GPUs for Google Cloud Platform - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/11/announcing-GPUs-for-Google-Cloud-Platform.html <comment><USER2> Kudos to Google for making moves here. Having spent the last year+ tackling GPUs in the datacenter, super curious how custom sizing works. It's a huge technical feat to get eight GPUs running (let alone, in a virtual environment), but the real challenge is making sure the blocks/puzzle pieces all fit together so there's no idle hardware sitting around There's a reason why Amazon's G/P instances require that you double the RAM/CPU if you double the GPU. Another example would be Digital Ocean's linear scale-up of instance types. In any case, we'll have to see what pricing comes out to.

Shameless plug, if you want raw access to a GPU in the cloud today, shoot me an email at daniel at paperspace.com We have people doing everything from image analysis to genomics to a whole lot of ML/AI.

<comment><USER3> Paperspace looks pretty awesome. Given the exorbitant expense of the new MacBook Pros, I'm thinking of getting a iPad Pro instead, except that you still can't really do dev work conveniently on an iPad.

This looks like it might be a cool solution to that problem. Use iOS most of the time (I'm a writer) and the Paperspace VM on the iPad for coding (I'm also a wannabe developer).

Only fly in the ointment is that it's not available in Europe, and I'm worried about latency over a 4g connection.

<comment><USER4> For $25/month, just rent a dedicated server in Europe (or even just put in your basement if your network connection is sufficiently sized). RDP with HyperV has everything you need for that sort of usage (RemoteFX).

For coding, you don't even need a GPU. Just use RDP. Big companies use this all the time (thin clients + central server farm, also called VDI).

<comment><USER3> I tend to prefer Linux on the server, and I've tried the iPad + tmux + vim route on a remote server and the experience hasn't been great. It's usually latency problems that trip me up. I travel a lot and rely on tethering to my phone's 4g connection, which mostly works but can be quite frustrating.

<comment><USER5> Living permanently on 4G I couldn't get by without mosh. I have managed to do weeks of work with most+tmux+vim at times when ssh was too painful to use.

<comment><USER6> On mosh's note. It's great experience for slow connection. Totally agree. There is new ios client recently released client with mosh support build-in [1]. Happy user

[1] [http://www.blink.sh/](http://www.blink.sh/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Google Cloud GPUs give you the flexibility to mix and match infrastructure. > You'll be able to attach up to 8 GPU dies to any non-shared-core machine...

Wow, that's impressive. One thing I've loved about GCE has been the custom sizing. This takes it even further, so we don't have to buy what we don't need.

Looking forward to seeing the pricing on this. Looks like they're going to heavily compete with AWS on this stuff.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I foresee a lot of 8 vCPUs VMs with 8 giant GPU dies attached to them. And that's just fine by us!

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (and want to sell you some GPUs!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the HUGE advanatages of GCE/AWS is that they will gobble up 100% of the unused resources for their own computation. Nothing is wasted, and the machines basically pay for themselves.

Compare this was something like oracle, which simply can't consume the unused resources in order to discount the hardware effectively. They can't beat GCE/AWS at the cloud game until this changes.

<comment><USER10> I'm curious to know what workloads you think Google is running on the same hardware that cloud customers are using.

<comment><USER11> What an odd question. Seems like training a new voice recognition model, or image classifier, or any of a zillion other research projects google is working on would be perfect for _any_ unused capacity.

I've never worked at google. Do they just let each team go with their own crazy hardware setup? Or maybe two separate systems, one internal and one external? That seems a little wasteful (they have the money, so whatever).

But wouldn't programming against a big unified api be a bit more, well, sane? I can see really sensitive stuff locked away on its own hardware, but the search front end? why not serve some JS or provide chrome downloads from a giant pool of common hardware?

Things grow organically, and they might be technically locked into a specific layout right now, that's totally understandable. But, unused capacity is just capital depreciating steadily away with no gain. Soaking up every spare cycle doing something useful should probably be somewhere in the company goals.

<comment><USER10> Like I said, I'm just curious. Google has so much capacity that I'm not sure it would be important for their bottom line to move it between Google and customer workloads in quanta smaller than one physical machine. Your theory also requires Google to have a substantial standby workload that is currently not scheduled, doesn't it?

<comment><USER11> In my very limited experience, trying to answer research questions can soak up all the computation you can throw at it. Consider something like the traveling salesman problem. The only answer is to check every path. There are heuristics to get good answers, but you never know if they're optimal.

You can get an answer on your laptop in an hour. You'll probably get a better answer throwing 1000 hours at your algorithm though, and a better answer throwing 10000 hours.

You can do a lot of neat things if p=np. Since no one knows if that's true, we're stuck with bad big O. More computer time is the only way out right now.

The point is, I'd be disappointed in google researchers if they didn't have a huge amount of unscheduled workload.

<comment><USER12> There are some questions though where the saved energy from not running the batch jobs is worth more than the answer (e.g. searching for the next prime).

<comment><USER13> We (google) ran numerous theory problems on Google's computing platform via the Exacycle program. Peter Norvig convinced me this was a bad idea, but mainly to say that time was better spent on disproving the conjecture using pure math, not search. [http://norvig.com/beal.html](http://norvig.com/beal.html)

"But Witold Jarnicki and David Konerding already did that: they wrote a C++ program that built a table of Cz(modp)Cz(modp) up to 5000500050005000 , and, in parallel across thousands of machines, searched for A,BA,B up to 200,000 and x,yx,y up to 5,000, but found no counterexamples. On a smaller scale, Edwin P. Berlin Jr. searched all CzCz up to 10171017 and also found nothing. So I don't think it is worthwhile to continue on that path."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Kudos for Google and happy to see that at least in principle AMD is still an option.

I wonder what kind of device driver does GCE use with AMD, the new ROCm?

What about Power8 + NVLink harware? Does anybody know if the current NVIDIA GPUs, in particular the P100s are all on x86?

<comment><USER8> I'll just answer your driver question: you bring whatever you want. Our VMs just boot off of bytes you have stored in your image (which is in turn just stored on GCS). If those bytes happen to be Debian 8 with some AMD driver that supports the 9300, awesome ;).

We will be working with both vendors to make sure we highlight which drivers work most reliably on our stack though (virtualization + GPUs is way too rare!). We want to work closely with both vendors to do the qualification, so you at least know what is known good.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

<comment><USER15> When is Kubernetes support going to be added? Right now it has it only in a very basic form for NVIDIA GPUs.

<comment><USER16> There is a PR[1] to extend the current alpha GPU implentation. Hopefully it will get merged soon.

[1] - [https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/28216](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/28216)

<comment><USER15> That's still NVIDIA-only, plus you can't even tell a P100 from a K80 for scheduling purposes.

<comment><USER8> I'd just use a separate NodePool and match your jobs using a selector as appropriate.

<comment><USER15> So, is gci going to come with the right drivers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very very happy to finally see AMD GPUs in cloud.

<comment><USER18> I love to root for an underdog. But I've been pulling for AMD for years and they just can't get their linux support to the same level of NVIDIA's. I speculate that they have undiagnosed design errors in their driver.

<comment><USER17> You should check out ROCm

[http://hothardware.com/news/amd-rocm-13-adds-support-for- pol...](http://hothardware.com/news/amd-rocm-13-adds-support-for-polaris-and- opencl)

They are revamping their entire linux stack for HPC, heterogenous compute.

<comment><USER18> Fool me several times, shame on me.... ;) Really -- ever since the ATI acquisition I thought AMD could make it happen. And it's true that they have come a long way since then.

"New Linux Driver and Runtime Stack optimized for HPC & Ultra-scale class computing" sounds great, let's hope this time they can do it.

<comment><USER17> :) I've only been deeply involved with compute for the past two years, so I am still an optimist. I think AMD pretty much has no choice but to get it right this time: they need server and HPC dough to stay afloat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This amazing!!! First cloud provider to have P100! Amazing opportunities ahead with compute power like that.

<comment><USER19> What about this[1]?

"GPU-Accelerated Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit Now Available in the Cloud on Microsoft Azure and On-Premises with NVIDIA DGX-1"

DGX-1 is powered by 8 x P100

[1][http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-and-microsoft- accel...](http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-and-microsoft-accelerate- ai-together)

<comment><USER20> AFAIK the DGX-1 is for running on premise, not on the cloud

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's the assurance like regarding security against other concurrent users on the same hardware? Historically multitenancy with GPUs has been quite iffy and not much security research around, even if there theoretically are IOMMU's.

<comment><USER8> We care a lot about security, that's part of the motivation for passthrough instead of any of the "split up a GPU". So as I quoted above from our post:

> GPUs are offered in passthrough mode to provide bare metal performance. Up > to 8 GPU dies can be attached per VM instance including custom machine > types.

So when your VM boots up, the GPUs you attach will not be shared with others. I agree that the state of GPU virtualization is not yet where it needs to be to make me _personally_ comfortable enough.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (and worked on this a little).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Now it would be great if kubernetes on GKE would work nicely with GPUs. It's still in the works: [https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/docs/pr...](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/docs/proposals/gpu- support.md) .

</comment><comment><USER23> Awesome news! The Tesla P100 is a monster, this will push ML development to new heights.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is there any public access to the TPUs?

<comment><USER25> If you use the cloud ml service.

<comment><USER26> Really? I was under the impression they just use standard compute instances to power Cloud ML?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This happened some months ago ... how does it compare? Anyone in the know can pitch in on a short comparison?

