Ask HN:  What hosting do you use for personal projects? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to set up a webhost just to play around with during my spare time.  I'd like some kind of virtual private server so I can have root access and customize it to my heart's content.<p>I don't need anything too expensive.  Does anyone have suggestions? <comment><USER3> For VPS: I'm using Slicehost currently, but have seen some good reviews of Linode. I think I'll likely give them a spin in the new year instead of Slicehost - you get a bit more for your money, and can customize more from what I understand.

I believe they both have quite good support from both community and company perspectives. Lots of good articles and tutorials.

Some comparison links:

recent: <http://journal.uggedal.com/vps-performance-comparison>

older: <http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode>

The companies:

Linode: <http://www.linode.com/>

Slicehost: <http://www.slicehost.com/>

<comment><USER4> Thanks! The second comparison link is mine, which focuses a bit more on memory, as opposed to performance. And that's where Linode and their 32 bit systems win over Slicehost and their 64 bit systems. The latter chews up a lot more memory for something like Rails, so even if Slicehost only looks _slighty_ more expensive, they end up being significantly more expensive. Which is unfortunate, because they seem like good people doing good work, and who treat their customers pretty well. However, Linode are that way too, and are also cheaper, so it's just not that difficult a choice at this point in time.

<comment><USER5> Most interesting summary. The one thing that's kept me from trying out linode is slicehost's support for whole-slice backups. Linode doesn't have backups, right?

<comment><USER6> Check out <http://is.gd/5ub0S> \-- the service is free while in beta.

<comment><USER7> ( [http://blog.linode.com/2009/04/03/backup-service-enters- beta...](http://blog.linode.com/2009/04/03/backup-service-enters-beta/) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> +1 for Webfaction.

You get a shell, a gazillion different application types (CGI, Rails, PHP, Django, custom). You can compile Apache and/or MySQL and configure a custom port for it.

Their support is responsive. Service has competitive pricing. I've been with them for three years and haven't experience any outages.

<comment><USER9> I've also been with them for quite some time. I originally got it because I wanted something cheap with django hosting, but I've stayed because they offer plenty of different setups and have great customer service. My credit card thought they were fraud a couple of times and stopped payment, and the Webfaction guys were very understanding about it, and kept my sites up while I worked my way up the bank chain trying to convince them that I actually wanted to pay them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> prgmr.com is very cheap and has worked well for me for the last month (which is when I signed up)

<comment><USER11> Anyone manage to get Gentoo running on there?

<comment><USER12> yes, it was simple with images provided on [http://stacklet.com/downloads/images/lister/Gentoo/2010-0/x8...](http://stacklet.com/downloads/images/lister/Gentoo/2010-0/x86-64)

<comment><USER11> Great. Thank you!

Would you happen to know where I could find detailed instructions on how to install these images?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> NearlyFreeSpeech.net

Insanely cheap. I deposited $5 on November 17th and I still have $2 left in the account, pushing 4.5 to 5GB/month.

<comment><USER14> I don't know why the hell people are downmodding you, <http://nearlyfreespeech.net> is pretty brilliant. Sure, having to use classical CGI is undesirable in 2009, but they were doing true distributed cloud-based hosting long before Google App Engine and Heroku came along.

Them and Dreamhost are the only simple shared hosting providers I ever recommend to anyone.

<comment><USER15> You just lost all credibility for recommending Dreamhost. They're down more than a hooker in red light district and overload their boxes to an average load of 10+. I would not use them for any hosting again.

<comment><USER14> They're also cheap as hell, have great support, and are _honest_. They're pretty upfront about CPU being their only contended resource. They'll go as far as corralling CPU hogs together into ghettos so they don't affect normal customers as much.

Classic shared hosting is bullshit in general, but Dreamhost makes the most of it. They're the only one I'd ever recommend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use my home computer for this purpose. There is a simple WAMP setup on the main OS (winxp) for quick and dirty stuff, and then I have VMWare running a 512 MB RAM image of Ubuntu Server to let me play around with more interesting stuff. So the cost is effectively free.

If something then turns into more than a personal project, I use the home setup as a development/staging server and then push it out to a hosted server.

<comment><USER17> same here- but centos on the home server because I am somewhat familiar with fedora.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Heroku, hands down. It's free unless it gets serious. (ruby only, though)

<comment><USER19> If it's ruby only, then one obviously doesn't have root access.

<comment><USER18> On heroku, no (that's the point - it takes a bit to get used to but it's worth it), but on another host, why would you not have root access?

<comment><USER19> Come on, man. From the OP:

 _I'd like some kind of virtual private server so I can have root access and customize it to my heart's content._

Which means if heroku is ruby only, as you said, and thus doesn't provide root access, then it doesn't fit the request.

<comment><USER18> Well, I suggested Webbynode in another comment. I think that, if by coincidence, the OP uses Ruby, he might want to take a look at Heorku. And the OP also asked what we used ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> +1 for Linode

<comment><USER21> From a European/UK standpoint by far the best value for money with their recent launch of a data center in London.

I found the VPS market in the UK was dead, with very little that excited me, the London data center was Christmas coming early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone use one of the Mac Mini hosting services?

<http://www.macminicolo.net/> [http://www.xservhosting.com/mac-mini- colocation/mac-mini-col...](http://www.xservhosting.com/mac-mini- colocation/mac-mini-colocation.php)

Looks like you buy a mini from them or ship one you already own and the hosting starts about $30 a month. I'm not sure if this is just to appeal to "Mac Fanboys" or if it's actually a good setup. I'd be interested if anyone has used one of these services.

</comment><comment><USER23> Linode and slicehost are quite expensive if you price out the RAM and disk you get per dollar, but they do let you rent quite small instances. I've found the main difference in favor of Linode to be nice monitoring tools and graphs.

Serverbeach occasionally runs specials on rented dedicated that offer very good value if you need a somewhat larger box.

An EC2 small instance is also surprisingly good value if you can commit to a year up front.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not really hosting per say, but I've started to use Google App Engine recently. No control over the software/hardware but it's nicely designed if all you want is a rest front end (web/api) to your application.

</comment><comment><USER25> I use dreamhost. Why? Because a while back they did that 777 deal, and I posted about it on a few forums, and ended up with like 250 primary referrals and 200 secondary referrals.

So basically I get paid money to host my stuff with them :) I made like 3 grand from them so far.

Also since they bump your storage/bw every week, at this point I have 10TB Bandwith and 500GB hosting. Which isn't half bad.

</comment><comment><USER26> Linode for general stuff.

Amazon EC2 when I need a sudden burst of computational power.

<comment><USER27> Can you give an example of an actual case when you needed this sudden burst of computational power? I'm curious what sorts of things people are actually using it for in real life. (instead of "well, you COULD use it for ....")

<comment><USER28> I use high-capacity EC2 for problem sets in my bioalgorithms class. Basically whenever something's taking too long for my liking on whatever machine I'm running it on, I'll throw it up on a beefy EC2 instance and let it run there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I want to caveat my choice by saying that I have been through the following options before settling on my latest and honestly greatest choice by far:

I used and cancelled; lunarpages, dreamhost, mediatemple, globat

I switched to HostGator Alluminum reseller program (but do not actually resell the space)

I house each project in its own cPanel so that I can modularize each project and have any join or access it if necessary. Helps me track bandwidth and start from scratch fast on new things. It also affords an infrastructure I have not seen elsewhere.

I support this decision after using Pingdom on my sites at MT then hostgator and seeing large latency differences. I feel it was a good sample set as the sites were identical (PHP\MySQL) on both services.

However that being said I am going to be using Engineyard for the first time now that I have a RoR project.

My older php\SQL sites will remain however on hostgator.

</comment><comment><USER30> Depending on your purpose/needs, <http://www.lowendbox.com/> lists sub $5/month VPS. Of course, dont expect much, but i have a couple for testing network connectivity. vmware/xen are great for local playing around though as others suggest.

<comment><USER11> Wow, ramhost (one of the links from that site) offers $3/month VPS.

That sounds about as cheap as it gets... anyone have experience with these guys?

<http://www.ramhost.us/?page=virtual-dedicated-server>

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm using Slicehost right now at $20/mo, but I did calculations, and if you pay for what you use on Rackspace cloud (and assuming you use almost nothing), Rackspace cloud comes out less than $20 per month. I'd be switching over if I weren't so damn lazy.

</comment><comment><USER32> I use a share at www.gandi.net, 1 share isn't too expensive. In my experience they respond the same day to support emails, and you can enable temporary console access via their website in case you really messed up your installation.

update: gandi is in france.

<comment><USER33> Gandi here too, great service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Media Temple. I absolutely hate it, but moving to a new host is a bitch. When I get some time to move I am either moving back to Slicehost or Linode and built my server up from scratch.

Note to everyone, don't ever use media temple. They are absolutely horrible. Every week, either the servers gets hacked, servers goes down or something is wrong with their admin panel and they won't let you access it. And of course its slow as hell. I have used their both dv and gs setup, just horrible. Their customer service is decent, but what am I going to do with good customer service when the server has so many problems?

They do have a good marketing and design team. I have to give them that.

<comment><USER35> Haha same deal. The gridserver is $20/mo and I have a dozen sites on it, nice control panel but the uptime is horrible and its slow as molasses

It blows yet I have to keep it unless I want to migrate 12 different sites...

<comment><USER34> I feel you. Migration can be a pain in the ass. Fortunately I only have 5 site with media temple. Next month I will have some free time and I will definitely dump this horrible hosting.

