Cisco Acquires Enterprise Wi-Fi Startup Meraki For $1.2 Billion In Cash - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/18/cisco-acquires-enterprise-wi-fi-startup-meraki-for-1-2-billion-in-cash/ <comment><USER2> I think Meraki was the 4th startup that I ever invested in (first was Wufoo).

When we visited their office in Mountain View, it was full of "Meraki Minis" (their first batch of hardware). I asked how much money they had raised so far, and their response was, "none". They were so scrappy that they had managed to build the first batch (which was partially pre-sold) for practically nothing. And they somehow got the office space for free.

Very impressive team. Glad I invested :)

<comment><USER3> How do you find good hardware companies? They seem to be rare. I imagine they come to you but for someone like me, I am at a loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, looks like pg called it on this one.

"MAKE HARDWARE WITH NON-SUCKY SOFTWARE."

"okay"

"Here, have a billion."

Obviously, I am omitting all of the actual work for entertainment value. Edit: isn't a YC company, I don't want to confuse things.

<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

"27. Hardware/software hybrids. Most hackers find hardware projects alarming. You have to deal with messy, expensive physical stuff. But Meraki shows what you can do if you're willing to venture even a little way into hardware. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in hardware; you can often do dramatically new things by making comparatively small tweaks to existing stuff."

<comment><USER5> Calling their solution "non-sucky" is an understatement.

<comment><USER6> Can you elaborate?

You're saying they suck?

Can you explain exactly why... as a tech design integrator fro major clients who really like and use them - I need to know how they suck in a very specific way so I may avoid such mistakes....

wait... areyou saying they are way far above non-sucky?

Sorry the song of your people is foreign to me.

<comment><USER7> Non-sucky being an understatement means "It is extremely good" as far as I understand it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congratulations guys (if you're reading). I'm sure this has nothing at all to do with Ruckus going public [1] :-) Its a great exit and Cisco certainly has the manufacturing and marketing reach to take you to the next level.

That said, I find it fascinating that my first experience with wireless gear was with Aeronet (which was also $1B+ buy for Cisco) And of course Linksys ($1B+). And now Meraki ($1B+) So here is the multi-billion dollar question, "Why does Cisco keep spending billions of dollars on WiFi companies and still they aren't leading the market in WiFi innovation?"

[1] [http://www.ruckuswireless.com/press/releases/20121116-ruckus...](http://www.ruckuswireless.com/press/releases/20121116-ruckus- celebrates-ipo-and-first-day-of-trading-on-nyse)

<comment><USER9> Cisco as a company can't do the kind of "out of the box" R&D that's necessary for significant innovation. When Cisco wants something truly new they go acquire a outside company.

That said they've done a fairly good job of growing those companies within their area (Aeronet as Enterprise, Linksys as Home) through incremental improvements.

This may be intentional behavior on Cisco's part to control their exposure to large project failures. IIRC there've been cases where Cisco employees couldn't get support to develop something new so they quit and once Cisco saw their success they were acquired back in.

<comment><USER10> Cisco has the highest market share in wireless and it is Cisco's innovation in wireless that's keeping it ahead of Ruckus, Aruba and Motorola. Don't understand the conclusion that Cisco can't do "out of the box" R&D, at least in wireless.

<comment><USER11> I think what he was trying to say is that Cisco's R&D efforts are largely focused on refining the wireless stuff that it already does, if it wants something radically new AND that something is being done already it's easier to just buy the company and their research instead of spinning up a new R&D effort to reinvent the wheel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How fortunate in the short term, and unfortunate in the long term.

< removed long cynical rant about Cisco and handling of IronPort >

(funny story, Cisco's workplace resources group's bonuses are based on (total revenue) / headcount+workplace costs. Instead of incentives based on retention and growth, the group gets a bigger bonus every time a group is downsized, or they close an office.)

<comment><USER6> I just hope that they don't have the same result as the acquisition of Airespace in ~2006...

Airespce brain trust cashed out and jumped out and left Cisco's wifi product poor at best...

So many mistakes... they have solidified their offering - but if you were an airespce/cisco customer when that happened -- it was horrific.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember way back in 2006 or so when Meraki was a startup trying to sell the hardware units geared towards community wifi systems. A short time after getting the units out into the community they 'pivoted' away from that model and started charging for the service: obviously trying to gear their stuff towards business customers.

I'm glad this pivot worked!

<comment><USER14> Interesting to read how this pivot affected customers who no longer fit their business model...

[http://www.virishi.net/from-happy-hacking-screw-you-story- me...](http://www.virishi.net/from-happy-hacking-screw-you-story-meraki)

[http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Meraki-Annoys-Partners- Cu...](http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Meraki-Annoys-Partners- Customers-88249)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neat.

Every time I find a company that I think is worth working for, I spend time on a good cover letter to try to get interest or even play around with their API and build something simple. Meraki was one of those companies I cared enough to write about, I believe, but I never heard back from them. I seem to not be good enough to be hired but good enough to recognize the best, lol.

Perhaps I should start a newsletter.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of the things mentioned in the acquisition FAQ was that one of the key differentiators was the Meraki business model.

Can anyone shed more light on exactly what is different?

EDIT: Also, since I have never priced any of their gear before, any idea on ballpark costs (list) would be nice.

<comment><USER16> Cisco: Buy hardware and associated licenses to use them with a WiFi control "box", then purchase optional support contracts to receive replacements/repairs when/if hardware breaks.

Meraki: Buy hardware and a time-based license per unit, typically for three years. No additional costs.

With the Cisco gear you can buy hardware and essentially use it forever just for the upfront cost. With Meraki you buy the hardware then pay on a regular basis to Meraki to continue using it with their cloud control software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congratulations Meraki, very well deserved!

I just wonder if they had continued their run, could they have IPO-ed at a much higher valuation? They seem to have both very strong product and business fundamentals. Would love to hear thoughts on this..

</comment><comment><USER18> Congratulations to the Meraki team. I was hoping to see them make more of a run on the wireless incumbents, but I can understand that 1.2b was too much to pass up (considering Aruba's market cap is only 2.1b).

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how similar this is to Ubiquiti's UniFi enterprise WiFi system. I'm a big fan, UniFi is just excellent as is their point to point/WISP solution airMAX, very inexpensive too. For example, I recently set up an airMAX 280Mbps point to point link over about 1/2 mile using 2x Nanostation M5's for ... $140! Their airFiber system gives you 1.4Gbps over up to 10km for about $2.5K for the pair of radios.

<http://ubnt.com>

<comment><USER9> Different markets. Ubiquiti's software is no where near as polished as Meraki. Ubiquiti is working on a cloud controller function to reduce the barrier to entry for some of their products.

<comment><USER19> I haven't seen the Meraki software, but what I have seen of the Ubiquiti software is excellent. The UniFi controller does in fact run in the cloud. Granted they could do more on the cloud front in terms of having something pre-built that you can activate with a click.

I'm not sure I'd want my wireless controller in the cloud though, I like the fact that the UniFi controller runs on anything from an 12 core x64 down to a single core ARM board depending on the size of your installation.

<comment><USER9> There's a significant difference between being able to run software "in the cloud" like how Ubiquiti instructs end-users to install Linux and then UniFi on EC2 and having the entire platform "in the cloud" and ready to use by the end-users with the operational cost rolled into the purchase price/support contract.

Requiring end-users to launch EC2 instances is missing the point of easy to deploy & maintain.

Ubiquiti is working on providing the controller "in the cloud" under the latter model. You can register and use their hosted system for mFi right now. Other stuff is coming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I gotta ask, I was looking for some access points for a small company. How does meraki compare to the super cheap <http://www.open-mesh.com/>

which seems to have some nice software as well. Is Meraki really aimed towards enterprise who can justify $1000 access points?

<comment><USER21> They have some pretty amazing stuff. I recently attended one of their webinarsa and received a free AP + License. I used to push Ruckus because I was really familiar with them. Meraki is hands down a much better product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Congrats to Meraki team. Another exit for Sequoia. Looks like they had an excellent year where companies like Palo Alto Networks, Kayak, LinkedIn that went public (and doing well). And companies like Instagram, Meraki got acquired for north of billion dollars.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting article on the CEO, Sanjit Biswas:

Move over, Doogie Howser; here comes Engineer Biswas [http://mytown.mercurynews.com/archives/sunnyvalesun/04.29.98...](http://mytown.mercurynews.com/archives/sunnyvalesun/04.29.98/SanjitBiswas.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> I understand how Ruckus could be doing IPO. Since they actually solve the problem with too many WiFi connections going to single point. Problems we have seen in Hotels, and Apple Expo. etc

How is Meraki different? Since Ruckus is a software + hardware solution.

