In Religious Arbitration, Scripture Is the Rule of Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/business/dealbook/in-religious-arbitration-scripture-is-the-rule-of-law.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news <comment><USER2> I am a Christian who is one of those weird people who believes that 1 Corinthians 6 actually tells Christians not to sue other Christians.

(Link: [http://www.esvbible.org/1%20Corinthians%206/](http://www.esvbible.org/1%20Corinthians%206/) )

I get _very_ wary when I see that same argument used by those on the receiving end of accusations. It's one thing to maintain a personal conviction that you will resolve things in person or through non-court mediation. It's another to run around trying to prevent other people from using the courts, while simultaneously hiding from the church, the intended alternative.

There's also a long tradition in biblical interpretation of distinguishing between imperatives (commands, like "thou shalt not sue other Christians", if it were hypothetically written) and indicatives (statements of fact, like "to have lawsuits at all with one another is a defeat for you"). Making the case to bind others' consciences is _much_ harder when you have only indicatives.

<comment><USER3> > I am a Christian who is one of those weird people who believes that 1 > Corinthians 6 actually tells Christians not to sue other Christians.

And every affinity fraudster in five miles suddenly became extremely interested.

<comment><USER3> Delete the parent to this comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the things I gathered when reading the excellent _Fields of Blood_ by Karen Armstrong is that this 'rule of law' property of religion was a fundamental facet of early-modern history. The idea that all persons could be held answerable to one set of rules and principles is so alluring that you have people even today trying to hold secular American leadership accountable to them.

Religion, initially, came in two flavors. One for the aristocracy, which was oriented around finding meaning in the many ethically and morally awful things they had to do to maintain their territories, human capital, and privileged lifestyles.

The other was for commoners, who needed ways to cooperate and trust each other. If two people didn't know each other, then they could still trust each other if they spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods, paid tithes to the same temples. Religion was how they ordered their thoughts about what was right and wrong. It didn't matter for the people at the time what was scientifically or rigorously right, just that it was the same throughout a people.

Until the age of Christianity, rulers had no interest in how the commoners believed. But as the world became more and more connected and the scale of warfare grew to where conscription became more and more necessary, rulers increasingly started to try to control how their populace worshipped.

Fast-forward to the age of Gutenberg. Bibles getting printed in the vernacular, so that ordinary people could read them, was a game changer. All of a sudden, religious hypocrisy became a thing, people with power became accountable for how they used that power, rather than just making up interpretations amongst themselves as they went along.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like bunk! Religion has pre-historic origin, it is older than agriculture and hence older than aristocracy as a class. Pre-christian rulers did have interest in how commoners worshiped - for example the Romans (though otherwise tolerant of various religious beliefs) insisted that all citizens took part in the emperor cult, which lead to problems for the first Christians. The rule of law is certainly older than Gutenberg - for example the pre-christian Icelanders held public recitals of the laws, so literacy was not required for laws to be public knowledge.

<comment><USER4> The rule of law, as we call it, is a specific term meaning that leaders are to held accountable to laws just as subjects are. It is rule by laws, and not people. It was pretty much invented by the English. A variety of factors, primarily geographical, prevented it from being adopted in continental Europe for a long time after it was already pretty-well-settled in Britain. The rule of law was one of the most important building blocks of the British Empire.

Laws themselves, of course, are as old as civilization.

Religion is, as you say, older than civilization, but it is worth examining how religion worked pre-historically and after the rise of civilization, as they are very different. You can learn about prehistoric religion in the aforementioned _Fields of Blood_. Essentially humans have three brains, the basal ganglia, the limbic system, and the neocortex, all of which gives us various drives. Religion is the child of the neocortex and serves to make sense of the other two drive us to do.

<comment><USER6> The rule of law was most certainly not invented by the English. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law)

<comment><USER4> "Invention" is somewhat arbitrary when discussing topics as these. You have to draw a line somewhere, and the English were the first to actually subjugate the head of state to their system of laws. Therefore I say the English invented rule of law. They may not have been the first to think that the king needs to follow the law, but they were the first to successfully demand it. Obviously you can look back through history and find isolated examples of things that _kind-of_ look like rule of law, but the English were the first to do it right.

A fun thing to do is to go through different countries you're interested in and analyze how much of the rule of law each of them actually implements, rather than just professes to have. Laws and justice are such appealing notions that even tyrants feel the need to put the people they want to execute on "trial". Plenty of totalitarian governments have nominal "constitutions" that aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

I personally consider it a measure of how advanced and robust a society is. One should not think of democracy as "people having elections", but rather as a collection of different principles which society forces the people that would want to rule it to follow. Is there a functioning legal system? Is there a system for transfer of power? Is there a working constitution? The rule of law is an emergent property that rests on all of these things.

<comment><USER7> > You have to draw a line somewhere, and the English were the first to > actually subjugate the head of state to their system of laws.

I can't think of any reasonable standard where England actually has subjugated the head of state to their laws and is also the first to have done so by that standard.

I mean, surely we aren't holding up the military purge of Parliament that produced the Rump Parliament and that Rump Parliament's creation of the "High Court of Justice" and its prosecution of the King as an example of the rule of law... _At best_ , that would give the English credit for the creation of the revolutionary kangaroo court (and, even at that, it probably wasn't original.)

And, even if you were to credit that as establishing the rule of law (and certainly, a lot of the _language_ popularly used -- e.g., in the US's own revolution -- about the relationship between the monarch and the law stems from that prosecution and the propaganda around it), you'd have to recognize that that was hardly a durable principle established in England, having been somewhat forcibly repudiated when everyone who participated it that was caught by the post-Restoration government having been executed for their participation in it.

<comment><USER4> > you'd have to recognize that that was hardly a durable principle established > in England, having been somewhat forcibly repudiated when everyone who > participated it that was caught by the post-Restoration government having > been executed for their participation in it.

It was tenuous when it was first established. It became less so over time. Nothing happens all at once. If the North Koreans suddenly decided they wanted to ape the rule of law and passed a whole bunch of laws and killed a bunch of people French Revolution style, I would hesitate to say that the new nation has rule of law for at least a hundred years, unless I lived there and could observe the process directly so I could ascertain whether they're moving overall towards robust rule of law or more towards modern Russian oligarchy.

<comment><USER7> > It was tenuous when it was first established. It became less so over time.

From the Restoration to _now_ the complete immunity of the monarch to civil and criminal law has been given; and its only in the mid-20th century that British law recognized some claims against the monarch's _government_ being of-right rather than by-license.

The idea of the monarch being subject to the law was more of a momentary, fleeting, and swiftly violently repressed concept in English law that had already been generally repudiated in England itself when the idea got raised as part of the Revolutionary propaganda in some of England's American colonies a century later, rather than something that was tenuous when first proposed in England but which later became firmly established.

(To the extent Britain has made progress in the rule of law, accountability of the chief of state to the law is pretty much the _worst_ place to look for examples; the bloodshed on both sides of that issue has led to most subsequent progress in the direction of rule of law focusing on making the monarch _irrelevant_ to the law in anything other than a symbolic sense rather than _accountable_ to it.)

<comment><USER4> It was fairly obvious once I started studying this stuff that the idea that a head of state should be immune to certain laws that keep commoners in line. It would suck if the President had to wait in line at airport security. You don't prosecute the President, you impeach him. The class of wrongs he can commit is wholly different than that of his people by virtue of his position. Note I never said that a sovereign and his people need to be under the _same_ law. That doesn't really work. What's important is that his powers are limited and circumscribed to a select few, with all others devolving to the people.

Many, many important battles have been fought to change the nature of power between state and nation to form a real difference from the normal state of affairs. That is what I'm arguing is the real crux of the matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Christian version of this is new. Previously, using US law to make decisions of religious courts binding has mostly been a Jewish and, to a small extent, Islamic thing. There are Jewish courts (Beth Din) in many US states.[1] They do both commercial and family law arbitrations. The commercial side is generally well thought of, but the family law side is iffy, because Jewish family law explicitly favors the husband and keeping children in the Jewish community.

There have been attempts to set up Sharia courts in the US, but there's much opposition.[2] Sharia family law also explicitly favors the husband.

[1] [http://www.nylslawreview.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/16/201...](http://www.nylslawreview.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/16/2012/11/NYLS_Law_Review_Volume-57-2.Broyde.pdf) [2] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/sharia-law-usa- stat...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/sharia-law-usa-states- ban_n_3660813.html)

<comment><USER9> I don't know from where you have experience with Bet Din's, but in my experience and knowledge it actually favors the women.