[https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2016/09/introduci...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2016/09/introducing-amazon-ec2-p2-instances-the-largest-gpu-powered- virtual-machine-in-the-cloud/)

<comment><USER28> Amazon: up to 16 K80s and ~700 GB of RAM

Google: up to 8 K80s and ~200 GB of RAM but much more flexible

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There are a lot of excited posts here about this announcement! For someone that doesn't use GPU's in everyday life, can someone explain why this is great and maybe touch on the current landscape around GPU usage and the cost landscape?

<comment><USER14> The excitement comes from the fact that some workloads benefit greatly from GPUs -- mostly those where the GPU arch offers some niche-advantage that can give GPUs >=10x perf[/W]. A good example is deep learning where Intel is struggling to compete [1], and even in linear algebra there is a 4-5x power efficiency difference [2, slide 6].

At the same time, in many other complex applications the performance/W/$ advantage has not been all that clear, especially since GPUs have been quite behind in process technology. A good example is a simulation code I work on where a 2-4x speedup from GPUs, which (due to inherent overhead of using accelerators) gradually vanishes in strong scaling, means that when price is considered, only cheap consumer cards can imrpove the performance/buck metric significantly (that's time-to-solution/buck in our case), professional cards don't offer significant significant improvements other than performance density [3, figures 6,7].

There are plenty more examples that NVIDIA collects [4], but always take the claims with a grain of salt, especially the ones with "incredible" >10x speedup claims :)

Last, I'd note that with the recent 14-16nm jump, the gap between the traditional CPUs and the simpler accelerator architectures has increased (I've just seen MAGMA BLAS on Tesla P100 results which show >10x GFlops/W, more than double that of the previous arch) and I expect it to keep increasing partly due to the manufacturing/process technology gap shrinking between Intel and the rest and partly due to architecture and programmability improvements of accelerators.

[1] [https://www.nvidia.com/object/gpu-accelerated- applications-t...](https://www.nvidia.com/object/gpu-accelerated-applications- tensorflow-benchmarks.html) [2] [http://on- demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2015/presentation/S5476...](http://on- demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2015/presentation/S5476-Stanimire-Tomov.pdf) [3] [https://www.academia.edu/13753737/Best_bang_for_your_buck_GP...](https://www.academia.edu/13753737/Best_bang_for_your_buck_GPU_nodes_for_GROMACS_biomolecular_simulations) [4] [https://www.nvidia.com/object/gpu- applications.html](https://www.nvidia.com/object/gpu-applications.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is it possible to have a non-shared machine? Is it virtualized anyway?

<comment><USER8> Even if we had a "You get this box all for you", we'd still run our hypervisor on it. We wouldn't give someone a raw, unfettered machine in our datacenter (and I hope you wouldn't either!).

What is your concern with virtualization in this context?

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (and for a long time specifically Compute Engine).

<comment><USER31> > We wouldn't give someone a raw, unfettered machine in our datacenter (and I > hope you wouldn't either!).

I think you're alluding to security issues with renting bare metal hardware to potentially untrusted customers, right? I've often wondered about the security implications of that - think backdooring BIOS/UEFI or other component firmware. But there are many large providers that rent dedicated hardware without a hypervisor. Are they just ignoring these concerns, hoping that this kind of tampering would be rare anyway?

> What is your concern with virtualization in this context?

I'm not the parent poster, but performance was probably the concern. There's still some (marginal, these days) overhead with virtualization in general, and VT-d specifically.

<comment><USER8> From our perspective: yes, we don't feel comfortable letting untrusted users run side by side without a sandbox.

In _this_ context though of GPU compute, you are just talking sporadically to a PCIe attached device directly. There isn't any virtualization or sharing of the device. And yes, I assumed that the complaint would be performance, but especially with just a pass through GPU, it's going to be honestly funny to find the right "oh wow this is 20% slower because _virtualization_ specifically".

<comment><USER31> > From our perspective: yes, we don't feel comfortable letting untrusted users > run side by side without a sandbox.

That's what I figured. I still wonder what other large providers (SoftLayer, OVH, etc.) do about this. Unfortunately, I suspect the answer is "nothing, we just hope/assume nothing will happen."

> In this context though of GPU compute, you are just talking sporadically to > a PCIe attached device directly.

I know; I'm familiar with passthrough. It's not completely "free," but the overhead is very minor. I don't think anyone will be able to complain with a straight face about its performance. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone know what the cost will be for these? AWS is quite high for the K80.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nvidia got a massive bump in share price. I was quite sad because I sold all my shares after election downfall. I think this announcement might have caused the huge peak. Could have made 10% in one day.

<comment><USER34> They announced very good results for the quarter, i think that was the reason for this spike. Their datacenter/compute revenue grew by >150%

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Great news!

</comment><comment><USER19> Similiar: [http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-and-microsoft- accel...](http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-and-microsoft-accelerate- ai-together)

</comment><comment><USER36> Mine ALL the bitcoins

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder what kinds of cores will be available and whether that will be visible. Optimizing your code for a particular GPU architecture can have massive performance differences, much more so than for GPUs.

<comment><USER8> 9300x2s, K80s and P100s.

From the post:

> Google Cloud will offer AMD FirePro S9300 x2 that supports powerful, GPU- > based remote workstations. We'll also offer NVIDIA® Tesla® P100 and K80 GPUs > for deep learning, AI and HPC applications that require powerful computation > and analysis. GPUs are offered in passthrough mode to provide bare metal > performance. Up to 8 GPU dies can be attached per VM instance including > custom machine types.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud and pitched in on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Am I the only one annoyed that their "announcement" talks about something that _will_ happen in the future?

What kind of asshole move is this? Why not just say "here, you can use it now, good luck".

<comment><USER15> Presumably you can contact them and ask for early access.

<comment><USER8> Yes, that's the goal of the survey:

> Tell us about your GPU computing requirements and sign up to be notified > about GPU-related announcements using this survey. Additional information is > available on our webpage.

Survey: [https://goo.gl/mgEI9X](https://goo.gl/mgEI9X) Landing Page: [https://cloud.google.com/gpu/](https://cloud.google.com/gpu/) (which also links to the survey and indicates as you rightly presumed, that if you fill it in, we'll add you to our waitlist)

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows Batch Script Command Injection - <AUTHOR> http://thesecurityfactory.be/command-injection-windows.html

<comment><USER2> So this places batch in the same situation as bash, but for some reason the internet is not losing its mind and claiming that the world will end.

<comment><AUTHOR> The flaw is in the same vein but not as widely exposed to exploitation. It requires human intervention of sorts to browse to an insecure script. Most interesting detail is that Microsoft is sticking by their design and recommending scripts be altered by the authors. This trick will hang around for a while.</comment></comment>


Landlords demand rent on flooded Houston homes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/04/hurricane-harvey-landlords-demand-rent-for-flooded-homes <comment><USER2> IMO, any landlord who demands rent on properties that are not suitable for human habitation should be locked up and have the key thrown away.

Then all their assets should be seized under RICO.

If they won't fix it up so that humans can safely live there, then they can't be allowed to charge rents on it.

But maybe that's just me.

<comment><USER3> That is ridiculous. A lot of us are middle class people who have rented our house and we have to pay mortgage. It makes perfect sense to demand rent for the month.

This "lock the people up I dont agree with" is called fascist attitude.

<comment><USER4> The other dude is crazy because no reasonable person would call for jail time in such a case. However, I also do not support a landlord asking for rent in a place that isn't fit for human habitation. A good contract, in my opinion, would stipulate that the landlord loses the rent on a pro rated basis till they fix the place up. I sympathize with their mortgage obligations, but I'm sure that's an added incentive to get the place in shape quickly.

<comment><USER5> > A good contract, in my opinion, would stipulate that the landlord loses the > rent on a pro rated basis till they fix the place up.

So something like:

> ...if a rental premises is "totally unusable" due to an external disaster > then either the landlord or tenant can terminate the lease through written > notice. But if the property is "partially unusable" because of a disaster, a > tenant may only get a reduction in rent determined by a county or district > court.

...? Because that's the current situation under the Texas property code according to the article.

Where it will get tricky is the legal distinctions of what usable means in this context. An apartment that is fine but has no working plumbing or power? A house that's fine except for the floors and carpets? Are the tenants storing things there? Can the property owner exercise their ownership rights by having parties or renting the place to the red cross or by kicking off a renovation?

These issues impact both sides of the agreement... Paying money secures rights for tenants/leasers. For every sad story about someone who can't pay their rent right now I bet we could put together bad legislation to make a hundred sad stories about people who lost their rentals and property because of market conditions favored them being kicked out during a flooding episode.

<comment><USER6> Renter's insurance (which can be mandated by landlord, and in some states, is required outright), solves a majority of these posed problems.

<comment><USER5> Renters insurance continues the payments on the property, maintaining their legal claims in the event of disasters, which was the suggestion I was responding to: that renters not have to pay _anything_ in situations like this.

Floods and other natural disasters tend to sneak past most common insurance coverage...

Regardless, the underlying demands for payment, and to what extent, as posited by OP and detailed by the local laws, are not addressed by insurance alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Couldn't the tenants sue for breach of contract (i.e. failure to provide habitable accommodation)?