</comment><comment><USER25> I might be wrong but the word meraki is one of those greek words that cant be translated in english and means passion to work and develop something. Try it on google translate as μεράκι !

</comment><comment><USER26> Nice to see startups still being bought for the products and not just the talent

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting, never realized they offer a free MDM (MAM) solution.

<comment><USER28> There's not a lot of documentation, but Systems Manager is solid. I've been testing the Android client and found it stable and well-behaved.</comment></comment>


Samsung's Android Replacement Is a Hacker's Dream - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/samsung-tizen-operating-system-bugs-vulnerabilities <comment><USER2> aww, title made me think it was open source and nice</comment>


Ask HN: Should we use a picture of a smoking man on our webpage ATF? - <AUTHOR> I manage a site for a firm that sells narrow AI applications. During revamp of the site, we found this stock pic that suits the site's above the fold background perfectly in terms of theme, color, everything. The only hiccup is that the man in the picture's got a cigarette in his hand. Given that even the most moderately non-PC things nowadays tends to stir up a lot of s<i></i>t online, I'm wondering if I should junk this picture and go hunting for another; or stick with this one? Thoughts / considerations appreciated <comment><USER2> PC has nothing to do with it. Do you really want visitors associating your site, even unconsciously, with addiction, the stench of smoke, death, etc.?

Personally, when I see a business use stock photography that has cigarettes, I have that reaction. And I also wonder whether they're trying to appeal to smokers in particular or trying to convey something else about themselves that I don't understand. To me, it's no good.

How prominent is the cigarette? Could you have it edited out? Does the license for the stock photo permit that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! That's a pretty solid line of thought to consider this decision. The offending butt is not small enough to be prominent, but large enough to be visible.

Editing it out has become quite the challenge given the amount of blur in the hand already. If you're curious, here's a look at the image: [https://img42.com/tMbeJ](https://img42.com/tMbeJ)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Strategies and Tactics for Accomplishing More - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested to tap into the collective wisdom of this community on this topic.  What strategies/tactics/tips can you share that you've used to help you accomplish your goals more effectively without sacrificing the quality of the goals or balance in your life? <comment><USER2> I work in sprints, I have a protein shake every morning as soon as I wake up and at night right before I go to sleep, ever since I started journaling I ditched to-do lists.

Also, the most productive times of my life, when it comes to work is whenever I'm in a relationship and the sex question is not so prevalent in my mind anymore.

The best hack I know for working out is to change into whatever your workout clothes are and just wait until you feel like working out.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd say, for most people, focusing more on the life-part of their balance is the key strategy to accomplishing their goals more effectively.

Exercise, eat properly, don't watch tv, sleep what's right for you. As a bonus, don't do long commutes.

Those 4+1 rules are, by far, the most important.

</comment><comment><USER4> I find that routine helps quite a bit. Also sitting time limits on what you're working on.

I've read a lot of books on productivity, the one that has stuck with me is called "The 4 Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss. If you haven't read it, read it now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate on how setting time limits helps?

<comment><USER4> You say, I'm only going to work on this for 3 hours, then I'm done, and you don't allow yourself a second more. If I don't finish, tough luck, try harder next time. It forces you to focus on the essentials.</comment></comment></comment>


Google turned my iPod touch into a free wifi phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.codercowboy.com/2013/10/19/oh-google-just-turned-my-ipod-touch-into-a-free-wifi-phone/ <comment> super-serial _" The downside to Google Voice has always been that it's not actually a phone. When you dial someone with the Voice app, it dials your contact, then dials your real phone, and connects you together – you can't just dial right out on a computer or non-phone smart device like an iPod touch and use a headset."_

On a computer it can "dial" GChat, so you don't need a "real phone." I don't own a landline or a cellphone so I would know.

But I never knew you could make calls from apps. I have an iPod Touch 4, so this is going to be awesome. Now my friends might actually think I'm normal.

<comment><USER2> The quoted claim is false. I use Google Voice on Android. There's an option to "make all calls with GV" in which case all your outgoing calls go to the corresponding proxy number. There's also an "ask every time" option.

<comment><USER3> Although I'm pretty sure doing that in android still uses your mobile number and cell network to make the connection, not the WiFi or data connection. So it's still not true VoIP/WiFi-calling like it is on the iOS version of hangouts.

<comment><USER4> That's what acchow is saying. "Calls go to the corresponding proxy number." As opposed to the call being incoming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, free? What's the catch?

Oh, they collect all my texts, instant messages, and phone call data and metadata? That's not for me, then.

<comment><USER6> I'll be honest, I'll be surprised if Google Voice is alive in a couple of years. I've been an avid Google Voice user since before it was even owned by Google (back when it was GrandCentral), and Google have showed it little love, made virtually no new features or improvements in the past four years, and now buried it into Google Hangouts. Which is a shame, because I use it regularly and find it really useful.

<comment><USER7> > virtually no new features or improvements in the past four years

Lack of MMS is a big one. No group text messages, with no notification to either the sender or the recipient that it was simply discarded. Aside from that, what are some features that you wish it had?

<comment><USER8> They've started sending the MMS through email, at least for ones coming from Sprint users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So this is integrating Google voice and hangouts? Still separate on my android, but if so, I suppose you might say it could be inevitable..

<comment><AUTHOR> It's still two separate apps on iOS too, though this does appear to be a step toward a unified product that's less of a kludge than voice has been on its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this work on android devices too?

<comment><USER11> Doesn't seem to, although the last update was a few weeks ago. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.talk) There are apps that do this though, I use GrooVe IP for example.

<comment><USER12> I use that, too. You can configure your phone so that outgoing and incoming calls use wifi when it's there, and the cell connection when it's not, automatically, and you can use the phone's default dialer. This kind of flexibility is not available on iOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There were apps to do this a long time ago, at least 3 years ago I remember texting and voice calling with the first iPod touch with retina screen with a VoIP app. I forget the specific app name though, and the mic wasn't that great. I remember calling someone and they said that they couldn't really hear me, but they guessed what I had called them about anyway because of the specific time. Google's apps might be more convenient than the app I used and/or cheaper, but they weren't the first.

</comment><comment><USER14> It says: There have been several inexpensive or free "turn your iPod Touch into a wifi phone" gimmick apps or services over the past few years, but they've always been a hassle (listen to a 30 second ad before your call begins..) or short-lived – so, I've just always dialed directly with my brick phone, and told my contacts "my real number is the google voice #, ignore the caller id".

Which is not really true, skype have been providing real phone service for years.

<comment><USER7> The biggest difference is that you have to have a Skype In number, which is yet another phone number to give to people and for them to have to manage. Plus, it costs $5/mo. I like the one-time charge to port my number to Google Voice, and I'll simply answer the device that's closest to me at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The author is running iOS 7, so his iPod Touch was already a "free" wifi phone, using FaceTime Audio.

<comment><USER16> As far as I know, FaceTime audio only allows you to call other FaceTime users, not old-fashioned landlines, mobile phones etc.

Google Voice is nothing new though. Google voice already offered VOIP (I regularly use an app called "Talkatone" for this). What's changed is that Google now offers a nicely packaged, official app for this.

<comment><USER15> True, didn't think about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This has been available in the form of Talkatone (on the App Store) for at least 3 years. This is nothing new.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is good news and because I don't make calls frequently, I'm selling the iPhone and iPad for the next Verizon iPad mini with month-to-month data. Just tired of paying $90/mo for voice minutes that are mostly forfeited anyways. VOIP and telephony apps all the way!

</comment><comment><USER19> Just an FYI: you cannot send/recive MMS (this includes Group Messages) with a Google Voice number. This doesn't matter to many of us, but if you still have contacts that rely on these protocols just be aware before you port your number to GV.

<comment><USER20> oddly, i do get occasional mms messages on my google voice #. most of the time, it doesn't work though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Buddy has been doing this for a while with an old 3GS. Problem is if he's not on wifi he can't take a call so I end up leaving home a voicemail and waiting hours for him to call back.

<comment><USER22> For some people, that "problem" is a feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> More like "Google turned my iPod touch into one of their data-hoarding drones. But I don't care about my data, as long as I get a free service in return!".

<comment><USER24> As if any other carrier is any different?

<comment><USER15> I'm not one to overly worry about data collection, but there is a difference between giving all your data to the same company and different data to different companies. Consider the reactions when Google itself changed their T&C to unify all their services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So... voice, the telephony app can be used for sending text messages. And hangouts, a text based chat service can be used to make phone calls. Great logic there google!

