New gTLD Applied-For Strings - <AUTHOR> http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-results/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en <comment><USER2> Google wants: .ads, .and, .android, .app, .are, .baby, .blog, .boo, .book, .buy, .cal, .car (no .cdr?), .channel, .chrome, .cloud, .corp (great way to snoop on poorly configured intranets), .cpa, .dad, .day, .dclk, .dds (New: Google Dentist!), .dev, .diy, .docs, .dog, .dot, .drive, .earth, .eat, .esq, .est, .family, .film, .fly, .foo, .free, .fun, .fyi, .game, .gbiz, .gle, .gmail, .gmbh (really?), .goo, .goog, .google, .guge (what?), .hangout, .here, .home, .how, .inc (really?), .ing, .kid, .live, .llc (really?), .llp, .lol (wtf?), .love (...), .mail (ambitious much?), .map, .mba (you can have them all), .med, .meme, .mom (awww), .moto, .mov (quicktime extension!), .movie, .music, .new ('nother file extension), .nexus, .page (web or larry?), .pet, .phd (duh), .play, .plus, .prod, .prof, .rsvp, .search, .shop, .show, .site, .soy, .spot, .srl, .store, .talk, .team, .tech, .tour, .tube, .vip, .web, .wow, .you, .youtube, .zip (file extension), .みんな, .グーグル, .谷歌

What the holy hell? Did google just have an employee suggestion box and they applied for all submitted names?

Apple wants: .apple

Microsoft wants: .azure, .bing, .docs, .hotmail, .live, .microsoft, .office, .skydrive, .skype, .windows, .xbox

Microsoft is just defending their own brands.

Only two applicants for .sex (and one for .sexy)

Amazon wants: .amazon, .app, .audible, .author, .aws, .book, .bot, .box, .buy, .call, .circle, .cloud, .coupon, .deal, .dev (nice way to snoop on poorly configured corporate dns too. in competition with google), .drive, .fast, .fire, .free, .game, .got, .group, .hot, .imdb, .jot, .joy (smells like zappos), .kids, .kindle, .like (only applicant), .mail, .map, .mobile, .moi, .movie, .music, .news (google didn't apply for .news), .now, .pay (dangerous), .pin, .play, .prime, .read, .room, .safe, .save, .search (woo), .secure, .shop, .show, .silk, .smile (aww), .song, .spot, .store, .talk, .tunes (ha!), .tushu, .video, .wanggou, .wow, .yamaxun, .you, .yun, .zappos, .zero, .アマゾン, .ストア, .セール, .ファッション, .ポイント, .亚马逊, .家電, .書籍, .通販, .食品

Amazon is part brand defense and part what-the-hell-are-you-doing too.

There will be no winners here. The best thing they can do now is cancel the idea of corporate TLD ownership.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, in google's list, what the heck is ".srl" supposed to be? (maybe the italian/spanish/romanian equivalent of .llc)

EDIT: I meant, is google really asking for "a domain for limited liability company acronym in some romance languages" or is there something that makes more sense?

<comment><USER4> From Wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRL>):

Società a Responsabilità Limitata, Italian Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Spanish Societate cu Răspundere Limitată, Romanian

Close enough:

Société à responsabilité limitée (aka SARL), French

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeesh...in case there was any doubt _beforehand_ that this is a terrible idea, the initial list is now proof. They have taken something that has a valid technical reason to exist and turned it into a cesspool.

Hopefully those in control of infrastructure take a stand and simply reject these "domains" entirely. Shouldn't be hard to set up sanity-restoring filters...let us please just pretend these are spam domains and never acknowledge their existence.

Ironically anyone vain enough to reserve ".<whatever>" is surely ALSO going to keep a death grip on "<whatever>.com" so this will do _nothing_ to improve the size of the name space.

<comment><USER6> > Ironically anyone vain enough to reserve ".<whatever>" is surely ALSO going > to keep a death grip on "<whatever>.com"

Monter (the job people) and Monster (the expensive audio product people) are both going for .monster

How do they resolve that? Toss a coin? Auction it?

<comment><USER7> It's ICANN! It'll be an auction.

<comment><USER8> I Can Auction Another Network Name?

(Sorry, completely valueless - couldn't resist! :)

<comment><USER9> Apply for .ICANN. Although maybe it's reserved :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Top 20 most wanted TLDs:

        $ cut -d, -f1 < tld.csv | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20

          13 APP
          11 INC
          11 HOME
          10 ART
           9 SHOP
           9 LLC
           9 BOOK
           9 BLOG
           8 MUSIC
           8 MOVIE
           8 DESIGN
           7 WEB
           7 STORE
           7 NEWS
           7 MAIL
           7 LTD
           7 LOVE
           7 HOTEL
           7 CLOUD
           6 [Many domains]

<comment><USER11> Funniest bit about the .app: 13 applicants picked ".app", not a single one went for ".apps", the obvious second choice with no competition.

<comment><USER7> which would you rather:

angrybirds.app

angrybirds.apps

The second makes no sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So basically, we are creating a two-tier internet where people with money can pay a lot for nice names and others will be considered cheap for having a .com at the end? Way to go democratic internet....

I wonder if they actually stopped long enough to consider the actual pros and cons on this.

<comment><USER13> The people that own most of these tlds will then sell domains on to ordinary people.

So give it time and you, too, can have a .fail domain.

<comment><USER12> Possibly. But say I'm starting a video-sharing website - I'm at a big competitive disadvantage when my customers need to type and remember an extra domain-name level compared to my competitors (who own '.video', '.movie', '.youtube', etc. while i might own '.bobsvideo.fail').

<comment><USER13> Except that, as discussed above, "youtube" by itself is not a valid host name. It would have to be "mysite.youtube"

Still easier than you having "mysite.bobsvideo.fail" I agree, but frankly most people don't even find sites via the domain name. They'll google "Bobs Video" and see what comes up.

<comment><USER14> why wouldn't "youtube" be valid hostname?

<comment><USER13> Same reason that "com" and "net" aren't. Root nodes aren't, from my understanding, valid names for machines.

Edit: Seems I'm wrong. See discussion downthread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105707>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious why some of those rows are colored blue (IDN, KIDS, UMMAH). I also wonder what effect this will have on domain squatting (probably very little, all told).

Anyone have any favorites? I see .DOT (dot.dot, anyone?), .WINNERS, .SUCKS (more desirable than .SEX), .NINJA, .MATRIX (registered by L'Oreal rather than HP, sadly), .IRA (financial planning and domestic terrorism in one convenient location), and absolutely _no sign of_ .CAT (what do you think the internet is _for_ , anyway? (No, wait, .PORN is right there.)).

<comment><USER16> .cat is registered by Catalan organisation puntCAT. According to Wikipedia, its intended use is to promote the Catalan language and culture, these pages notwithstanding:

<http://nyan.cat/> <http://lol.cat/> <http://crypto.cat/> (hey, at least it has a Catalan version)

puntCAT can be found at: <http://www.puntcat.cat/>

<comment><USER17> AFAIK every .cat domain has to have at least one web page in catalan. This is to prevent it being a vanity silly domain

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The most contentious domains are .app (13 applications), .inc (11), .home (11), and .art (10), followed by .shop, .blog, and .book, and .llc at 9. Rough list here: <https://gist.github.com/2923898>

<comment><USER18> Yeah, the number of .art applications took me by surprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love the long ones like '.BARCLAYCARD', '.BLOOMINGDALES' pretty funny. Looks like a corporate suit decision to buy those.

