how easy it is to be successful at making money on the Interweb?

<comment><USER5> As a relative recently said, "You know the Internet, right? Let's do something and we'll make a lot of money!"

<comment><USER6> My old boss used to pester me in this way all the time...funny thing is, he was the IT manager for the branch I was in.

Now you know why I still have to use COBOL quite a bit :(

<comment><USER7> Fly to Haiti and get a decent voodoo exorcism done. That took care of my pain++, it might work for your cobolitis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not shown: other 100,000 computer geeks making $0 from their online games.

<comment><USER9> So why do those 100'000 other geeks make no money? And why does torn make money?

<comment><USER10> 95,000 of those geeks made their "game" by stacking a bunch of HTML pages on top of each other.

4,500 more are in "beta", which means they didn't finish making it.

400 more were built by people who didn't understand CSS, and so are ugly and Times New Roman'd.

70 are blatant copies of other existing games.

20 are played by a small group of friends, but didn't spread beyond that.

5 thought they would make money by selling t-shirts or something silly like that.

4 make money, but not a million dollars worth.

<comment><USER11> So you make sucky games and have a poor advertising stragety? Big deal!

That is like saying you won't succeed because 99% who went into martial arts never made it to black blet because they never took martial art seriously.

<comment><USER10> That's the point I was trying to make. If you take only the people who're good at what they do and put a serious effort into what they do, I doubt you'll see as many failures as the 1 in 100,000 would indicate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This another classic example of how people can make lots of money simply by making a game that gives people a chance to do illegal things. Personally I don't view that as a healthy thing, but I know there are those that say that giving people a chance to "try out" murders, muggings, etc in a game is healthy.

But I think Torn's TOS (<http://www.torn.com/tos.php>) says it all:

 _Torn accepts no responsibility for the actions of its members i.e. Self harm, Vandalism, Suicide, Homicide, Genocide, Drug abuse, Changes in sexual orientation, Bestiality. Torn will not be held responsible and does not encourage any of the above actions or any other form of anti social behaviour. Although Torn is highly addictive we encourage you to spend time with your family and loved ones, do not forget them. Remember Torn is just a game, if you hit someone with a hammer in real life, they may not just go to hospital._

<comment><USER13> Torn makes a lot of money because it is an interesting online game. It is interesting because you can build your character and watch how it performs over time, not because it is about crime. Very similar to other online multiplayer games, e.g. Legends of Zork.

As far as I know, there isn't any statistically valid data in favor of the concept "letting people try it out in another reality decreases crime rate" or the opposite. I tend to think trying it out virtually does decrease crime rate. It has the same effect as an experience of a vaccine injection, where one gets an infection in low dose, which helps them gain immunity to it.

<comment><USER12> That is true chimariko but you have to admit that most of the biggest money making games involve violence.

<comment><USER14> This is a common cliche but I am not too sure there is really a correlation, just think of

\- Civilizations

\- The Sims

\- Snood (Not talked about much but used to be installed to many many computers, I would suspect it means revenues)

\- World of Goo (Sure it is not super big but if you consider the cost compared to popularity, it is interesting)

\- All the EA sports games

\- All the poker and board games

or many more where violence is not the main topic.

<comment><USER12> True. However, for every simulation game it seems that there are at least two or three first person shooters.

And the big ones like Grand Theft Auto are very popular. Back in 2007 they had already sold 50 million units, making over a billion in revenue. And that was two years ago. With a cursory check I couldn't find recent sales stats.

Btw World of Goo _is_ a great game and really shows that fun doesn't have to be violent. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how he got all those users in the first place. <http://www.torn.com/> is poorly designed and doesn't elaborate on what the game _is_. I'm going to sign up anyway because it must be a pretty good game to keep all those users, but I wonder how he marketed it in the first place - that strikes me as the harder part.

(Update: I signed up and played for several minutes so far. It's a handful of PHP scripts with little to actually "do" - at least at the intro level - training is merely clicking on some JavaScript buttons. This guy must be a Derren Brown-like master of persuasion if he really has 40k regular players - wow, hats off to him.)

<comment><USER16> I used to make these types of games all the time when I was younger, and they're still pretty popular. I guess it all started with A3 <http://alienaa.com> and some space trading game I forget the name of. They were probably just a natural evolution of BBS games. Making text-based browser games was why I even started programming to begin with when I was 14 or 15, and for a while there were a bunch of games derived from code that I wrote and handed out long before I really knew how to do open source. Seems stupid of me now to have never thought of trying to make money off of them.

<comment><USER17> I started programming for the exact reason as well. Created Medieval Battles [<http://medievalbattles.com>] while I was in high school, quickly realized that creating a BBMMORPG isn't profitable and turned this into a career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I eagarly await the day when someone's age is no longer a determining factor in how cool, interesting, or innovative someone's work is, especially in programming and technology.