Maybe I'm biased because I know a couple of divorced religious jews, but as I see the only example of favoritism to the husband is on get refusal, if the husband refuses to give the divorce the wife can't remarry, all the court can do is put pressure, in Israel they have more powers, they may imprison the husband until he agrees to the divorce.

What people don't tell is that the wife may refuse to accept the divorce, maybe is not that common or maybe people don't talk about it much, but in practice the husband can't remarry the same way until the wife agrees to accept the divorce. The difference is that the court don't apply pressure the same way they do to men.

Also there's the ketuba, on divorce the husband must pay an amount for "breach of contract", and this goes only one way, meaning there's no way the wife will ever need to pay any money, she has only money to receive.

Also children custody goes to the mother, while this is not a problem exclusive of Bet Din's, the court doesn't have powers to assure the father right's of seeing the children, meaning the ex-wife can create problems and difficulties and the court can't do much in practical terms

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "My faith is still strong," she said. "But I am more careful in dealing with Christians than I used to be. They are just people with no more ability to be good than anyone else."

If you don't grow up in an area that has a very heavy Christian presence it can be hard to understand how very conservative/evangelical Christians think. Many of them believe, honestly and truly, that they are incapable of being wrong because they have been sanctified and saved and therefore even if they perform a transgression no one on Earth has the authority to call them out on it. But see, since they're saved, Jesus forgives them, so no one can call them out on their sin because no one is without sin, so best to just let it go.

It's an extremely insidious mindset because there's no arguing with it. There's no way to get someone who believes that they are morally right to budge even an inch because they 100% do not believe in capitulating to anyone other than Jesus Christ- and since the only source of what He thinks is the Bible and it can be interpreted in about a thousand different ways... you see where this is going. Their personal definitions of what's "good" and "bad" are very, very different from people who did not grow up in the religious culture and there's no way to bring them around to another way of thinking. It happens within the culture too- my father in law and his lifelong best friend had a falling out about 10 years ago over a very small, nitpicky religious matter (they were both elders in their church and disagreed over the way some church finances were distributed) and my father in law straight up stopped talking to his best friend because his friend would not capitulate and come around to my father in law's way of thinking. My Father in Law believed, and still believes, that he was 100% in the right and that his best friend was deceived by the devil and that's why their friendship had to end. And this is over something like "Should we put the church's nest egg all in a savings account or should we take half of it and put it in a Money Market account instead?"

I point this out to add some context to this type of arbitration since, if you didn't grow up in an area where this was just a normal fact of society, you're probably scratching your head wondering how in the world this is even a thing.

Even growing up Southern Baptist below the Bible Belt I had no idea that Religious Arbitration was a thing until I read this article. I had heard of Orthodox Jews having their own set of laws and rules and that being a thing in some very small neighborhoods of NYC, but I didn't realize there was a Christian equivalent being played out across the US.

<comment><USER11> I lived in the bible belt and I did not see any indication that evangelical christians thought they were infallible. This is literally the first time I have ever heard something like this. Now, there is quite a bit of self- righteousness but that's another matter

<comment><USER10> It is not something that is readily apparent unless you have grown up in an evangelical household/ gone to an evangelical church. It's a deep-rooted thought process that doesn't usually come up in interactions with anyone outside of the church/social structure, since people from outside that social structure aren't inherently expected to adhere to its internal laws. The article talks about people who were already a part of the existing social norm and what happened when they were wronged within that norm.

<comment><USER12> Grew up evangelical. Still am. I go to an evangelical church. I have _never_ heard this, and I don't know anybody who thinks it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I recently signed up for a new credit card and was really disappointed to find out that if I wanted to use the card, I'd have to submit to arbitration and forgo my rights to a proper American trial.

I'm not against arbitration; speaking to this article specifically, the apostle Paul directs Christians to resolve their differences without going to non-Christian courts. There's nothing inherently wrong with the concept.

But in either case, it'd be nice to have some sort of a provision that allows for escalation to a court if you can't get things resolved in arbitration. That's my concern with the credit card I just signed up for; I feel like the company is setting the rules in a way that stacks the deck against me, and if I get slighted I'd have no recourse.

I would find it difficult to imagine Paul, the Roman citizen who appealed to Caesar himself, wanting to shut people out of certain aspects of the legal system entirely.

</comment><comment><USER14> All: when commenting on this piece, please stay substantive and engage with the specifics of the article. Avoid generic discussions about religion, which turn into flamewars, which are off-topic here.

</comment><comment><USER15> This article is purely anecdotal. In theory, promoting reconciliation when possible seems like a positive, but also likely to lead to sugar-coating reality. I'd be interested in a way to quantitatively evaluate outcomes from arbitration of various types, e.g., religious, commercial, voluntary associations, and lawsuits in courts, both state and federal.

I'm surprised by the power of arbitration clauses in contracts. My understanding is that you cannot sell yourself into slavery in the US because the contract will not be considered valid. Perhaps if you put an arbitration clause into the contract, you could?

</comment><comment><USER16> > "When you think Christian, you automatically think good[...]"

That is everything you'll ever need to know about why religion will never leave humanity. Substitute literally any belief system for Christianity, and then realize that every single human who holds that belief system also holds that refactored sentence to be true. Possibly in a more grammatically correct manner.

</comment><comment><USER17> If arbitration proceedings grounded in superstition and other tomfoolery (i.e., Scientology) hold up, it seems like anything will.

I think there needs to be an 'arbitration by combat' service.

<comment><USER18> _More than anything, the cases show the power of arbitration clauses._

If you sign a contract with someone with one of these clauses, you have legally opted-in to the arbitration process. I'm against drive-by EULA's, but other than that I can't really see a reason not to uphold them.

<comment><USER19> I also don't have a legal argument against it. But it deeply violates my sense of fairness that one cannot appeal to the actual courts, and must participate in religious-based courts, even if such courts will be obviously biased against you.

<comment><USER20> I believe, at least in the US, the ideas it that arbitration is for civil dispustes, not criminal disputes. I believe your concern is that a person will be dealt with unfairly in a civil dispute... I would argue that if any arbitration clause for civil issues is to be upheld then it must be upheld for all of these agreements where there is no criminal issue; otherwise the party that feels they will do better outside of arbitration will always choose to not use arbitration regardless of their prior agreement... that seems unfair to me; to go back on the original agreement.

<comment><USER19> This article is part of a larger series by the NYT on the rise of arbitration: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitrat...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration- everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html)

The difficulty is when there is a power asymmetry in the original agreement, as there normally is when it's an individual signing a contract with a larger organization.

Two large companies agreed to arbitration? Stick to the original agreement, as both sides paid lawyers to advise them on what to do, and there was almost certainly a negotiation. But individuals don't, usually, have the resources to hire lawyers or the ability to do the kinds of negotiations required to get favorable contracts. In such situations, I am troubled that we can end up signing away our ability to appeal to the courts to intervene on our behalf.

If this issue gets enough press for a long enough time, I could see legislation that voids arbitration clauses in certain cases.

<comment><USER20> I have not read the entire series so I may be misnifored or speaking to other topics covered in the series, but I think many if not the majority of contracts are signed between parties with power asymmetry. One party write a standard contract in a way that mitigates their risk in order to provide a service and another party signs the contract to recieve the service with understanding that the benefits are worth the risk of dealing with an entity that has significantly more power then they do. I could argue the person was misniformed and mislead into signing an agreement with a relgious organization and should be free from the contract... but I could make the same argument for student loans, credit cards, mortgages, etc.

I can see value, and certainly abuse, in people agreeing to allow their religious organizations to arbitrate civil disputes... it would seem that people should be allowed to make the choice and suffer the consequences if the agreement is within the established law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd be surprised if the hardwood flooring example from the article held up in a court.

If I go to your showroom, purchase 100 sq ft of hardwood floor for my home office, hand over my AmEx, not entering into a written contract, come home and find it faulty/unfit and the retailer protests, they can't then turn around when I sue them and say "actually, according to our web site, you can't sue us, you have to go to arbitration".

It would be extremely difficult to make that binding, save a written contract with the presence of that clause.

<comment><USER22> > I'd be surprised if the hardwood flooring example from the article held up > in a court.

It looks like the specific company mentioned only sells online and through dealers.

<comment><USER23> Generally speaking what you actually agree to is to attempt to use arbitration before going to the courts.

Of course, please consult professional legal services before signing any agrrement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> During my "Legal Environment of Business" class they spent a lot of time talking about arbitration in general. Religious or otherwise, anytime I see a contract that requires I defer to arbitration my instinct is going to be to assume that it's to protect the interests of whoever has created the contract.