<comment><USER8> Yup. Did this when my heat didnt get fixed for a month one winter. Was an easy case. Got a city inspector to come out and write it up first, but that might be harder in the case of floods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are Texas courts that landlord friendly that they are able to evict people this fast? It's the 4th, so assuming the rent is due on the first, that seems pretty nuts. Or are landlords illegally evicting people and I missed that part of the article?

<comment><USER10> Eviction notices can't be sent out before 30 days of being late which means, before the hurricane, the eviction process was already in process. I can't speak for the first story, but the second wasn't well researched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The 2008 financial crisis was sort of the beginning of -- or acceleration of -- a shift in home ownership from individuals to larger institutions who bought up distressed properties and put them on the housing market.

As this unfolds, I would be interested to see analysis of how rental property ownership breaks down in the affected area.

And to the extent it is large property and financial institutions that are impacted, my sympathy is going to be rather low.

They took advantage of the economic crisis -- one the big banks engendered -- to profit off of financially distressed mortgage holders. Now, they find themselves in a situation where they feel squeezed due to their own distress, in this case caused by a natural weather event -- and a lot of poor planning with manifold causes, of some of which they are probably complicit (holding their immediate, short-term expenses down).

As for "smaller" landlords, they have bills to pay, too -- to such large institutions. This is where "the government" steps in and sets rules -- or at least guidelines -- for how to proceed, what is and isn't permissible, and what grace periods and conditions should apply -- including terms and compensatory actions that allow the large institutions to manage, albeit perhaps with a manageable "haircut" of sorts. So that landlords are caught in the middle of a financial squeeze, themselves.

But yeah, insisting a renter cough up rent for a property they cannot use as the result of an "act of god"? Well, you have to ask yourself: Just whom should that "act" affect?

</comment><comment><USER12> Given the landlords are contracted to provide accommodation they ought in fact to be obliged to arrange a suitable alternative at their own cost for the duration of the notice period or until the original is made fit.</comment>


Things I wish I knew before I started making websites - <AUTHOR> http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/things-i-wish-i-knew-before-i-started-making-websites

<comment><USER2> > Programming is also a skill, but it's not at all intuitive or tangible. > Without guided learning, it's impossible to even get started.

I have to disagree. Especially with web programming, it's surprisingly easy to get started. I know plenty of people who started out by just copying and pasting bits of html they found through 'view source'. Even when I had a basic grasp of html (through the "guided" learning of a 5-page tutorial), my first javascript was trying to change a counter on a snippet I'd copied from somewhere else on the web.

I realize that "you need a mentor" is a profitable piece of advice for a site that sells web development tutoring, but it's blatantly incorrect.

<comment><USER3> The followup question, of course, is: how did those people discover 'view source'?

<comment><USER2> How did any of us discover it? Presumably they saw an interesting button and clicked on it. That's how I first discovered that pages had source like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Programming is also a skill, but it's not at all intuitive or tangible. > Without guided learning, it's impossible to even get started.

That's total b.s. I taught myself programming in middle school by reading books.

<comment><USER5> I think he would consider books as "guided learning."

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. Programming is not intuitive, so you need something (like books) to help you. I suppose you could learn by pure trial and error, but that's really only helpful after you've picked up a lot of the basic syntax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I learnt to program by typing ? at a BBC BASIC prompt. Later on I found some manuals and after that magazines started appearing. Intuition is just experiences you haven't thought through yet. Not that I'm recommending this approach, it takes an unnecessary amount of time to build sufficient experience by trial and error.</comment>


Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/08/facebook-finds-a-new-way-to-liberate-your-gmail-contact-data/

<comment><USER2> Some points that are getting lost in the discussion below. I work at Facebook.

1\. Facebook lets you export your data. It has been possible to do so ever since the graph API debuted in April '10. Since the market wasn't filling the gap, we even built a "download your information" product (<https://register.facebook.com/editaccount.php> -> Download Your Information). It gives you a zip file with all your contact info, photos, video, status updates, wall posts, etc. If somebody would like to write an importer for Diaspora, or Google Me, or even a non-vaporware competitor, they are well within Facebook's ToS, imho.

2\. Facebook allows other sites programmatic access to the social graph. Yes, the supposed "crown jewels." That's exactly what Facebook Connect is for. You can see it in the wild on Pandora, Netflix, Yelp, Quora, and literally millions of other websites that are already doing what Google claims it wants to do: identify your Facebook friends.

3\. Most importantly, what Google is insisting on is completely insane.

The ability to _export my friends' email_ sounds good, but as with so many social product ideas (e.g., themed backgrounds for profiles), it stops sounding so good when you realize everybody has the same power. Think of it instead as: all of your Facebook friends can export your email to anybody who writes a Facebook app. Those spam quizzes? Every farm simulation knock-off flash game? The day Facebook does this, every Facebook user will wake up with their inbox crammed solid with spam from random Facebook applications that they do not even use.

What Google has not explained is why they need _friends' email addresses_ , per se. Why couldn't whatever message they want to transmit be transmitted via Facebook messages, or wall posts, which send email notifications to almost all users anyway, and are already available via third-party APIs? This entire "not open enough!" straw man is a set of moving goalposts that Google will use to justify whatever competitive maneuvering they find convenient.

 _Facebook is in the right here,_ people. The product decision Google is asking Facebook to take would be a disaster for Facebook users. Meanwhile, the lever Google is using to attack Facebook comes entirely at the expense of GMail's users, who before this episode were voting with their feet by the millions to import their contact data to Facebook, and no longer have that option. Google is making its users' lives worse, in an attempt to make Facebook make _its_ users lives worse.

<comment><USER3> If you agree it's wrong to allow a friend to export my e-mail address, why should Google allow it either? It seems like Facebook wants to have its cake and eat it too.

<comment><USER2> They are _different services_. Facebook is a third-party platform in a way that GMail has never been. If _your_ email address becomes _your friends'_ Facebook data, your email address will be distributed to many companies that you have no direct relationship with. Who knows what those companies will choose to do with it; we choose not to find out.

GMail simply does not have this problem: there are essentially no "GMail apps", and users realize that their email addresses are exposed to their contacts when they use the service. There are no fly-by-night "GMail games" that will sell anything they can get their hands on to RapLeaf. This has its ups and downs, but one of its consequences is that "transitive trust" must have its limits.

<comment><USER4> Isn't there a distinction between letting a single user export the emails of his/her friends and having an API method for this?

<comment><USER2> Google is specifically demanding an _API_ , and further making demands about performance, uptime, availability, etc. of the API. They're being perfectly clear that exporting the emails to .csv file that then gets uploaded is unacceptable.

And again, it's their service, and their servers, and I'm libertarian enough to say that they should be free to do what they want with them. However, I'm also free to question their "Love is Hate, War is Peace, Closed is Open" syllogism with respect to Facebook, and I find it preposterous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> or "facebook won't let you liberate your facebook data to alternate providers".

i don't understand why people tolerate facebook. they don't seem deserving of the trust people give them. first opt-in/opt-out privacy issues, now this... plus it doesn't seem like they're really trying to make money yet. i suppose this is what the initial "exclusivity" of the facebook brand got them: loyalty without needing trust.

<comment> wh-uws Most non-technical average users (read: the majority of their users ) just don't really understand / care about the privacy issues.

They just love the experience they can find at and pretty much only at the facebook site.

The tech press and media make an initial fuss about all of it but by the time they figure out a way to bring it down to a level the masses can understand facebook has put a notification on the top of the News Feed to explain.

I'm not agreeing with the practices merely attempting to explain why in the minds of the lion share of facebook users mind it just does not matter

<comment><USER6> _Most users...don't really understand / care about the privacy issues_

You are completely and utterly wrong.

I was surprised too, but check out the slides that were posted by the Google UX guy the other day showing their research.

[http://www.slideshare.net/padday/bridging-the-gap-between- ou...](http://www.slideshare.net/padday/bridging-the-gap-between-our-online- and-offline-social-network)

Users are circumventing Facebook to protect their privacy, using email and self-censoring (this is further along in the presentation). There is also anecdotal evidence presented at the beginning of when they are presented with the not-so obvious consequence of general sharing they are actually quite horrified.

<comment><USER7> urm, that slidedeck is from google employee, so fairly obviously bias plus the "proof" it provides is one slide with an anecdotal quote.

I cant provide any stronger proof aside from their 500+ million users, but anecdotally, outside this hacker news / techcrunch esque commmunity, nobody cares about the facebook privacy issues. At the very least its in question enough to not be "completely and utterly wrong"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What really upsets me about Facebook is I refuse to start an account there but they already know everything about me because they tricked all my AOL/gmail- using friends into giving them full access to their contact lists.

So I constantly get spam from Facebook personalized with my name, location and list of friends, based on all the stupid data they have sucked up. It's borderline stalking.

<comment><USER9> Joining and locking down the account by disabling all the notifications would make them stop spamming you. Dunno what's more important to you, getting rid of the spam, or the principle of not having an account there?

<comment><USER8> Wait, cave-in to their bullying that I join their nonsense is a solution? Was that a joke?

How about a class action lawsuit for unsolicited spam and data scrapping?

Much longer to wait for results but much more satisfying.

<comment><USER10> Sounds to me like the "spam" you are complaining about is a communications service for your friends. No lawsuit there, unless every email you get from your friends but didn't ask for is also considered spam.

Would an invite to gmail by a friend be considered spam?