</comment><comment><USER26> Problem is, when is the last time google voice has been improved? Sounds like it's going down the hole of google reader.

</comment><comment><USER27> To be fair, Facebook has had this for close to a year now (albeit on on an iPod, but other cellular devices.)

</comment><comment><USER28> Great news. Might finally be able to delete skype! I really have to wonder why it took them so long though.

</comment><comment><USER29> I used SIP on that for years, what's the big news?

</comment><comment><USER30> TIL. devs continue using google after NSA revelations. They also praise google voice. google and apple ftw yo.

<comment><USER31> In light of _all_ the NSA revelations, I think we can say that using Google Voice is probably not any more dangerous than using any other type of SMS or telephone service.

<comment><USER32> That's not the point, though, is it?

<comment><USER33> Isn't it? OP was suggesting boycotting a particular company and someone responded to essentially say "Boycott them in favour of whom?"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Popularity test between any 2 things. Useless or useful? (iOS App) - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/ro/app/versus-ask-the-planet/id736726885?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> It's based on the number of Google search results.

The concept is that the more results something has -> more mentions by people -> more popular.

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice execution of a simple idea.</comment>


The True Cause of the Opioid Epidemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/01/what-caused-opioid-epidemic/604330/ <comment><USER2> " _Her interviewees had easy access to opioids, yes, but they also felt betrayed by the world. When Silva presented her work recently, an economist told her, "This is, like, an everything problem."_

" _"I thought that was a really smart way of putting it," she told me. Indeed, in one of their studies, the Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who coined the "deaths of despair" hypothesis, noted that opioid overdoses, suicides, and alcohol abuse are the results of "cumulative distress," or the overall "failure of life to turn out as expected."_

" _The solutions to this "everything problem" are not clear. Silva told me that the opioid epidemic had made some of her interviewees even more resentful, because they saw their neighbors as too weak to pull themselves out of addiction. At times, they seemed to almost celebrate the pain of withdrawal from opioids, as a necessary way of toughening up. "They actually end up supporting programs that would give people less help or less aid, because they feel like it's enabling to keep giving help to people who refuse to get better," she told me._

" _One of Silva's interviewees tried to convince her that stress is how people grow. But stress can also make people hurt._</comment>


Show HN: Pretty music visualization in real time with JavaScript and WebAudioAPI - <AUTHOR> http://vizrify.com

<comment><USER2> I picked one of the demo songs, and this is what I got instead:

[http://vizrify.com/vizapp.html?src=5a65e535b85154595f3833429...](http://vizrify.com/vizapp.html?src=5a65e535b85154595f38334298d5d677)

When I hit back on the browser, it did go back to the demo song I had chosen. I love Roxette though, so no worries, just FYI.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know! I think this is a rare bug, and I'm pretty sure it's caused by the audio element not properly loading. It's definitely on my todo list!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why make it google chrome specific when things like this run in other browsers:

<http://gattis.github.com/milkshake/> ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure how milkshake is generating it's visualizations, but with Vizrify I was playing with using the new WebAudio API (which will be coming to firefox in a while) to access html5 audio element FFT data directly. It also opens up the avenue to do other cool audio transformations that are difficult to do otherwise.

<comment><USER3> Oh ok, sounds cool. :) In which chrome version did it get supported?

I'm trying on chromium 23 on Linux Mint and only see 2 concentric circles and nothing is playing / moving.

Though here it seems not to complain like it does in FF when in chromium and I could hit a random play button on the page:

<http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webaudio/intro/>

cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> I've experienced some users reporting bugs using chromium and ubuntu, I haven't had a chance to look into it, thanks for letting me know!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Brilliant way to collect mp3's :)

Seriously, though, I am impressed. Is a non-minified version available?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will probably make it availble once I've cleaned up the code and made some improvements to the algorithms. Beat detection can be spotty on constantly loud songs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a very nice. I was surprised how fast it was. Great job.</comment>


RedisGraph: a fast, queryable property graph database for Redis - <AUTHOR> https://oss.redislabs.com/redisgraph/ <comment><USER2> Just a warning that this is one of the modules that's licensed under the controversial "Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause" license.

<comment><USER3> This motivated me to reread the commons clause again. I remain so disappointed in the naming and positioning of it. If you want to sell commercial modules that is totaly fine, but Apache 2 with commons doesn't jump off the page as an unfree license (which prima facia it is). Should be called the 'free for personal use' email us for pricing clause instead.

<comment><USER4> I'm not a fan of combining licences - it's just confusing. They should come up with some new license like the "totally free if you're not reselling it as a service" license or something like that.

"The large print giveth, the small print taketh away".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Glad this was posted on HN because Roi's work is outstanding. I see there is a thread about the license here, you know my position. I think in short that:

* It makes sense for MongoDB / Redis Labs to change licenses of what they produce if they want / need.

* In the case however of the Redis core, it's BSD, no way it will be changed. But for modules produced by Redis Labs, it's their choice and there is something to do against the cloud providers exploit.

* I don't like the OSS license + Common Clause combo, but instead I like more to rename the sum of the two, like "Redis Labs Sharing License". We'll see if the company will move in that direction, I'm advising in that way.

* I don't like the attempt at getting things like SSPL OSI approved.

However, I want to ask if you would be more comfortable if RedisGraph would be licensed under SSPL instead of Apache 2 + Commons Clause. I don't have the power to change the license but I can advise, and for Redis Labs I suspect it is practically the same because the goal is to let users do what they want like-if-it-was-open-source, but stop cloud providers.

<comment><USER6> > * I don't like the attempt at getting things like SSPL OSI approved.

Why?

<comment><USER5> I had already issues with the GPL v2/3 concept of linking and the fact that the project linking to a GPL license should also be under a compatible license. To turn provisioning, that is just using normal system APIs, into a form of linking is IMHO wrong and no longer open source. I wrote a whole thread on Twitter with the details btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm pretty uninformed on the subject, but I am interested to hear why an adjacency matrix is chosen over an adjacency list when it is sparse. My basic data structures and algorithms class would lead me to believe that an adjacency list would be better. Is this due to the nature of how the database is constructed?

<comment><USER8> The underlying representation is a sparse adjacency matrix. The graph that it is representing is not necessarily sparse.

<comment><USER9> True, although most "organic" graphs are sparse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Fast". Compared to what? How does it perform compared to Neo4j? How do you scale it?

<comment><USER11> [https://twitter.com/dvirsky/status/1053987868677423104](https://twitter.com/dvirsky/status/1053987868677423104)

<comment><USER12> Comparing RedisGraph (an in-memory db) to Neo4j, which does not need to hold the entire graph in-memory, is not really fair though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really like how, just when I got interested in Graph Databases, this springs up.

I also really like the Cypher Syntax. I am definitely going to give Neoj4 and RedisGraph a go at some point.

</comment><comment><USER14> Would be reeeal sweet for my use case if it supported finding shortest paths based on some link properties out of the box. That way I can get rid of neo4j.

</comment><comment><USER15> Curious if this can work with a sharded redis cluster?

</comment><comment><USER16> Thanks</comment>


$700bn Bailout is shot down by House of Rep Vote (205-228), US stock market plummets - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26884523/ <comment><USER3> Did anyone notice the title of the bailout?

"To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, _and for other purposes_ "

I think the real reason it failed is that they didn't title it "Flags for Orphans and other stuff".

<comment><USER4> People assume that 1.2 trillion was lost(stock market). However that money still exists, just the ownership has changed. Today was probably the largest transfer of wealth ever.

In my opinion this is a good thing. You can't have unchecked growth forever. You need to have a downturn to jolt consumer confidence and investor confidence.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't still exist - it never existed in the first place.

<comment><USER6> Someone said (I think it was in Money as Debt[1]) that "if all debt was cancelled, 95% of the money in the world would _disappear_ instantly."

[1] <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So an administration that no one trusts can't pass a bill that would enact the largest transfer of wealth in history - from American people - to reckless financial institutions that don't even trust themselves? Astounding!

<comment><USER8> If those financial institutions fail, they will have to be nationalized. Taxpayers will lose far more than $700 billion. The only way your characterization of the bailout as a net transfer of wealth is tenable is if you're against government intervention in financial crises altogether, which is silly. Unless you also think fractional reserve banking should be illegal, which is also silly.

<comment><USER5> Why is it silly to make conjouring money out of nowhere illegal?

If there is only $100 in the world, and a bank gives it to you and you pay it back with interest, where does the interest come from?

If there's $100 in the world, and a bank "gives $100" to 10 people, who all have to pay back $100 + interest, where does that come from?