Happens with employment contracts all the time around sexual harassment and workplace disputes. It's not to say it's unreasonable though. Disputes are common and court is expensive while arbitration is usually cheaper and more efficient.

Honestly, the bigger concern is contract signing practices more so than arbitration. I'm 100% for people or businesses being able to sign a contract with an agreement between them for just about anything, from buying a house to getting married.

The problem is the way contracts are presented. "The fine print" is meant to be something huge and intimidating enough that you won't take the time to read it. Lawyers are expensive and in most situations you're not going to have one read every single contract that you're presented with.

I went to lease a vehicle a couple of years ago. Talked to the sales person, sat at their desk, filled out a bunch of paperwork, sat and waited while he stepped out of the office to do something with it. After I'd been waiting for about an hour he comes back in with a huge stack of paperwork for me to sign.

At this point a few things can happen:

A) I spend 2-3 hours pouring over every one of the documents, asking him specific questions about wording, to which he'll call his manager to get an answer, etc potentially dragging on for hours before finally reaching an agreement.

B) I ask to have my attorney look at the documents, taken them and leave. He will review them when he gets free and in a couple of days send me his concerns. I will then pass them back along to the sales person who will pass it on to a manager who will either approve or escalate it to their own attorney. At the end of this process, assuming everything can be worked out I will PROBABLY lease the vehicle assuming it's still on the lot. I will then get a bill from my attorney.

C) I will rush through and sign the documents, trusting the business not to screw me, simply because I'm tired of waiting and want to get out of there.

All of these are a problem and the result is usually C "just sign the damn contract"

At some point, we need to establish some legal rules around SIZE of contracts and the strength of those agreements. Under scenario B where each party has an attorney involved and gets the details worked out to exactly the terms everyone is happy with a contract should be borderline ironclad.

Under scenario A or C where an attorney wasn't involved and the signing process was engineered to produce a signature, significantly more leeway needs to be given to the terms of that contracts and/or the penalties for breaking it.

That's one of the great things about working in Right to Work states because even the most ironclad of noncompete agreements are basically unenforceable in all but the most specific of circumstances.

<comment><USER25> Another thing that can happen is D) you find something disturbing in the contract that you would like changed, and the business just cancels the transaction. Another guy will come in and lease the car and won't ask questions.

I'm not really sure how to fix this, or if it should be fixed. Is it a problem that I can't get phone service without agreeing to give up my right to a class action? It seems that it is: it allows companies to essentially have one sided contracts. I must abide by the rules of the contract or be taken to arbitration (where I will lose), but the company can feel free to break the contract whenever they wish. If I complain, we will go into arbitration and I will lose.

I suppose the way to fix it is to put legal controls on arbitration, but if enough controls are put on arbitration, it starts to look a lot like court, at which point, the value of arbitration has been lost. However, at the moment, the lack of controls make outright fraud much too easy.

Here is a question: can you sue the arbiter for a bad decision? It seems this idea isn't unheard of[0], but it is definitely not perfect.

[0][http://works.bepress.com/andrew_guzman/12/](http://works.bepress.com/andrew_guzman/12/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So, basically, Christian Sharia.

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone have idea how the decisions reached by the arbitration panel are enforced? What holds any party from not abiding by the ruling and refusing to comply?

</comment><comment><USER28> In these cases, as in many others, religion is the arsenic of the people.</comment>


Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/10/google-warns-that-rate-limits-overage-fees-are-coming-to-maps-api.ars <comment><USER2> I remember in the 90s when we lambasted Microsoft for cornering markets with free products (IE) so they could drive out the competition (Netscape) and eventually start charging for them when we had no other choice. Luckily that never really happened, Microsoft never started charging for IE.

While Google isn't exactly doing that here, it's coming awfully close.

<comment><USER3> I agree with that, it is quite similar to what they did with youtube and the unbearing amount of ad that one has to endure before watching a video now, after 5 years+ of making it available free of annoyance.

<comment><USER4> I don't have to bear one second of Youtube ads. (Thank you AdBlock!)

The "Shark Week" ad that literally screamed at me at 11PM was the straw that broke my mental back. I immediately installed AdBlock.

<comment><USER5> Some video ads (on YouTube and elsewhere) can detect AdBlock and refuse to play the video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This has an MBA-in-charge smell about it.

I'm not certain how many GMap implementations there are that exceed a 25k/day load, but my back-of-the-napkin guesstimation is <10% of all sites that use Google Maps.

But, those are exactly the sites that I want using my maps, instead of Yahoo or Bing or some other provider.

Unless there's something I'm missing, this seems penny-wise and pound-foolish.

<comment><USER7> There's actually not a _huge_ benefit to Google in my site using Google Maps instead of Yahoo Maps. There is a branding benefit for sure, but there are no links to Google services, no ads, or anything like that.

I've been wondering for a long time when this would come- the processing (getting directions, geocoding, etc) and bandwidth (for map images) demands must be huge, with comparatively little payback.

It'll be interesting to see how many big operations pay up, and how many switch. To an extent switching might be futile- if Google can't afford to keep the maps offering free, do you really think Yahoo can?

<comment><USER8> Don't forget the cost of the actual data. Remote sensing satellites are not cheap. Google Maps is heavily dependant on a few companies who provide the bulk of the data.

<comment><USER9> They have driven cars around nearly all the roads in several countries taking photos of everything... They could use that to make better maps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> " \- the "JavaScript API or the static maps API will be capped at 25,000 map loads per day.

\- They will be expected to pay a fee of $4 per thousand loads in excess of the limit.

\- The cap is set to 2,500 loads for styled maps that customize the presentation.

\- After 25,000 loads, the overage fee for styled maps will bump up to $8 per thousand. "

That is no joke, a $4 - $8 CPM on map loads means your app has to be doing substantially better than that, which is NOT an easy enterprise.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, the pricing is absolutely ridiculous.

At least there are alternatives:

1) Yahoo maps

2) Bing maps

3) OpenStreetMap

4) Nokia Maps

5) Cloudmade

<comment><USER12> There's also (I'm as surprised as you are) Mapquest. They have a whole host of open APIs now, built on OSM, and even have web services like directions/elevation: <http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open>

[http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/directions-s...](http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/directions- service)

<comment><USER13> Ahh Mapquest. I'd forgotten all about them.

They are one of the poster children for early success and then resting on their laurels while the competition ate their lunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems to me like Google has only two dials: free or expensive. For example, in the case of Google Apps, the jump from free to $50 per account / year is rather steep imo. $4 fee for each 1K over seems rather expensive. Anybody know the price range for the subscription?

<comment><USER15> I agree with you that Google's Apps pricing is steep, but I don't think they're marketing it towards the average guy who just wants a couple of email accounts for his personal site. I think they're marketing it towards businesses and schools who see $50/acct/yr as pennies compared to hosting their own email server, hiring a sysadmin (or telling their current admin to handle it), and then supporting that server all day, every day.

I'm not a small business owner, though, so I don't know how much one would generally pay for email, or how much $50/person/yr is compared to the rest of the business.

<comment><USER16> $50/acct/year comes to $4.16/acct/month. If your staff's use of email isn't in someway contributing to making more then $4.16/month you should probably just fire them, or not give them an email address in the first place.

<comment><USER14> I'm talking about places where maybe 10 people really need email and 100 other maybe once a week if that. You can definitely justify the cost for those 10 people, but not for the other 100.

If you could mix and match free and non-free accounts this would work great, but you can't. Again, I'm talking about companies with razor thin margins where the technology side is not super important. What do they do now? They mainly use free gmail/live/yahoo accounts.

<comment><USER16> You can in fact mix and match - you can use Google Apps on top of a corporate system such as Exchange for only specific users. It's unlikely to save you any money since you'll then need someone to run it, but it's possible.

As things stand at the moment the company I'm working for is in exactly that boat of some staff depending on email, and others only needing to retrieve a single email on each day they're working. We're working around it right now by just getting them to give us their personal email address.

That probably won't scale long term, but for now it does the job, and if we get to the point of needing more then I may just throw together a quick and dirty mail server for the people who don't need the convenience of Google Apps syncing between devices for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Reposted from other Maps thread_

Aren't the limits IP based? This page on Google's 'Geocoding Strategies' seems to say so: [http://code.google.com/apis/maps/articles/geocodestrat.html#...](http://code.google.com/apis/maps/articles/geocodestrat.html#quota- limits)

So as long as your call to the Maps API goes out client side, aren't you ok?

<comment><USER18> I think the Maps API is different than the Geocode in that the Maps API requires you to grab a key here:

<http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html>

So to avoid it in that sense you'd have to force every one of your clients to go grab an API key and input it.