Not sure what the other part of the domain will be for these as well:

"Visit www.bloomingdales!"

Lots of confusion on the way!

I'm not too impressed with ones such as '.CANCERRESEARCH' paid for by the 'Australian Cancer Research Foundation'. What a waste of money.

<comment><USER20> I could see pay.barclaycard or apply.barclaycard. shop.bloomingdales and fashion.bloomingdales would work as well. donate.cancerresearch would work, but I'll grant you the money could be better spent.

Basically what these new TLDs are for is to eliminate the .com in shop.bloomingdales.com.

<comment><USER19> I'd like to here the Australian Cancer Research Foundation's reasoning behind registering it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Dutch government wants ".overheidnl" (govermentnl), not only it's one ugly gTLD, they already have overheid.nl! What a waste of tax money...

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting to note that Google has applied for 101 TLDs (search for @google.com in that list) including a lot of generic words like car,book, dad, dog, eat, family, film, fly. While some words are related to Google's business many aren't.

A little over $21 MM[1] in application and first year fees. $185,000 for the application fee and $25000 for the annual fee.

[1] <http://mashable.com/2011/06/20/icann-top-level-domains/>

</comment><comment><USER23> Man this is going to be a mess. Guess I'd better get used to the fact that the days of easily rememberable TLDs are gone.

<comment><USER24> This is a complete and total mess. Worse, when registering with one of these corp tld operators, how much can you trust they'll be around in XX number of years to keep your domain name alive?

Google will win big out of this, not because of the number of tld's they will own, but because the browser's address bar will become useless without a search engine.

Good opportunity for next-gen domain name resolvers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> With a quick look there are some interesting things. Doesn't look like too many consumer companies came out to play. One of note is that Coca-Cola did not bid on .coke nor did P&G bid on anything.

<comment><USER3> car companies seem to be on board, I can see brands for ford, general motors, fiat, toyota, audi, nissan.

No french though, quick, let's grab .renault!

<comment><USER26> Car companies were late to the internet game the first time, and probably don't want to be left out again. Some car companies paid through the nose to domain squatters, others were unsuccessful (ie. nissan.com)

<comment><USER27> Holy crap. Just when you have faith in the system...

<comment><USER28> Why? The guy just registered the domain of his surname (he's called Uzi Nissan).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Was I the only one slightly tickled that the same company who registered .mormon also registered .porn?

<comment><USER29> No, they didn't. Also, these are just applications, not registrations. Nothing is finalized yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Apparently nobody has applied for .localhost yet.

<comment><USER31> .localdomain would be better.

<comment><USER30> Also .local

"Despite not being a valid top-level domain in the Internet, considerable DNS traffic that queries the local domain exists in the public Domain Name System.[1] In June 2009, the L root server received more than 400 such queries per second,[2] ranking 4th in DNS traffic of all TLDs after COM, ARPA, and NET." [1]

Scary potential for mischief-making. Hopefully ICANN would reject applications for these domains, but I'm not sure I'd take that level of competence for granted.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local>

<comment><USER32> .local is already spelled out as a reserved word in the application guidebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A great way to squeeze the last dollars out of domains, now that all are squatted.

The application fees were $5k registration + $185k or $47k evaluation, so they collected something between $100 million and $366 million dollars, annual fees excluded.

I can see two possible outcomes:

1\. all conflicts are resolved by agreements/bidding, process goes smoothly. But usage nevers picks up, and in a years'time it's all money down the drain.

2\. ICANN backpedals and decides to cancel this stupid idea, while deciding to (legally) keep the application fees. Fighting ensues and we get a new, better management organization. Or worse.

<comment><USER34> "now that all are squatted."

I find lots of fine domain names for TLDs that aren't .com

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "I can't say it any better than this: "Non .com extensions will leak traffic to the .com version of that domain name. Every business set up on a [non .com extension] domain will lose a proportion of their traffic to the dot com version of that domain name, although the amount of that leak will be difficult to predict.

The leak occurs because customers/ potential customers will frequently recall the name of the site and add '.com' almost instinctively, unless they recall that it is on a relatively unusual extension .net, .org etc.

Inevitably, the more the [non .com extension] site is marketed, the more traffic is sent to the .com, however, the problem is that the .com domain may well resolve to a competing business's website.

Some businesses are willing to live with that loss (perhaps because the [non .com extension] is a relevant, memorable generic, for example) – for them the [non .com extension] is a viable option.

However, without a compelling reason like the one mentioned above, I would argue that a business on a limited budget just cannot afford to develop a site using a [non .com extension] domain name. It is as simple as that."

SOURCE: [http://www.domaining.org.uk/2007/12/10/spectacular-net- or-a-...](http://www.domaining.org.uk/2007/12/10/spectacular-net-or-a-so-so- com-which-should-you-chose-for-your-business/)

HACKER NEWS THREAD FOR ABOVE LINK: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108016>

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there a default domain for these tlds? Let's take .home for example. How will this work when typing it into a browser?

If you have my.home, it makes sense. If you type www.home, it really looks ugly, but I guess it works, and we've spent the past few years moving away from including "www" as a whole.

Typing "com" into my url bar doesn't get me anywhere, so I'm assuming typing "home" won't either. If I bought "apple", is there going to be a conventional or canonical "default"? home.apple?

I really find this confusing.

<comment><USER37> _Is there a default domain for these tlds? Let's take .home for example. How will this work when typing it into a browser?_

I believe it's possible to set things up so that "home" or "co.uk" on their own will work. As below, my memory is hazy, and I have no idea how many RFCs this behaviour might violate, but I certainly remember us doing so.

My background: many, many years ago, I used to work for a minor country-code tld, and we set up fun email addresses such as: a@cctld or t@cctld (for Tom ;-)). My memory is hazy, but I think this violates some RFC somewhere. Mail still got delivered, though.

<comment><USER20> This would be tricky for LANs. I'm not sure too many corporate network admins would be happy with the amount of work they'd have to do to change up all the DNS entries when "test" no longer routes to "test.company.com" while you're on the company.com domain. You'd have a riot when the development staff has to take a couple weeks to change over all their pathnames.

I'm of the opinion that RFCs don't matter if they're not being enforced. What matters is the implementation that exists in the real world. It doesn't matter what the ITU says 4G is supposed to be when 4G already implemented as something completely different. What would make sense is www.home routing to the default .home domain.

<comment><USER38> It wouldn't be quite such a big problem, since well-behaved clients _should_ attempt to use 'home.company.com' before the root 'home'. Regardless of what is possible or allowed by RFCs, that behaviour should discourage TLD holders from trying to use a naked 'home', since a lot of users wouldn't be able to access it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think I may pre-emptively confgure my home DNS to NXDOMAIN all of these.

</comment><comment><USER27> Check out Top Level Domain Holdings Limited's requests. Welcome to domain squatting 2.0.