I personally recommend slicehost, there are excellent. Never had a problem with them, leaving them was a mistake. I was looking for a managed solution and MT was recommended by some guys so I jumped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I use amazon ec2 for <http://freeciv.net/>

</comment><comment><USER37> I prepayed for a 3 year reservation for a small Amazon EC2 instance and I am very happy with that decision because I frequently deploy customer projects to AWS, and any experience from my own projects is a big help.

I also permanently rent a small VPS from RimuHosting. I like their customer service and their low costs.

And, the elephant in the room is Google AppEngine. I have several deployed apps and an effective price of free is difficult to beat. Surprisingly (to me) I have had no customer interest in deploying to AppEngine. I have had ongoing problems using JRuby+Sinatra on AppEngine, but the Java support is fairly much hassle free.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've been very satisfied with RootBSD so far.

<comment><USER39> Awesome to see a BSD-based hosting service. Are they fairly new? I was looking for one a couple of years ago and don't recall seeing their name.

<comment><USER38> As a company they're not new (they're part of Tranquil Hosting) but the first time I heard about RootBSD was in early 2009 I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I use Linode. It's inexpensive, reliable, and easy to set up and use. The company also makes significant contributions back to the open source community. On my rating scale they get double bonus points for that.

</comment><comment><USER41> SchoolRack(.com) is built on a small cluster of 4 Slicehost servers. I know this isn't a small/personal project but it's given me a lot of experience with them. Of course, they're a great web host and definitely mean it when they say they're built for developers.

But... Linode is (so far) better. You get everything you get at Slicehost, for a little bit cheaper, with a more useful admin panel. Statistics are built in for CPU and Bandwidth. However, the panel is a bit more complex than the average park rangers jeep, so if you're a newbie you might wanna stick with Slicehost.

I say so far because I've only been a customer for about 3 months now. whalesalad.com (my personal site) runs on a small $19 Linode (which gives you 360mb of ram vs 256 on Slice, 16GB of storage vs 10, and double the bandwidth). At the moment I'm powering my aforementioned blog, a couple of WordPress sites, and another Django site. Nginx + FastCGI for both the Python and PHP side of things. It's holding up like an absolute champ.

Linode also lets you play around with other distros easier. You can basically cut up your allotted HD space and boot whatever you want. You can cut it in half and play with Fedora/Debian, or whatever you choose really. For experimentation, that's good.

This is a great performance breakdown/comparison of the popular VPS' out there - <http://journal.uggedal.com/vps-performance-comparison>

Finally, if you choose Linode, help a guy out with this referrer link :D - <http://j.mp/linodesalad>

</comment><comment><USER42> I started with a host called "kiloserv"...I haven't yet met anybody else who has heard of them (saw them in a sig on /.); they were fine for something that I wasn't too concerned about (all I really needed was an off network box for testing my network setup at work). Kiloserv was $10/mo for a VPS, it never went down on my in ~2yrs, and it worked...

That said, the bandwidth didn't seem too special, the company had 0 support of any kind...didn't offer a console, or DNS hosting (that I know of), and on and on and on...they worked, but not for a business.

After them, I switched to slicehost (per a recommendation here) and they were/are _awesome_. Totally professional, good bandwidth, $20/mo, everything I wanted. I recommend them 100% to anybody doing a semi-serious project.

After a recent comparison here, it sounded like linode was also really really good, so I bought a VPS from them ($20/mo again) to use a development server/sandbox. The linode box seems to, honestly, be outperforming my VPS from slicehost with benchmarks on AB (although this could just be a slight disparity between my httpd.confs on the two boxes).

Slicehost or Linode are outstanding +1 to them.

My next box will probably be a colo'd box with prgmr. ($50 for 1u including power and bandwidth is really enticing to me).

Slicehost/Linode are what I use right now...

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm using hosteurope.de (as I'm in Europe and want decent ping times). They have pretty good deals, starting at €13/month for 1GB RAM and 5TB data. I'm still on an earlier plan, 256MB for €10/month though.

They have pretty decent service, but their English (understandably) isn't that good. They've been down a few times in the last few months, but otherwise have a pretty good track record.

I think for the money you pay them, you get a very good price, but don't expect 99.99% uptime

<comment><USER44> I did a short and non-representative comparison between the ping times to my Linode in London (<http://vix.io>) and hosteurope.de. From my home in the Netherlands my Linode VPS is 10ms faster (~31ms for Linode versus ~41ms for hosteurope.de). Considering that hosteurope.de is hosted in Köln (Germany) which is about 190km from where I live the routing to London is a lot better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Looks like I am the only one in here that uses dedicated servers. Mix of theplanet, colo at level3 and gigenet.

</comment><comment><USER46> I've been very happy with Rackspace Cloud, and especially with how well it scales down -- as low as $10/mo. It's not quite all the flexibility that Amazon does, but the API's nice and getting better, and for personal stuff the smaller size is a big win.

</comment><comment><USER47> I use WebbyNode as my main VPS provider, but over the years I've made enough friends on the Net as to be able to get shell accounts on several servers, as well. Add to that a machine at home which is used for less important stuff.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have been using OVH to host my main projects They offer dedicated servers for the hobby market, at unbeatable prices (<http://kimsufi.fr>, you'll have to look for your local OVH distributor), but also top-level servers at very good price. Plus they're very good (have awesome peering/transit quality, unbeatable prices, 3 datacenters and 10 years of experience).

For my own thing, I've got a shared hosting at SurpassHosting.com. I used to rely on Dreamhost to host my blog and do random tests, but they're just crap. Surpass is just good for what I need in those cases...

<comment><USER49> OVH are - <USER2>

But they have absolutely terrible support, heaven forbid if your server goes down or experiences a hardware failure - its often a battle just to get them to replace hardware. They also throttle FTP traffic.

Although, apart from the throttling and assuming your box never dies, yes OVH are good.

<comment><USER48> I have a pretty good contact with the old-skool OVH community and their administrators. And I can say that they don't throttle any traffic at all! (I'm sure of that)

And their support may be pretty bad if you have a non-pro offer. That means that if you get a 200€/month box you'll have a pretty awesome, first-class support. But if you have a 20€/month box and your hard drive dies, you'll have to wait one day or two. That seems fair to me.

<comment><USER50> I have 300 servers from the Kimsufi to PRO and the support is pretty much the same.

As for the throttling, that doesn't happen (as far as I'm aware) however they do have poor peering connections to the US so it's pretty normal to get 5kb/s there which is much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I use linode for work and think its great. I used to use webfaction but switched because they were too inconsistent. Poor performance sometimes and they were always responsive to deal with problems, but they happened every couple weeks.

For home use I have an old Thinkpad thats way more powerful than a cheap slice somewhere which cost me $150 on craigslist + 12kwhrs/mo. I used to use an old desktop, but the laptop will actually save me money on my power bill in about 2 years, by using 17watts instead of 100. Saves carbon too since we get mostly coal power here.

</comment><comment><USER18> Before Heroku, I used Webbynode (<http://webbynode.com>). It has root access and much more, all you need, and it's not expensive. They're also very good.

</comment><comment><USER52> No one likes AWS? You can turn it off whenever you're not using it.

<comment><USER53> AWS starts at around $60 a month, a basic VPS (Rackspace, Linode etc) starts at around $10 a month. With the VPS, you wouldn't have to spend time turning it off and on to save pennies, and you wouldn't have to learn all the EC2 oddities (Elastic IP, EBS, Ephemeral Storage, AMIs, Availability Zones, KeyPairs, etc).

For someone looking to get started, a normal VPS seems easier and cheaper.

<comment><USER54> Rackspace bought slicehost who charges $20/month.

Linode's lowest VPS is $20/mo: <https://www.linode.com/signup/>

Am I missing something? I'd love to find a decent VPS provider at $10/month.

<comment><USER55> No, grandparent poster was off on pricing, but his intent is correct. AWS is several times more expensive than the other 'lighter' VPS solutions out there, which is why is isn't brought up/suggested more often.

<comment><USER53> Thanks, I was a little off on pricing - I didn't realize Linode started at $20.

Rackspace is $11 / month for the 256MB slice, no bandwidth, though there's no bandwidth included in EC2 so that's apples-to-apples. I doubt bandwidth costs would be that significant for the OP's purpose.

Looks like prgmr also has cheaper entry points, including some bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> If you're playing around in Ruby, you could give Heroku a try (<http://www.heroku.com>). They have a free plan for small projects.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've started using Zerigo.com's cloud-hosting. So far, it's been fantastic for keeping my LAMP stack imaged for quick deployment so I can test new projects in their own sandbox for pennies.

Note, it's a private beta still, but I figured they were worth mentioning. Having a VPS on SliceHost as well, I'd recommend something quick & small for "tinkering" and keep the VPS for your existing sites until you're sold on a new environment.

</comment><comment><USER58> Free Yahoo Developer Accelerators from Joyent, they apply same terms and conditions and AUP to free developer accounts as well as their customers - <http://is.gd/5uR3I>

PCSmart Hosting is cheap at 4.95 pounds / month - <http://is.gd/5uR4E> unmanaged linux vps, pure bliss for the low price.

</comment><comment><USER59> To the general hosting question:

blog: Nexcess.net

small project sites: HostGator.com

Old ASP.NET site that I'm going to discontinue: DiscountASP.Net

"Real" web projects: roll my own using VMWare or Xen

</comment><comment><USER60> There's no root access and might not suit you, but the answer to "what hosting do [I] use for personal projects?" is Google App Engine. It's really very convenient and easy for small things. (e.g. <http://h4ck3r.net/>, <http://skulpt.org/>)

</comment><comment><USER61> I've been a happy Linode customer since August 2007. There were two minor issues with DNS (not their fault, I believe) during that time. Once I had to do an emergency RAM upgrade on a Sunday -- it was the best customer service experience I've ever had.