Nor is this "data scrapping[sic]" you mention anything of the sort if your friends deliberately requested, or passively acquiesced, to Facebook reading their address books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Uh, exporting your address book from Google and uploading it to Facebook is perfectly within any user's rights - it's a textbook example of data liberation. Now if only I could export my facebook pictures and easily import them into Picasa, or sync my facebook wall with my Buzz stream...

<comment><USER12> Your photos are easily accessible using the Graph API[1]. I wrote a python script which downloads all your photos and saves them to your computer[2]. However, I agree that Facebook doesn't make it easy for other web services to access stored data.

[1]: <http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/photo>

[2]: <https://github.com/derferman/scrapebook>

<comment><USER13> genuine question (this sounds a little smarmy but I know nothing about Graph API or web dev at all really): How is it not easy for other web services to access this stored data when a random guy can easily throw a script on GitHub to do it?

<comment><USER11> Not sure if this is the right answer, but a guess: it's easy for other web services to access this stored data if the user provides them with their Facebook login and password, which no self-respecting service would ever ask for. Even if Google did at one point get users to give up their facebook credentials, the API's they access will probably block IP's that try to access multiple users' data in a short amount of time.

The best solution, IMO, is to use the browser as a platform: a Chrome extension can allow users to seamlessly sync data between services, because Chrome already has access both to your Facebook account and your Picasa account.

<comment><USER14> With the Facebook API, the user doesn't have to provide any third party his credentials to allow the third party to access his data. Facebook uses OAuth to securely pass an access token to the third party while protecting the user's credentials. See <http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/> for more info.

(I work on the Facebook platform.)

<comment><USER11> Ah, but if I remember correctly, the terms of that OAuth usage explicitly state that while data may be _accessed_ and _used_ , it can't be stored indefinitely (with good reason, sometimes I don't want some app toy to indefinitely store all the information I trust Facebook with). So if a third party uses that API as an export mechanism, their API access should be (rightfully) shut down.

BUT - what if I actually want to export all of my photos into SomeApp.com, and I want to give SomeApp the right to store my photos indefinitely? Is there an API they can use to pull it from Facebook directly?

<comment><USER14> It used to be the case that apps could only store your data for 24 hours, but we removed this restriction in the last f8 conference.

You can definitely export all your photos into SomeApp.com using the graph API and they can store your photos indefinitely. These APIs are documented at <http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api>.

<comment><USER11> Oh, cool! Big misconception on my part, thanks for clearing it up :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google could easily fix this w/o impacting other services: block Facebook's referrer. And then present them with an opt-in page for Google.me... BOOM! Instant win? High five.

<comment><USER16> You do know the referer header is optional don't you, I mean, you'd look pretty dumb relying on it for _any_ web service because, you know, some crazy people turn them off altogether, perhaps with the Firefox add-on RefControl.

<comment><USER17> You're missing the point. It's not about disallowing importing the address book from Gmail to Facebook, it's about making it more difficult in order to force Facebook to offer reciprocity.

You will always be able to export the CSV version of your Gmail address book yourself and feed it wherever you like. It's just slightly less convenient and the experience is not so smooth anymore.

<comment><USER15> I'm so glad someone understands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Google should just get in contact with Hacker News - they are great at preventing their precious data from getting out. I've never seen a big data set go up on bit torrent and have all traces vanish so rapidly!

</comment><comment><USER19> I would never give my gmail password to any third party proxy. So this is how I imported my gmail email addresses to facebook a few years ago in the first place. I took the export from Gmail in CSV format, cleaned out anything but email addresses, and fed them in Facebook.

<comment><USER20> google contacts supports oauth so you don't have to provide your password. I'm not sure whether facebook uses this support though

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Google added private API to Android to make contact data imported through Facebook sync adapter in-accessible/invisible to other applications!

Maybe Google should respond by removing that restriction.

This API was implemented specially for Facebook and only used by them.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wonder if there will be statistics released on how many google users export data using this method. That would signal an interesting trend. Of course anything coming from Facebook HQ would have to taken with a pinch of salt.

</comment><comment><USER23> Facebook 'Liberating' you gmail contact data?

Sounds like Nazis 'liberating' France in WW2.

<comment><USER24> I don't think the Nazis ever claimed to be liberating France. It was actually the Brits who wanted to "liberate" France but General de Gaulle kind of interfered with that by talking on the radio. But I know what you mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> and by liberate they mean spam.

</comment><comment><USER26> Kinda off topic but does anybody know the status of ''Google Me''?

</comment><comment><USER26> The ball's in your court google</comment>


Where Did VCs Go Wrong In Online Video? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/12/online-video-vcs-wrong/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> The author seems to contradict himself, first stating that Michael Eisner was an investor in Joost, and then going on to tell us that the problem is that media VC's don't exist because all the outstanding media CEO's don't invest in startups. If anybody personifies a media CEO it's Michael Eisner.</comment>


Vatican: "Open source is 'only reliable way' to preserve human history" - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2407221/open-source-is-only-reliable-way-to-preserve-human-history-argues-vatican

<comment><USER2> Hey, easy. We don't come over there and tell you guys how much to charge for indulgences.

<comment><USER3> Sure we do. They're called "carbon credits".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this about that for a second:

the _Vatican_ , at _Las Vegas_ , talking about _Open Source_</comment>


Show HN: Venture News – 24 hours of trending links from VCs on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturenews.co

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! My friend Leslie and I created Venture News to easily keep up-to-date with the buzz in the VC community. It is great for people who are interested in VC/startups but don't use Twitter, follow all the VCs on Twitter, or have time to keep up with their timeline.

Since a good fraction of y'all keeps up w/ VC and startup news, it'd be helpful to hear your thoughts and suggestions!

<comment><USER2> Fist bump.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How did you guys make this? Can you guys upload it on github?

<comment><USER2> Hi wilshiredetroit, it's currently built in Python with Flask, custom front- end :)

<comment><USER4> No plans on making it open source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, not in the near future.

If you look into the Twitter API and have some experience fetching and parsing websites, it isn't too bad. If you don't, its a fun learning experience :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Find your next cashflowing real estate investment property - <AUTHOR> https://www.onepercentrentals.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> One-Percent Rentals is a screening tool for identifying single-family investment properties that meet the 1% Rule (a common rule of thumb in real estate investing).

Thank you in advance for your feedback!

Jon</comment>


Slides 4.0 – Create Websites and Landing Pages in Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://dsm.am/slides4 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, Hacker News.

I'm a creator and developer of Slides Framework. We released our new version and even got a #1 Site of the Day on ProductHunt yesterday: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/slides-4](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/slides-4)

The new version contains a lot of changes, that makes it even easier to create an impressive page for your landing page.

Let me know if you have any questions!</comment>


Ask HN: Is blockchain useful outside Currency?Is decentralized validation used? - <AUTHOR> (I'm looking for ideas, not shilling coins)
I am very skeptical of blockchain as a revolutionary technology.
Isnt the entire purpose validation of data?
To me, for social media, Facebook isnt going to lie about my July 4th vacation pictures. I can trust Facebook with this data. If they screw up, I can leave facebook.
So where do we need decentralized Validation?
Currency, Voting, Timestamps.
I dont think Logistics is worth the extra price and is untrustworthy due to the garbage in garbage out problem.
dApps are are extremely rigid, and if they arent, the decentralized verification means nothing. Smart Contracts are not smart and are only useful for niche scenarios that are also very rigid.
Services, Products, and Leadership is still needed, blockchain ONLY decentralizes the validation.
I understand Bitcoin is valued around the world because the currency/rare number is validated and trusted. This is a real use of blockchain where people do pay extra for having 7 'Notaries'.
I'd like to hear from other programmers if I am wrong about my understanding of blockchain. Will blockchain allow any sort of revolution to happen? Or is it an expensive way to write to a database?
(Goal is to communicate ideas an learn, if you have a coin that solves a problem, I'm all ears.) <comment><USER2> > Isnt the entire purpose validation of data?

No. Digital signatures are for validating the data (who said what). The whole purpose of blockchain is to tell who said what _when_. Document timestamping, in other words. There were previous attempts at solving this problem, though they needed a trusted third party.

> Services, Products, and Leadership is still needed, blockchain ONLY > decentralizes the validation.

No, it does not decentralize validation. It decentralizes assigning timestamps to documents.

> Will blockchain allow any sort of revolution to happen?

Doubtful, given the previous timestamping protocols haven't brought about any revolution.

> Or is it an expensive way to write to a database?

If you try to use it as a database, of course it will be expensive and unwieldy. Blockchain is a service not designed to work as a database. It was a document timestamping service from the day 1.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man.

This is basically been my understanding for a while.

Glad I'm 90% BTC and didnt fall for alt coin mania.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Logistics is the low hanging fruit that absolutely makes sense to use a blockchain for. You have multiple agencies and actors that don't need to trust each other... just send their data to the distributed database.

If you have tainted spinach, you can track where it was introduced into the supply chain and figure out very quickly the source of the issue.

When you have pharmaceutical returns, you can validate the source of the manufacturing and validate the returned product can be resold.

<comment><AUTHOR> My turn to be a skeptic, looking for a response :)

We already have barcodes to track the source, this is already done outside blockchain.

Maybe its more immediate after a problem happens, but what is the cost to:

>Blockchain soil ph

>Blockchain fertilizer

>Blockchain water schedule

>Blockchain that workers washed their hands

>Blockchain the weight of the product

>Blockchain the date picked, shipped, etc........