<comment><USER40> That's Mind+Machines, and yes, it's a mega-landgrab. That guy has been going on and on for years about how amazing this will be and how everyone wants it. I cite: [http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090923_61_businesses_tell_ic...](http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090923_61_businesses_tell_icann_new_top_level_domains_are_needed/)

It's a joke of a post of everyone who stands to make a pile of money saying there is community support for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Can you imagine what would all these look like in 5 years (even 2 maybe)? It is going to look messy! I mean I like the idea of it and surely it would looks elegant if it weren't abuse...but I think this is not happening..

People are pouring money into these TLD as well... Sad to say, but I see a totally different future, these are totally different to real estate, this is a digital world, maybe these .com, .app thing won't even needed, no address at all in the future, replace by something else, like on Facebook where you type say Dropbox, then suggested site just come out

</comment><comment><USER42> The list appears fear-driven to me. High probability the investment will not pay off, but everyone is afraid of not taking part in this historical moment that MIGHT change users' assumptions and behavior.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's nice to see that the australian cancer research society thought their $100k would be better spent on domain speculation than actually funding cancer research.

</comment><comment><USER44> What happens when several companies want the same one? There's a whole bunch of companies going for .app, so who gets which domains?

<comment><USER45> I want to know how a doughnut company could get .world

<comment><USER31> It's not a doughnut company, it's a VC-founded internet startup!

<comment><USER32> And even if it _were_ a doughnut company they'd still have every right to apply for it. No one has gotten anything yet. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My three personal least-favorites:

.DOTAFRICA (what is this I don't even)

.CASHBACKBONUS (by Discover Financial Services -- wtf?)

.TRAVELERSINSURANCE, .NORTHLANDINSURANCE, and .NORTHWESTERNMUTUAL (three-way tie for the longest applications)

And dishonorable mention to every company that's applying for their own business names and/or trademarks. Which is, by my best estimate, probably at least half of the total applications.

</comment><comment><USER47> Please, if you don't like the idea of this, comment on [https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments- feedback/programfeedb...](https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments- feedback/programfeedback/login)

This would be all sorts of horrible if it passed.

It's bad for security, it's bad for usability, it will probably break stuff, it's unfair. There is also no benefit to it.

<comment><USER47> Here's what I wrote: Subject: Creates More Problems Than It Solves

Feedback Submission Date:13 Jun 2012 at 17:44:48 UTC

Feedback: ...and its only purpose is profit.

1\. It's bad for security. This will make phishing a whole lot easier.

2\. It's bad for usability. Humans have come to learn that .com (and its ilk) signifies a website address. With now unlimited TLDs the only way to identify a domain is by a solitary dot, if that.

3\. It will probably break stuff. Many a software / regular expression out there assume that domains will end in a relatively small list of TLDs. The new domains will not work with this type of software.

4\. There is no benefit. The benefits listed on this page <http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/about/benefits-risks> all equate to selling more Internet real estate and profiteering for the sake of profiteering. ICANN is abusing its power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Since the very beginning this entire concept has seemed horribly misguided. I get that we need to expand the range of possible domain names but is this really the way to do it?

It seems like 1 part extortion, 1 part destruction of a free internet, and 1 part orchestrated gold rush for squatters.

</comment><comment><USER49> OMFG what the hell is with all the real email addresses listed - its a spammers paradise. You'd think they'd be all throwaways but there's a lot of real ones (eg. banks, communications) and also noticed a smattering of gov domains.

<comment><USER50> If you think spammers have trouble getting their hands on real email addresses, you don't really understand spam.

<comment><USER51> This is real email addresses of wealthy people who are open to a rather risky idea. I'm not thinking spammers...

<comment><USER50> ... wealthy people? You mean: technical contacts at large corporations, I think. They sound perfect for sending ... well, sending what to? 419 scams?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Nissan Motor Corp is after ".nissan".

I would be amused beyond words if Uzi Nissan/Nissan Computer Corp also applied for ".nissan". ( He's current owner of nissan.com and has had a long fight with Nissan over the domain name. )

</comment><comment><USER53> How can they lump .goog and .aaa with the likes of .app and .mail. .goog and .aaa are not "generic" in any sense. I think they should at least re- categorize and call the .goog and .apples brandedTLDs

</comment><comment><USER54> How much do those cost again? A nice cash grab by the ICANN I presume.

<comment><USER38> At $108k per domain, that's about $200 million for ICANN.

<comment><USER22> It is actually $185,000 for the evaluation fee. There is an annual fee ($25000 or a % of each domain registered) and other dispute resolution fees.

Section 2.2 on the FAQ page [http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer- service/faq...](http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer- service/faqs/faqs-en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Vanity, my favorite sin. I can't imagine when people start registering their names: britney.spears, lady.gaga, kim.kardashian

This will be a huge money making machine, retarded but huge.

<comment> T-hawk And the Kardashians can even split the cost three ways.

But the Baldwin brothers could go four.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> How will the chrome unibar distinguish between a search for the word "stupid" and an attempt to access <http://stupid> ?

</comment><comment><USER57> Is it still to late to register .localhost ?!

</comment><comment><USER58> If I had $185,000 sitting around I would apply for .tld. So many possibilities...

meta.tld or email@example.com for starters

</comment><comment><USER59> Both Amazon and Google applied for .dev.

Sorry Pow users!

<comment><USER27> Doesn't pow make changes to your local machine's routing such that .dev will always route to your local box? /clueless

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> no .exe ?

<comment><USER61> <http://virus.exe> seems totally legit.

<comment><USER34> I clicked it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> what, nobody for .js?

<comment><USER21> no 2-letter domains allowed, they are reserved for countries ;)

<comment><USER44> So who wants to register a new country called... JavaScriptLand?

<comment><USER63> <https://github.com/ozten/TLD.js>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Dumb question and maybe off-topic but what happens to the $185,000 you pay for a gTLD? Does that go to charity or the US government keeps it or what?</comment>


Glacier redux - <AUTHOR> http://storagemojo.com/2014/04/30/glacier-redux/ <comment><USER3> > _Old hard drives that are no longer economical for more intensive service, > supported by disk-handling robotics._

I am with the author in that I do not think they are using older disks. From personal experience (working with petabytes of disk based storage), I would put money on the fact that AWS is not using stock off the shelf older disks and then powering them on/off as a method of storage. The _last_ thing you want to do with an older disk (5+ years) is _ever_ power it off. The chances of it coming back to life decrease rapidly with each cycle. Picture seized bearings, etc. Your best hope it to keep them continually moving, but never powered down for extended periods of time.

Also, the GB/power/physical space required ratio does not make sense after X number of years. For example, you could replace 3 shelves of 1TB disks, with one shelf of 3TB disks. Yielding less power consumption in less physical space! When you are at scale, data centre space and power are big factors. For these reasons, I do not think they are using old stock disks.

NOTE: Maybe they are using some custom make disks, but from what I know about standard disks, even enterprise, they do not like being powered on/off when they get old.

<comment><USER4> Emphasizing the above, the study a few years ago of disk drives at big HPC centers found that they don't follow a bathtub failure model. Rather, there are very few infant failures, and wear is noticeable starting in the range of 1-2 years in service.