I run two servers -- Gentoo and Ubuntu. I recommend Ubuntu.

<comment><USER62> I was with a company who used Linode from about 2003 to 2007. It was awful. We had a one-day outage when someone kicked out the power cord. Another outage with some routing mishap by Linode. DDoS floods destined for our VM due to irc bots or whatever running on another VM.

Linode would start an upgrade without notice during normal business hours, and then only admit they were messing with things if there was a crash.

Get a dedicated machine. The lost productivity alone makes it worth it.

<comment><USER63> Since Linode started in June 2003 (and your company was one of the first customers -- I'm looking at your tickets), you got to experience a lot of the growing pains of a new company. If you were to try us today, you wouldn't walk away with the same impression as you did then. I'd bet on that.

We learned a lot during that time, and I think it's a defining aspect of our company that we can admit that.

I am, however, unable to find a one-day outage for your account; the longest I've come across -- which is power-related, so I'm assuming the one you're referring to -- was reported by your company at 5:39 p.m. and resolved at 8:01 p.m.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've used MediaTemple which has become so awful as to be unusable and Slicehost which was great and reliable but now owned by Rackspace and starting to suffer from the problems with their datacenters...

Been hearing good things about Heroku and after reading this thread psyched to check out Linode

</comment><comment><USER64> <http://brightbox.co.uk> all the way

</comment><comment><USER65> I use a server at The Planet. Probably more costly than what you want for your needs.

</comment><comment><USER66> I've used linode for a couple of years now and I've been very very happy with them. I use dnsmadeeasy for critical projects even though Linode has their own custom dns you can use, just to keep it separate.

</comment><comment><USER67> <http://lithiumhosting.com/> pretty cheap. haven't noticed a second of downtime in the 6 months i've been with them. very responsive staff, too.

</comment><comment><USER68> <http://www.volumedrive.com/> They have real servers for reasonable prices. Or some kind of linode/slicehost, if you don't need too much.

</comment><comment><USER69> I've used Rimuhosting VPS <http://rimuhosting.com/> for a while now and they have been nothing short of excellent.

</comment><comment><USER70> For my personal projects my main consideration was price, I found fsckvps.com. For $12.95 a month I get 512MB memory, 30GB disk and 400GB transfers a month.

</comment><comment><USER71> I have a server at fdcservers and one at theplanet - both "unmetered" 100Mbps, no problems so far (I'm with theplanet for more than 5 years, since ev1)

</comment><comment><USER72> I am a very happy VPS customer of WiredTree.com. Their prices are great, servers are fast, and the support is top-notch.

Edit: root, WHM/Cpanel, etc as well

</comment><comment><USER39> I've used OpenHosting with no complaints.

</comment><comment><USER73> vpslink.com

Pretty cheap, and only down two or three times in the last two years (since I started with them). They are somewhat less communicative than I'd prefer when something happens, but they did tweet updates last time.

</comment><comment><USER74> Chunkhost.com is giving away half-gig instances right now.

<comment><USER75> Sorta, they're not free, it's only for the beta period, and they still require a (valid) credit card number, and presumably they'll start charging you once the beta period ends (and they don't specify when that is on their homepage).

<comment><USER34> I have no experience with these people and never heard of them, but I am guessing that the CC information is needed because they are giving you root access to their server. From a purely legal and business point of view, it seems to make sense.

What if someone registers for more than one vps (or dozens with the help of proxies and gmail account) and runs illegal activity like spamming or DDOSing some other site? These are all plausible scenario and having valid CC number is the most reasonable thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> if i needed need stupid easy backups, i would go with linode, as it is, i go with slicehost.

</comment><comment><USER77> hosteurope.de

dirt cheat: good vps with loads of ram, disk and traffic for $20 or $30 per month.

<comment><USER78> Absolutely! Great company. Though the KIS is a bit clunky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Another vote for Linode.

</comment><comment><USER80> github for static pages + heroku.

</comment><comment><USER81> linode++

</comment><comment><USER82> webbynode

</comment><comment><USER83> RackSpace Cloud ($10 per month for 256MB instance w/o traffic). RSC allows me to follow modern administration practice ( <http://vlisivka.pp.ua/en/modern_administration> ) even at my own private host.

</comment><comment><USER84> Geocities bitches.</comment>


Ask HN: How to view offline files Android browsers - <AUTHOR> Recently I found out that I have more than 2 Gb in storage of Brave browser. But I could only see the URL and size of storage. Fx almost 1 Gb for Mozilla.com. This was a surprise. But I can't find a way to view the different files on the android phone. Is there some way to give one self permission to fx view these directories? <comment><USER2> Not without 'rooting' the phone. The android system aggressively sandboxes each app into its own, isolated, part of the filesystem. So there is no 'official' way to see the app local files, other than by the app itself showing them to you unless you can root the phone.

But, you can go into the settings -> apps section, tap on the storage used area, and press "clear cache" to clear some of the data, and in Firefox go into settings -> "clear private data" and then choose what to clear and delete that and likely recover a fair amount of space.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could recover 2.4 Gb - thank you. Still a bit puzzled about 1 Gb from Mozilla.com since I don't use that site very often. But now I will follow it a bit closer.</comment></comment>


The Youngest Are Hungriest - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/the-youngest-are-hungriest.html

<comment><USER2> > India's patrilineal traditions dictate that the eldest son care for his > parents in old age and inherit property, while the dowries paid to marry off > daughters can be expensive. The result is sex-selective abortion and an > underinvestment in girls so common it has popularized a Hindi motto: "beti > to bojh hoti hai," meaning, "a daughter is a burden."

This explanation has always been unsatisfying for me. At least it seems incomplete. The system is obviously unethical, but I don't understand how the economics work here.

If only the eldest son inherits, why are the the following sons valued? Given that the practice creates a surplus of unmarried men, shouldn't unmarried women become an asset instead of a liability? Shouldn't unmarried men be a huge force against the dowry system?

<comment><USER3> Blame the british. In pre-colonial India women had extensive rights, including property rights. The dowry is exclusively controlled by her so that she can have economic independence if she needs it.

In post colonial india property rights were taken away from women so that the dowry was transformed from something to help your daughter to a payment to your son in law.

<comment><USER4> While I certainly believe you, I'd still love to see a reference for my own curiosity.

<comment><USER3> Sure:

[http://www.hitxp.com/articles/history/origin-dowry-system- br...](http://www.hitxp.com/articles/history/origin-dowry-system-bride-woman- india-british/)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=dowry+pre+colonial+india&oq=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=dowry+pre+colonial+india&oq=dowry+&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0l4.1391j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8&qscrl=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Over 40 percent of those 5 and under are stunted — meaning they are in the bottom 2 to 3 percent of the worldwide height distribution for their age and sex"

Argh. It really bugs me when newspapers can't do simple arithmetic. Especially in the lead paragraph.

India is about 17-18% of the world's population. It has a slightly above average fertility rate, so it will have disproportionately more children. So about 20% of the world's children are Indian.

If 40% of Indian children are stunted, therefore, _at least_ 8% of children worldwide must be stunted (not including Africa, China, etc.). 8% of children cannot be in the bottom 2-3% of the world's height distribution. That is not how statistics works.

If this obvious an error was put in the lead paragraph, how can we trust that the other facts are accurate?

<comment><USER6> The world food programme list their methods here. [http://www.micronutrient.org/nutritiontoolkit/ModuleFolders/...](http://www.micronutrient.org/nutritiontoolkit/ModuleFolders/13.Manuals_and_resources/WFP_Measuring_and_Interpreting_Malnutrition_and_Mortality/3\)_Chapter_1_-_Defining_&_measuring_malnutr_\(pgs_15-32\).pdf)

The CDC and NCHS developed data that was adopted by WHO and then WFP.

> To determine a child's nutritional status, you need to compare that child's > status with a reference for healthy children. References are used to compare > a child's measurement(s) with the median for chil- dren of the same sex and > age for height- for-age and weight-for-age, or to children of the same sex > and height for weight-for- height. The internationally accepted reference > was developed by the CDC and its National Center for Health Statistics > (NCHS) using data collected from a popu- lation of healthy children2.

> The World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the NCHS reference curves for > international use. Evidence has shown that the growth patterns of well-fed, > healthy preschool children from diverse ethnic backgrounds are similar and > consequently are applicable for children from all races and ethnicities. > These references are used by agencies involved with nutritional assessments > and analysis, including WFP.

<comment><USER7> It seems like "worldwide height distribution for [healthy children of] their age and sex" would have been clearer phrasing. Either way, the ambiguity does not discredit the article's findings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure if this is the place for an anecdote, but here we go. And just to give a warning, this is from an American perspective.

I am the first born. My mother has told me that she would could the amount of protein she would get each day during her pregnancy with me. If she didn't get enough she would each more or drink a large glass of milk to try and supplement her diet. She didn't drink soda either.

With my younger brother she tried to make sure she ate enough protein, though she gave up not drinking soda.

With the youngest, my sister, she was working part time during her pregnancy and wasn't able to watch what she ate like with either me or my brother.

This all being said, we are no where near malnutrition. There is a considerable size difference between me and my siblings. I am 6'4" and have considerably larger bone structure than my siblings. (I'm not fat/obese/heavy. I only weigh 193 lbs.)

My brother is just a 6' and considerably smaller than I am. My sister is smaller than my brother and has a similar bone structure.