<comment><USER17> Look at the note at the top of the page you linked, Version 3 of the Maps API doesn't require a key.

<comment><USER19> Not only does v3 not require an API key, as of Sept 28 (a couple days before the rate limiting went into effect) sending a v2 API key to v3 will cause the request to fail:

[http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-js- api-v3-notify/...](http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-js- api-v3-notify/browse_thread/thread/46666c2d61f8bf66)

Sounds like they're laying the ground work for v3 to use API keys again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here's a Tweet from the Google Maps team:

Google Maps API is still free! Just has a limit of 25k maps/day. That means pricing only affects the top 0.35% sites!

[https://twitter.com/#!/GoogleMapsAPI/status/1296873737002762...](https://twitter.com/#!/GoogleMapsAPI/status/129687373700276225)

</comment><comment><USER21> I will be switching.

I quite like the Google Maps API but in my company we're just not able to pay for things with credit cards or in fact to pay for anything we don't know the cost of up-front (i.e. variable billing). We'll happily and routinely pay hundreds of millions to suppliers so long as we have a contract, of course.

This is no doubt more of an indictment of my employer's internal processes and policies rather than Google, but it does mean that the "standard" maps platform I built will have to be re-written to use another source of tile data etc.

But it does seem like this means I have some re-work to do :-(

<comment><USER22> Is that not what Google Maps Premier is for?

<http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps.html>

<comment><USER21> I imagine so - I've already requested info.

It will take my company literally months to push through a contract for something like this. Google will be required to tender, alongside other comparable services. I just don't see that happening...

<comment><USER23> If your company is going to consume large volumes of mapcalls you will definitely need the tiered pricing which they do offer per client basis.

It's possible to get 50% discounts of the $4 price (if you do more that 100,000,000 per year)

<comment><USER21> The main problem is that my company (an executive agency of the UK government, effectively) can't enter into this kind of financial agreement easily, precisely because we have such a huge budget (numbered in the billions).

Any contract we sign needs to be for a fixed price, rather than a variable amount. And amounts above a certain limit need to go out to competitive tender, which takes a long time. (I'm not sure Google or the other players in this space would even bother to tender anyway.)

So the only option remaining is to rebuild the mapping solution using another technology to ensure continuity of service.

<comment><USER22> Well, if you're playing in this big a space you could always run your own mapping server using OSM tiles. Of course, GIS guys in my experience tend to be extremely parochial and you might have difficulty in pushing that approach :/

<comment><USER23> Saying "you could always" for something like this doesn't make any sense. To undertake creation of a mapping service with no/little expertise and if the main constraint is approval timeline doesn't even seem like an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> They say the premiere service will be cheaper than the overage.

<http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps-compare.html>

Unfortunately, they don't list pricing in an obvious way.

<comment><USER25> I beleive it's 10K per year.

<comment><USER26> Yep <http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps-faq.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There are some incredible Google Maps mashups, but I wonder how many make enough money to pay Google. I sure hope this isn't too tall a hurdle for PadMapper.

</comment><comment><USER28> Yahoo maps isn't bad, and as far as I can tell they aren't enforcing their limits.

<comment><USER29> Meh.

Google maps UI is by far better than Yahoo maps. That and the street view/bike maps/etc. are features that give it a nice edge over alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Glad we (Stormpulse) made the decision to build our own mapping system.

<comment><USER31> Off topic, but your site is awesome.

<comment><USER30> Haha, awesome, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Shit! There are so many sites out there using this API. And many are totally dependent on it - location is the cornerstone of their model. Zaarly, Foodspotting, AirBnb, GetAround - every location-based P2P platform.

I guess this was inevitable. But maybe we can switch to a different maps API? Google is so smooth though.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm really surprised that Google would make such a sudden change. I would've expected lower rates or allowing free use if AdSense ads are placed on the maps or on the same page. Such changes could've been easier to accept for many sites instead of making them look for alternatives. It appears that they decided that the branding effect of having the Google logo and copyright plastered on so many Web pages wasn't doing much.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's time like this that RMS Free Software message really stands out. Corporations will screw you eventually no matter how sweet they sound initially.

</comment><comment><USER35> On reading this I wondered if this was meant to target Apple? I'm sure the Maps app uses over 25k API calls a day.

<comment><USER36> Probably not. The guy who authored the blog post says that Google Maps use in Android apps won't be bound, I imagine the same would be true for iOS: <https://twitter.com/thormitchell/status/129665976001236994>

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> At $work we signed for the Premier agreement. We're paying more than $10k/year but it's still reasonable for the benefits it gives us. There are ways to keep your map views down when they aren't essential to the page. :)

</comment><comment><USER38> When spending $12bil on a second rate hardware company is cheaper than the legal cost of patent defense, things like this will happen.

</comment><comment><USER39> Google Maps is dead, long live OpenStreetMap!

</comment><comment><USER40> Visual candy for the world that people didn't know they wanted - but want. +1

</comment><comment><USER41> So, does this mean they can't monetize ads on maps?</comment>


Unikernels: The Next Stage of Linux's Dominance [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.bu.edu/~jappavoo/Resources/Papers/unikernel-hotos19.pdf <comment><USER2> Oh, it's a paper I am (rather peripherally) involved with. If you have questions then ask away, although it's possible I might not have all the answers ...

Edit: In case you can't read the paper there's a copy here: [https://www.cs.bu.edu/~jappavoo/Resources/Papers/unikernel-h...](https://www.cs.bu.edu/~jappavoo/Resources/Papers/unikernel- hotos19.pdf) (Thanks anonymousDan in the comments below for linking to it)

<comment><USER3> How do they relate to microkernels ?

Since last HN post about GNU Hurd, I'm wondering why not try to join this Free microkernel project instead of looking in another kernel's direction ?

<comment><USER4> Architecturally, microkernels and unikernels are direct opposites.

Unikernels strive to minimize communication complexity (and size and footprint but that is not relevant to this discussion) by putting everything in the same address space. This gives them many advantages among which performance is often mentioned but ease of development is IMHO equally important.

However, the two are not mutually exclusive. Unikernels often run on top of microkernels or hypervisors.

<comment><USER2> Right answer.

While a unikernel might be structured to some extent internally into modules, it's basically all linked into a single blob and running in a single address space. Some _programming languages_ may support some kind of PL-level separation, but there is no hardware enforcement. In the case of what Ali is doing because all the code is written in C (it's all Linux, glibc and memcached) there is neither software nor hardware separation internally.

<comment><USER5> To give a list of these PL-level separation mechanisms, and their languages, these are the kernels I know of that work in this fashion.

Spin OS (Modula-3), Singularity (Sing#), Midori (M#), TockOS (safe rust).

As far as I know TockOS is the only one I know of which has some form of both PL-level and hardware enforcement of separation, albeit on an MPU rather than a full MMU, PL-level for kernel modules, and an MPU protected userspace.

I at least think it is worth addressing that none of these separation mechanisms are actually mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Long ago, an OS I worked inside had a tool which took shared library indirect calls, and wired them out so you did not have a nested indirect function call cost, but went direct from the call to the backend without the pass-through the null function mapping into the specific .so library. It made things faster by one layer of the onion skin.

Strip, as a UNIX tool removes the textual crap in a debuggable binary, to leave behind only the bits you needed.

It feels to me like if you can do runtime code call checks, and confirm which _actual_ calls you make, then stripping the bits of libc and associated libraries out, being left with only the strictly required calls, and then by extension the syscalls, and then by extension the kernel elements, is actually possible a lot of the time.

So, library -> reduced library -> reduced calls -> reduced syscalls -> reduced kernel state is a sequence or set or something, of applied minimisations which can be done, if you can predict all the call paths in your code and their dependencies.

But then its not a generic OS any more: its an application specific binding to a general purpose CPU.

Why not go all the way, and work into the ALU and remove the bits you don't need? And then go into the micro code, and the associated FPGA, and everything else..

<comment><USER7> You have to make sure your test cases exercise every possible code path. German demogroup .theprodukkt made a demo one time, .kkreiger, a first-person shooter game in 96kb. They used a technique like this to strip every line of source code that was not hit during a playtest. But the playtester didn't press the up-arrow in the main menu, so that doesn't work. More importantly they didn't get hit by any bullets, so in the final release the player is invulnerable because the code that handles damage was never compiled.