You have to borrow it from another bank. Total money in the world increases, the economy grows, but it's a con, a mirage, a convenient consensual fiction. A system based on eternal growth, which relies on pushing around ever increasing debt for its very existence, where repaying the total debt would require giving the banks back all the money they ever loaned plus all the stuff in the world to the value of the conjured extra. How is this not silly?

<comment><USER8> "If there's $100 in the world, and a bank "gives $100" to 10 people, who all have to pay back $100 + interest, where does that come from?"

That's not how fractional reserve banking works. Banks don't lend more than they have in their vaults, they just have less in their vaults than the sum of their depositors' accounts.

That's tangential to your main point, which seems to be an objection to a perpetually increasing amount of money that only exists as numbers in a computer backed by nothing. That only becomes a problem in a severe recession, where the rate of wealth creation slows so much that loans can't be paid back. The system breaks, and governments have to intervene to fix it. This isn't done by just giving banks money, as you suggest. The government typically takes over the banks. The proposed bailout involves buying assets, but it's still not giving banks money.

That is only a problem if you think we'd be better off with the slower economic growth that would result from banning fractional reserve banking. We're not. A system that breaks on a regular basis sounds like a bad idea, but you still have to compare it with the alternative before you condemn it.

<comment><USER9> One alternative: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAK_members_bank>

Basically: money lent is less or equal to money deposited; no interest (only fees). Interest including fees is ~2.5%, and will "never" change.

<comment><USER10> Interesting link. Do do you think the financial system could be replaced by that?

<comment><USER9> Sure, but it would be different from the one we have now. Things might be moving slower, but crashes should be less frequent.

The main difference is that that system isn't built on the assumption that the economy will always expand, which the current system is. I'll leave it to someone who actually knows something about the pros and cons of each to tell you if that's good or bad.. But basic reasoning tells me that it's not likely that something that takes place in a fixed environment (Earth) can expand for ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Stocks are only down ~6%. The Dow is regularly going up and down hundreds of points at a time these days, -571 points is not really that big of a deal.

Plus, what would you expect to happen? Investors were counting on about $1 Trillon of free money from the government, and then the government pulled it back at the last minute. In a few days there will be news of a new deal and the DJIA will be up 500 points again. And, if the House of Representatives keeps doing its job, then the DJIA will fall 500 points again when the next "no" vote comes.

<comment><USER12> And while it's the biggest single day _point_ loss, it's not even in the top 10 _percentage_ losses.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not to mention the majority of it bounced back the next day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good. Now get to work devising a bill that has more oversight and whose tactics are more agreed upon by economists (capital injection a la Sweden in '92: [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23k...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23krona.html)). Sweden spent 5% of its GDP but recouped 3% of GDP, for a 2% GDP net cost. Did anyone believe that 60% of the money spent by this defeated bill would have been recouped?

<comment><USER14> Well up to 40% could default on them before you got to that point. Right now no one knows what the rate will ultimately be. In some areas it is already 60%, but in some areas it is 5%, so 40% nationally would be a very high number. At that point the better question would be what to do with so many bankrupt people.

<comment><USER13> Remember, the 700 billion would purchase the worst bank assets, so presumably the associated mortgages would default at significantly higher rates than the national average.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This bill cannot pass. We will only make the problem that much worse in the end. We will be proping up this failed system to continue on. The legislation is so vague and flimsy it's virtually worthless.

The patching of the credit liquidity crisis right now is like using corks to patch a leaky submarine. Not only that, but you don't have enough corks to patch all the holes.

We are going to see a large recession in all of our markets. Even if you pass this bill, no serious economist knows the extent of the financial crisis. All of them can gaurentee, though, that it will be far above $1tril.

Don't fall for this nonsense the politicians and the rich are spouting about. They only want to sustain this failed lesse faire market and continue to benefit from it. We need our economy to be entirely restructured and this is the time to do that.

</comment><comment><USER16> [http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/09/ive-never-been-so- happy-t...](http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/09/ive-never-been-so-happy-to- lose-money.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow. And it's only Monday. Things are going to get exciting this week. Dow 8-9k.. any predictions?

Fortunes are made buying in bear markets. Though I wouldn't suggest its easy to recognize the bottom.

<comment><USER18> 8K would be a reasonable valuation.

<comment><USER19> Based on what? Historical P/E FCF valuations?

<comment><USER17> Heh, one of the only reasons I stick to buying index funds is because I don't have the energy to learn what those terms mean.

<comment><USER19> Ha! One of the reasons I stick to buying low cost index funds is because I know what those terms mean and have realized finance is mostly a fools game. Especially hedge funds.

Different means - same ends.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with the "index fund" approach. Too many people get caught up playing the market or paying out the butt to some "financial advisor" who doesn't have much more of a clue where the economy is going than your Average Joe.

Just stick it in an index fund and let compound interest be your friend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Forgive me if this is obvious, but I'm not sure most people realize that this wouldn't be $700 billion going straight from taxpayers to banks. The actual cost to taxpayers will be _much_ less. The $700 billion would be used to purchase assets from banks, and sold to investors at a later time.

<comment><USER13> The $700 billion is a balance sheet number. My understanding was that the total amount to be spent had no preset limit in the defeated bill. In the end it's true that nobody knows what it'll cost. It cost Sweden between 0 and 2% (depending on accounting method) of their GDP in 1992 according to [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23k...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23krona.html). The $700 billion figure is about 5% of US GDP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> [http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/house/2/vote...](http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/house/2/votes/674/)

If you're interested in how specific Representatives voted, we (I work at the Post) grabbed the data before house.gov keerashed.

<comment><USER21> I'm surprised by the vote tallies. Democrats voted 140 yes and 95 no, while Republicans voted 65 yes and 133 no.

So, either Republicans (in the House) have more integrity than I'd given them credit for lately (and more than Democrats, on the whole), or I have less understanding of the bill than I thought I did.

Also, the Washington Post is either a little bit batshit crazy, or they have a strange sense of humor: You can sort the results by astrological sign. If you really wanted to have one more sorting type...the length of time in office would be more interesting to me (and not indicative of being ready for a quiet retirement with fewer disturbances in life).

<comment><USER22> I think a simpler line of reasoning is that the Democrats have a bit more control over the bill, and have been able to get in terms that Democrats favor more than the Republicans have been able to.

<comment><USER21> The issue is that from my understanding, it's a really bad bill. I think it shows a striking lack of character to vote for a bad bill because it happens to contain some earmarks or other terms you (and your biggest contributors) happen to like.

The older I get, the more I realize that character in politicians is far more important than ideology. Decent people can disagree on the right way to solve the problems our nation faces, including this (very large) one...but lining the pockets of supporters at the expense of everyone else in the nation, particularly those least able to protect their assets, strikes me as a despicable and crassly self-serving act. The only way to a solution that most everybody can agree on is to honestly discuss the issues.

With a bill named "To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes" that hands $700 billion (actually more...) over to a fellow who'll be doling it out to all of his old buddies from the finance industry with no oversight, we've already established that no sane discussion can take place. It's classic doublespeak on the order of the best the Soviets and Red Chinese ever came up with, and that duplicity in and of itself is enough to disqualify this bill from consideration by honest folks.

This is actually a prime example of why I genuinely like Ron Paul. I disagree with him on some major issues (immigration and abortion being the biggest), but I know where he stands, and I know he believes in what he says and acts accordingly. I think I'd like to see a lot more of that, from any side of the political spectrum. But, it seems like crooked Republicans get voted out only to be replaced by crooked Democrats. I'd be happy with a batch of honest Democrats or a batch of honest Republicans, but it seems the only way to keep them close to honest is to keep churning new people in, keep the parties roughly in balance, and keep them at each others throats so they can do the least amount of damage possible.

<comment><USER22> The bill is quite a bit toned down from how you described it (afaik). You're talking about the initial version of it, which I thought was absolutely horrible. The version that was voted on today seemed quite a bit better (more oversight, some limits on executive pay, not all the money is paid out at once among other provisions...), but I just think that the core of the bill is simply not a good idea.

<comment><USER23> oversight by 2 small committees who can be bought isn't enough oversight - <USER2> transactions need to be made available to the public.

Not to mention that while payments would be made in installments, there was still no cap.

<comment><USER22> Thanks, I wasn't too aware of exactly what had changed. I didn't realize that the transactions would not be made available to the public, that seems insane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I forget where I read this (Andrew Sullivan?). Someone predicted that now the Democrats will put out a new bill and it'll be voted through the house along party lines. Bush could veto it in the middle of his financial armageddon, or sign something with real teeth in it...