Might there be a biological imperative to ensure that the first born is healthy. Then with the later children parent lose the need to ensure their children are as healthy.

<comment><USER9> _> My brother is just a 6' and considerably smaller than I am._

That is already very large, please don't interpret this as a sign that your brother is less healthy than you. If you are considerably larger than 182cm, then by some measures you'd be viewed as being _less healthy_ than your siblings because you're prone to all the problems large people have.

It is very likely you all three maxed out the size range available to you genetically and epigenetically by receiving adequate nourishment, as is common in industrial nations.

 _> Might there be a biological imperative to ensure that the first born is healthy_

Probably not as such, but the psychological effect you're describing might create that impression: first-time parents obsess about everything because they don't want to make any mistakes. With subsequent children they realize they've been overthinking everything and they consciously apply what they learned the first time, instead of indiscriminately following through on every little thing that comes to their minds (like giving up soda).

It's also a very first-world way of thinking about children.

 _> Then with the later children parent lose the need to ensure their children are as healthy._

Again, I think you're postulating purpose where none exists, because you see a correlation between your "better" health and the amount of attention your mom applied to arbitrary details when she was carrying you to term.

Instead, evidence suggests that increased survival pressure in humans leads to an increase in the amount of children a couple has, and attention to individual children (including first born) goes down drastically.

My own anecdotal impressions of wealthy industrial societies imply that while first-time parents sweat arbitrary details, it's really the _last_ child a couple has that receives special attention. Partly because the parents have better skills, but probably also because they know it's the last chance "to do everything right".

<comment><USER10> Children are like making pancakes. You totally ruin the first one; the 2nd is almost right; 3rd one - perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The South African Indian population has, apart from easily distinguished recent migrants, been in the country for 100+ years, and is relatively large (more than 1 million people). Due to apartheid, assimilation was limited, and the population was drawn from all over India. It would make an interesting comparison group, matched for socioeconomic status. If the pattern persisted in South Africa, then further research would be needed - South African Indians generally rely on pensions/savings to support them in old age.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is an interesting example of a market without speculators. Future demand will be high, but current demand is low, so production remains low. In a market with speculators this would lead to stockpiling in anticipation of price increases.

</comment><comment><USER13> _open defecation, which is more widespread in India than Africa,_

For real? It's astonishing that India - a second world country, alleged rising star - could get beaten out in sanitation by Africa.

</comment><comment><USER14> Devil's advocate, which is why I have this account: why is it not a gender equality issue that the sons are expected to care for their parents and not the daughters?

I'm not saying everything is hunky-dory in India. I'm saying that if someone thinks the fix is "Oh just apply Americanism in this particular aspect" then that someone is naive.

<comment><USER15> The dowry system has already been illegal by law in India for 60 years but of course it is not well enforced. Secondly due to family dynamics, things are not equally divided as you might think. It maybe the oldest son that gets the property but another son who takes care of the parents. It maybe a daughter who is the caring one while the sons go of on their own.

<comment><USER10> Even in US its traditional for bride's family to pay for the wedding. That's not appreciably different from a dowry.

<comment><USER16> Yeah it is. First, the bride paying for the wedding may be tradition, but it isn't absolute. In other words, in the United States, you won't see two people NOT get married because the wife's family can't afford a wedding. If your culture expects a dowry, what you can afford may influence who you are allowed to marry or whether a marriage can happen or not.

Second, the tradition of the bride's family paying in the U.S. has significantly lessened over the years. More young people pay for their own weddings or share the cost with their parents.

My parents's paid for the bulk of my small wedding (which despite being deliberately small and my hack of avoiding having to pay for the location, was still probably $20k once my dress, the reception, airfare/hotel for my parents and sister, flowers, photos and other assorted pre-wedding meals were dealt with -- weddings are just fucking expensive), and were happy to do it (and were happy they were able to do it), but if they would have been unable to cover the bill, my husband and I -- or his family -- would have stepped in, no questions asked. Like, it wasn't even a concern.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists Use Recycled Sewage Water to Grow 500-Acre Forest in the Desert - <AUTHOR> https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/using-sewage-water-to-grow-trees-in-egyptian-desert/ <comment><USER2> A little beside the topic perhaps, but my all time favorite desert greening project is connecting the huge Qattara Depression in Egypt with the ocean.

This would create a huge lake in northwestern Egypt, potentially home for millions. It would also negate one year of climate change induced sea rise, or so I read somewhere.

[https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/qattara-depression- projec...](https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/qattara-depression-project-time- revisit)

Map of the potential lake, if brought up to sea level: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression#/media/File...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression#/media/File:Egypt_relief_location_map.jpg)

<comment><USER3> Couple dozen 55km Boring Company Tunnels could do the trick, no?

<comment><USER4> > Couple dozen 55km Boring Company Tunnels could do the trick, no?

The Boring Company is not the only one using COTS tunneling equipment, nor has any relevant engineering project under it's portfolio. Although it excels at marketing, I fail to see how it should be used as a measuring stick in geothecnical work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome! See also "Greening the Desert" [1] about integrated systems ("Permaculture" is a school of applied ecology.)

These systems, properly designed, create the materials needed to build new copies of themselves. They're (potentially) self-replicating. A bit of labor and a lot of intelligence and we can convert deserts into gardens and food forests. And, given time, they will alter the (micro- then macro-) climate.

(I feel like we have all the technology we need to solve our problems now, but we are distracted and incoherent.)

[1] [https://greeningthedesertproject.org/about- us/](https://greeningthedesertproject.org/about-us/)

[https://greeningthedesertproject.org/celebrating-10-years- at...](https://greeningthedesertproject.org/celebrating-10-years-at-the- greening-the-desert-project-jordan/)

> The Greening the Desert Project started with the purchase of land about ten > years ago, and it expanded slowly until that mounted into exponential > growth. Things started at the top, literally, with a large water tank that > feeds a shower/toilet block just downhill. The toilets are dry composting, > supplying fertilizer for plants on site, and the greywater from the showers > and sinks goes to a nearby reed bed. The reed bed, still high in the > landscape, is then able to send gravity-fed irrigation to many trees > throughout the site. It's all used onsite for beneficial biological > cleaning.

> The food forest with stone walls and earth-backed swales moves through the > landscape to rabbit and chicken houses, which combine manures in a system > that creates a cubic meter of compost every five weeks. That goes to the > main crop garden, a shade-covered kitchen garden. The surplus fertilizer > (compost) goes to food forest trees and the nursery. The runoff from the > nursery goes through to the kitchen garden. The accommodation building has > an office, a classroom, and eight bedrooms. It's two stories high and made > with earth brick and straw bale. The roof has a beautiful garden made up of > wicking beds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! I am hoping and planning to get my PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) this year.

<comment><USER5> Hey, you're the AutoMicroFarm guy?

There was a company years ago that remodeled/landscaped people's yards into permie gardens and then harvested the crops and distributed them like a CSA. You could integrate a market function into your offering, eh?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there are lots of possibilities... but figuring out the business side of things has proven harder than I expected.

<comment><USER5> I'd be interested to hear more. As I said in a sib comment, permaculture et. al. obviously _works_ and (in many ways) is more desirable than conventional agriculture† yet integrating it with the existing economy seems challenging. The existing systems really do provide tremendous amounts of food at very low prices, and it's hard to compete. It seems like you have to work with the kitchen budget that would be saved by growing one's own veggies in the backyard.

†Farms turn forest into desert, while permaculture turns desert into forest!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great to hear! My ambitions for [https://edible.estate/](https://edible.estate/) are to use the climate, weather, and plant data available to help guide the user and eventually provide auto-generated permaculture designs for a given plot of land (essentially, permaculture in an app). I realize that the app might get you only 50% (maybe eventually 90%) there, but a lot of the design principles and rules of thumb I've learned are amenable to being captured in code logic.

If you would like to continue the dialog, please email me (andrew at automicrofarm.com) or set up a time to video chat ([https://automicrofarm.com/book-an- appointment.html](https://automicrofarm.com/book-an-appointment.html)). Thanks, looking forward to it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Although desertification is sometimes thought of as the swallowing of lands > adjacent to deserts, it is actually a process whereby land that was once > fertile or semi-arable becomes desert as a result of things like > unsustainable agricultural practices, or long-lasting drought.

So, desert doesn't encroach. Does this imply that de-desertification also doesn't encroach?

I'd like to think that a green vanguard paves the way for further colonizatiin, including by better water retention than sand; and capturing morning dew.

<comment><USER7> So you can find me a large barren field in a rainy region that was created by unsustainable agriculture?

On the contrary, life finds a way. unless an area is nearly 100% devoid of water you're going to find some life there, and if it's rainy, something will certainly be growing.

<comment><USER8> > _" So you can find me a large barren field in a rainy region that was > created by unsustainable agriculture?"_

Is 40 acres big enough?

> _" The Desert of Maine is a 40-acre (160,000 m2) tract of exposed glacial > silt (a sand-like substance, but finer-grained than sand) surrounded by a > pine forest near the town of Freeport, Maine, in the United States. The > Desert of Maine is not a true desert, as it receives an abundance of > precipitation, and the surrounding vegetation is being allowed to encroach > on the barren dunes."_

> _" The Desert of Maine originated when the Tuttle family purchased and began > farming the site beginning in 1797. Failure to rotate their potato crops, > combined with land clearance and followed by overgrazing by sheep, led to > soil erosion, exposing a dune of sand-like glacial silt. The initially- > exposed small patch of sand gradually spread and overtook the entire farm. > The Tuttles abandoned the land in 1919 when it was purchased for $300 > ($7.50/acre) by Henry Goldrup, who converted it to a tourist attraction in > 1925.[1]"_

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

<comment><USER9> "40 acres and a mule" is what each freed family was proverbially promised after the US Civil War, so it seems like it wasn't considered a huge amount in 1865.