Edit: more informative link [https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/metaprogramming- for...](https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/metaprogramming-for-madmen/)

<comment><USER6> Yes. And its almost impossible to do this without a huge investment in time and effort, except: If you use languages with FP, and are rigorous, then I believe (possibly wrongly) its actually somewhat simpler to understand because the style of coding in FP exposes much of this "better" than in classic imperative coding

So yes, I think you're right: great dream, hugely hard to do, if not actually impossible in most cases near as damnit, but there are places where program proofs take you to this, Military/Space/Medical needs to know the code calls don't have unexpected outcomes. And language choices which express as "how" you express code, can also help. Probably not enough.

<comment><USER8> I think it's impossible, or close to it. Isn't it just another form of the halting problem? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem)

<comment><USER9> Well, the alternative is that you limit the set of things you can do, such that you no longer have a Turing machine. But that's certainly less fun, isn't it?

<comment><USER10> Depends on your definition of fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those who don't want to read the whole paper, I'd made a short ten minute explainedy video going through it:

[https://youtu.be/3NWUgBsEXiU](https://youtu.be/3NWUgBsEXiU)

<comment><USER12> I love your approachable style. Keep it up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article is Tl;Wbmloc;Dr (too long, way beyond my level of comprehension, didn't read), so forgive any stupid questions. Could the unikernel technology be used to build extremely small Linux distros that contain just the bare minimum to satisfy all dependencies for running say a single software or a small group of them. I'm not interested in virtual machines for network related services but rather in small embedded systems where the user might need to use just one single application for the entire board lifetime. Security wouldn't be a concern there, assuming the user already has complete access to the hardware, that layer could be moved outside of the box by inspecting and firewalling the network traffic.

If yes, does anyone know if there is/will be any automated way say to analyze a software, example: a .deb package containing an user software, then build a list of dependencies and create a bootable image for the requested architecture which will run just that software?

<comment><USER14> It doesn't really make much difference in terms of size in itself, I suspect. You're still carrying along the whole kernel and the application code, they're just linked together into a single binary. You can certainly then trim things down a lot by stripping the kernel to its bones by removing drivers etc., but you can do that even without linking it together, and you can go a lot further than what the normal kernel configuration mechanism allows if you're prepared to strip out functionality you know you'll never need, but I'm hard pressed to think of approaches like that which you can apply to the kernel that will only work if you move your application code to kernel space.

In the past I've brought up Linux on embedded boards with 4MB RAM and 4MB flash for both the kernel and the application, and we gained most by linking statically to a smaller libc on the user side and stripping out drivers on the kernel side, ditching bash for ash (currently dash) and using a stripped down barebones init. We could have ditches ash and init as well and booted straight into the app, but ash made debugging and testing slightly easier and we could fit it in. 4MB at the time was not even a challenge.

I think the gap from something that you can fit a Linux kernel and an app mashed together into a unikernel up to being able to run them separately will be very small, so in most instances if you can make it work as a unikernel odds are you can produce a nearly a small solution without it.

Going full on unikernel potentially costs you a lot of resilience against failure, it's not just about security. The main reason for wanting to do it is to reduce the amount of context switches and data copying to reduce _latency_.

<comment><USER2> The linking stage automatically removes all parts of Linux (eg. drivers) that are not needed. We can also apply various link-time and whole process profile- guided optimizations. Apparently most of the performance improvement comes from getting rid of system call overhead although we still have a student measuring these things more precisely.

<comment><USER14> > The linking stage automatically removes all parts of Linux (eg. drivers) > that are not needed.

So does the normal kernel build process once you've specified which drivers you need compiled in. That's in no way unique to a unikernel approach. There'll be extremely little code that can be stripped from a unikernel that can not be stripped from a kernel built for the purpose of running a specific application.

It's just not where the benefits of a unikernel are. As I said, and you reiterated, it's really cutting latency from syscalls that is the big benefit of a unikernel.

<comment><USER2> That's not how most distro kernels are built, but sure you can build a custom kernel with everything statically linked in. What you can't do is link your application in as well and do whole-program optimizations on the whole binary, which is what Ali is trying to do here. We're also hoping that the eventual solution will be distro friendly enough that we can pack the "kernel library" into a future Fedora which you can use to link your own servers into unikernels.

<comment><USER14> Of course it's not, but the comment I replied to was about whether using it to build binaries for extremely small embedded systems made sense. In that scenario a distro kernel from one of the desktop distros is a total non- starter.

If a few MB of space matters, then you'll want a suitably configured kernel that disables a ton of stuff that is totally irrelevant for such a system, and you'll need to take that configuration into account whether or not you're building a normal kernel or a unikernel, as it involves not just excluding drivers and the like, but disabling functionality that if left enabled will not get removed by the linker because there will be calls into it from code paths that are reachable.

Do that, and you'll find it is pretty straightforward to get a Linux kernel down under 1MB.

Now, it's possible your tooling makes that _easier_ , but my point is that it is equally possible to disable those parts of the kernel for a non-unikernel system as well, and you're not going to make significant additional savings. And if you want to, then ditching glibc for one of the smaller libcs would be a better starting point.

This is not a criticism of this project - size is simply not what most people look to unikernels to address, especially not one built on a general purpose kernel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Unikernels have demonstrated enormous advantages over Linux in many > important domains, causing some to propose that the days of Linux's > dominance may be coming to an end.

Where are unikernels widely used?

<comment><USER16> I don't think that this statement describes the reality we live in.

To me, unikernels feel quite a bit like statically linked server binaries running under an unprivileged UID - but you're choosing not to trust Linux' (or any other kernel's) user separation facilities, but your hypervisor's domU separation facilities instead. In exchange, you lose virtually all of your existing OS's amazing debugging and performance analysis/tuning tools. It's not a tradeoff I'd readily consider.

<comment><USER17> i think this kindof misses the mark. A unikernel is both the kernel (just the things you need) + app together. It's build for one thing: whatever the app is doing.

Tooling/Perf/etc is not needed when running (do you really want to debug in production) but tooling can be used in the process of development.

Why consider unikernels? 1) they're stupid fast. You have only the things you need (booting in nanoseconds? yepp) 2) small attack surface (because you only have your app that's the only attack surface. you don't have cruft that build up in you os/kernel over years) 3) light resource usage (you could run thousands of these on the same physical machine) 4) true isolation via the hypervisor

definitely worth keeping an eye on the developments in this space

<comment><USER18> > Tooling/Perf/etc is not needed when running (do you really want to debug in > production) but tooling can be used in the process of development.

Whether or not you want to debug in production, reality often means that you will see things in a live environment that you will not see in other environments.

Unikernels are very interesting and have a number of compelling attributes, but let's not pretend that the current state of available tooling for troubleshooting, instrumentation, and general debugging isn't a challenge.

<comment><USER19> You're moving the goal posts and invoking a straw man. No one is advocating for "pretending", and the anti-unikernel argument is that the inherent cost of unikernels in general is the loss of kernel debugging tools; not simply that "right now the unikernel debugging experience is subpar".

<comment><USER20> in general right now, running on a full-featured monolithic kernel, the debugging experience is really pretty bad. especially in the target environment of horizontal clustered services or lots of little micro services.

so I actually believe there is an opportunity here to focus on the important pieces (network messages, control flow tracing, memory footprints, etc) after ejecting a huge amount of irrelevant stuff

<comment><USER18> Totally agree, there's definitely an opportunity there if the surface area of what the system is doing gets smaller. The big difference today is that it's a lot easier to compose a debugging suite using additional tools on top of a traditional host-based runtime for now.

Definitely excited to see how the technology evolves over the next few years. It hasn't moved as fast as I'd have expected over the last 2-3 years but I'd love to see that accelerate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there any way I can read this if I don't have an ACM subscription?

<comment><USER22> In this case the authors themselves put the pdf on their website.

In the general case, you can almost always download the article from scihub by searching for the DOI of the publication.

<comment><USER23> > In this case the authors themselves put the pdf on their website.

OT: This should honestly be a criminal offense, at least if done before a year passes. The publisher does valuable work in vetting contributions and checking the paper before publishing. They shouldn't be cheated out of their fair share of money that comes with due process just because authors go rogue.

<comment><USER24> Can't really say if this is sarcasm or not, but journals are paid to do that checking, it's not free, and they use unpaid people for peer review, so I'd say they aren't really losing money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is really cool, though it looks like the _security_ impact is nuanced.

Unikernel plus: A lot of code, including code with vulnerabilities, can disappear. So _some_ vulnerabilities disappear.

Unikernel minus: The unikernel and application don't have any security isolation, since the kernel is essentially linked into the appl. As a result, the application has all the privileges of its virtual machine (not the subset that would normally be imposed by the kernel), which would normally be more privileges than it really needs. So any remaining vulnerabilities can have a more devastating effect.