<comment><USER5> The google results I saw were more like an exponential curve, i.e. a memory- less distribution - which would mean old drives are just as reliable as new ones.

<comment><USER4> The HPC paper struck me as a lot more detailed, rigorous and useful. I read the Google paper later (assuming we're talking about the same one, they came out at roughly the same time), and the only useful takeaway I got from it was that disk companies seem to have solved moderately high temperature issues, Google actually saw a correlation with longer life and higher temperatures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author handwaves away the power savings of powering down disks by talking about the capital cost of providing power.

"Unless the prices of copper, PDUs and diesel-generators have started following Moore's Law, this is probably more true today than in 2007."

But this is fallaciously assuming that Glacier servers would need to be like EC2 or S3 servers that are switched on for x random hours per day. This isn't the case at all.

Diesel generators, for instance - what's the use? If you're replicating the data around the world, it doesn't matter if your Glacier servers in one location are powered down for days.

Cooling, power - just switch off _every single_ Glacier server at each location during the peak hours of the day. No additional capital costs, because you're never adding to peak power usage.

Distribution of reads - Profile customers based on how frequently they're reading from the data store. I bet 50% of customers never read a single byte back. Colocate these customers on the same servers, and you only have to power up the server once a month to check if the data is still there.

Bonus - Profile data access patterns with simple heuristics to determine what's likely to be read back in, and temporarily store that data in S3. Imagine a company that archives everything to Glacier daily, but restores day, week and month old backups regularly. Keep all data less than a month old in S3, and the rest on the indefinitely powered down servers talked about above.

I actually quite liked the author's case for BDXL, but it seems he's doing a straw man on other possible solutions. Well implemented BDXL more cost efficient than a naively implemented disk strategy? Not exactly news.

<comment><USER7> Makes me wonder something

Database machines are usually never shut down. And when they are, it's usually a manual process (unless we're talking about a power failure or something)

"Diesel generators, for instance - what's the use?"

Backup power (not only for Glacier).

Reducing power consumption in peak hours is a good strategy, however, I'm not sure how worried Amazon is about this (and the difference in price between regular hours and peak hours)

<comment><USER6> It's not about the price they're paying for power (peak hours from the power company's perspective), it's about the peak usage of their data center.

As the article (correctly) says, the capital costs are dependent on your peak usage. If you have 1000 servers using 400kW at peak, you need sufficient air conditioning to extract 400kW worth of heat, and backup generation capable of producing 400kW. It doesn't matter if you only use 100kW 16 hours a day - <USER2> capital costs are the same.

I'm suggesting that Glacier could live entirely in non peak periods, meaning that the capital costs are unchanged and the demand curve is flattened.

<comment><USER7> The real question then is: is there really a peak hour for datacenter usage/consumption? What's the consumption difference between peak and regular hours (and low-demand hours)

How much power does Amazon use during mornings compared to Netflix watching peak time?

<comment><USER8> Yes, I'm sure there is. Look at Google clicks by hour or similar metrics, there is a significant curve during the day, peak can be 4-5x the low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you have a lot of heavily-read data distributed across machines, you're probably constrained by available spindles rather than available storage space. So co-locating data that will almost never be read with heavily-read data is effectively free. I would guess that Amazon stores Glacier data alongside S3 data, and the lower price reflects the fact that the limiting factor in their storage system is IO rather than capacity.

<comment><USER10> That doesn't offer any clear explanation of why they would charge extra for early deletion of that data, though.

<comment><USER9> One possible explanation: the cost of initial IO to write your data is amortized over that data's lifetime. The early-delete penalty ensures that Amazon always makes enough on your data to justify the cost of writing it into their system in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11>
      But NONE of the Hacker News commenters addressed Sony and
      Panasonic's continued investment in high-density optical
      disc technology. [...] There has to be a business reason
      for the continued investment, i.e. customers prepared to
      buy a lot of product in the future and buying a lot right
      now.

If Amazon was the only customer for high-density optical storage, they'd be crazy to invest in developing it, because Amazon will have all the negotiating power in the relationship.

There must be other customers somewhere if _two_ companies are continuing to develop this stuff.

<comment><USER12> Is it really that unusual to have two vendors competing for a single very large customer?

<comment><USER13> If the customer is a major government, no. Otherwise? Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The deletion charge is interesting. Does deletion guarantee a scrubbing of the data as soon as possible? If so, I could see that as justification for the fee since some sort of significant work is involved in retrieving data, implied by the hours of wait time. If not though, the author has a good point in that Amazon needs to make at least .03/GB in order to be profitable.

<comment><USER15> I would be surprised. Anyway, why would they pay for scrubbing if the data is less than 3 months old and do it for free if not? If they do scrub, I don't think those are related

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Okay, this is beyond silly. Still ignoring tape.

Explain how BDXL, a new format, which has never proved itself beyond a few years, which costs $45 for a few hundred GB, which AFAIK has very little data on re-writability (which is probably terrible and close to one-time use) could be any more profitable or reliable, or useful than tape.

I don't buy it. Tape would be the logical short-term choice to get started, because Amazon could just go buy an off-the-shelf tape library and add tape as they needed from Oracle, versus again, engineering their own BDXL library on the expectation that it would cost less than tape, taking into account factors such as:

1\. Reliability and degradation 2\. Supply 3\. Cost 4\. Reusability/Re- Writability

<comment><USER17> Not tape.

[http://www.zdnet.com/amazon-launches-glacier-cloud- storage-h...](http://www.zdnet.com/amazon-launches-glacier-cloud-storage- hopes-enterprise-will-go-cold-on-tape-use-7000002926/)

<comment><USER16> No, it doesn't definitively say the backing storage is not tape based. Only that:

        "Essentially you can see this as a replacement for tape,"

and:

        "inexpensive commodity hardware components"

Nowhere did they explicitly deny that it may be tape-backed.

In addition, From the article:

         Instead, Glacier runs on "inexpensive commodity hardware components", he said, noting that the service is designed to be hardware-agnostic.

Which may allude to the fact that the backing storage itself may be flexible (a combination of HDD, Tape, possible BDXL)

The author himself only acknowledges:

        This suggests the system will be based on very large storage arrays consisting of a multitude of high-capacity low-cost discs.

Which isn't definitive in the slightest. Also, the article is over 18 months old.

I've said it before, I wouldn't be terrible surprised if they got started with old commodity hardware to get started, but the economics and characteristics of tape still seem much more amenable to the use case.

<comment><USER17> "Replacement for tape" is tape? OK.

<comment><USER18> "Essentially you can see this (our tape) as a replacement for [your] tape".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What I'd like to see is a storage product that aggregates the unused storage space on EC2 instances.

* By default instance storage isn't attached, so there's probably a lot of completely available capacity.

* Even if attached, it's rare that the full capacity would be used, so thin provisioning would leave some space available.

* Some host machines won't be fully allocated.

I imagine taking this pool of capacity and using erasure coding and replication to build reliable storage. As your volumes come and go, you need to make sure it remains available, which is why I imagine erasure coding across a large number of customers. By integrating with the guest -> host assignment function you can ensure that you never lose data, if need be delaying scheduling until you've copied data elsewhere.