It seems like just buying equity in the failing companies is a more direct way to deal with the problem than throwing money at the problem, in exchange for promises that Paulson will write up warrants that benefit the American taxpayer.

</comment><comment><USER19> Less than 75 years ago, it was essentially illegal in this country to be black. I wouldn't trust our government to clean up dog shit let alone handle $700 billion dollars trying to bail out our retarded amateur-hour financial institutions.

<comment><USER25> true

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> and the dollar surges! (re: biggest dollar gains in 15 years)

<comment><USER27> where do you see this I'd like it to be true.

<comment><USER26> [http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/artic...](http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article4844255.ece) "As nine central banks used currency swaps to oil the wheels of dollar liquidity in the money markets, sterling plunged and was on course for its steepest one-day drop against the dollar for at least a decade and a half."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Maybe this video really went viral. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsC2k9opOP0>

</comment><comment><USER29> One point not mentioned in the article. The subgroup of the House that was most in favor of the bill were those with the least conflict of interest between their personal political future, and the good of the country as they perceived it: the Representatives who were not running for reelection.

They were overwhelmingly in favor.

What does that say about the state of our democracy

<comment><USER30> You can read this different ways. "those with the least conflict of interest between their personal political future" But those not up for reelection could do business as usual, right? Most of us think that "business as usual" means legislation not in the interest of the many.

I don't think your perspective is clear.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just as a heads up, this vote now passed: [http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/03/news/economy/house_friday_ba...](http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/03/news/economy/house_friday_bailout/index.htm?postversion=2008100309)

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill You cannot fix a structural defect with wallpaper.

</comment><comment><USER31> good! lawmakers on the radio today were saying 90% of their callers were against it. this is a victory for the stingy saver who doesn't obsess over vacation homes and luxury cars. every THING is about to go on sale, and the prudent will have their day.

taxpayers who pay their bills and live wisely don't need credit, they live on cash. these people should not be punished for the greed of everyone else on wall st and main st

<comment><USER32> Ok, here's the thing: even if you disagree philosophically with the legislation that they put together, you still would be wise to be very worried about the overall state of the economy due to tight credit. Many businesses (good, solid, profitable businesses that employ hard-working people) fund their operations via credit markets that have seized up. Absent some kind of intervention (and I for one would like to see more ideas on the table), even your ideal "prudent" person will probably suffer.

Just because you've done everything prudently on your own micro scale doesn't mean macro events can't hurt you.

<comment><USER33> I can't pretend that I understand this whole thing, and am quite suspicious of anyone that says they do, who does not report on it more or less full time and have a good grasp of economics, but... one analogy that's come to mind is a car stopping. In one case, with the brakes, in another, by hitting a rock wall. The end result is still a stopped car, but there are some other differences that might be of interest to the occupants.

In any case, most of the discussion that's worth anything is coming from economists, of which there are a wide variety to read. Most people on sites like this one don't seem to have the expertise to say much that's useful, either for or against (and that includes me, thanks).

<http://economistsview.typepad.com/>

<http://econlog.econlib.org/>

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

<http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/>

<http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/>

<http://delong.typepad.com/>

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/290ca9f6-8d8b-11dd-83d5-0000779fd1...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/290ca9f6-8d8b-11dd-83d5-0000779fd18c.html)

As you can see even those guys are peddling their own ideologies to various degrees, along with everyone else with vested interests - and that's a lot of people, because 700 billion combined with a potential collapse of the economy is pretty high stakes. This doesn't make it easier to understand.

<comment><USER34> That's a great analogy.

There's a brick wall looming up ahead, and we just cut the line to the brakes.

<comment><USER35> Pumping in a huge amount of government debt and credit is hitting the accelerator, not hitting the brakes. Cheap credit is the fuel that produced the mess.

<comment><USER33> This is precisely the sort of "I know exactly what's going on" comment that I'm suspicious of. Perhaps you do, but I am in a "don't trust anyone" sort of mood, I suppose.

<comment><USER35> If feelings of mistrust are your guide then it should be obvious that the bailout is an evil racket. Cui bono?

Outstanding consumer and business debt is something like $40 trillion. Way more than $700 billion of it is at risk. The bailout bill is so small relative to the real credit markets that it can ONLY possibly be a political act for certain well connected individuals. It cannot drive the macroeconomic conditions related to the whole credit market.

<comment><USER33> "certain well connected individuals"

Sounds like conspiracy theory territory to me, but maybe I'm misconstruing what you're saying. On the surface, your argument regarding 700 billion vs 40 trillion sounds plausible, but then again, it doesn't seem to be convincing guys like Larry Summers, Mark Thoma, or The Economist ( [http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm...](http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12326538) ), and I don't think they're all in on the plot, yet are pretty smart.

On the other hand, if things don't go to hell without the bailout, it will show that Paulson et al. were indeed quite wrong.

<comment><USER35> There is a simple, good test for smartness in the current climate: Who identified and coherently described the housing bubble in 2005 or before? I think everyone on your list fails the test.

<comment><USER33> After a quick search in The Economist's archives:

[http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E...](http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_QPRVNJP)

> The technology bubble in the late 1990s at least left behind a modern > capital stock, which continues to yield productivity gains; a property boom, > in contrast, does nothing to boost long-term growth. Instead, it diverts > resources away from more productive sectors and by fuelling consumer > spending it exacerbates America's economic imbalances. Eventually, there > will be a price to pay.

Also, I'm not sure that predictions of problems equate to knowing what to do to best wind down the current mess. You're right (elsewhere) that some things need to go under. However, I think the point of the 'bailout proponents' is that more will go under than otherwise needs be without it.

Of course I guess we'll really never know for certain in any case, as it's impossible to know what would have happened otherwise. We could have no bailout and massive failures just as we could have a bailout and still have massive failures. Or no massive failures in either case.

<comment><USER35> > I think the point of the 'bailout proponents' is that more will go under > than otherwise needs be without it.

I've seen this movie before. If bailouts and stimulus packages worked Japan would have been the economic star of the 1990s and the Depression would have ended before FDR ran for the nomination.

<comment><USER33> Japan didn't do "bailouts", from what I've read. More along the lines of simply never facing up to the bad debts and letting some things fail. That certainly has to be part of it, and has been so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Where can we see how they voted?

I want to keep an eye on those 205 SOBs

<comment><USER37> <http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll674.xml>

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> In their infinite wisdom, Congress decided to wipe out $1.2 trillion in market capitalization by not passing the plan, thus costing the economy $500 billion more than the bailout would have -- assuming the bailout would have no effect at all. Brilliant.

<comment><USER30> uh...wrong. You cannot know if investor confidence will be stronger or weaker with this bailout. Time will tell and we only get to play it one way. There are no "do overs" here.</comment></comment>


Ask HN - do you need an incoming email processor? - <AUTHOR> http://abacron.com/

<comment><USER2> I definitely would use a nice separate service for incoming emails because parsing incoming emails is a PITA. There are services like Mailgun or Sendgrid with incoming mail parse APIs, but they concentrate more on the sending end.

Features: \- reliable (!) charset conversion (everything to UTF-8) \- attachment handling (large attachments too) \- backup storage (in case of problems on my end) \- and letting me choose what I want to receive, such as full source code, HTML, text only, "safe HTML" (HTML stripped of JS, tracking pixels and other presumably dangerous code).

These I'd consider as basic requirements.

Later on it 'd be nice to have other stuff such as spam ratings, filters etc.

As for the pricing: please only charge for the number of emails received and maybe storage used, but don't charge based on the number of mail boxes ;)

So, when do you launch? :D

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Abacron takes your mail via an MX mail server that you can put in the DNS for one of your domains (or subdomains), and then posts the content of those mails to an URL of your choice using the POST method. As the project would become more advanced, other features could be added (spam protection, processing rules, etc).

HN: do you think you would need such a project and how many things would you prefer to see in it? (comments about the viability of project or other entrepreneurial comments are welcomed as well)</comment>


The City of Chicago is on Github - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/the-city-of-chicago-is-on-github/

<comment><USER2> This is a very nice initiative!

A question: as a non-american, in view of America's current levels of paranoia, does this really have much potential beyond, say, bike-racks and street-lines?

I'd love to know, for example, which areas are served by fibre, which have a high numbers of wireless communication towers, which are serviced by new (as opposed to ancient) utilities? I can imagine some bureaucrat deeming many game-changing datasets as "security risks".

If that's true, then what's left to publish?

I'd also like to know, what commitment is there to keeping datasets updated? My guess: GitHub makes this much easier. For example, how long before hundreds of privately owned bike racks get added? How long before pathways get crowd- sourced into the data?