That trade-off in terms of security is really hard to evaluate.

But the kinds of performance improvement shown here, with relatively modest changes, is a really really big deal. So I'd expect a lot of people to investigate this further; it certainly seems promising.

<comment><USER26> If you write your unikernel in a high-level language then you can mitigate some of your security concerns. The unikernel should only have access to the data it needs to, so doing multi-tenancy or isolation inside the unikernel is probably not what you want: just spin up a new unikernel for each tenant/thing you want to isolate. The hypervisor would provide isolation in this case.

There is a downside, if there is a vulnerability the exploit can probably make hypercalls straight to the hypervisor, but a hypervisor can have less of an attack surface than a full OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> all unikernels so far suck ALOT regarding security. wouldn't recommend any of them to run in any production environment unless you want to lose all of your data.

NCC group did a good article on unikernels and how crap they are if you want to know.

A better idea, like already suggested would be to create an OS which builds itself according to a target application and system, to host that application on said system specifically. that would reduce about as much code, but keep potential security mechanisms like aslr, stack protection , user / kernel separation etc. in tact. (now kernels / oses build to target system ,but not application! -> application would only use subset of kernel, and thus kernel can be built to target application, reducing kernel to whats needed).

don't try to be cheap for performance and skip security, we're not in the damned 80s anymore.

/endrant

<comment><USER28> I'd argue the Mirage Unikernel (built almost wholly in OCaml) is one of the most robust platforms out there. The NCC paper you talk about looks at two rather old fashioned unikernels in isolation. I don't think the idea of unikernels should be discarded because the current implementations are slightly lacklustre -- it just shows that there's a fair way to go yet.

>[..] A better would be to host that application and reduce the kernel to whats needed

This is a unikernel.

<comment><USER29> The authors of the NCC paper are evaluating MirageOS as well. IIRC from listening to their talk on the paper and ongoing research [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b68VFuB_y5M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b68VFuB_y5M) it's got more of the problems other unikernels do than I'd have assumed. I'm pretty ignorant, but the paper gave me the impression that there's a long (rather than fair) way to go yet, especially relative to seemingly widespread assumption that unikernels are inherently more secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can anyone commnent on how this approach differs from LinuxKit? Or is the LinuxKit plan at all unikernel (MirageOS) based anymore?

I hope people will only use unikernels with memory-safe languages or otherwise well sandboxed runtimes.

<comment><USER31> It's worth noting that Linux itself is written in C (not rust).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anil Madhavapeddy's work on unikernels is also quite interesting to look at.

</comment><comment><USER33> > a support layer for Emacs

The best part of this joke was that I can't tell if it's shade or earnest appreciation.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a paid article. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER35> I'm getting this link: [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3321445](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3321445)

The link the PDF contains IDs and stuff which differ each time I visit, which seems unnecessary.

Maybe get it from here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cb17mn/read_a_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cb17mn/read_a_paper_unikernels_the_next_stage_of_linuxs/)

which links to: [https://www.cs.bu.edu/~jappavoo/Resources/Papers/unikernel-h...](https://www.cs.bu.edu/~jappavoo/Resources/Papers/unikernel- hotos19.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'd rather see unikernels written in Rust or any other memory-safe language. If we're going to start from scratch with this, let's do it right this time.

70%-90% of bugs seem to be memory-related. Let's end that with a little bit of effort upfront for much fewer headaches in the long-term.

[https://twitter.com/LazyFishBarrel/status/115341007092920320...](https://twitter.com/LazyFishBarrel/status/1153410070929203201)

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all- se...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-security- bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/)

[https://security.googleblog.com/2019/05/queue-hardening- enha...](https://security.googleblog.com/2019/05/queue-hardening- enhancements.html)

<comment><USER2> The entire point of this paper is _not_ to start over from scratch, but to reuse existing software (Linux and memcached in this case), and fiddle with the linker command line and a little bit of glue to link them into a single binary. If you want to start over from scratch using a safe language then see MirageOS.

 _Edit:_ I don't mean to say you have to use C for the "userspace" part of this. It should be possible -- in future -- to use any language for that. However at the end of the day you'll still be linking that with Linux (written in C) and glibc into a single binary that runs in one address space.

<comment><USER26> So this would be basically like rumpkernels but with Linux instead of BSD?

<comment><USER2> It's kind of the opposite (AIUI). Rumpkernels run kernel code in userspace. We run userspace code and the kernel in kernel space.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kim Dotcom's new Mega project - <AUTHOR> http://me.ga @KimDotcom Servers overloaded. Adding capacity. Stop reloading :-) <comment><AUTHOR> Already seems to be smashed down by traffic..

Same goes for <http://kim.com> & <http://kim.com/mega>

\-- UPDATE -- @KimDotcom Servers overloaded. Adding capacity. Stop reloading :-)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And it's back up: <http://samgranger.com/mega.png></comment>


Git pull request review strategies from three dev teams - <AUTHOR> https://linearb.io/blog/three-git-pull-request-review-strategies/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I'm buying the argument that PRs are a repository for institutional knowledge. But I do think thorough reviews are important if you work at a company that has a lot of customers and cares about quality.</comment>


Ask HN: Does Netflix Have a Future? - <AUTHOR> With every other entertainment company pulling content and starting their own streaming service, what does Netflix have to stay competitive?<p>I have personally found their original content to be 90% mediocre, especially compared to HBO/ShowTime/etc. Do you see them making better content in the future, or sticking to this model of frequent low-quality shows? <comment><USER2> Yes, I think Netflix survives, and prospers, for a number of reasons;

A) not "every other entertainment company" is starting, or can sell, a streaming business.

At one end of the scale you have Disney, with a huge catalog of stuff you've already seen. At the other end you have Apple with a handful of shows that you can watch all of in a single month.

But there are lots and lots of long-tail entertainers who will ultimately sell their work to a provider. Which brings us to B)

B) content costs money. And Netflix is out-spending the others. Which they can afford to do because they have the larger income from this already.

Of course there will be multiple platforms going forward, but most people will consolidate to 2 or 3 services. And for most people it'll be Netflix plus 1 or 2 others.

</comment><comment><USER3> Netflix will have to adjust their business model in order to stay competitive.

They sowed the seeds of that years ago when they started building their own content -- Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, and so forth.

They could license their technology to the other streaming services for IP revenue.

They could start advertising.

They could branch into AR/VR, music services, data cataloging, more interactive content, and so forth.

They can continue their international push.

They could sell their engineering services as a consultancy (Chaos Monkey!). They could build 5G-enabled multimedia content. So on and so forth.

In short, even though their primary market is now being sucessfully encroached, they have enough of the FAANGM knowledge capital to pivot profoundly. I look forward to seeing what Reed Hastings does next.

<comment><USER4> They own a lot of content. Netflix could sell out to a media company or some other company that wants to become a media company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think when the data tells them that their strategy isn't effective at decreasing churn they'll pivot to a different one, and they'll do it faster than pretty much any other company in the space is able to. And if the data tells them that strategy isn't great, they'll pivot again.

IMO people underestimate the power of being a tech company that spends on media versus a media company that spends on tech.

I also think they're better suited to international content development and distribution, which has always been tricky for Hollywood. Part of that is technology, part of it is organizational.

<comment><USER6> " the power of being a tech company that spends on media versus a media company that spends on tech "

Amen!.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Remarkably few companies die of innovation. People have subscribed to Netflix. It solves the problem of having something to do when lazy. People won't really switch to watch Game of Thrones or Simpsons if they can still marathon Friends for years. I've been marathoning Adventure Time with my kids since last year, and even though it's the only thing I watch on Netflix, it's still a better deal than buying whole 10 seasons.

It'll probably be the WhatsApp effect - everyone knows it's inferior and play with changing but it's just too much effort to. Netflix has some lock in because people share their accounts with family members or even "family" they just met online, and people are hesitant to unsubscribe.

</comment><comment><USER8> > I have personally found their original content to be 90% mediocre

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think personal preference is really an indicator of the success of a company. Especially not one as influential or 'cultural' as Netflix.

It's like when people on Hackernews claim that Google is going downhill and will be 'dead' soon just because they don't like their search results.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think personal preference is > really an indicator of the success of a company. Especially not one as > influential or 'cultural' as Netflix.

This is not just my opinion. Most of their original content has been poorly reviewed by most media publications and on Reddit/etc.

> It's like when people on Hackernews claim that Google is going downhill and > will be 'dead' soon just because they don't like their search results.