You'd have to throttle reads & writes to ensure that the guests weren't unduly impacted (easier with SSD's predictable IOPS), and the splitting and erasure coding would make for slow reads & writes as well. But this makes the economics a lot more attractive (free!).

One thing that suggests Glacier could be doing this: if I was AWS, and I was doing this, I would not be in any rush to tell EC2 customers that I was "stealing" their unused capacity!

<comment><USER20> I don't see why Amazon would want to buy enough disks to support 100% of what they promise and then sell the unused capacity at below cost when they could just buy fewer disks instead. Either way they'd be in trouble if their EC2 customers suddenly started wanting to use all the space they were promised.

<comment><USER19> It's a good point: a cloud provider could choose to try to under-provision disks instead. The problem though is that (some) disks are local to the machine; it's not easy to move physical hard disks around when the calculations are wrong (and if you have to get it right on a per-host basis, it's more likely to go wrong). It is however easy to move chunks of data around, particularly if you use something like erasure coding to give you a huge amount of flexibility.

In short, your way is a good alternative, but my guess is that buying the full capacity and selling the surplus is probably roughly cost-equivalent, and considerably less likely to end up with you not being able to sell the full capacity of any given host.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Amazon Glacier Secret is hidden in plan sight. I think is just a virtual product. Probably unused S3 capacity, at a much lower price, not a different technology.

<comment><USER22> Maybe Glacier stores in the unused parts of S3 disk sectors, the empty part of the last sector of files that don't completely fill 512k. Takes 4-5 hours to retrieve because it has to pull without impacting dozens or hundreds of S3 drives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Full disclosure: I work at UpCloud, a cloud hosting provider and I think business in this industry day and night.

One thing that gets overlooked in almost all comparisons is the pricing models. I actually use Glacier through Arq (brilliant backup for Mac), but the catch is in the requests. I recently uploaded 200GB of photos to glacier and the upload process cost me about $10. The monthly storage is about $2.

The thing is that you shouldn't compare the sole storage price, but the total of cost of storing your data in glacier, which was also overlooked in the original article.

I'm sure AWS has understood this through their S3 storage lifecycle and thus developed an appropriate pricing model for glacier that arouses interest in the product like no other.

<comment><USER24> $10 for upload? Pricing is $0.050 per UPLOAD request plus $0.000 per byte. That means that your backup system made 200,000 UPLOAD requests. I don't think I have that many files which I want to back up, and I would hope that any system using Glacier as a back-end would bundle smaller files into larger archives.

(Well, I guess it means that your request size averaged 1 MB. If I'm already using Glacier, I would be perfectly happy with archive granularity coarser than 1 MB.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25>
        Glacier is significantly cheaper than S3

Yes, as long as you put something in and almost never take it out.

        They charge for deletions in the first 3 months

What if this is just disincentive to pull content out and treat Glacier like S3?

        Power is not the driving cost for Internet scale infrastructure

It is not the only cost, but it is still one of the largest factors, no?

        Sony and Panasonic continue to invest in a product that has no visible commercial uptake

That means nothing in and of itself. The only person who will win such a market needs to be one of the first there, innovator's dilemma, etc.

        Facebook believes optical is a reasonable solution to their archive needs

Do they? I saw one mention in the author's previous post of James Hamilton commenting on a Facebook cold storage system using Blu-ray but is unclear to me if it is in production.

Assuming it is true though, it is likely an apples-to-oranges comparison. Glacier provides archival restoration for presumably largely enterprise-level customers. Facebook backs up data from users, and I'd presume this is from deactivated accounts, etc., and unlikely to need urgent restoration.

<comment><USER26> Is there another example of amazon doing discentive pricing?

Every example of their pricing I've seen has been cost plus, cost plus, and/or cost plus.

Thus it seems at least an order of magnitude more likely that the $.03 reflects some cost.

<comment><USER25> Fulfilled by Amazon has disincentives for heavy/large objects, pulling inventory back to mail it back to you and for not prepping your item correctly when shipping it in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Other than burying the cite (2 links to his own blog) to why "cost of provisioning a single watt of power is more expensive than 10 years of power consumption," the author's canonical source is eventually a 404:

[http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/labs.google.com/en...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/labs.google.com/en/us/papers/power_provisioning.pdf)

The data is also > 7 years old.

EDIT: working link:

[http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/archive/power_provisioning.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER27> If power provisioning and space are an issue it seems unlikely to me that they're sitting with many drives all hooked up for immediate power-up. It would make more sense to separate the storage of media and the power connection so you get the most from each power connection. Therefore: removable media, whether those are hard drives or optical.

There's a data retrieval period of multiple hours [1]. That doesn't sound like they're just powering up a drive. It sounds like they're moving something around or doing some kind of linear read (as opposed to random-access). I'd bet on "a retrieval job fetches this stack of read-only media and connects it to the powered device, which loads it onto hard drives for quick download".

[1] "Retrieval jobs typically complete within 3-5 hours" \- [http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/](http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I've always thought that the deletion fee for <3 month old data was a way to limit "misuse of the service" \- call it a detergent if you will - more than actually a way to recuperating costs. Because I guess the costs will be there no matter when you delete data

</comment><comment><USER28> I still think it is possible to make the whole thing work using a tape library.

</comment><comment><USER29> If the goal is to manage capital costs, I don't see how funding the development of an entirely new data storage hardware ecosystem is a reasonable answer. You control capital costs with commodity hardware, not cutting edge.

Yet that is what the author thinks Amazon is doing with BDXL.

So who's funding high-capacity optical storage? Hmm, can we think of a customer who ingests huge amounts of data, wants to keep it for a long time, and has no fear if funding cutting-edge product development? Yes: defense departments.

</comment><comment><USER30> My friend Robin Harris wrote the original article.

A little off topic, but it seems really strange to me that Amazon is not transparent on the technology. Because of the high charge for fast reads, I tend to believe that the underlying storage is some form of media that gets mounted, perhaps like Facebook's bluray archival system.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is data really so heterogeneous? How many files in your home directory are generic, with bit-exact duplicates existing in the home directories of many other users? And the remaining files, which are uniquely yours -- what percent of each of them consists of generic data, like file headers?

<comment><USER5> I have 100gb of gaming screencaptures. That data exists nowhere else (some people may have copies of the final cuts on youtube, but that's tiny in comparison); if you could store it as input data + game code you could compress it by a lot, but I highly doubt Amazon's that far ahead of mainline video encoding technology.

Other than that, I think the big culprit will be photos; everyone's family photos are different (the JPEG header is a tiny proportion of a modern 5MB photo) and that's one of the most popular things for people to back up on these kind of services.

Plenty of data is generic in the way you say, but plenty of it isn't. So I don't think there's any free lunch here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Don't forget that S3 costs additional $0.12/GB for transfer out.

So either cheap VPSs or dedicated servers are still much cheaper if you don't want to deal with Glacier.

</comment><comment><USER33> another question: what is the difference in power consumption between a HDD that's powered up but idle, and one that's being used to read from or write to?

As an aside, erasure codes allow you to reduce power consumption as the redundant fragments are only necessary for safety, not for regular retrieval. You don't need glacier to benefit from that. (But glacier might be an optimization of that strategy)

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the power is used to keep the drive spinning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Don't forget that S3 costs additional $0.12/GB for transfer out.