We'll see.

<comment><USER3> Sean Gorman did a lot of work around critical infrastructure and national security at GMU.[1] He ruffled a few feathers at the time. His research at GMU later turned into GeoIQ/[2]. I am not sure if you are interested in actual fiber mapping or the level of paranoia. If its the former there are some publications listed in the research section specifically about fiber mapping.[3]

[1] <http://gembinski.com/interactive/GMU/>

[2] <http://www.geoiq.com/>

[3] <http://gembinski.com/interactive/GMU/research.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So is Philly: <https://github.com/PhillyCDO>

<comment><USER5> There really isn't any data there though.

Pittsburgh has a lot of good data too, it's just not on github: <http://pittsburghpa.gov/dcp/gis/>

<comment><USER6> <http://www.opendataphilly.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Merging user contributions comes with a number of problems. It'll be interesting to know how they'll manage it. Or, they won't, and this is entirely token. For example, if the city tenders for engineering works, they will likely be required to supply the consultant with source data like road centrelines and road reserves, as-built water networks, etc. That _has_ to be the official, verified, accurate data. User supplied just won't cut it.

I'm also dubious that GitHub is the right way to release data. There are a huge number of people interested in civic data, and GitHub is probably one of the least accessible ways for 99.9% of people to get it.

For example, a number of city and regional councils in New Zealand publish their data via Koordinates.com. Wellington City Council alone publishes over 50 key datasets:

<http://koordinates.com/maps/wcc/layers/>

(disclosure: I work for Koordinates)

<comment><USER8> For the vast majority of non-technical (or even highly technical in some area other than software development) users, The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning has a site called MetroPulse, which offers a large selection of open data browsable through a (sometimes) friendly GUI. It's more demographically and statistically focused (though there is a map view), but it's a much more generally accessible platform than GitHub.

<comment><USER7> That's good to hear, but it raises the question: why doesn't the City use GitHub to host code and tools to _extract_ data from MetroPulse? Now you've got a situation where there are two versions of the data.. which is the most up to date or authoritative?

It _is_ good to see public entities picking GitHub as a collaboration tool though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Github is ridiculously unsuited for one-time publication of blobs. Seriously.

<comment><USER10> As the person that convinced them to use GitHub, I suggested it to them because they were looking for an extremely easy way to bring changes from the community back in to the city's data. I suggested GitHub and GeoJSON because I envisioned them taking pull requests from citizens interested in adding more detail to their data or correcting existing data.

You're right, though: GitHub is horrible for large blobs of data like this. At the time I didn't know how big the data releases would end up being.

Tom and I have plans to talk more about future data releases and how they might be made with a more appropriate tool.

<comment><USER2> I have a hard time imagining a more appropriate tool.

The best tool would offer

      * Discoverability
      * Updatability
      * Transparancy (who, specifically, is behind it)
      * Tracability
      * Time stamping
      * Linkability, with über-stable URIs
      * Public issue tracking.
      * Documentation, including the possible crowd-sourcing thereof.

How is this not GitHub?

Edit: In this case we have identifiable and passionate individuals behind the initiative. This is far from faceless and cursory, as most data-dumps are. What's not to love here?

<comment><USER10> The only issue is that with huge data dumps (the buildings dataset here as GeoJSON is ~2GB uncompressed and ~1GB as shapefile) it becomes difficult to make direct pull requests against the data. Indeed they zipped the JSON file up before uploading it so it's impossible to make pull requests (I originally suggested GeoJSON because a pull request could be read by a human as opposed to a shapefile diff which could not be read).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool initiative. Quick import of the bike rack data into Fusion Tables and then into map view - [https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1KXdOsA...](https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1KXdOsALBG05LR_M11odqNaLA6CnvbYDuHi9jDdk#map:id=3)

I don't believe it is possible to have Fusion Tables refer to the raw Github CSV. The ImportData in Google Spreadsheets first and them import into Fusion Tables isn't working.

</comment><comment><USER12> Glad to see my city in the news for a good reason!

<comment><USER13> I'm going to be visiting it for the first time this week (on business), I'm really excited. Except for the cold:)

<comment><USER14> Yeah for some reason it's still snowing and below 30 most days. About the topic though: I'm really excited to see what people come up with... I might even have a few ideas

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Chicago and most cities have had their GIS data available to the public for years, so this seems like a nice progression

<comment><USER10> Two key differences here:

1\. The data is now available under the MIT license. This is important because (a) it is a predictable, well-known license that allow businesses to interact with the data without fear of the unknown (license) and (b) it does not have the "you must remove our data if we ask you to" clause that their data portal has [0].

2\. They're actively seeking contributions from the community. None of the existing data portal tools have a built-in way of doing this, so they went with GitHub because it's a step in the direction of taking feedback. Is the data wrong or lacking something? Add it yourself and submit a pull request.

[0] [http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/narr/foia/data_disclaim...](http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/narr/foia/data_disclaimer.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Absolutely wonderful birthday present for the greatest city on planet earth.</comment>


JSON Support in SQL Server 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jocapc/archive/2015/05/16/json-support-in-sql-server-2016.aspx

<comment><USER2> If I'm reading this correctly, the unfortunate part about using nvarchar rather than a native JSON data type is that it's entirely possible to store malformed JSON into the database, thus putting the responsibility for validation on your business logic. When querying, you need to exclude malformed JSON by using the ISJSON() operator.

I get the argument that nvarchar makes it work with all tooling, but one could make the argument that if your tools don't support JSON already then perhaps they need to get with the times.

Imagine if SQL Server didn't have any date types and you had to query an nvarchar data type with ISDATETIME() and then get the year via DATE_VALUE(t.OrderDate, '$.year'). Seems a bit too hackish.

<comment><USER3> The article points out that you can use their ISJSON function as a check constraint on your column, guarding it from malformed data:

> ISJSON( jsonText ) that checks is the NVARCHAR text input properly formatted > according to the JSON specification. You can use this function the create > check constraints on NVARCHAR columns that contain JSON text.

<comment><USER4> Not to nitpick. But you want this validation to be default. In this case which it can't be.

Question is what stopped MS to just wrap this NVARCHAR with json validation and json access and give it as json type. May be native json type will be added in future versions. I think just they wanted to ball to rolling.

<comment><USER5> > Question is what stopped MS to just wrap this NVARCHAR with json validation > and json access and give it as json type

A large part of the blog post [1] is dedicated to this issue?

> In SQL Server 2016, JSON will be represented as NVARCHAR type. There are > three reasons for this:

[1] [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jocapc/archive/2015/05/16/json- suppo...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jocapc/archive/2015/05/16/json-support-in- sql-server-2016.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Surprised that they mention PostgreSQL. Surprised even more that they seem to admit PostgreSQL is more advanced now than what they are releasing next year.

However, they incorrectly mention that PostgreSQL supports BSON. It doesn't. It rather has a data type called "jsonb", which is a binary JSON serialization, but has nothing to do with BSON (which happens to be MongoDB's serialization format, and a relatively poor one, by the way).

Edit: blog post has been updated by the author to reflect that the type is now "jsonb" rather than BSON. Thank you!

<comment><USER7> As someone who extensively uses pgsql and SQL Server, I don't think it's fair to say that PostgreSQL is "more advanced" because it has one particular, somewhat trendy feature. There are many critical features that pgsql either lacks (query parallelization), or came many years after SQL Server (index-only scans, true materialized views, etc).

And really json in the database is just the more modern version of xml in the database, which of course SQL Server has supported for years. The problem with xml in the database was not a fundamental one, but rather an implementation issue -- where the json model in most solutions is some variation of toss- some-structured-data-in and then work with it, the XML model of SQL Server required significant poorly documented, confusing to implement configuration to work with in any meaningful way. It really killed the feature.

Personally I still think XML is superior to JSON, but it got usurped by the architectural astronauts who kept layering noise on it to the point of being unusable.

<comment><USER8> json's been around for over ten years and is the default serialization format for most web frameworks. To call it trendy in the same breath as singing the praises of XML is a bit gauche.

<comment><USER7> JSON is used for persistence in a limited number of projects, and still lacks fundamental things like a validation schema or even a _date_ type. Yes, it absolutely is "trendy", and it absolutely pales compared to XML. They both fill virtually the identical requirement, one just slowly repeating all of the mistakes of the other, as history tends to repeat itself.

<comment><USER9> JSON is an improvement overall even though there are certainly issues. It is easier to read, easier to parse, and usually fewer bytes for the same data. Validation schema can be provided by JSON Schema [1]. The lack of date type and comments is annoying, but not that big of a deal. I think parsing and reading are far more important to get right which XML didn't.