<comment><USER8> Whether or not the Tuttle family were wealthy is beyond the point. 400^2 meters of Maine turning into sand dunes is plenty large enough to demonstrate that mismanagement of farm land can destroy the fertility of that land.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you like this you might also like Groasis, a company that produces boxes that can be placed around young trees so they can grow from condensation the first years. They also have a lot of success in deserts and mountain areas.

[https://www.groasis.com/](https://www.groasis.com/)

<comment><USER11> Funny that Groasis was founded in '03 while Tree T-PEE of Shark Tank fame was founded in '05\. Similar inventions popping up at the same time is always fun to see in action.

<comment><USER12> The concept of collecting moisture from air is somewhere between decades-old (the modern plastic version) and centuries old.

<comment><USER13> "Fog or dew collection is an ancient practice. Archaeologists have found evidence in Israel of low circular walls that were built around plants and vines to collect moisture from condensation. In South America's Atacama Desert and in Egypt, piles of stones were arranged so that condensation could trickle down the inside walls where it was collected and then stored."

[https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/03/07/the-fog- collectors-...](https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/03/07/the-fog-collectors- harvesting-water-from-thin-air/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of people eat food grown with recycled sewage and don't even know it.

Every excretion flushed in the city of Chicago ends up as fertilizer on midwest farms. Mostly soybeans, IIRC.

A lot of zoos sell their surplus animal dung in big bags called "zoo poo." It's used in home gardens and small scale community farms.

<comment><USER15> > Every excretion flushed in the city of Chicago ends up as fertilizer on > midwest farms. Mostly soybeans, IIRC.

Is this meaningfully true? My understanding is that the wastewater is treated and emptied into the Chicago river where it flows toward Missouri. Insofar as that water is rich in organic compounds, it "fertilizes" the fields that draw from that river and its distributaries; however, this model is different than the picture you paint, which sounds more like dumping more-or-less raw sewage directly on fields. If the latter is indeed the case, it's news to me, especially since I understand human sewage fertilizer to be prohibited as a health risk.

<comment><USER16> No parts of the sewage are filtered out and turned into fertilizer. At least that's how it works in ny.

<comment><USER14> Chicago is not in New York.

[https://news.wttw.com/2016/05/24/turning-wastewater- fertiliz...](https://news.wttw.com/2016/05/24/turning-wastewater-fertilizer- mwrd-plant-battles-nutrient-pollution)

"What it does is essentially recovers the phosphorous and the nitrogen in the wastewater at the Stickney plant and coverts that into a high-grade, slow- release fertilizer that can be used for all sorts of agricultural applications."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cyprus has been using sewage to irrigate crops for ages. What's different here is they're using to build greenways to stop desert creep. Very cool.

It used to be that you couldn't even flush toilet paper in Cyprus - you had to use a separate bin to this side. I expect more sewage reuse in the future. Expect in ~50years time for it to be exceptional to release any sewage into nature.

Apart from sewage being useful for irrigation, it's also a goldmine of minerals, and drugs to reclaim. I expect the same to happen with garbage dumps slowly. We already divert aluminum cans and paper, slowly the rest will be reclaimed too.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think this is a great idea! Does anyone from Egypt have an opinion of how far along this is? I ask because I thought "Cool, let's check that out on Google maps." and got this :[https://firstname.lastname@example.com...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,32.2285727,1267m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x14f8670d8e69136b:0x4c05d910662d56db!8m2!3d30.4862906!4d32.2307614) Which shows a fairly aspirational project rather than a forest.

</comment><comment><USER19> How exactly is wastewater distributed throughout the 500 acres? Article says a system of pipes. Is it percolating throughout the entirety of the pipes or are there just a few endpoints with massive ponds? Really interesting read.

<comment><USER20> It looks like drip irrigation. It is more efficient, especially in arid climates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This reminded me of a recent _Economist_ [1] article about China's "Great Green Wall" around the Gobi. Per the article scientists think the tree wall might not actually prevent desertification, and that there are potential externalities from planting masses of non-native vegetation.

Nonetheless it sounds really cool and I hope the sceptics are wrong!

[1] I found an archived link but I wasn't able to view it for more than a second in the browser. In the end I just curl-ed it to see the source:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191208001344/http://www.econom...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191208001344/http://www.economist.com/china/2019/05/18/chinas- desert-taming-green-great-wall-is-not-as-great-as-it-sounds)

</comment><comment><USER22> Is this it? [https://goo.gl/maps/mqtoyiSgzFbU8xkA6](https://goo.gl/maps/mqtoyiSgzFbU8xkA6) Why would one call it 500 mile forest?

<comment><USER23> The title and one place in the body call it 500 acre, while one other place calls it 500 mile.

500 square miles is 320,000 acres. (500 miles) squared is 160,000,000 acres.

One other place in the body refers to 1,600,000 acres being viable to reforest.

I think it was just a typo for 500 acre.

<comment><USER24> And, the narrator, in the video at 5:49, calls it 240 hectares, which is 593.0524 acres.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What a brilliant idea. I wonder if the same method would be applicable for growing rice in dry areas?

<comment><USER26> Great question!

It's not safe to grow veggies and grains with human manures.

For safety, the human manure should be used as an input feedstock for growing and expanding forest.

Then we use the forest's outputs as feed stock for grains and veggies and fruits and trees.

The forest outputs are leaves and wood, both of which may be processed into composts, or used as mulches for veggies, orchards, and grains.

This is what I practice.

<comment><USER27> Have you explored humaneur production? It strikes me that properly composting the waste ought to be enough to destroy any problematic bacteria. Would love to know what you ran into that may have prevented doing that. Been thinking about incorporating regenerative systems to build a food forest and trying to figure out safely handling biowaste. Even goose poop is potentially toxic.

<comment><USER26> Yes you can properly compost human manure, to make it safe... But the process is more complicated and involves processes which cannot be skipped. I would rather do less work and be safer.

This means I simply don't use human manure on my agriculture crops, I use it in my forested areas.

That said, I do use urine in my grass/leaf compost, and recently I started charging biochar with human urine. Urine is much safer that feces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The federal effort, called the National Program for the Safe Use of Treated > Sewage Water for Afforestation is going a long way towards achieving the > country's commendable ambitions voiced in the 1992 UN Rio conference on > climate change—because so many trees can soak up hundreds of tons of CO2.

My understanding is that commercial forests like these don't generally capture the carbon, depending on how the harvested wood is used.

<comment><USER28> A forest will be carbon negative regardless of how the harvested wood is used. Forests increase soil depth through dropping leaves or needles, and by light- starving prior growth. The trees also leave behind roots, a substantial fraction of the total organism weight.

The vast majority of carbon in a tree is from the air, so the sum is a net win. Most wood is also put to long-lasting uses, or made into paper which is eventually buried.

But even burning trees for power, while short-sighted, is net carbon negative, due to the first set of reasons I've mentioned.

<comment><USER29> i'm no expert but don't the roots (and everything else left behind) rot away and release co2?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the CO2 is captured in soil. And there is a very good chance that such good soil will sprout other plants, continuing the carbon capture cycle. (In fact, dead trees in the forests are sometimes called tree nurseries.) So the effect is net-carbon-capture.

<comment><AUTHOR> (I meant carbon, not CO2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why do "scientists" always get credit for this stuff? Sounds to me like engineers, technicians, plumbers, and foresters did it.

</comment><comment><USER2> PSA: 500 acre = 2.02 km²

</comment><comment><USER31> Sewage water tends to be high in salt. Especially in a desert where there is high evaporation and low rainfall, irrigating with this type of water increases soil salinity, eventually to the point where it is toxic to native plants and most crop plants. They will get greenery and good growth for a while, and then as salt accumulates over the years, the plants will start dying and they will have poisoned the soil to the point where almost nothing will grow on it anymore.

Great PR, but in the long term, it's a lousy idea. We have many decades of knowledge on how salination plays out in desert agriculture.

</comment><comment><USER32> Anyone know of any similar projects in the US? I think we also have similar desertification issues here too.

</comment><comment><USER33> Which plants are they using?

<comment><USER34> Second paragraph:

> 10 miles west of the Suez Canal—you would see bountiful forests of > eucalyptus, teak, and mahogany trees limned against the orange sand and blue > sky of the Sahara?

I see no reason to use anything but native plants.

<comment><USER35> Which makes eucalyptus problematic. Its introduction to California has done an incredible amount of damage, especially because the ecosystem can't process it, the bugs etc that can eat eucalyptus leaves and wood don't exist outside of Australia</comment></comment></comment>


Winning on Wall Street: Tuning Trading Models with Bayesian Optimization - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigopt.com/post/146068404603/winning-on-wall-street-tuning-trading-models-with <comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the co-founders of SigOpt (YC W15) and am happy to answer any questions about this post or the underlying Bayesian optimization methods.

For more info about the underlying research check out [https://sigopt.com/research](https://sigopt.com/research)</comment>


Show HN: Learned Objective C as a high schooler and made this iPhone game - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-deeps/id532041586?mt=8

<comment><USER2> An old guy here: I too was making video games in high school, but mine never nearly looked as good as this, nor did they ever get this kind of an audience. You don't know how good you've got it :)

Good work and good luck with whatever you decide to make next!