Dedicated servers are still much cheaper than even Glacier.

</comment><comment><USER33> question: how does Amazon's glacier relate to this? [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1251214](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1251214)

<comment><USER34> It doesn't. Just coincidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Erm, isn't it getting a bit meta to have a post to respond to the comments on HN for a previous post of yours? Surely, that is exactly what the HN comments are for?

<comment><USER36> Robin's blog post is not only to respond to HN comments (as you may noticed, he addresses an observation made by another commenter on his own blog).

And he not only responds to the comments, but adds plenty of other information and reasons why he suspects optical media is used by Glacier.

So no, I don't see anything "meta" about this post.</comment></comment>


Informal Chicago Meetup - <AUTHOR>

A couple people interested in starting, running, or growing companies are gonna get together Thursday (and hopefully many Thursdays after this) for a bit of discussion from 5-7pm or so at Noble Tree Coffee Company (2444 N. Clark http://www.yelp.com/biz/noble-tree-coffee-chicago ) here in Chicago.
No pressure, no pitches, nothing as formal as TechCocktail or ChicagoBeta.  We're just interested in meeting people working on cool stuff and partaking in some of noble tree's delicious offerings.
The idea being more to meet people and make friends in the community than to get business deals done and what not. Should be a good way to relax after work.  Anyone is welcome to stop by and come and go as you please, we'll be up on the top floor. <comment><USER2> Sounds like a cool idea. I'd like to meet some hackers out in Chicago.

</comment><comment><USER3> in - how will I recognize you guys

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe we have the whole top floor to ourselves. I think Phil Tadros of metroproper might stop by (if you know what he looks like) since it is his shop. Other than that, we'll probably be taking up the space towards the the front of the top floor, its not very big up there so we should be pretty easy to spot.</comment></comment>


Coded messages in the control room as Mars Curiosity lands - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2012/08/10/158515499/so-you-landed-on-mars-now-what

<comment><AUTHOR> The best details are in the audio story - under 'listen to the story' at the top. I'm fascinated they had a series of announcements that indicated specific points in the landing sequence that were not publicly known, before they actually announced the landing, which had happened 10 seconds earlier.</comment>


Rules of formulating knowledge in learning (1999) - <AUTHOR> https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/20rules <comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of these rules. Although Super Memo has been superseded by other software like Anki, the inventor is a pioneer of spaced repetition. His tips are valuable and really improve my own cards.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oof, claiming there is only one tool in the toolbox. Painful.</comment>


The Disappearance of John M. Ford - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/john-ford-science-fiction-fantasy-books.html <comment><USER2> the short version is that the author described his relationship with his family as estranged, in part due to his domestic partner. When he died, the family received the entire estate due to the absence of a valid will. When the author tracked them down to find out why they prevented his works from being published, his siblings denied they had, and implicated a publishing agent who never responded to repeated attempts at communication. The agent never received the messages, because she had left the industry.

So the resolution was putting the siblings (estate) in touch with a publisher, and now the works will be published.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not very familiar with Ford's work, but I very strongly remember reading his poem about the September 11 attack:

[http://nielsenhayden.com/110.html](http://nielsenhayden.com/110.html)

It's amazing.

<comment><USER4> There's also this sonnet, composed on a whim in response to a half-joking prompt:

      The worm drives helically through the wood
      And does not know the dust left in the bore
      Once made the table integral and good;
      And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
      Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
      A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
      The names of lovers, light of other days --
      Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
      The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
      But memory is everything to lose;
      Although some of the colors have to fade,
      Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
      Regret, by definition, comes too late;
      Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

This is, as noted later in the thread, a person who once won a World Fantasy Award for the poem on his self-published Christmas card (the absolutely brilliant "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station", on line here: [https://sigridellis.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/winter- solstice...](https://sigridellis.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/winter-solstice- camelot-station-by-john-m-ford/) ).

<comment><USER5> that seems to be titled "Against Entropy" here:

[http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008033.html](http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008033.html)

<comment><USER4> Also sometimes titled De Vermis, which is the title of the blog post that Ford dropped the first comment on:[http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/003789.html](http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/003789.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Literary estate in unfavourable family hands" has been the obscure fate of a lot of authors. Another reason to question why the heirs deserve the 70 years of exclusive control after the author's death.

Also:

> Even if Ford had found a larger audience, though, his health problems and > lack of insurance would have kept his finances on the thinnest of ice. "All > it took was one bad infection and Mike would wipe out every penny he had," > Teresa Nielsen Hayden explained. "To be an adult about money would mean to > be permanently impoverished, give up on books, give up on travel, give up on > the things that made his life so much better. And so he didn't."

<comment><USER4> It has, but in this case, the family was (by their own account) not so much unfavorable, as clueless -- they say they inquired about getting the books back into print, but asked Ford's former agent, who was in the process of ghosting pretty much everybody and never responded. Meanwhile, the former publishers would have loved to get the books back into print, and privately complained bitterly about the supposedly intransigent family that was preventing this, but it's really not clear how seriously they tried to ever get in touch. Crossed wires all around.

I think the surest sign of everyone's actual intentions is that when the reporter who was investigating this finally had contact information for everybody, they wound up making a deal to get everything the estate had the rights to back in print. (The exceptions to this are things like Ford's utterly brilliant Star Trek tie-ins -- fanfic written by a master at the height of his form -- to which the family never had the rights. Though ironically, for that very reason, they're among the very few Ford works that are still in print!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Web of angels, written in 1980, describes the life of a hacker (cracker) on the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER5> > The Dragon Waiting ... > At the time, used copies of this mass-market > paperback from 1985 started at $200 on Amazon. (It's currently much more > affordable.)

I suspect because of this article, Amazon shows no paperback copies, and only a hardcover for $500.

<comment><USER8> Amazon UK is currently showing only one used paperback copy at £799 ($1036 USD). I have a horrible feeling I left mine behind in my last move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks! Added to reading list! I was glad to find that Robert Jordan had supported him, and by transitivity - so did I :)

Also - a good argument for shortening the default time to public domain.</comment>


Show HN: Poor man's Google Docs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/delight-im/HTML-Sheets-of-Paper?hn=2016-08-30 <comment><USER2> Looks pretty good.

For an even-poorer-man's google docs, I like to keep this bookmarked:

        data:text/html, <html contenteditable>

If you navigate to that string in your browser it gives you a blank, editable page. No saving or any fancy features, but it is pretty convenient to be able to quickly spin up a scratch pad sometimes.

<comment><USER3> Clever, but why? Notepad.exe, TextEdit.app, Gedit, nano are all already there - and do save if you want to after. TextEdit will even just let you quit and come back without saving and the draft is there. Leave the browser sometimes man!

<comment><USER4> How dare you forget my favorite text editor in your list.

<comment><USER5> Which is?

<comment><USER6> Cat, Awk, Grep, and unix pipes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It doesn't take away from this, but because of the title: Google Docs started much like this, but eventually they gave up on plain HTML and changed to the current model which still uses the DOM but is "complicated"(tm) HTML.