1\. [http://json-schema.org/](http://json-schema.org/)

<comment><USER10> > but not that big of a deal. I think parsing and reading are far more > important to get right which XML didn't.

...in your opinion, for your use cases. I think XML is eminently more readable due to the fact that it has named types and also because I never have to read the following and figure out what goes where:

        }}}}}]]}}]]}}

JSON is great for sending data to Javascript though and I'm pretty sure that's the only reason anyone is using it.

<comment><USER9> You have the same problem in XML with that amount of nesting. Then you pretty print the XML or JSON and problem solved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Postgres became our goto RDMBS because of JSON support. It is really sad it has taken Microsoft this long to get JSON native database support. It makes using it for .NET projects more difficult than competitors or NoSQL databases. When clients pick .NET we always get a little annoyance every time we need to use JSON in the database which we solve with caching/redis/mongo/file io/compression depending on the situation.

JSON support has lagged in all areas of Microsoft development platforms. They didn't even embrace it or most .NET developers weren't even using is or knew what it was until WCF in 2006-2007 when it had been heavily used for years. Newtonsoft really pushed it in the Microsoft/.NET world which is awesome. 10 years later after rest web services and SOAP went away in favor of REST/JSON, it is finally getting into MS SQL Server. MS SQL Server had support for XML searching early, poor showing in JSON support but glad they are getting it done.

</comment><comment><USER12> SQL Server 2005 and newer continued to invest in the XML datatype which was a poor product choice in hindsight.

While I applaud this product feature, I'm not convinced of the value of storing JSON in a relational database (any more than storing XML).

<comment><USER13> turns out relational databases make for quite good nosql datastores, it just takes a little bit of thought instead of jumping onto a bandwagon of the month.

<comment><USER14> SQL =>

Step 1: remove data integrity.

Step 2: remove powerful query language.

Step 3: only store strings.

=> No-SQL

It's interesting that the technology is named after a missing feature.

<comment><USER15> As someone who had to do aggregation on hstore... Gosh! Why? It's not that difficult to add a column!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks a lot like what Postgres originally did with their Jason support pre-9.4 where it got significant beef ups.

</comment><comment><USER17> But can it parse and output a proper CSV yet?

</comment><comment><USER18> What's the best use case for this? I've seen lots of requests but I'm struggling to find a really good scenario beyond just avoiding the work of normalizing into regular DB tables and all the schema management that comes with it (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

Any top level fields can just be made columns and we already have 1:M and M:M mappings done well in relational tables, is it purely just being able to serialize into 1 field and then query on that? Why not just use a document database then?

</comment><comment><USER19> Leaving out JSON indexes seems like a tremendous oversight.

<comment><USER20> if you really need indexes, extract the fields from your json and keep them as additional columns in the table. Key value stores have always had problematic indexing on anything that wasn't the key. RDBMS does indexing really well, lean on that side for what it is good for.

<comment><USER21> > extract the fields from your json and keep them as additional columns in the > table

You can do that only for simplest key-value json, not the more complicated ones IRL.

E.g. an array

ID, book_title, book_intro, book_tags

here book_tags is a json array. Now try index that!

Mongodb could index it, full text could index it, pg 9.4+ could, but not other RDBMS.

Support nested data structure in RDBMS is hard. You have to implement flat/unflat voodoo in a weird & lame, non-SQL DSL

<comment><USER22> > here book_tags is a json array. Now try index that!

You just need to create a new table which links tags to books. That's how relational databases are normalized ...

<comment><USER21> Expanding a billion row table into a hundreds of billions of rows table is not really a good idea

MongoDB handled this really well, create two index entries pointing to the same row.

<comment><USER23> w00t? A billion attributes on hundreds of billions of rows? Could you think more of an edge case? You're just coming up with shit so you can show off how l33t you are. If you have that kind of a need, just go for a NoSQL server, nobody is stopping you. This feature is a nicety to have, not a replacement of NoSQL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What's the use of this? Something like JSON.NET makes it extremely easy to map between JSON and objects and vice versa. That way you'll only store the useful data and not all the JSON markup.

</comment><comment><USER25> At first sight, this looks like a competitor to json based data stores such as mongodb. However, it looks like json is just a line format and you still need to write T-SQL.

<comment><USER5> Well Entity Framework 7 is meant to have support for non-relational data sources [1] so ... at some point you probably won't have to write Transact-SQL for dealing with JSON data in your cookie-cutter OLAP applications written with .NET.

[1] [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/dn890367.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/dn890367.aspx)</comment></comment>


Points - The Most Advanced Sign on Earth - <AUTHOR> http://breakfastny.com/points/

<comment><USER2> Considering how frequently people steal street signs, with Route 666 in the US having had a long history of theft, presumably renamed to avoid problems (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_491>), these things will disappear double-time.

They are very clever, but how can you anchor these in such a way they won't disappear?</comment>


RMS: Too Crude to Lose - <AUTHOR> http://fossforce.com/2011/10/rms-too-crude-to-lose/ <comment><USER2> RMS was crazy enough to think he can change the world. And he did change the software stack used for development machines and server backends in the cheap.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do you still use Emacs/Vim? - <AUTHOR> Modern IDE's have many nice, fancy features. Yet I still find myself preferring Emacs. I also have much respect for those who use Vim. So, why do you (or not) use Emacs or Vim? <comment><USER3> I programmed for over 15 years before I got into Emacs. I grew up with Visual C++ and later on used Eclipse, Netbeans and XCode.

Along the way I realised I wanted a text editor with live-coding capability. I wanted to be able to write code on the fly in some sort of DSL to manipulate text while I was working on it, in conjunction with normal gui manipulation tools.

I started thinking about writing my own editor with Qt and V8 until a friend told me that Emacs could pretty much do what I wanted.

I had always been aware of Emacs but I thought it was just an old editor with an ugly gui with thousands of features and keyboard shortcuts I'd struggle to remember :) I didn't know it was an interactive Lisp programming environment.

While plenty of editors have plugins, to the best of my knowledge only Emacs offers an interactive programming environment where writing code is part of how you use the software. I mean, you can actually write Elisp code straight into the text/html/c document you're working on and run it.

So as long as there are no other editors with that kind of capability, I'll carry on using Emacs. The only thing that would replace it for me would be some kind of Super-Emacs running Common Lisp within a modern graphical interface.

I still use IDEs all the time though for Java and C++. My least favourite programming activity is dealing with project settings, build tools and configuration so I let the IDE handle that :) I use Emacs for everything else.

</comment><comment><USER4> Because Vim is like programming text. You have motion commands, you have operators that act on text motion command moves over, and you can specify how many time to repeat the operator. You have programming specific motion commands, so called text objects. This is incredibly powerful. You learn to move around efficiently and you multiply your power, because now you can also make changes, delete, etc using the newly learned motion command.

General form of the command in Vim is: nOm meaning repeat n times operator O acting over motion command m. There are motion commands to move by letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, code blocks, XML/HTML tags etc. There are delete, change, insert, etc operators.

So for example: 3dw says 3 times (d)elete (w)ord (i.e. delete 3 words). di{ says delete everything inside code block.

Vim is also modal, there is distinct mode for editing by issuing commands, and there is insert (also replace, visual etc) mode(s) which is what all other editors have as the only mode. This makes it incredibly powerful, and it is possible to make large sweeping changes with very few key strokes.

Also, vim discourages mouse use. The context switch of your arm moving to the mouse is like CPU doing a cache miss and going to disk to fetch data. It's a huge distraction and if you add time to actually find the mouse pointer, select something etc, it really slows you down compared to Vim.

So, I still (since 1993) use Vim because it makes me really productive and I can edit text really fast with it. With that said, Vim is not an IDE (even though with language server and background tasks support it can be made into surrogate IDE). So, the best of both worlds is to have a good IDE with good Vim support. Jetbrains products have solid Vim support (much much better than say VS Code), so if you need to work with verbose language or work with unfamiliar libraries, IDEs are still useful.

However, I also love the ability to work in plain Vim when I work on code base I know really well and don't need IDE type of help. Vim is also great at working though SSH remotely, tmux etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Vim loads fast and has the best vim emulation mode of all the other editors/IDE i've tried.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol:

> has the best vim emulation mode

Good point. XD I must ask, have you tried Emacs' "viper" or "evil" modes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using vi since about 1985. At the time, emacs was the program that would crash our PDP 11/70 if more than one copy was running anywhere on it. And all undergrads in the EE/CS department shared that one machine.