<comment><USER3> You're claiming to be an "old guy here" and making video games in high-school?

wtf. that's not old. wait till you're in your 50s or 60s to call yourself old.

<comment><USER4> I think he meant that he _was_ making games in high school but is now "old" (e.g, 50s).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nicely done! I noticed it was sold by <http://makegameswith.us/> \-- can you elaborate on why you chose them? I notice that they take 30% after Apple takes its 30%, leaving you with just under half of the selling cost as your gross revenue in exchange for help and promotion. How widely have they promoted the game? Your game is also translated into tons of languages; did you need to arrange this yourself, or is that something they helped out with?

<comment><USER6> MGWU co-founder here, to clarify we take 20c of 99c (30% of the 70c post Apple) so the developer keeps majority :). The localization on iTunes showed up by accident due to the Appirater library (<https://github.com/arashpayan/appirater>) being localized, will be fixed in an update

<comment><USER5> Right, that was my understanding. 70% of 99c is ~70c. 70% of 70c is ~49c. 70% of 70% nets the developer 49% of the 99c selling price; just under half.

<comment><USER7> We'll definitely explain this in a clearer way as we move out of beta. Out of 99c Apple takes 29c and we take 20c leaving the developer with 50c, so slightly over half :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fellow high school IOS programmer here. This is pretty cool, It's nice that you get help with the art, that is the main thing that keeps me from making games. Instead I just make apps for psychological researchers: <http://hume.ca/ix>

<comment><USER7> Hey, we'll make art for your games too! Drop me a line at email@example.com if you're interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just downloaded it. Curious - from start to app store, how long did it take?

<comment><AUTHOR> Roughly 3-4 months. I was taking classes at the same time, so I worked about an hour a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always wanted to learn a language and make a game out of it, but procrastination always gets the better of me (5 years later, I still haven't learnt anything). Congratulations, good luck and keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER11> Did you learn Objective C as part of your high school curriculum or by yourself in your spare time? I think all high schoolers should at least have an introduction to programming in high school, if not middle school.

<comment><AUTHOR> I connected with makegameswith.us through high school. I first learned to program in a class freshman year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congratulations, Chris! I'm sure Mr. T and Mr. S are very proud, too. The work looks fantastic; Jeremy and Ashu have done a great job getting art assets into place for you guys.

\-- A friendly HS alum

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Matt! I'd like to think that I'm putting what they taught me to good use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been trying to learn Objective C and make iOS Apps, where did you learn? Everything I've tried so far has been really, really boring or outdated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try going to makegameswith.us! That's where I learned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well done. What are your next plans?

<comment><AUTHOR> With regards to this project, I'm considering making a sequel and an iPad version. Otherwise, I'm pretty busy at the moment, but I have an idea for a bigger mobile project that I'm not ready to unveil just yet...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Did you create the sprites yourself, or did you contract an artist?

<comment><AUTHOR> I got help with the art and with learning Objective C from makegameswith.us They were awesome in making the whole thing possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure! They helped guide us through the process of learning Objective C with Cocos2D, and lent a hand if we ever got too stuck. Also, they provided the art to complement our code and published the game out on the app store.

<comment><USER16> Did you look into any other frameworks besides Cocos? I just taught myself Objective-C this year and love it so far. I'd like to get into making games next and it seems Cocos is the the most popular/recommended so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do you have any gameplay videos or promotional videos?

<comment><USER18> MGWU art/marketing dude here...Thanks for asking. Gameplay videos will most certainly be part of our promotions package in the very near future (read: probably a YouTube channel). In the meantime, I can assure you that this game is legit and future updates will make it well worth your investment.

</comment></comment><comment> SG- how much have you made off this game and how long has it been in the app store?

<comment><USER7> The App has been out for a couple of days. Apple's sales reports are delayed for yesterday so we're not sure how much Chris has made yet. While it was free it made top 25 puzzle and arcade games in 3 stores and top 100 puzzle and arcade in a couple more including the US!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you book hotels? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Directly through the hotel websites that I have loyalty status at. Not a very useful answer but, hey, it's wildly common among business travelers so I thought I'd mention it.

<comment><USER3> Back when I was a consultant on the road, we'd talk to the sales manager at the nearest Hilton (most of us were HHonors guys) and negotiate a group discount for the team. Even in metro areas we could generally get below $130 a night with perks thrown in.

Plus, they'd book all our reservations for us. We just cancelled the weeks we didn't need as we went.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious if there's a lot in it for them; for example, if you book through some third party, are they paying 20-30% in fees to the booking site to get you in the door?

<comment><USER5> Yes on sites like Expedia commission can get as high as that and hotels hate that. They'd rather actually talk to you and get to know you while you book and give you a discount than see you book online and them have to pay a high commission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully not off topic, but I use Airbnb. This matches my budget, but if I had more money I would still use it and rent full apartments.

I search the postal code of the place I want to be in the city (a combination of work location, downtown, neat area of city, near transit, etc.). Then I use the map to zoom on the area.

I filter by price and review. Usually find a well priced, beautiful booking with a good location within 2-3 minutes. Then I contact the host.

<comment><USER7> I've had good experiences doing business travel with Airbnb, but it can be disturbingly non-deterministic; it takes a long time to get confirmation for a room that you're already uncertain about, and there's always a fair chance that when you arrive the room won't actually be available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://booking.com>

<http://hotel.de>

or the hotel's website if I've been there before (and they have a booking page).

</comment><comment><USER9> I always use booking.com if I can, and most of the time when a hotel isn't available through booking.com (which is rare) I try to find another that is.

To me booking.com is the amazon.com of hotel reservations: you know that you're going to be served perfectly, in a timely manner, at a great price (maybe not the absolute best price you can get, but usually very close).

I once booked a three-day stay at a hotel in Portugal in the middle of summer. I missed my flight because the train was delayed (in France you don't have a choice for trains so it's impossible to not use SNCF, but I sure promised myself to NEVER fly with Air France again!!)

I called booking.com and they managed to move the reservation (the hotel was full but they were still able to do it) and they called me back right when this was done.

The contrast between this level of customer care vs. what we got out of Air France (in short: "tough luck / fuck off") was staggering.

booking.com never disappointed me.

</comment><comment><USER10> It may be convenient to book through a service like Hotwire, but before you book with one of those services, always call the front desk to see if you can strike up a better deal than just what's offered on Hotwire. Not sure why, but hotels seem to appreciate it when you just go straight to them, but that's just my experience.

<comment><USER11> They prefer it since when you book directly, no portion of your booking needs to be paid to a middleman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mostly using <http://www.google.com/hotelfinder/> which aggregates a lot of different sites.

<comment><USER4> I had no clue this existed.

Google really has too many services for their minimalistic UI these days...

<comment><USER13> I wonder how many others they have like this. I found <https://www.google.co.uk/compare/carinsurance/form> the other day which I never knew existed.

<comment><USER4> Probably many interesting 20% projects that are hosted in some way.

Their problem, as always, is they have no way to organize their interface. Google just simply (lol) isn't that good at UI design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I travel a lot. I usually book through a particular travel agent who manages to book me into top end hotels for comparatively very cheap prices. The only snag is you have to jump on the phone to them because the hotels don't allow them to publish the rates online. The process can be a bit cumbersome if you want to get prices on several hotels but I always find that it's worth it. Email me if you want the company name and telephone number.

The other thing I do that is kind of risky is just rock up to a hotel on the day and try to get a good rate at the front desk. I'm at the Scottish Ruby Conference now and managed to get one of the best class of room here for less than my friend paid for his standard room. As a more extreme example last summer I turned up at the Ace Hotel in NYC hoping to lay my head down in one of their entry rooms for the night. Unfortunately they were fully booked except for the lofts which were ~$1500/night, there was no way I was prepared to pay that, and I talked them down to under $400. I called my friends and some girls and had a massive "house party" in my loft room. It was awesome! (pic - <http://instagram.com/p/OdJmamMw2D/>)

From the hotel perspective an empty room does not make them any money, they may as well have occupied even if it is deeply discounted.

<comment><USER15> Hope the party got better later--in this pic everyone seems awkwardly uncomfortable and sitting on their hands. Waiting for somebody to kick it off.

Drinks. The table needs to have some bottle service happening.

<comment><USER16> They look like they're just gathered for a photo to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a student, so I spend less than 5 nights a year in a hotel (usually to/from internships or conferences). If I'm driving, I don't pre-book, I just show up and get a room. If I'm flying, I'll use Hipmunk to find a cheap place and book there. The last two nights, I was driving and picked the hotel closest to McDonald's so I'd get a quick breakfast before hitting the road.

</comment><comment><USER18> Usually on Hotwire. With a little Google savvy and sites like Better Bidding you can almost always find out what the hotel is before you book it and the savings can really add up (often 40% or more). It's also handy for last minute bookings with the mobile app, I have gotten a room while being in the lobby of a hotel before (at a ridiculous price).

</comment><comment><USER19> I usually try priorityclub.com (Intercontinental Hotel Group) first, because I collect their points, have by far the highest loyalty status at PC/IHG and Staybridge Suites is my favourite hotel chain. If there is no acceptable hotel nearby, I search using roomkey.com which is a site that only searchs for hotels owned by larger hotel chains (IHG, Best Western, Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, Starwood...). I have stayed at so many bad indedependent hotels that I really try to avoid them know. It's just not worth the trouble. If roomkey.com does not help, I would probably use HRS or Expedia, but I did not have to since I started using Roomkey.