Dead soon, maybe not. But if the quality of a company's primary product starts to slide, then yeah, it's not a good sign. That is how business works.</comment></comment>


Thoughts on AbbVie's Rova-T Implosion - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/06/05/more-thoughts-on-abbvies-rova-t-implosion <comment><USER2> Most (all?) current right to try legislation involves drugs that have already passed safety protocols, but are not approved for treatment of a specific condition, or drugs currently approved in other countries for treatments.

To deny a terminally ill patient a drug that may save her life and is unlikely to cause further harm is the height of regulatory hubris.

<comment><USER3> This is literally exactly the scenario you're talking about: The drug looked like it would work, so much so that someone decides to spend $6 billion to buy it before it completed stage 3 trials.

Now it turns out that not only does it not work, it also actively made things _worse_. So your "terminally ill patient" and the "drug that may save her life" turns out not to be "unlikely to cause further harm".

The existing regulatory regimes allow for the patient to end up in a trial for a drug like this, but the "right to try" law now means the subject can be 1) charged for it and 2) not provide useful information for other patients because they're no longer in a blinded trial environment.

<comment><USER2> Ending up in a trial != getting the treatment, and fewer than 3 percent of terminally ill patients gain access to investigational treatments through clinical trials.

Current 'compassionate use' exceptions are even worse - only 1,200 of those are granted each year to the lucky few, out of hundreds of thousands of people who could use them.

Also, don't you think it's rather hypocritical to imply that being in a trial (if you win that lottery) is safe, while getting the drugs unfer RTT is not?

Yes, there will no doubt be failures, but to deny a terminally ill patient the right to choose what to do with their own body seems rather crazy to me.

<comment><USER3> No i don't think it's hypocritical.

Right to try laws allow companies to monetise desperate terminally ill patients. That's been shown repeatedly throughout history (and these days in the 'supplements' industry) to result in abuse of dying patients. And you get things like [https://www.statnews.com/2017/11/21/herpes-vaccine-hotel- roo...](https://www.statnews.com/2017/11/21/herpes-vaccine-hotel-rooms/) which was clearly a great plan - and yeah that's not "terminal", but the exact same kind of thing can happen for terminal diseases as well.

The trial methodology removes the financial incentive, so that now you can't just take all of a dying persons money.

By keeping the treatment in the trial model you also mean that we get data that can actually help -- maybe find out that the drug does not in fact work, or maybe finding out that it does! A patient who is not being treated under trial conditions is much less useful as a data point (if at all) because the placebo effect, and a bunch of other related ones, have repeatedly been found to lead to incorrect feedback - the person says that the drug makes them more comfortable, even though they didn't live any longer, is that because it actually made them feel better? Or was it placebo? Or was it a desire to be "helpful"? If you use them as a data point you may end up with a drug that doesn't actually help, and that drug gets sold. for money. to people who it doesn't help. Cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a counterpoint: New Immunotherapy Treatment Removes All Tumors In Woman With Advanced Metastatic Breast Cancer

[https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press- releases/2018/immun...](https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press- releases/2018/immunotherapy-targets-breast-cancer-case-report)

[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01174121](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01174121)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2018/06/04/new-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2018/06/04/new- immunotherapy-treatment-removes-all-tumors-in-woman-with-advanced-metastatic- breast-cancer/#963363100550)

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immunotherapy-treatment- saves-l...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immunotherapy-treatment-saves-life- of-woman-with-late-stage-breast-cancer/)

<comment><USER5> How is this different than the existing Compassionate Use [1], program? Under this program my dad had access to try treatments for his terminal cancer. What does Right To Try offer over that?

[1] [https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ExpandedAcc...](https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ExpandedAccessCompassionateUse/default.htm)

<comment><USER6> Having just skimmed the text, it seems like the difference is similar to the difference between "shall issue" and "may issue".

Fundamentally the FDA is very against right to try because they believe, correctly, that it reduces the incentive for patients to participate in medical trials - why risk being in the control group if you don't have to? My (perhaps flawed) understanding is that the FDA doesn't not approve Compassionate Use very often for this reason, although they probably use safety as the official excuse.

<comment><AUTHOR> The null hypothesis in clinical studies is that the investigational drug doesnt work. Most of the time it doesnt and patients are better off getting standard of care

There are also ethics guidelines that deal with control group selection. If an effective approved drug exists, usually that has to be the control arm, not a placebo. So a patient will get a drug that works in the control arm, though maybe not in the active arm

<comment><USER6> > Most of the time it doesnt and patients are better off getting standard of > care

The context for "right to try" is a person with a terminal condition that does not respond to any conventional therapies. In essence, the choice is between experimental treatments and hospice.

> If an effective approved drug exists, usually that has to be the control > arm, not a placebo.

There will always be a placebo in a stage 3 trial.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is not always a placebo in Phase 3 studies. You can have an active control. Here's an example [0]: active arm is upadacitinib, control is methotrexate (the standard of care)

FDA guidelines are you need "at least two adequate and well-controlled studies, each convincing on its own, to establish effectiveness" [1]. Well controlled can be placebo controlled or active control

[0]: [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/upadacitinib- monoth...](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/upadacitinib-monotherapy- meets-all-primary-and-ranked-secondary-endpoints-versus-methotrexate-in-a- phase-3-study-in-rheumatoid-arthritis-300659605.html)

[1]: [https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegula...](https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm072008.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can we please change the title to match the article instead of being sensationalized/ politicized ?

<comment><USER8> ^ This.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another pretty harmful potential downside of "right to try" is that while FDA may no longer hold as much sway, payers will still be gatekeepers. Payers will decide what to pay based on evidence and will not pay for drugs with little evidence to support their effectiveness. So patients will be stuck with the costs, and end up paying more than they do now

There is precedent for this in the world of molecular diagnostics. Certain tests can be marketed without FDA approval. However few companies are successful because insurers wont pay and patients wont pay enough

</comment><comment><USER9> Derek's argument seems to be that some drugs may actually harm patients, and so Right to Try is bad.

Isn't that known, and just something terminal patients need to balance with their doctors? If I had 6 months to live, I would probably roll the dice for a cure even if 50% of the time the drug would actually only give me 3 months to live.

I doubt anyone believes that trying experimental drugs can only help, and never hurt the patient. If that was the case we'd have been allowing experimental drug usage for a long time.

<comment><USER10> The problem with right-to-try is that it's framed as "Big Bad Pharma (and/or FDA's onerous regulations) is preventing these life-saving cures from getting to people, we need to get them sooner." Yet the experimental evidence is most drug candidates fail because _they don 't work._ Even the big, expensive phase III trials have about a 50% failure rate. If you're pushing for access much earlier (concurrent with phase I), that means you're pushing for access before there's data on how lethal the drug is.

Derek's big concern with right-to-try is that it's basically a way to advocate for taking the science out of drug approval. Data outside of a well-controlled study is hard to use, but the public _will_ lobby for it to be used. And the concern isn't idle: when the FDA's response to the bill was "we're going to look into how to do this safely," the reply form a key Senator was "no, no, no, you don't understand, we're trying to tell you to get out of the way." The end goal would be to eliminate the FDA as useless bureaucracy, but we already have an example of what unregulated drug industry looks like: it's called the health supplements industry, which is so sleazy that many companies don't even bother to include the active ingredients they claim to include.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget Thalidomide, etc.

People seem to forget that there was a time where the FDA and trials didn't exist. And that the reason the FDA has to exist is because otherwise you get very expensive "drugs" that frequent, at best, do nothing, and oftentimes do harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The idea that bureaucrats and scientists should be able to decide what experiments a terminally ill patient should be allowed to participate in is a deeply evil one.

<comment><USER12> "Deeply evil"? Is this based on ideological considerations which reject any sort of government oversight?

We have experience of what sort of quack "medicine" appears when unscrupulous people take advantage of the hopes of the terminally ill for personal gain.

Is that what you want us to return to? Or do you have a way to prevent it?

<comment><USER11> If I am dying, what right have you to tell me what experimental treatment I can take or not, if I otherwise have no hope to live? You would condemn me to no hope at all in order to save me from what you consider to be unproven or possible quackery.

<comment><USER12> We are all dying. We are all condemned. So if you're going to use such emotional words, at least ground it in real-world examples.

Here's a real-world example - [https://www.livescience.com/4040-dying- desperate-lure-quack-...](https://www.livescience.com/4040-dying-desperate- lure-quack-medical-clinics.html) .

People in the US in the last months of their lives, in desperation, go to Mexico for "treatment" by methods which have never ever worked.

> One hospital we visited offered homeopathic treatments. (Homeopathy is a > form of quack medicine essentially based on the mystical principle of "like > cures like.")