So, the only people who got to run emacs were the sysadmins, and they were really good about warning everyone else away from it.

It also helped that emacs is a great OS from the 1970s, and the only thing it lacks is a decent text editor. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> > the only thing it lacks is a decent text editor

That's a funny joke. It's made funnier by the fact that Emacs can emulate Vim. ("Viper" and "Evil" modes.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use emacs because it's competent as a text editor and doesn't try to be more than that. It works well in conjunction with other Unix style tools.

It's hackable enough to have various plugins built for it that I need to use sometimes. For example, proof general and modes for specific languages.

Also, I like that Emacs is extremely polished. When I am working with someone who uses VS on windows they will typically have projects break for no reason and generally a more buggy experience

<comment><USER8> > emacs... text editor... doesn't try to be more than that

Enter meme about emacs OS.

My big issue with emacs is that it isn't installed by default everywhere, whereas at least vi is pretty nearly everywhere (except windows). Vi is pretty good, vim is better, and emacs is a different beast altogether.

However, I'm considering switching to emacs _because_ it's not just an editor. I think org mode is awesome, and I'm playing with it using evil mode so I get the best of both worlds. I've seen awesome renderers hacked into it (LaTeX, PDF, HTML, etc), and pretty much every emacs user gloats about the crazy features that they've thrown in (e g. web browser).

People seem to use emacs because it's _more_ than an editor, and people seem to use vim because it's _just_ an editor. Yes, you can do crazy stuff in vim as well, but people in general seem to prefer simpler configs in vim and more crazy configs in emacs.

Yes, emacs doesn't try to be an IDE like Visual Studio, but it also tries to be more than a simple text editor like nano or vim.

<comment><USER9> Emacs can edit files over ssh, even via multiple hops of ssh, so often you don't need to install it everywhere!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use (neo)vim so that I can have a consistent editor experience across any *nix machine I'm on, be it my MacBook or some remote VM instance that I'm ssh'd into. Copy over config files and ready to go.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've never found the fancy features in IDEs to be worth it. Compared to vim/emacs, they're:

\- slow \- visually distracting \- lightweight in text manipulation \- built around seldom use features

I rarely need a debugger or type information, yet the entire interface bends over backwards to include those features. In fact, I feel that IDEs encourage more complicated code structure because it makes dealing with them reasonable.

The only time I use an IDE is when:

\- the build process is too complicated (mobile, .NET or Java, game engines) \- I'm unfamiliar with the platform \- everyone else is using it, so I'd have to maintain the CLI build process myself \- I need a fancy debugger

That being said, I've only fired up an IDE a couple times in the last year or so, so vim has been more than capable at solving my problems.

</comment><comment><USER11> I recently switched from Vim to Emacs with Evil. Vi motions are really not that hard to get used to. I reached my previous productivity quickly and then was able to move on from there. However, you're not going to get the full IDE experience with vim (by design), so moving to Emacs felt natural to me when I wanted more advanced plugins and I learned that Evil was as good if not better than Vim itself.

I have used IDEs in the past and it was an overall pleasant experience. Visual Studio is okay, XCode is fine, Eclipse is all right, but what bothered me most was that all three were necessary to be able to develop for common platforms. I would find a game changing plugin for one and then want it in another (not happening). The integration between language and editor is the beauty of IDEs and that's the best and the worst thing about them, the reason that they're never going to replace the venerable text editor for me. The other issue is that IDEs discourage experimentation into new languages because using a new language means learning a new editor and getting comfortable with all new tooling. I'd much rather use the same editor for everything, with easy-to-get modes for every kind of language imaginable instead of learning yet another okay-ish IDE for each language.

</comment><comment><USER12> Reliable. Ubiquitous. Lightweight.

Really don't need the extra overhead of an IDE.

(Actually, I use another text editor on the desktop, but still don't need an IDE. Vim on the server. Someday someone will make an extension to support both Mac and Vim keybindings together in my text editor, and my life will be complete.)

</comment><comment><USER13> I use Emacs with evil-mode (vi binings). Along with evil-mode, I have Spacemacs for a decent set of packages with some sane mnemonic key bindings for a lot of operations. I recently started using magit in Emacs as well for git commands and I'm overly satisfied with its capabilities.

I chose Emacs primarily from pairing with some other developers. I was blown away by how fast they were able to do things in the environment. I really wanted to be able to move that fast without my editor getting in the way. The flexibility of customizing my environment with lisp is also an added benefit. Plus with how heavyweight other editors are in terms of memory usage, Emacs still works great on machines with less RAM.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1\. I often program in the commandline, or via an SSH connection. Emacs is there, whether I have a GUI running or not.

2\. Emacs keyboard shortcuts mean I don't have to use a mouse at all - <USER2> typing and navigating so much quicker.

3\. It's one editor for all your files. No matter whether you're working on a markdown, Lisp, Python, Julia, C document or whatever else, Emacs has you covered. And that doesn't just mean syntax highlighting - there's interactive interpreters for many scripting languages available.

The only time I find myself wanting a real IDE is when I'm working on a large Java project: I sometimes go back to Eclipse for that. But thankfully, I haven't had to do much work at all in Java in the last few years.

</comment><comment><USER15> Emacs, for the following reasons:

1) Key chords/features have become a second nature. I've tried using Idea when working on legacy Scala/Java codebases and its Emacs compatibility mode caused a lot of frustration: enough key bindings implemented to make me forget it's not Emacs and then fall hard on my face when I tried using a more advanced Emacs-ism without thinking.

2) Latency. Again, tried using Idea and couldn't get used to the feeling of it being sluggish compared to Emacs. It's like listening to a low bitrate MP3 or something.

</comment><comment><USER16> Vi is on every linux server.

Easy to move between words, sentences, pages.

Macros are amazing.

IDE's are really, really slow to load when you just want to edit one thing.

Sometimes the syntax highlighting errors that aren't there can be an eye sore, ES6 syntax on Webstorm for example.

So many things seem unnecessary in an IDE, I won't ever need some tab or button, so why clutter my screen with it? I would say it's also true for a lot of the features you get. You probably don't need most of them, but there they are distracting you.

</comment><comment><USER17> Really fast editing features. I have found there's no real winner between Vi(m) or Emacs - I can use both although I'm more used to GVim.

Shortcuts in either editor allow quick editing compared to non Vi(m)/Emacs editors.

Also, I have a finely tuned tool-chain outside of GVim that (so far) does what I want better than what IDE's provide, depending on the language or target platform.

(I still use IDE's with java, for example)

</comment><comment><USER18> There isn't really a better IDE for Idris currently along with it being part of the full Guix experience. Most modern IDEs I've tried tend to either not be supported on platforms I tend to use or come with many features I didn't really ask for. That and they usually are a pain to configure.

If and emacs-like in configurability with less cruft comes around I'll probably switch to it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't need any of the features of an IDE. If I were a developer, then for certain I would be using one, but not all of us are developers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Intriguing... What do you do then?

<comment><USER19> A bit of everything. Some would use the term, "Jack of all trades". Others would just call me a PITA.

<comment><USER20> Do some call you The Gangster of Love? Maurice? Do you speak of the pompitus of love?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> question with a question. Why does everyone still use bash?

<comment><USER22> at work, lots of scripts are in bash script. I tried using fish shell, but it doesn't support bash script well.

<comment><USER23> But so long as the bash scripts have the shebang, and all should, things should work properly in theory with fish able to load bash when needed, surely?

Or is that another in a long line of "yes, in theory, but…"s?

<comment><USER11> Or you can insulate yourself from bad scripts without the #! by just calling bash then running your script. In my case, since I run so few bash scripts, I use fish (and ksh on BSDs) and call sh when needed.

<comment><USER23> That works when you call the scripts yourself, not so much it's scripts calling other scripts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Feds agree to give Seattle $2B in low-interest loans for light rail - <AUTHOR> http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/feds-agree-to-give-sound-transit-2-billion-in-low-interest-loans-for-light-rail/ <comment><USER2> Interest is the largest single expense of any debt-financed infrastructure project. Ellen Brown, author of _Web of Debt_ [1], has advocated a public infrastructure bank for several years now.

[1] [http://www.webofdebt.com/](http://www.webofdebt.com/)

<comment><USER3> Who profits the most off the interest?

<comment><USER4> Municipal bond holders (you could be one if you want). The interest is tax free too!

<comment><USER3> And who are the biggest Muni bond holders?

<comment><USER4> As with most financial instruments they are owned by primarily by "institutions". You may know them better as that bond fund in your 401(k).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But not the monorail system which the voters wanted several years ago.</comment>