</comment><comment> jimle-uk In incognito mode of course! Haha but seriously, the last few times I booked I did it through cashback websites like Quidco. Laterooms.com which is my prefered booking site also offers cashback via quidco, so it's basically win- win.

</comment><comment><USER20> My secretary calls hotels. Or, it's up to her.

</comment><comment><USER21> Whenever looking for hotels in an area I check the TripAdvisor reviews. I usually end up trying to call the hotel and booking directly, but recently TripAdvisor has been slowly rolling out pricing info directly on the hotel page from Expedia, Orbitz, etc. so I used that a few days ago when I booked a room for last night.

I believe this functionality has been completely rolled out in the mobile (iPhone/Android) app if you want to check it out.

(Disclosure: I work for TA, but in a different department. However, I was a TA user before I joined the company, and continue to be one)

</comment><comment><USER22> booking.com

Also try <http://www.hotwire.com> for better deals

<comment><USER23> A second vote for booking.com, great site.

<comment><USER22> I was _literally_ saved by booking.com

Case in point: lost my flight (because of airport issues), this was a sunday evening, so no one at the airport to help you book a hotel.

Grab my phone, booking.com, search for hotels at that airport, ok fee, etc, gets a taxi there

Night of sleep saved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I go back and fourth between booking directly with the hotel by calling them, or through the hotel's websites. Mostly I prefer to call to try and negotiate a rate, unless its one of those places that has told me that they just don't do that. a while back I bookmarked this website and will use it again because its an aggrevator and coupons are easy to search for on there too: <http://www.besttraveldealsomg.com/>

</comment><comment><USER25> If > 1 week, I use Airbnb. There's usually a discount for lengthy stayes. Less than than, it's not worth the hassle since most hosts require a specific time to meet up to exchange keys and instructions - which is difficult considering flight delays, new terrotories, no cell phone if you're out of the country.

I also use hotels.com, which is nice for its 10th or 11th night free stay in participating hotels.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'll generally use a site like hotels.com to get feel for what hotels are available and what the general price level is, and then I'll call or email the hotel and book directly. I've never gotten a worse price and often gotten a better price. On the whole it just feels better to have had direct contact with someone at the hotel.

</comment><comment><USER27> I always check the local Groupon page of where I'm travelling to. Most of the time, I can find a 4 or 5 star rated hotel that offers >50% discount.

If I can't find a coupon, I research the hotels and prices on booking.com and then call the hotel to negotiate a lower price by booking directly.

</comment><comment><USER28> If someone else is going to be paying for the hotel, I let them choose and book it so they can choose how much they spend.

If I'm paying for myself I check hotel aggregation websites, and check prices directly with hotels I've stayed at before or that have been recommended to me.

</comment><comment><USER29> WeHostels app has the largest number of accommodations for less than $100 almost anywhere in the world (they include budget hotels, hostels, bed & breakfast, etc). Plus the app is really easy to use on the go. It's perfect for last minute budget travel.

</comment><comment><USER30> I generally only stay at a hotel for a convention. I want to stay at the specific hotel for the convention, not a nearby one, which means that I pay more than I would like. Usually I book through the hotel with the Convention rate.

</comment><comment><USER31> I travel a lot. I locate the place I'll be working at on Google Maps, then type 'hotels' in the search box to find nearby hotels. Find one that's part of the Hilton chain (I collect Hilton points), then book it via the Hilton Web site.

</comment><comment><USER32> First Google maps to find hotels where I want them. Then go to hotel's website to compare rates.

Seems kinda barbaric but search sites don't list all the hotels. (Google does a little better, street view also helps)

</comment><comment><USER33> Google 'boutique hotel near x' or read a wallpaper guide. Call hotel directly, ask for corporate discount if AI expect to be in th city a lot.

Don't like chains as I find they have poor food and service.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't usually book in advance unless I know it's difficult to find a room in a specific area. Last time I remember booking a hotel, it was through Agoda.com (it's pretty big in Asia AFAIK).

<comment><USER35> Agoda is amazing in Japan. It's the only site we use here and we can usually find really good deals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I browse the visitor photos on tripadvisor and check out the neighborhood on google maps. it's the closest you can get to seeing each hotel without actually being there.

</comment><comment><USER37> The WeHostels App. If that doesn't work, then the Hotel Tonight app. And if that doesn't work, then booking.com. I usually book last minute, as you can probably guess.

</comment><comment><USER38> British Airways (and I assume other airlines too) let you add hotels to your flight and book through that. It's probably more expensive but it's easier.

</comment><comment><USER39> Priceline's Name your price using strategies from the forums at <http://www.betterbidding.com/>

</comment><comment><USER40> Booking.com. The UI is very good and you can compare prices very easily. If I want to learn more about the hotel I check it in TripAdvisor.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hotels.com or booking.com usually, plus some review checks on Tripadvisor though I despise TA for their pop-unders.

</comment><comment><USER41> I use agoda.com or asiarooms.com generally. Mind you, I live in asia, and primarily travel around here.

</comment><comment><USER42> For most occasions I use HotelTonight. Had some amazing experiences with cheap last minute rooms.

</comment><comment><USER43> Always filter the hotels through tripadvisor, then kayak, hotels.com, and the other majors

</comment><comment><USER44> hotels.com - Huge catalogue, fast to use, good photos, and TripAdvisor rating right there on the page.

They also do great cashback on Quidco regularly, and have their own loyalty program, so it's usually a great deal to go through them.

</comment><comment><USER45> Last time I used laterooms.com.

</comment><comment><USER46> I love the WeHostels app, it's super easy to use and the hostels are pretty nice.

</comment><comment><USER47> I booked my last trip through hipmunk. It was a good experience.

</comment><comment><USER15> 65 responses and nobody is saying AirBnB. Me neither.

<comment><USER32> Also many varied responses, mainly because you have a tech savvy pool of responses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Expedia is the way to go for me

</comment><comment><USER49> Mostly google "Hotels near X"</comment>


Ask HN: is Facebook's "GMail Killer" Going to Succeed? - <AUTHOR>

So Facebook is planning to unveil their "GMail Killer" on Monday?  Does anyone think they're going to be successful in their stated goal of killing GMail?
More realistically, how do you see this product turning out?  I think it could be a great product if they do it right and aim it to be the e-mail client of choice for the tens of millions of their users who predominantly use Facebook when they're online.  If it keeps them on Facebook even more than they already are, then I think it has to be considered a success.  No doubt Facebook plans to serve ads with it and integrate it with their existing products.
On the other hand...am I the only one concerned that Facebook could potentially screw this up?  Would it surprise anyone if they launched the product on Monday and then 'accidentally' let your installed applications also retrieve your entire list of e-mails?  Do they get rid of the whole "Delete" button entirely? <comment><USER2> I'm waiting to see how good their email client will ben but I don't think they're mature enough to kill gmail. They already have email integration, they just need to add 'attachments' and the basic email product is already there. Also, many people 'talk off of facebook' on gmail in addition to facebook (like me, although I'm not a heavy fb user)

It will be interesting to see what else they plan to add.</comment>


Microsoft Office under fire - <AUTHOR> http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article2495951.ece

<comment><USER2> ""We think the future is going to be software plus services," Darren Strange, senior product manager for Microsoft Office, said. "There are some things which thick client [Microsoft's favoured model, where PCs are linked to a central server but can operate independently] is better at than [web-based services] X offline use being a big one."

The need for off-line access to data is shrinking every day. Many people simply can't do their job without a network connection.

"You also can't create the richness of an application like Word through a thin client [where a user's PC is effectively a dumb terminal and the processing of data is done elsewhere]".

Why not? Maybe not today, but next year, five years from now? Items get checked off the "can't do that in a browser" list every day.

"Our smartest people are looking at mash-ups [where several online tools are fused together to create new ones] and web 2.0-type applications [which focus on online tools that allow users to collaborate and share information]".

They're just LOOKING INTO mash-ups and Web 2.0 applications now? Isn't the industry looking for a Web 3.0 model already?

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't seen anyone challenging a market where Microsoft practically own except in the browser market (i.e. Firefox).

Journalist/blogger should write stuff about Microsoft when there is something growing fast against it, not when some company purchase Zimbra.

Have Yahoo! ever done anything right integrating stuff they bought?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Google should tie-up with biggies like HP, IBM, Best buys etc. and give their apps on CD for free - this will increase the awareness and potential, also they should add a tool for automatic synchronization between docs on the hard disk and google doc website, this way user can have a backup copy and they can work off-line while they are on the go.</comment>


A map of the entire internet as of May 1973 - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/workergnome/status/807704855276122114 <comment><USER2> Hi there—original tweeter here.

Some context for the picture—my father, Paul, was the business manager for the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon at the time, and is a fabulous record-keeper, so he kept all sorts of interesting things from that era.

He was also one of the founders of Three Rivers Computer as well as PERQ, which were tech transfer spin-outs from the CS dept in the seventies.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for posting this, and engaging here on HN. Do you think this collection of interesting things would be a good candidate for digitizing and getting up on the Internet Archive?

<comment><USER2> Quite possibly—most likely the PERQ and Three Rivers Computer stuff is the hardest to find, though I don't know how much of it is already out there.

<comment><USER4> bitsavers.org are probably the best bet to have a chat with about this sort of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This version from 1974 includes the first international link to UCL in London. As no-one had budget for a dedicated transatlantic link, it was piggybacked on a link via NORSAR in Norway that was intended for seismic monitoring of nuclear tests.