<comment><USER19> Fortunately, what the media decides to take interest in does not necessarily coincide with what is actually cool, interesting, innovative, or profitable. But if you want press for the glorification of your ego, there are a variety of avenues you can take.

<comment><USER18> The rare event here is that a million pounds were made and how the person did it, not that the person who did it is a certain age. A 50 year old making a million pounds in the same way would be just as much of an interesting story. "The media" likes to present youthful success as an exception (perhaps because, as we all know, the youth of today are lazy do-nothings who need hair cuts and should get off my lawn), when it's just as much of an exception, at these levels of success, at nearly all age groups. You don't see stories with headlines like "50 year old computer geek makes £1m with online game", it would just be "online game makes £1m" or would mention the person's name rather than hiding their identity behind an anonymous age. It's semi-presented as though the young don't deserve success, or shouldn't be able to do something interesting because they don't have as much experience as people at some other random cut-off age, when really that has nothing to do with it at all. It's sensationalistic.

Although, I admit that complaining about sensationalism in journalism isn't very interesting in itself. Maybe I'm too young to buck the trend and complain about something, and seek change, in an interesting fashion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is a whole bunch of these games now that allow you to train attributes and gain experience. I remember being hooked into MUDs, but those were really geeky. Now everyone has been turned into MUD players because they are much more approachable now.

<comment><USER21> Exactly the first thought I had. I started into MUDs back in '98 (high school) with CarnageMUD and even worked with some of the immorts there on a VB-based MUD. We poured so many hours into that and the project eventually fell apart because we figured, "who's into MUDs these days?" When WoW hit, I felt vindicated. Then, just a few months ago, my brother tells me he's playing this text-based online game called Mob Boss or something.

I gotta think one of the keys here is that our MUDs were fantasy-based and these more successful MUDs are crime-based.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "users can pay extra to receive extra status".

oh hello, a one sentence explanation of life hiding in a gaming article.

</comment><comment><USER23> I worked for a couple kids like this for 5 years, until July this year. They got lucky, they were in browser gaming really early with one of the first micro-transaction backed games out there. It also spread itself virally, pissing off a lot of people on the internet. Nonetheless it did gather a pretty large userbase and grossed more than 100k/month for a couple years. But that's where it stopped. The kids that started the game had one good idea for the time, hired myself and a couple others to keep it a good idea for an extended time, but failed to move on and grow the company. Now they're grossing around 60k/month and panicking, rushing to add something else to their library.

It's one thing to hit on something that works, once. It's another to actually be an entrepreneur and know what needs to be done to sustain growth. Not very easy in the gaming industry because people get bored and move on pretty quick.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was surprised to hear that most of the 40,000 users are happy to pay £3/month to the creator in exchange for small bonuses in what seems to be a very niche (and I say niche because it's text-only, online) game.

I wonder what the retention rate for new users is, and whether the experience will deteriorate as more people sign up to try it out and it moves from a friendly 'niche' community towards something more reflective of the wider internet (youtube comments anyone?)... or whether the fact that it _is_ a text-only roleplaying game will pose a sufficient barrier to entry to those that wouldn't hesitate to act like trolls, and they'll rapidly lose interest, thereby preserving the atmosphere?

<comment><USER25> It's especially interesting to me, because my online game is far less successful financially. (I make a living at it, but it's not a glamorous one.)

To be honest, my gut reaction was initially "there's no way this game has 40k active users", but then I clicked the online tab and sure enough there were that many people listed in the last 24 hours. Colour me impressed.

<comment><USER26> Just to give you one datapoint: I played forumwarz episodes 1 and 2 pretty much like an addicted fiend when they initially came out. But I am not sure if I have been to the site in between and since (if you made an episode 3 in the interim, I don't know about it). If your TOS allows it, perhaps you could notify your users when new episodes come out? I'd personally enjoy episodes with a much longer story arc--I think that would keep your users more active and for longer--but I realize that is easier said than done.

Finally, I just want to let you know that I have always been pretty impressed by the online chat functionality that you implemented for the INICIT game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just for a bit of background - this game has been around for years, used to be at torncity.com, first registered in 2004 it seems.

I used to play way way way back, and it was pretty addictive (to me, although I was like 16). Most of the people paying are literally paying to win, since you get direct benefit in-game by paying (unless it was changed).

It's been through quite a lot including horrible lag and a month-long server fuck up, but I'm glad to see it turn out well for him.

</comment><comment><USER28> Published in a major UK newspaper - and discussed on HN. This guy has some good skills in getting attention. And we're part of it!

And if a newspaper writes that he says he's making £50K, it doesn't mean he actually is. He could be all part of the PR campaign.

<comment><USER29> I suspect that this is not an uncommon tactic for some start-ups, iPhone app developers, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "In Torn players earn points and status by carrying out muggings, murders and heists in an imaginary city.

"But Joe claims the game is about 'meeting people' not committing crimes and revealed one couple have even married because of Torn."

Hilarious! What's next? Torn-dating.com? Stay tuned...</comment>