I can't find the link at the moment, but I think it's interesting because despite it being the simple solution, they eventually realized it was holding back adoption amongst business users.

Edit: Found the article: "Babe Ruth and Feature Lists" [0] where former Google PDM Ken Norton writes:

>We were relying on the browser's rich text surface, which used HTML as the underlying data format and caused browser compatibility nightmares. You'd bold a word and then be unable to un-bold it. Bulleted lists couldn't be edited or deleted without screwing up the whole page or turning everything into a bullet. Centering a line would often center-align the entire document. Formatting bugs had been an annoyance for Googlers, but they were fatal for groups of students who needed to print a term paper to a teacher's exacting specifications.

0 - [https://library.gv.com/babe-ruth-and-feature- lists-1818bb8c6...](https://library.gv.com/babe-ruth-and-feature- lists-1818bb8c6ca8#.sq8086m2t)

<comment><USER8> Here's a great technical explanation of the problem: [https://medium.engineering/why-contenteditable-is- terrible-1...](https://medium.engineering/why-contenteditable-is- terrible-122d8a40e480)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, great read!

Please see my comment on the parent to your post for a response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No JavaScript? Nice. Don't see too many functional pages without it. I don't know that I would call it a poor man's Google Docs due to the lack of equivalent features but good work nonetheless.

<comment><USER10>
      > No JavaScript?

And even these keyboard shortcuts work, at least in Chrome:

Ctrl B: bold

Ctrl I: italic

Ctrl U: underline

<comment><AUTHOR> They do not work in Firefox (and probably other browsers), unfortunately, but you can still edit the DOM in the inspector there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My favorite is this chrome extension : [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-notes- alph...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-notes- alpha/dnghgncclglnalfilefbdpoflgajhdpo)

<comment><USER12> Another one (bottom-left menu for options): [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/papier/hhjeaokafpl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/papier/hhjeaokafplhjoogdemakihhdhffacia)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's possible to generate PDF client side. You might consider adding that feature.

<comment><USER14> "Print to PDF" isn't clientside enough for you?

<comment><USER15> As far as I know Chrome is the only browser that offers that as built in feature.

<comment><USER16> Every browser in Linux and OSX does it, and doesn't Windows 10 ship with a built-in PDF printer too?

<comment><USER15> Those are built into the operating system, not the browser.

My point is that not everyone has those features out of the box. Sure, you can install more software, but it's not a reason to not have a feature like that in this word processor.

<comment><USER17> Well by that logic, I sure hope my word processor has a calculator and an mp3 player and shit it better have an app store too.

Printing is the responsibility of the platform, not the application.

<comment><USER16> > Well by that logic, I sure hope my word processor has a calculator and an > mp3 player and shit it better have an app store too.

Something something Zawinski's Law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >No skeuomorphic paper

But isn't it skeumorphic to have pages based off of real paper sizes?

<comment><USER19> No, that's just good design. The use-case seems to be for printed documents.

<comment><USER18> I guess my confusion is just: are we saying that white rectangles with the dimensions of paper are not skeumorphisms of paper?

What, then, would skeumorphic paper be?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the confusion!

This was actually only added to underline that there's nothing like [1] in this project. Will improve the README.

[1] [https://www.google.de/search?q=paper+texture&tbm=isch](https://www.google.de/search?q=paper+texture&tbm=isch)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I believe Google Docs is actually the poor man's Google Docs.

<comment><USER21> my wife calls Google Docs poor man's Microsoft Word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm a big fan of Papier for chrome. It doesn't save to your Google account so my notes on my home computer are different than my work computer, which is just how I like it: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/papier/hhjeaokafpl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/papier/hhjeaokafplhjoogdemakihhdhffacia?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER23> Might be nice to add "outline: none;" to .page

<comment><AUTHOR> What browser are you using? Did you test this? I can't see any difference. Please note that a drop shadow has been added deliberately here.

<comment><USER24> Safari on OS X has a blue glow around the input field when focused.

<comment><USER25> As does Chrome 52 on Windows 10

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What happens if multiple people load the same page and type simultaneously? I'm on a phone and can't test that for myself, but the simultaneous access/editing is what Google Docs truly valuable.

Does this do that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point!

It doesn't do this _yet_ , because the focus here has been on perfect representation of pages via CSS.

But using socket.io or something like this, it shouldn't be thard hard.

<comment><USER26> I suspect it is harder than you think. Have a go, and let us know how you get on. I'd love to see a simple, light-weight, elegant alternative to Google Docs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I didn't mean it's _trivial_ , but it's not a hard technical problem (anymore) to do that on the web.

Not sure if I'll be working on this, though, because there are so many (commercial) services providing this already. Sure, you might think that Google Docs could be more lightweight and elegant, but for many people it's working fine and that 10% improvement _on Google Docs_ is definitely too much work for a _tiny_ open-source project.

I was talking about basic functionality, just as you were in your first comment. The title of this contribution didn't talk about a _poor man 's_ Google Docs by chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This contributes nothing more than <div contenteditable> and to present this a document editor is counter-productive to users searching for something reliable. The link below shows the many shortcommings of just calling the contenteditable browser API as an emulator. For example, Google Docs does not use contenteditable at all -- for the many reasons outlined below. Building a real doc editor that functions as a widget in blogs and forums sites requires a lot more support -- of the open source alternatives, Medium is one of the best.

Why ContentEditable Is Terrible, Or: How the Medium Editor Works (2014) (medium.com) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11487667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11487667)

<comment><AUTHOR> It does!

You might not have looked at this closely enough, but "contenteditable" is really only one line that has been added to make the demo more useful.

The real thing this is about is the CSS. There are ~250 lines that produce the correct page sizes, margins and paged content and ensure that prints are as expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Adding content to the first "page" doesn't cause the content below it to re- flow onto the second page.

Is that a bug, or is it not intended to work that way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

This does only affect the "in-browser" view. In the print view, everything is correct.

Yet, you're right in that this just isn't acceptable. The "preview" mode in the browser should work exactly like the print mode here.

This is a known issue and had already been tracked here: [https://github.com/delight-im/HTML-Sheets-of- Paper/issues/2](https://github.com/delight-im/HTML-Sheets-of-Paper/issues/2)

<comment><USER17> When i viewed the print preview it seemed broken too - the content in the first on-screen page (which was too long) became two pages, and then in the print preview it forced a new page before the next block of content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Pretty cool - thanks!</comment>


Microsoft agrees to $1.2bn purchase of Yammer - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2012/Jun12/06-25MSYammerPR.aspx <comment><USER2> This is what keeps me from being a shareholder of Microsoft: that they are willing to pay ridiculous premia to purchase speculative or middling businesses.

Think about it this way. $1.2B in cash would purchase ~39.1 shares of MSFT stock, had they repurchased stock instead of buying Yammer (at today's open of $30.70/sh, per yahoo finance). Those shares have a proportional claim on $106.7M of _after tax earnings_ over the last 12 mos (approx $2.73/sh, TTM, again per yahoo finance). $1.2B represents 1/250th of MSFT's market cap.

Even if Yammer grows revenues at 100% y/y for the next 10 years (it won't), its cumulative after-tax earnings won't come close to the benefit shareholders would have received--esp when discounted appropriately for the risk--had MSFT simply bought back $1.2B worth of stock.