[http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeo...](http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography//atlas/arpanet_june1974_large.gif)

<comment><USER6> ...being a bit of a pedant (and Norwegian!) I'd like to point out that the first international link was precisely the one to NORSAR at Kjeller; the link over the North Sea to UCL was the second. :)

(Kjeller/NORSAR was hooked up in June 1973 using a blistering fast 9.6kbps link, if memory serves)

<comment><USER5> The history of this link is quite interesting:

[http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/internet- history.html](http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/internet-history.html)

Anyway, I think we can agree to share the glory; although the first international link was to the TIP at Kjeller, the first end host was the PDP-9 in London, which itself acted as a relay to the University of London CDC.

<comment><USER6> I think you are right; however, I will have to dig into my old copies of the Norwegian engineering monthly Teknisk Ukeblad; I read a very interesting feature there a few years ago, interviewing a couple of then NORSAR employees who admitted that quite a lot of tinkering and exploring resulted once the link was there - as you'd expect, given the nature of boffins...

Edit - I'd like to dig out the old feature not to dispute your suggestion; only to share what was a very entertaining read. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One interesting aside is you can see from that even this early in the evolution of what's still a very sparse network, how dense the resources are in California, presaging the eventual concentration of the "internet business" there. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions and such.

It's also interesting to note that the DC area is the #2 (arguably tied with Boston) given how relatively inconsequential that community is now to what we'd consider the tech sector. That was a slow process of course, given that at one point AOL dominated the consumer internet from its offices near Tysons Corner.

<comment><USER8> "It's also interesting to note that the DC area is the #2 (arguably tied with Boston) given how relatively inconsequential that community is now to what we'd consider the tech sector."

Remember, back then it was ARPAnet. ARPA was/is the Defense Departments Advanced Research Projects Agency. If you think the defence department then or now as not part of the tech sector you would be underestimating the investment in technology research made by the DOD.

<comment><USER7> But of course. California's nascent technology industry was also created by Federal dollars, just look at Ames, Rand, etc, on the left side of the map. The interesting question I was pondering is why the transition from public to private/consumer sector happened in one place but not nearly so much in the other.

<comment><USER9> I think at a certain point the question becomes very similar as asking why you got a 6 in a dice roll instead of a 3. You can definitely explain it using Newtonian physics but at a high enough level I'm not sure it really matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For a deeper dive into the history of ARPANET cartography, check out this paper (many more maps inside!): Fidler, B., and M. Currie. "The Production and Interpretation of ARPANET Maps." IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37, no. 1 (January 2015): 44–55. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2015.16. [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7057559/?arnumber=705755...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7057559/?arnumber=7057559)

</comment><comment><USER11> For a geographic representation, try:

* ARPANET Maps || [http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/history/arpamaps/](http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/history/arpamaps/)

<comment><USER12> As you can read there, these maps come from "Heart, F., McKenzie, A., McQuillian, J., and Walden, D., ARPANET Completion Report". This text can be obtained from [http://walden-family.com/bbn/arpanet-completion- report.pdf](http://walden-family.com/bbn/arpanet-completion-report.pdf)

EDIT: For a less deep link go to [http://walden- family.com/bbn/](http://walden-family.com/bbn/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wikipedia has a similar image from 1977 on the PDP-10 page. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10)

</comment><comment><USER14> Make a high quality scan and blow it up so we can all print out our very own internet map!

<comment><USER2> No problem: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/2efes525sd9q5yg/1973%20ARPAnet%20P...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2efes525sd9q5yg/1973%20ARPAnet%20PDF.pdf?dl=0)

(I'm assuming that doing this doesn't get my dropbox account suspended for some reason...)

<comment><USER14> Very nice! This'll look great hung over the microcomputer I've scavanged and fixed up (and hopefully one day my collection of microcomputers I will have scavanged and fixed up).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> See also RFC 4.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4)

      7  Test messages between UCSB-SRI 11/15/69

       7a  Network configuration

               SRI .
                  |  .
                  |   .
                  |     .
                  |       .
                  |         .
                  </comment><comment></comment><comment>
               UCLA           UCSB

</comment><comment><USER16> Which modern protocols even existed back then? IP? TCP? FTP?

<comment><USER17> NCP, the Network Control Program, was the predecessor of TCP/IP. [1]

Host addresses were only 8 bits (zero was reserved), so there could only be up to 255 hosts on the ARPANET.

NCP was a simplex protocol, not full duplex like TCP/IP, so each port=>port connection transmitted data in only one direction, and applications would use an even/odd pair of ports for two-way communication.

The parity of the ports at each end of the connection was required to be different: you couldn't connect an even port to another even port, or an odd port to another odd port. "Homosocketuality" was strictly forbidden by internet protocols! NCP's mandatory "heterosocketuality" was called the "Anita Bryant feature". [2]

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

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422813)

<comment><USER18> > The parity of the ports at each end of the connection was required to be > different: you couldn't connect an even port to another even port, or an odd > port to another odd port. "Homosocketuality" was strictly forbidden by > internet protocols! NCP's mandatory "heterosocketuality" was called the > "Anita Bryant feature". [2] > ... > [2] > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422813)

Well, that's a whole distasteful part of computer history I was blissfully unaware of before now. As someone fairly young (in my early 20s), it's sometimes hard to remember that things like this are very recent history, so I guess it helps to have some perspective every now and then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Surprised that Berkeley got online later than several others UCs and LBL.

</comment><comment><USER20> What do IMP and TIP stand for here?

<comment><USER21> IMP must be a Interface Message Processor [1], an Arpanet equivalent to our routers. And TIP must be Terminal Interface Processor [2], not really sure of their usage but basically they would allow remote sessions on the network, my guess is that they were some early forms of modern modems.

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

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

<comment><USER22> I went down this rabbit hole this morning myself. There's a nice document at Bitsavers ([http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/bbn/imp/BBN1822_Jan1976.pdf](http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/bbn/imp/BBN1822_Jan1976.pdf)) that has details about the two different IMP models, and the TIP and Pluribus IMP (an interesting multiprocessor IMP that I'd never heard about prior to today).

The TIP was the "Terminal IMP" (per the linked document) that provided connections to 64 terminals directly to the network through the IMP (with no intervening host).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The ARPANet Completion Report is Fascinating; it includes maps of the US with the ARPANet nodes indicated as the network grew. As well as additional logical diagrams of the network. [http://walden-family.com/bbn/arpanet-completion- report.pdf](http://walden-family.com/bbn/arpanet-completion-report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER24> A very similar map from 1972 is included in RFC432: [PDF] [https://tools.ietf.org/pdf/rfc432.pdf](https://tools.ietf.org/pdf/rfc432.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> It's kind of amazing how fast the internet evolved. Did the original people who were hooking these boxes up ever imagine what it was eventually going to be?

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone know what some of the non-obvious locations are? I'm not sure what RADC, ETAC, and a few of the others are.

<comment><USER27> RADC was Rome Air Development Center (from memory at the time; I got on the network in the fall of '72 as a frosh at HARV-10), a big funder of ARPA- related research.

I'm pretty sure RADC were the funding sources for much of the CS research going on at the Harvard CRCT [Center for Research in Computing Technology] in those days. My advisor, Tom Cheatham (RIP), was the head of the CRCT and the PI for many of the funded research programs. (Great man.)

All from memory, the less obvious names:

MIT: LCS, AI, Arch. Machine group, Multics, etc.

Harvard: CRCT with a few machines (PDP-10, -1, etc.)

BBN: contractor that developed the original ARPANET technology

Aberdeen and Belvoir: I believe Army testing grounds

NBS: National Bureau of Standards

MITRE (Corp)

Lincoln (Labs)

LBL (Lawrence Berkeley Labs)

Xerox (MAXC was PARC's home-made PDP-10 clone)

SDC (Software Dev Corp)

We had fun back in the "open days" when most systems had open guest accounts, telnetting from machine to machine to see how many "miles" we could go before the whole thing broke down.

(Fun factoid: back in the early days of email, the mail delivery mechanism was anonymous FTP to append to your recipient's mailbox file.)

Eventually (I'm vaguely remembering by 1973-74) there were enough troubles with vandals that all the open accounts were turned off. (I remember watching a TTY where Harv-10 was logging all typing from guest users, see what mischief they were up to.)

"Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> One of my old networks lecturers used to love trotting out this on a slide, pretty sure he had the same map in his attic.</comment>


Ask HN: Hacker culture becomes mainstream. What's next? - <AUTHOR>

Hacking, the culture of building things, ignoring conventions, moving quickly and breaking things has infiltrated biology, chemistry, electronics, software, space travel, politics etc. , it's becoming a mainstream mode of thinking and acting.<p>So, what's next? <comment><USER2> Ignoring conventions cannot be mainstream by design.

Of course what can happen (and has been going on for some time already) is that people will want to feel that they are. A lot of people do things that are very common and conventional but give them a feeling of being a rebel.

"Hackers" fall for that too. They can be waking up everyday with the feeling that they're right on their path to building an amazing thing when in fact they're doing nothing innovative. Just because people will have read essays by PG etc. will not make people suddenly building useful things and ignoring conventions. We'll just see (and are seeing) the convention shift.

The so called hacker community seems to have as many taboos as other communities.

</comment><comment><USER3> What will happen next, I presume, is that absurd patent and copyright laws will start catching up to reality. Hopefully.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, I don't think that hacker culture is particularly anything new. Using your definition, almost every revolutionary figure since the dawn of time was a "hacker," which obviously isn't true, in the literal sense.

So, if anything, it would be like past revolutionary periods in history.

</comment><comment><USER5> Solving real problems?

</comment><comment><USER6> It infiltrates healthcare and education (hopefully).

</comment><comment><USER7> Celebrate?</comment>