If you do every step along the way, the cost becomes enormous. I cant imagine the size of the hash either.

Not to mention the extreme problem of garbage in garbage out. Sure you have an expensive thermometer that writes to a blockchain, but what about when its time to weigh it? What if someone accidentally sweat and that drip added 1g to the weight of something that needs precision.

Then the entire chain becomes unreliable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about some kind of distributed database you share with your friends, say to keep track who has borrowed books or equipment from each other?

<comment><USER5> How is blockchain beneficial there? This problem seems well-solved with traditional databases with ACLs.

The only benefit of Byzantine fault tolerance would be if you don't trust your friends.

P2P lending (none of the lenders/borrowers know each other) is a better candidate because there is no central authority and actors can't be trusted.

<comment><AUTHOR> Remember that if your friend claims they returned the book, the blockchain accepts it even if your friend never got it.

<comment><USER5> If I understand your meaning, I think that's a problem with any kind of software tracking real-world transactions, not something limited to blockchain.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is blockchain provide no additional value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Git is decentralized append-only tamper-resistant ledger aka "blockchain".

<comment><USER5> I think append-only ledgers and specifically BFT distributed ledgers have obvious uses.

The question is whether you can call them blockchains (I'd argue that you can't) and whether the added traits of a blockchain have any additional benefit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you speak to the 'obvious' uses? They are not obvious to me unfortunately.

<comment><USER5> Append-only ledgers have been used for a while and pre-date the concept of blockchain. Some accounting systems use them. Other examples are IPFS (which uses Bitcoin technology but technically doesn't need to), Internet Archive, some types of event logs, some message queues, chain-of-custody applications, and some P2P marketplaces.

As for Byzantine fault tolerance, it's a bit more of a niche. The most famous examples I know of are extremely high-risk situations, like aircraft software. I don't fully understand how it's used there, but to my knowledge, it prevents "bad" signals (from malfunctioning sensors, cosmic rays, etc.) from corrupting the rest of the data that controls the hardware.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


US sues Apple and publishers over e-book prices - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17681137 <comment><USER3> I for one applaud this effort and always viewed the agency model as anticompetitive, anticonsumer and arguably outright price fixing.

Ebooks have essentially zero printing and distribution costs and, from the publisher's point of view, can't be resold like paper books can. For both of these reasons they should be cheaper. On this point, Jeff Atwood actually makes sense [1].

I know the spiel about pricing having nothing to do with the cost of production, blah blah blah. I don't care. The present situation is stupid and ultimately shortsighted. Only Amazon seems to be interested in creating an ebook market rather than just gouging consumers.

[1]: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/books-bits-vs- atoms...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/books-bits-vs-atoms.html)

<comment><USER4> I am at a loss to understand how the "agency" model is anti-competitive or price-fixing.

I am hoping someone can just explain it rather than saying that it simply "is."

The agency model is what keeps the price of apps on the app store low. Developers (agents) can charge whatever they want, but clearly that doesn't equate to automatic sales at whatever price. It is in fact a very competitive market.

Nothing about the agency model, as I see it, in the example of the App Store has even a hint of being anti-competitive.

How is this different for books? I just don't see it. But I am open to explanations.

If anything is anti-competitive, it is selling at a loss so that nobody else can enter the market. That is what Amazon was doing.

Price fixing requires collusion between the producers to all sell at the same price point. It's certainly possible this is going on with the big publishers in Apple's store, but that doesn't require Apple's participation in the collusion. It doesn't exonerate Apple either, it's orthogonal.

In the wholesale model that traditional booksellers and Amazon use, it's still possible for publishers to price fix. It's possible for book sellers to price fix.

It seems to me that Agency vs Wholesale doesn't really have much to do with the concept for price fixing.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER5> This link makes some sense of it: [http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2012/03/why-dojs- potential-l...](http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2012/03/why-dojs-potential- lawsuit-over-agency.html)

It isn't the agency model that is the problem, it is how the Apple et al. coerced/enabled the publishers to price-fix and then allowed/enabled the publishers to impose that price fixing on Amazon. I still don't exactly understand why Apple and Google are being sued and not the publishers.

[edit] It is Apple and five publishers according to the WSJ: "Three of the publishers have agreed to settle, according to court documents. Those are Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins Publishers Inc. Under the settlement, those publishers will terminate any agreement they have with Apple regarding electronic books." [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230444460457733...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304444604577337573054615152.html) [/edit]

Money quote:

Along comes Apple and the iPad. Steve Jobs talked the publishers into the agency model - publishers set their own prices and they get 70% of the proceeds.

[...]

Publishers then turned around and imposed that agency deal on Amazon, which is the subject of the DOJ investigation [the agency model, not Amazon - gvb]. The end result: There really is more competition in the e-book world, but prices are higher than they likely would be if Amazon and others were able to discount as they saw fit.

<comment><USER6> Right - basically the argument is that publishers cooperated with Apple to raise prices, and prices actually did go up. Which raises a red-flag of anti- competitiveness.

The counterargument is that this took place at a time when prices were artificially lowered because of Amazon's leverage over the publishers. When competition was restored, prices returned to a level set by the market.

<comment><USER7> Prices weren't lower because of Amazon's leverage over publishers. They were lower because Amazon was willing to lose money to build a platform and a market. Remember, pre-agency publishers made more money along two dimensions:

1\. Wholesale prices were often higher than their share of an agency price.

2\. Since the prices to end-users were lower sales were higher than they otherwise would have been.

And don't forget, publishers had a much simpler, pro-competitive response if they were afraid of Amazon's dominance: drop the DRM. Then they could have sold ebooks to all of Amazon's customers (including Kindle device owners) without Amazon.

<comment><USER6> You might be in favor of dropping DRM, but that would in no way provide publishers with comparable access to the Kindle customers.

Kindle customers buy titles using 1-click from their devices or from the Amazon website. How does just 'dropping the DRM' compete with that distribution channel?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the process is like this:

\- Publisher says "I want $10 for this e-book. You distributors can decide the actual 'list price'" \- Amazon starts selling at $9 as losses $1 per book - <USER2> help drive Kindle sales \- Publishers freak out, not about the now, but the future as Amazon has 90% market share of e-books \- Enter Jobs and Apple who says "Oh here's what you do. You tell them the street price has to be $x and we'll keep 70% and you get 30%" \- How do we make Amazon comply? Well, Apple insert the most favored nation clause saying that a price offered to anyone is the same price that they must Apple is selling at. \- The book publishing executives also make the mistake of getting together every few months to discuss strategy and how the whole pricing thing was going (Dumb!)

So Apple, getting ready to launch the iPad, saw the stress with the publishers and a way to reign in Amazon and used their business savvy to help the publishers connect the dots.

</comment><comment><USER9> The important question to me is will this lawsuit do more good than harm. Having the government establish when prices are too high (price fixing, Apple in this case) or too low (unfair competition, Google maps in France) is a risky situation.

Consider this quote from Milton Friedman talking about the antitrust suit against Microsoft in the 90s:

"Under the circumstances, given that we do have antitrust laws, is it really in the self-interest of Silicon Valley to set the government on Microsoft? Your industry, the computer industry, moves so much more rapidly than the legal process, that by the time this suit is over, who knows what the shape of the industry will be. Never mind the fact that the human energy and the money that will be spent in hiring my fellow economists, as well as in other ways, would be much more productively employed in improving your products. It's a waste! But beyond that, you will rue the day when you called in the government. From now on the computer industry, which has been very fortunate in that it has been relatively free of government intrusion, will experience a continuous increase in government regulation. Antitrust very quickly becomes regulation." Full article at: <http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v21n2/friedman.html>

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure of your point here. Your opening sentence appears to question antitrust laws? Yet your Friedman quote seems to support antitrust laws and just argue that the Valley really shouldn't get too spun up about MSFT because by the time a conclusion is reached by the processes set in place it will likely be moot. This was a pretty cut and dried case that moved rapidly (2 years) against a group of executives who were colluding to raise prices to thwart a competitor?

<comment><USER9> Yes, I do question the value of antitrust laws. The Friedman quote was meant to show that given the existence of antitrust laws, it is still not in your long term interest to seek to have them enforced in your industry. Arguing that the government should have power to punish your competition is also an invitation for the government to regulate you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If they lose, it's not obvious how this would hurt Apple aside from the fine. Wouldn't they just adopt the wholesale model for books leaving the publishers high and dry?

Presumably the only way Amazon was able to force the wholesale model in the first place was to threaten to stop selling paper books from those who wouldn't accept it.

<comment><USER7> In losing, Apple is likely to wind up under significant antitrust oversight. Given some of their other business practices (like the app stores), that could be a big issue for them.

<comment><USER6> The app store is clearly nothing to do with any kind of monopoly, however much people would like the government to force Apple to make it what they want.

However, I agree that antitrust oversight would be harmful for the Apple, and indirectly for the industry as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The question I have is what would be the consequence if the DOJ wins. Does Apple and others involved pay up to the government or compensate the people?

What does usually happen when the government wins in a lawsuit against a private firm?

<comment><USER11> "To collect your $2.35 share of the settlement payment, please fill out this form and mail it within 10 days."