> Another, respectable-looking hospital offered such "alternative" treatments > for cancer as shark cartilage, mega-doses of vitamins, and "prayer therapy." > The hospital also offered Laetrile, a notorious cancer treatment discredited > by repeated scientific studies.

> ... Donsbach's clinic had a reputation for providing questionable medical > procedures, including "ultraviolet blood purification," colonics (a > potentially dangerous colon-irrigation therapy), and the use of microwaves > to "heat" cancer cells.

This is what you want, everywhere, yes?

<comment><USER11> I believe in the right of individual self determination in matters of life and death, even to the point of foolishness, yes.

<comment><USER12> It would have been easier if you had said that my first statement was essentially correct - your belief is based on an ideological consideration which rejects government oversight on the broad topic of "life and death."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In some sense we are all terminally ill so I'm interested to see how far they will push the definition of a terminal illness.</comment>


Report: Microsoft Buying Would-Be Google-Killer Powerset For $100M - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/report-microsoft-buying-would-be-google-killer-powerset-for-100m <comment><USER2> There's already a good discussion of PowerSet on another thread, but at that price the emphasis should be on _would-be_ and not _Google Killer_.

<comment><USER2> Down voted? Google is worth 2,000x what Powerset is being bought for, and that's money MSFT really wants. If it really could "kill Google", it should be worth more than 0.05% of Google.

If the goal is to kill Google, then the price indicates it's a risky bet. If the goal is good semantic search, then buying Powerset's tech and adding MSFT's financial resources to scale it sounds like a really good plan. Exaggeration doesn't help anyone.</comment></comment>


Storing Javascript in comment tags and later eval'ing it - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/12/07/downloading-javascript-as-strings/

<comment><USER2> This is pure evil. I don't like it. Even if it works and it's fast and conceived by the ultra-smart people at Google, it is evil. Definitely sets off my "WTF" alarm. Storing code in comments and then later retrieving it for execution, what could possibly go wrong?

For example, there are ISPs (T-Mobile UK, I'm looking at you) that strip off any comments from HTML, as a compression measure. Now I don't think that's a good idea but it is a very widespread practice at 3G/GPRS ISPs and definitely breaks this "code in comments" thing, especially since this whole thing was designed with mobile devices in the mind.

<comment><USER3> If comments are a problem you can use a display:none textarea or a dozen other things. The important bit is that steve has found another way to decouple the HTTP loading from the Javascript engine parsing/loading. That's a fairly significant result.

If something goes wrong it's probably fixable / avoidable. This kind of extreme tuning may not for everyone but a 100msec saved is a happier user.

<comment><USER4> I was just wondering, why can't you start an async xmlhttprequest at the onload event? It won't start the parsing until you tell it to, it won't block the loading of the UI and it's not as obscure as using eval on comments.

<comment><USER3> In very high latency situations new connections are too expensive. Say you have 300msecs packet latency, which is common in mobile. That means in worst case, that XHR will take at least one second just to the DNS lookup and establish the TCP connection to start downloading the file.

It's not the volts, it's the amps that kill you. So to speak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any idea why Chrome>String is such an outlier? I would have imagined quite the opposite from Chrome actually.

<comment><USER6> I thought Chrome kept [compiled] common js locally? I could be wrong. But it would seem explain some of the difference.

<comment><USER4> Yes, probably. That's why this sort of performance tests should only be done with an empty cache. Otherwise it isn't a fair comparison.</comment></comment></comment>


A Ransomware Outbreak Is Infecting Computers Across the World Right Now - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qv4gx5/a-ransomware-outbreak-is-infecting-computers-across-the-world-right-now <comment><USER2> I'm employeed in one of global companies hit by this attack and we've been told to immediately turn off the boxes and remove the cords and await further notice by global-wide mailing.

The costs of workhours lost due to people being forced to move away from their workstations will go into hundreds of millions. Scary times.

<comment><USER3> _remove the cords and await further notice by global-wide mailing._

How would that work, disconnect from the network, and await email...

<comment><USER4> I'm guessing enough people have access to email via their phones to spread the word?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Same story from a website that allows you to read content even with adblock : [https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15879480/petrwrap- virus-u...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15879480/petrwrap-virus- ukraine-ransomware-attack-europe-wannacry)

<comment><USER6> So does this one.

<comment><USER5> Oh, my bad, there was two links on HN homepage, that was the Forbes one which was blocking me. Any admin can delete my comment, please?

<comment><USER6> No worries, I hate Forbes too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > According to a tweet from anti-virus company Avira, [these attacks] were > taking advantage of the EternalBlue exploit previously leaked by the group > known as The Shadow Brokers

So it's using the same exploit as WannaCry? I'm very inexperienced when it comes to transfer protocols and windows vulns and all this kind of stuff, so maybe I'm missing something, but how could this be allowed to happen again? Some big firms have been hit!

However a quick glance on other news sources and twitter, Vice is doing a clickbait with the title, since it's not really a high number of firms that have been hit, but more that the few that have are geographically sparse.

<comment><USER8> Probably another exploit but published by the same group? Still means that companies didn't react properly after WannaCry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meta: I would have preferred the Forbes articles tagged [dupe], this one is better researched</comment>


Show HN: Handy website that saves videos to your device (and other stuff) - <AUTHOR> http://www.saveitoffline.com <comment><USER2> I tried saving a Youtube video (to mp4) as a test, and the video ends up out of sync with the audio (video .25-.5 seconds ahead).</comment>


IBM Nears Deal to Acquire Red Hat - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-28/ibm-is-said-to-near-deal-to-acquire-software-maker-red-hat <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18321884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18321884).

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting to see no comments praising this at all. I wonder what happened to RedHat for them to make this decision.

</comment><comment><USER4> time to invest into Ubuntu</comment>


Venmo for crypto, send ERC20/ETH at realtime speed, search via username - <AUTHOR> I'm hoping this app helps make crypto easier to use for peer-to-peer transfers and for accepting crypto at Points of Sale, since we can process payments in real time. Would love for any feedback from this group!
Users can send ERC20 tokens or Eth by username. Peer-to-peer transfers are free (only pay gas cost in currency being sent)
Buy ETH/DAI/USDC in app with apple pay.
How our app works
• User deposits funds to smart contract via mobile app from private wallet
• Users can search for other users by username
• User signs a transaction with the amount to pay and wallet address (which is provided via app), which is then sent to a processing queue for settlement.
• The merchant balance is updated on app immediately, but it may take up to an hour for the transaction to settle on the Ethereum network.
• Once the funds have settled on the network the user can send a request to withdraw the amount received.
• User must send a request to withdraw to prevent users from withdrawing when they owe money. We can only prevent withdrawal of funds for approximately one week but we cannot at any time seize customer funds due to the decentralized nature of the smart contract.
Smart contract code publicly viewable and verifiable here: [redacted]
https://www.mopayd.com/faq
App available for ios platforms only at this time. Download link -> [redacted] <comment><USER2> This company's web site[1] does not inspire confidence for a financial business that people are expected to trust with the security of their money and their sensitive personal information. There's no indication of where the company is located (I had to do a web search[2] to discover that) and the only way of contacting them is through a web form - no phone number or address. There's no mention of who the founders are and what experience they have with funds transfer or security.

You'll probably need to look more trustworthy before you get any traction in this line of business (especially considering the number of high-profile scams and hacks that have occurred in the crypto space).

[1] [https://www.mopayd.com](https://www.mopayd.com)

[2] [https://www.bizapedia.com/ca/mopayd- llc.html](https://www.bizapedia.com/ca/mopayd-llc.html) (created 9/10/2019)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are only common words for the project itself.

If you want to challenge DeFi further, please describe the advantages of competing projects such as MakerDAO and Compound based on numbers</comment>


A collection of cool terminal tools you may not know (with screenshots) - <AUTHOR> http://kkovacs.eu/cool-but-obscure-unix-tools

<comment><AUTHOR> If anybody has any suggestions, just post it here -- I love to find new, useful stuff!

K.

</comment><comment><USER2> missing :: Midnight Commander easy way to manage files. It is part of the Orthodox File Managers crowd

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_mana...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_managers)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if it can be considered "unknown", but vnStat is another cool CLI network monitor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds good, I'll look into it! Thanks, man!

K.</comment></comment>


China's 'Good Will Hunting?' Migrant worker solves complex math problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/17/asia/china-migrant-worker-good-will-hunting/index.html <comment><USER2> I must warn the young man that girls are far more difficult to fathom than any math equation.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "I want to have my own family first and then comes math."

Considering the value of success in his society, he might want to change priotities. ;)</comment>