<comment><USER12> "Be sure to include a certified bank cheque for a $4.99 processing fee."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Speaking as someone publishing an ebook through BN, Amazon, and Apple, there's some competition in distribution. Basically Apple and BN are competitive and Amazon isn't (which is, I guess, what you'd expect given that Amazon is dominant). Apple offers 70%, as does BN. Amazon offers 70% if you sell your book for under $10, and only in some markets, and it charges you for downloads (from your 70%). If you want to price a book over $20 you get 35% royalties.

<comment><USER8> Fascinating. I assume this is self publishing (vs this article which is about the large publishers?) When you mention 35% royalties are you saying that Amazon gives you 70% of the street price you set to them? However, if your street price is more than $20 they drop that to 35% to you? Also, do any of the agreements require you, if you sell in other locations, that the price listed must match the price you told them? Ie - are they using a MFN clause like that listed in the article above?

<comment><USER13> AFAIK Amazon doesn't have an MFN clause. (Does Apple still w.r.t. books? I thought that's past tense.)

If I am willing to sell for under $10 Amazon offers a 70% royalty (less various charges -- effectively 60%) in some regions, 35% in others, and if the price is over $10 then it's 35% (with no deductions).

Oh my original post is confused -- books over __$10__ are limited to a 35% royalty (which is a huge poverty trap)

In all cases I'm talking percentage of my set selling price. (Perhaps Amazon wants to discount my books and still have enough margin to pay my royalty -- that's a lot of wiggle room -- they can sell my $20 book for $10 and make just as much money off it as if I'd set the cover price at $10.

From Apple, Barnes & Noble, etc. it's 70% minus some admin charge -- effectively 65% or so -- across the board.

Note that Apple does cap prices for "textbooks" created with iBookauthor at $14.99.

I guess in the end this doesn't matter much since we can always split books into parts, but the fact is that Amazon's business model currently involves:

* paying less to writers than anyone else

* evading state sales taxes by fair means and foul

* being the only vendor of ebook readers that can't read DRM-free ePubs out-of-the-box

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This whole thing is pretty complex. I'd say the crux of the issue is Apple's non-compete clause on price. You can't list your ebook cheaper on Amazon than the price with Apple. But what if you don't have control over pricing at Amazon? That's where we'd be if Amazon was still using the wholesale model.

For this lawsuit, the problem is still the publishers since they insisted on the agency model with Amazon. The publishers are "price fixing," not Apple and not Amazon.

<comment><USER15> I am not a lawyer but I think the issue with Apple is that they coordinated the change. 1 publisher making demands of Amazon has no leverage, but collectively they do, and Apple is who told the publishers that they would have that support. Allegedly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I fail to see the problem being solved by this lawsuit.

I'm sure there's some anti-competitive laws somewhere that have been violated, but I still disagree with the philosophy behind this action.

Consumers are buying ebooks and ebook readers like never before -- free individuals making a choice of their own free will to pay a certain amount of money for the product.

It is also hard to see how anything could be "anti-competitive" in a market where a lone person could compete by writing a book at home and selling it on their own website with paypal. Think that's an unrealistic example? You probably also thought that about the video games industry 5 years ago with big box stores, gamestops, and steam seemingly controlling all access to the market. Despite all that, a game involving digging blocks out of the ground made millions of dollars and completely side stepped the all the dominating distributors.

Don't under estimate the choices of the consumer and the power of innovative individuals. They will shake things up orders of magnitudes more than a small army of government lawyers.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that industry executives got together to fix prices and raise them by 20 - 30%. I'm all for innovative people but struggle with the logic of "We're ok with crony capitalism because it drives innovation!" Surely free, transparent markets are better for innovation than manipulated ones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For a much longer and more involved write-up, see [1]

[1]: [http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/justice- fil...](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/justice-files-suit- against-apple-and-publishers-over-e-book-pricing/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Where does Amazon's market influence fit into this picture?

A poster below offered two valid scenarios from opposite angles: 1) Prices were illegally raised by Apple and publishers colluding in an anti-competive way 2) Prices were artificially lowered by Amazon's pricing scheme, and competition was restored by returning to price levels originally set by the market

It wasn't a stretch of the imagination to think that Apple would move into the ebooks market at some point, building on their success with music and apps. Does a competitor running a loss to preemptively lock out new market entrants count as anti-competitive behaviour?

</comment><comment><USER19> To me the bigger problem is Apple's arbitrary standards regarding the App Store. They can effectively shut out what are legitimate apps for whatever agenda they want to push (anti-competitive or otherwise) and back it up with any bogus citation of their restrictive ToS. The idea of Dell or Apple able to dictate what we can or cannot install on our computers would be absurd yet we're paving the way for such a future as smartphones get smarter while such policies remain in place.

At least book/content publishers have other avenues to disseminate their content.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone have the complaint?

<comment><USER21> [http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/ebooks04112...](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/ebooks04112012b.pdf)

<comment><USER22> Wow, that reads like a pretty good slam dunk for the govt.

<comment><USER6> It does look strong. I wonder what Apple is holding out for, or whether there is actually a defense.

<comment><USER7> Apple, like Microsoft before them, might be holding out for a change in the people who oversee the DoJ.

<comment><USER6> If so, that seems like just as unwise strategy now as it was for Microsoft. I think it's pretty unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 The government complaint is actually pretty easy-to-understand and read, for anyone who wants to understand the real issues here:

[http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/ebooks04112...](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/ebooks04112012.pdf) (pages 5-9)

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't the agency model exactly what enables _new entrants_ to publishing (whether publishing houses or self-publishers) to operate on a level playing field with established publishers?

It seems to me to be the best thing that's happened to the book industry for decades.

<comment><USER23> Not really; anyone could sell an ebook to amazon under the wholesale rules as well. It probably makes things easier for self-publishers in that amazon can't sell big-name titles for as cheap, which might increase demand for small name titles at lower prices, but is that a good thing?

<comment><USER6> I'd say it could a good thing because it facilitates price competition between actual producers, where the feedback from the market can more directly affect the quality of actual books rather than just who gets to sell them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's a little hard to be up in arms about this alleged price fixing. Yes, it's anti-consumer and might end up costing us a few dollars, but if the DOJ is looking to make some real change, I'd argue that this isn't the best use of their time. Let's remember that we still have too-big-to-fail banks and an associated industry that the Dallas Federal Reserve says is on the brink of putting us into another bailout situation.

To make a comparison, it's like candidates arguing over birth control issues and glossing over the 3 wars and financial crisis we're in. Yes, very important, but there are some more pressing matters that are being largely ignored.

<comment><USER8> Parallel processing? To make a comparison, just because the siding on your house is badly in need of repair doesn't mean you stop doing the dishes for two weeks until you've replaced all your siding.

<comment><USER24> Maybe they just need a better PR department. From my point of view, I'd like to hear a few more headlines about how they're working to avoid the next economic meltdown before I care about being charged an extra 50 cents for an ebook.

To use your comparison, if there were reports of a hurricane coming I'd use every available resource to fix that siding, because the dishes won't matter if the house is blown apart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm curious why Google Books isn't involved one way or another in this. I suppose they may be tired of lawsuits involving publishers.

<comment><USER26> I'm guessing due to lack of popularity and possibly inclusion in whatever collusion is going on. For most, if you think "eBooks", you think Amazon or iBooks.

<comment><USER27> Not necessarily. If you have iWhatever you may think that. If you're running android you're thinking Amazon or Play books.

<comment><USER28> Considering the Play Books has only been around for a few months, you sound a bit hard to believe.

I'd say it's more likely the average Joe and Jane think about the Kindle and the Nook (and maybe the iPad - oh, but that's mainly for playing games + browsing) and their respective bookstores.

<comment><USER27> Well - when you open android market, you see ebooks advertised. That's Play books. If you browse popular applications, you'll see Kindle.

I'm saying this from the point of view of possibilities / easy accessibility. No, iBooks is not an option for Android users, because they have no access to it. They don't care about it unless they have an iDevice - that's all I tried to say.

If you go for a Kindle device, your first option is Amazon of course. Actually a common user will probably know something about Kindle and that he can buy books on his mobile. The details about who they come from and how they work are not that important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Dopiest thing I've seen about this is the statement that Apple "considered" fixing prices.

God forbid someone should think about doing something.

</comment><comment><USER30> Governments hand out monopolies with one hand (copyright, patents) and then sue companies for making use of these monopolies with the other hand. What a great waste of time and money!</comment>


The site's down.  Quick, Tell the customers - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.fredalger.net/2012/07/the-site-is-down-quick-tell-the-customers.html

<comment><USER2> I used to work in telecoms about eight years, and loved one of our SMS providers, simply because they'd send an email the _instant_ an issue was detected on their end. This helped us, in turn, to communicate with our customers, and also not waste time investigating why messages weren't being received at whoever's end.

Compared to another supplier we were hooked up to, who quite often we'd be the ones informing their support staff that there was an issue. Utterly frustrating, and self-defeating as it meant we'd sell towards to the former provider whenever possible just for the fewer headaches alone.</comment>


BitBench – Visually dissect and analyze bit strings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zuckschwerdt/bitbench <comment><USER2> That made me think about something else. How cool would it be to have a program visually show you how a string is stored in memory?

This way you would be able to interactively see how unicode and different runes are represented in bytes, how they are also abstractly represented in your programming language array data structure, and how finally they are stored on your little-endian system.

<comment><USER3> > see how unicode and different runes are represented in bytes

I wish golang had never appropriated the term "rune". Runes are Viking writing. Unicode has Code Points, not runes!

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry, what? Golang didn't appropriate the term Rune in reference to Unicode. The term comes from Plan 9's UTF-8 handling library (libutf) which was written by ken and pike, who invented UTF-8. Rob Pike went on to write Go, which was heavily influenced by Plan9 C.

rune.c:2: "The authors of this software are Rob Pike and Ken Thompson."

[https://github.com/9fans/plan9port/blob/master/src/lib9/utf/...](https://github.com/9fans/plan9port/blob/master/src/lib9/utf/rune.c#L2)

<comment><USER3> In that case I wish Plan 9 had never appropriated the term "rune" :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the README: "here is a hosted instance on [http://triq.net/bitbench](http://triq.net/bitbench) "

</comment><comment><USER6> From the title I wondered if another person decided to implement their own variant of Christopher Domas' ..cantor.dust.., which has never been released to the public (despite initial promises). The only alternative I know if is Veles.

[0] [https://sites.google.com/site/xxcantorxdustxx/](https://sites.google.com/site/xxcantorxdustxx/)

[1] [https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/..cantor.dust.](https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/..cantor.dust.).

[2] [https://codisec.com/veles/](https://codisec.com/veles/)

<comment><USER4> Are you sure that that program _ever_ worked and isn't just a bunch of mockup images.

<comment><USER6> The author showed it on conferences, so yes, I am sure.</comment></comment></comment>


Kicks Condor - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickscondor.com/ <comment><USER2> So happy to see it on the first page of HN. This has been my favorite personal website/weblog/web directory for over a year and I'm always stoked when my feed reader pings about an update.

Do _not_ miss his HrefHunts[1], the interview with the Things Magazine[2] creator or his P2P Muxtape alternative[3].

I love this answer:

> I don't necessarily think there needs to be a new future for blogging > though. The heyday has passed, that's all. Most forms of creative expression > in most mediums still exist somewhere for someone. They just have to adapt > to a quieter world.

[1] [https://www.kickscondor.com/hrefhunt/](https://www.kickscondor.com/hrefhunt/)

[2] [https://www.kickscondor.com/things/](https://www.kickscondor.com/things/)

[3] [https://www.kickscondor.com/duxtape/](https://www.kickscondor.com/duxtape/)

<comment><USER3> Can you help me understand what this is? I read through it all and I couldn't decipher what's actually happening or what it's about. It felt like word soup to me — I'm possibly far outside the intended audience.

<comment><USER4> It's just a personal website. I find it delightful to explore, although I also have no idea what's going on half the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is it? I like the aggressive oldschool design, but it isn't clear from the first glance, what is it, a forum, news aggregator, or..?

<comment><USER6> Clicked that for you:

FILE_ID.DIZ

This web page is a CIA operation designed to amplify subculture linkstuffs

<comment><USER5> Thanks! Didn't recognize that as an 'about' link, not that familiar with the pre-web culture, I guess.

<comment><USER7> File_id.diz isn't pre-web, despite its origins in BBSs - it's an archive descriptor, most commonly associated with the warez scene. I guess it largely died along with dialup, when multipart archives stopped being a necessity for large downloads.

<comment><USER8> I've seen file_id.diz before, but any insight as to what 'DIZ' is? I can figure out what, e.g. an .nfo file is, but I'm having trouble with .diz.

<comment><USER9> Wikipedia even has an article on these files: it says, 'FILE_ID stands for "file identification". DIZ stands for Description In Zipfile'.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.wearesuperorganism.com/](https://www.wearesuperorganism.com/) is done in a similar vein. Great band btw (if you happen to like this kind of music).

Their game ([https://escapetheinter.net/](https://escapetheinter.net/)) is also an interesting retro / psychedelic Mario style experience.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just a heads up, if you have photosensitive epilepsy, you might want to turn off images before scrolling on the above url.

<comment><USER12> And if you're on limited data, you might want to disable images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really liked the CRT instruments video, I found another instrument using barcode readers also by that creator - [https://twitter.com/crab_feet/status/1222165813135720448](https://twitter.com/crab_feet/status/1222165813135720448)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is interesting from them:

[https://fraidyc.at](https://fraidyc.at)

[https://youtu.be/zgA4GzRsldI](https://youtu.be/zgA4GzRsldI)

</comment><comment><USER15> not everything needs to be judged by how well it "makes sense at first glance", not everything needed be _on message_ all the time....

some things take (demand) time to be appreciated and known (if not understood)

a good relationship, a work of art... maybe even content

not everything is optimized for quick consumption

<comment><USER16> From your flagged comment, you're interpreting the downvotes as some sort of reactionary resistance to your free thinking rebellion against conformity.

In reality I think it was because you gave a hostile, pompous response to an honest question about the motivation of TLA. The actual point you made is not controversial at all, in fact it's quite self evident, banal even.

<comment><USER15> I think it is a free-thinking rebellion against a certain type of conformity. I think that's a good thing, something that should be welcomed.

You don't know what's honest, hostile or pompous, only your interpretation. Pretend that's the truth? Don't impose that.

It's even harder through text when you don't have tone of voice, body language, other context. So you should be careful before leaping to accuse a hostile intent, don't you think?

Why should my comment be any less valid than the question. I don't think the question was bad at all. Don't judge stuff like that.

Your misinterpreting hostile intent _should_ be a violation of the HN guidelines. That's not responding to the strongest version of what I said, that's misrepresenting to a straw man so you can hate on it. It's not my problem if you need to hate on something. That pal has nothing to do with me, so don't make it about me, huh?

Pretty clear I would think.

Also, "controversial" and "banal" depends on who you are, and context. When you put it like that...inspires me to think people maybe don't like having something obvious, but off-message pointed out to them? They want an answer, don't tell them to expand their mind.

But...teach people how to fish, not feed them, right?</comment></comment></comment>


Linus on kernel changes breaking user programs (from 2012/12/23) - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 <comment><USER2> Mauro's response shows incredible restraint. I commend him for that.

Linus could have easily written that email privately to Mauro and spared him the public shaming. He could have then written a stern yet civil public response. Would that be asking too much?

It doesn't matter who you are; basic human decency is not above you.

<comment><USER3> I've never worked at Microsoft, but I'm pretty sure Bill Gates and Steve Jobs sent messages like that to working groups, and even department lists. I have no idea whether it's right or wrong, but I don't think this kind of thing is atypical for big tech projects.

Linux just happens to be open source, so when it happens in Linux you hear about it.

<comment><USER4> All this argument seems to do is solidify the idea that engineers would be well served to work on their ability to interact with others. It doesn't make screaming and swearing at your peers okay because Bill Gates or Steve Jobs does it, as much as everyone would like to think so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two things: this should not have been the public chewing out that it was, Mauro obviously didn't do any of this on purpose and getting scolded like this privately would have been plenty, heck the guy probably berates himself a lot more effectively than this message could.

Second: the buck stops at the top.

Testing procedures should have caught the bug long before being seen in the wild so apparently linux still has some catching up to do there and that's a lesson that Linus should be learning here rather than to dump on the developer that caused the bug that wasn't caught in testing.

Process really does matter in cases like this. The problem is not that it happened, the question is how to make sure it never happens again. Maybe Linus was wearing his 'do I look like a people person to you?' t-shirt.

<comment><USER6> _Second: the buck stops at the top.

Testing procedures should have caught the bug long before being seen in the wild so apparently linux still has some catching up to do there and that's a lesson that Linus should be learning here rather than to dump on the developer that caused the bug that wasn't caught in testing_

The buck may stop at the top, but if Linus takes the public blame and picks it up, he then has to put his house in order, wouldn't you agree that's what we're seeing here?

Yes, testing procedures should've, would've, etc, but that's exactly why these kernel maintainers are there for. As far as Linux having some catching up to do, how often does this situation occur? I also believe the most valuable lesson to learn here is the one you can do nothing about: no matter how adamant you are about your dearest and most basic rules (we've heard Linus many times on code that break user-space), shit happens.

His frustration appears to stem from (rightful) presumptions that a kernel developer would not make such newbie mistakes.

I totally agree with you that this exchange should not have been so public, unfortunately kernel communication is by design. I would, however, also like to provide a different perspective. Linus is carrying the burden of being a bully, he does a dirty job of publicly berating people from whom he expects nothing but the best, everything about his handling of these situations shakes our moral fibre and makes him appear a dis-likable human being. But then, we're millions to enjoy the fruit of this dirty job everyday, blinding ourselves to what it takes to provide it. Such is often the burden of leaders.

<comment><USER5> > His frustration appears to stem from (rightful) presumptions that a kernel > developer would not make such newbie mistakes.

Everybody makes mistakes including Linus.

His frustration appears to stem from the fact that the developer was blaming the user space program, rather than to immediately recognize the bug as a kernel problem.

But as a team leader you don't start yelling at people like that, this is unacceptable behaviour for someone of Linus' stature. It's immature and damaging to the community in the longer term even if in the shorter term it may have the desired effect.

Imagine you're working somewhere and your boss berates you in front of the whole world for some error.

<comment><USER7> I was conning a ship while the captain stood on the bridge-wing to watch our boarding party inspect a potentially hostile vessel. He was generally considered a really good, competent, and gentle captain. I was good at conning. I mean, throw a ring in the water, and I could maneuver the ship so the bos'un only had to stick his arm over the side and drop the grappling hook straight down through the ring to retrieve it. Every time. But this time, I had to keep the ship in a very specific position, to make sure the captain could see his men now on a potentially hostile vessel, we had intel that they were a mother ship for the cartel's cigarette boats. 450' ship vs a 150' ship, with 6 degrees of freedom each, rough seas, sundown, and I was off by 10 feet. A rather critical 10 feet: CO couldn't see inside their bridge. He blasted in front of my entire watch team. That was 14 years ago. I will never forget it.

I was in the OR with the coolest neurosurgeon I've ever seen. WashU grad (the med school's mean MCAT score is at 99th percentile for individuals). This guy could operate without disturbing the venous plexus around the spinal cord. I had a hard time focusing on the work because he was moving so little it didn't even disturb the smoke under the operating microscope. I could literally inspect individual specks of particulate smoke hanging in the air. He was moving microns at a time. He had asked for and rejected a specific pituitary in every surgery that week. This time, looking at a patient's dura mater, and trying to sneak around to the other side, seeing the wrong rongeur, his head didn't even move. But he grabbed the pituitary in both hands, bent the stainless steel, and flung it the floor so hard it bounced as high as the table and hit a wall. BA-WHONGGGG! The fact that it was this guy that did it is what everyone felt. I mean, it was palpable. That was 3 years ago. That scrub tech, I guarantee, will _never_ forget that experience. I doubt I will.

I was taught years ago to carry two bags. Put the leadership tools you like in one bag. Put the ones you don't like in the other bag. Remember.

Sometimes the leader looks in the good bag, and comes up empty, or just decides that she's had enough.

Was it the right thing to do? It doesn't matter. Just decide which bag you're going to put it in.

<comment><USER5> Time critical engagements are different than software problems. You illustrate eloquently that there is a right time and place for everything. Linus' outburst was definitely not in the right place.

1) he's yelling at a volunteer

2) he's doing so in public when I'm sure he has the guys email address

3) (and this is the bit that bothers me) Linus seems to enjoy being abrasive at times

4) included invective that wasn't necessary at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He is right. If you are part of the linux kernel team you know what you got yourself into (Linus) and you are part of one of the highest profile opensource projects on this planet.

For are project like the kernel this is an appropriate response to eliminate errors. If they f..up on the development, alot of server will break all over the planet and many companies will get angry emails from people who have no clue why they cant upload pictures of their kitten.

 _The fact that you then try to make excuses for breaking user space, and blaming some external program that used to work, is just shameful. It's not how we work._

Most people would get some similiar response if you would do this on a clients project.

</comment><comment><USER9> Have you seen Mauro's response? I think he took it like a champ. <https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/87>

<comment><USER10> Once you follow it all the way through, it seems to be a much more involved issue: <https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/24/125>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/607560> broken kernel could fuck up a lot lof users.I am suffering from this broken kernel, and I do appreciate what Linus is doing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4962912>

</comment><comment><USER13> Using some logic here:

1 - It seems Mauro added a new error message called ENOENT; 2 - After this change, Mauro noticed an error at pulseaudio; 3 - Linus says that _always_ the userspace is right and kernel space is wrong in those cases and simply discarded Mauro's argument;

But thinking about this I think Mauro is not entirely wrong. Mauro's question makes a lot of sense to me: Why pulseaudio failed after just a new error code was added to the kernel?

Can't it be that pulseaudio is doing some wrong treatment that is ignoring the possibility of a _new_ (or non-existent) error code?

<comment><USER14> ENOENT isn't a new error code. It's the standard errno value that indicates an attempt to access a nonexistent file or directory on all POSIX platforms.

The problem is that it was being misappropriated in a nonsensical way, returned by an ioctl call. ioctl can only be called on already-open file descriptors, so it makes no sense for it to complain that the file doesn't exist. If the file pointed to by the file descriptor didn't exist, the file descriptor wouldn't have been able to be opened in the first place (errno would have been set to ENOENT by the call to open).

<comment><USER15> What if an ioctl is trying to indicate that a certain "entry" is not valid or available? Like when it is returning a cached entry or dealing with some container, where a notion of an entry does make sense. Insisting that ENOENT is reserved for path operations seems asinine.

<comment><USER14> _What if an ioctl is trying to indicate that a certain "entry" is not valid or available?_

I don't understand the question. It is not possible for ioctl to be called on a valid, open file descriptor that represents a file that is not valid or available. Even if the file is unlinked after being opened, the kernel will ensure that it remains available to any processes that have it open until they close the file descriptor.

 _Like when it is returning a cached entry or dealing with some container, where a notion of an entry does make sense._

I honestly don't know what you mean by this. ioctls, like nearly all Unix system calls, are file system operations, they necessarily and by definition refer to files.

 _Insisting that ENOENT is reserved for path operations seems asinine._

On the contrary, ENOENT has meant "No such file or directory" since the early days of Unix history. Arbitrarily deciding to redefine it now would be asinine. There are other errno values to represent other error conditions.

<comment><USER15> I am just saying that the abstractions that the drivers can implement, can be pretty diverse. A particular ioctl may very well be dealing with a container like abstraction (contained items may or may not be file paths), and some return value that indicates "NO SUCH ENTRY" (i.e. ENOENT) may not be so out of order.

These examples are contrived, but consider a driver returning a encryption key corresponding to a index, which is stored in some encryption hardware table (controlled by the driver). Or a driver could be maintaining a cache, which is indexed by a key. Or even routing entries. There are a million possibilities.

I have to admit that I have used ENOENT for cases where "NO SUCH ENTRY" made sense. But maybe the tradition is to exclusively use it for path based operations only. I better shut up before Linus gets on my case. Because it would not be good for the Linux world at all. I'd probably clock him really badly if he spoke to me like that.

<comment><USER14> As far as I know, the "ENT" in ENOENT refers specifically to a "dentry" (directory entry), i.e. the kernel data structure `struct dentry`, identified by a pathname in the virtual file system. It's not supposed to be a generic term for an entry in some arbitrary container of data.

I do see where you're coming from now, but I still think any usage other than the standard "no such file" meaning is errno abuse.

<comment><USER15> Seems reasonable enough. Can't help but wonder though, that a lot or the other errnos were probably also invented for very specific contexts, but find use in a wider sense because they capture a more generic error class.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The original patch/commit that Linus calls out: [http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6...](http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=f0ed2ce840b3)

<comment><USER17> Whoa. That should have set off alarm bells when being reviewed. Changing errno return values just because? And a counter-change in another place to put the changed errno back to the original.

I'd accept that from an intern. Any grown-up that did it would get a talking to, though not in public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Torvalds swears in kernel chat, unrelated devs frown sternly, sun rises in the east, tides happen twice a day...

</comment><comment><USER19> Harsh, so god damn harsh!

Then again, I can't fathom how Linus must feel getting hundreds of pull requests that are plain wrong and/or stupid.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been defending Linus over this, but on second thoughts I think he crossed the line here:

> And you've shown yourself to not be competent in this issue, so I'll apply > it directly and immediately myself.

I'm rather surprised at him; he's been pretty abrasive before, but seldom directly abusive like this.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why self-censor 'f*cking' but not 'FUCK'? Consistency please.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is awesome. I would entirely freaking love to be chewed out like that. I feel like this is what it feels like to be set back on the right track by folks like a young and tempestuous Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc. Sure he's cranky, but even through his crankiness you can tell he is fundamentally right.

DHH needs to swear more.

</comment><comment><USER23> this is awesome, communication should be open (as in public) and candid. i'm not saying that i enjoy the approach, but there's much truth to linus' rant, that was a shit commit.</comment>


Delft Students on Software Architecture: DESOSA 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://delftswa.gitbooks.io/desosa-2017/content/ <comment><USER2> Highly focused on metrics, code organization and project stakeholders, with little discussion of actual architectural choices. I particularly hate the "lets run static analyzer on this project, and use that to make a judgement" step they all seem to do.

For actual introductions to very specific architectures adopted by open-source software and the reasoning behind, see [1].

1: [http://aosabook.org/en/index.html](http://aosabook.org/en/index.html)

<comment><USER3> I have taken part to this course as a student, can confirm.

We were on a very tight schedule of 8 weeks and we had pressure to deliver content each week. Focus of the grading was on quantity vs quality. We had to take a book (Rozanski and Woods) as the bible and follow its guidelines for the analysis, even if many times they were not really applicable to the chosen project. Apparently the teachers think that every software project can be thoroughly analysed in eight weeks using a bunch of automated tools and predefined guidelines.

They ask you to create a "Module Structure Diagram" but your project has a complex set of dependencies and not-really-well-defined modules? Just make a fancy diagram with a lot of colours and it will be fine, nobody will check if that shit makes sense.

I have spent a considerable amount of time in writing my team's chapter, and I'm not proud of the fact that it's been published.

<comment><USER2> Which really is a shame. When I read the headline, I thought "Oh, like AOSA, great idea to let students do it". Then I clicked through the chapters, and was continually disappointed. I mean the selection of projects is quite promising... I'd love to read about each of them, but the content is an astonishingly accurate description of the aspects of "Software Engineering" as a university discipline that I passionately hate.

On the other hand, I don't really have found a good solution how to teach Software Architecture to students. I feel like it's one of these things that come primarily with experience.

It really is no wonder that the project turned out this way if it follows the "deliverable each week" scheme, it's a terrible way to do a university project. You absolutely have my sympathy.</comment></comment></comment>