Don't get me wrong, Skype represented even more egregious profligacy. But my point is that I (and many others) would be far more interested in owning MSFT stock if they fired the entire corp dev team and replaced them with a small laptop that merely issued orders to buy back stock every quarter.

Silicon Valley used to view MSFT as a rapacious shark. Now it sees MSFT as a well-heeled but dim tourist--an interloper that has more money than brains and is willing to spend exorbitant sums for shinky trinkets. Sadly, MSFT has warmed to the role.

<comment><USER3> Obviously this is strategic. Enterprise Social has a lot of room to expand, MS can do things that Yammer can't do on their own.

<comment><USER4> Can, but won't. What have they done with Skype in the year and a half since purchasing it?

I can't believe MSFT's shareholders haven't gotten rid of Ballmer yet.

<comment><USER5> there's been a lot of work on skype, most of it coming in the next months. it takes months or even years for two big companies to merge and align strategies, not to mention products and tech are often shared behind the curtains so you wouldn't know about progress until some big news or big release, ie. wait till win8

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft's acquisition of Groove Networks 7 years ago ([http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/features/2005/mar05/03-1...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/features/2005/mar05/03-10grooveqa.aspx)) in a very similar space failed to ignite anything. I also rarely ever hear about groove anymore and haven't seen it used in the wild in about 5 years. I like yammer and have used it at the past couple of startups I've been at, but there's a good chance that yammer will be on the same downward path post-acquisition.

<comment><USER7> To make it clear:

Groove -> Office Groove -> SharePoint Workspace (not SharePoint in general)

Office Communicator -> Lync (unrelated to Groove, internally developed from the start I think)

<comment><USER8> Some features of Lync came in part from the Parlano acquisition in 2007:

[http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/press/2007/aug07/08-29Pa...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/press/2007/aug07/08-29ParlanoPR.aspx)

<comment><USER9> Interesting to think that Parlano started as an in-house java chatroom/im tool at UBS (the big Swiss bank).

I wonder if any of the team from UBS that were spun off made any money from the acquisition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Did anyone else try out and use Yammer for awhile and then ultimately switch away from it or off it it in favor of another tool or just back to email?

<comment> brown9-2 Yes, a number of people at my company (with about 1000 people in it) tried to spread usage of it, but it only stuck with about < dozen people. Communicating through status messages doesn't really seem to give enough detail to anyone who needs to know.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure what you mean by communicating through "status messages". It doesn't seem like a good way to operate. Posts are not limited in the same way as Twitter messages. You can add various attachments, and create messages longer than 140 characters. In most companies email is the dominant form of communication and other tools (including discussion boards etc.) just don't get uptake because people drop back to email.

In very big companies (> 20k) there is more of a need for a tool that that can connect people in different "silos". I've seen how Yammer has helped people in this type of organisation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Now Microsoft seems to be finally getting wiser, Yammer is a good purchase for Microsoft. Specially if they can integrate it with Sharepoint and Office Suite. This can turn out very cool product from MS in long time, now I can only wish they down't screw up with a good product.

<comment><USER13> _Specially if they can integrate it with Sharepoint and Office Suite_

As a person who uses Yammer on purpose and Sharepoint only under duress, I would prefer to keep them distinct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Email isn't going anywhere (anytime soon), but I do think news-feed style posts with threaded comments for lots of group communication is far preferable to cc:->ALL. Smart buy for MSFT.

<comment><USER15> That's what Lotus Notes was, right (news-feed style posts with threaded comments). At least that how I saw it used, in the mid-late 1990s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "$1.2bn in cash"

Wow. Has there been any acquisitions north of $1bn with cash (and no equity) buyouts?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is really a good buy for Microsoft. Yammer has the potential to eventually penetrate most of the medium to large enterprises. I have used it and it really is great tool for multi-location organizations.

</comment><comment><USER18> Previous (interesting) discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4114546>

</comment><comment><USER19> This might be blasphemy, but why not turn Sharepoint into a platform for the enterprise that developers can create software like Yammer for instead of snatching up these enterprise software companies for billions?

I've used and implemented Sharepoint. It's software that looks great on paper (or slide deck) with many bullet points about "integration" and "business requirements", but it's an absolute nightmare to use and deploy well.

<comment><USER20> I know a fellow who, while working at MSFT a few years back, proposed this very thing. Nobody bit.

<comment><USER21> because it would make the servers ever slower?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love Yammer, so I'm really really hoping this doesn't become another AOL/WinAMP debacle.

</comment><comment><USER23> Never heard of Yammer until now. The buying price is a lot; I remember the days when millions were only used (born in the sixties).

Anyway, yet another company swallowed by Microsoft. Whether it will "live" or "die", it is too early to tell.

<comment><USER24> We've used Yammer inside our small company, but quickly gave up on it because we are few and I think Yammer is a lot more useful in big companies were you should keep up to date on what the other groups around you are doing.

The implementation is pretty solid though and I liked the features provided. It really is Twitter for the Enterprise, so this acquisition makes sense for Microsoft.

Some smart people like Coda Hale also work there. I wonder if they'll leave or not.

<comment><USER25>
        Some smart people like Coda Hale also work there.
        I wonder if they'll leave or not.

Oh heeeeell no.

<comment><USER26> well at least we know that someone is incentivized :) congrats

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can you say Facebook style communication > sharepoint?

Good purchase.

</comment><comment><USER28> And so I will be closing yet another social media account.

It is nice that I have a specific reason (valid or not) this time, besides the usual vague feeling of dissatisfaction.

</comment><comment><USER29> How does this compare to Salesforce's Chatter? They seem to be the same thing, but I've heard Yammer is much better. I've only used Chatter.

<comment><USER30> Chatter is more like a private enterprise version of Twitter (small messages, 'I'm working on X right now')

Yammer is more like a private enterprise version of Facebook, lots of groups and media postings and timeline/widgets commenting similar to Facebook.

<comment><USER31> I think Chatter is closer to your description of Yammer than Twitter. It really revolves around groups and updates on objects, and it has private messaging now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone know what their revenue/profit margins were like?

</comment><comment><USER33> With apparently 5 mn users, Microsoft just paid ~$200 per user... C.R.A.Z.Y. This just beat Instagram to a pulp as the yard stick for ridiculous valuation. When do I see an Oatmeal comic on this?

<comment><USER34> Yammer charges $5-$15 per user per month. if everyone of the corporate users were charged $5 per month its $60 a user per year. How does that compare at all to a company which had no revenue?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is going to be interesting; sleep with one eye open, Mr. Ballmer, sleep with one eye open...

Edit: for the downvoters who probably don't "get" the reference, out startup (Fogbeam Labs) are now competing with Microsoft since we're in this same "enterprise 2.0" space as Yammer.

Anyway, Mr. Ballmer... "never mind that noise you heard, it's just the beast under your bed." :-)

<comment><USER35> And this is why I love HN... Nothing like showing a little support for one of our own. :-)

It's not like we're the scrappy, underdog competitor, building Open Source products that will contribute to the world whether we ever make a dime or not, while Microsoft are the original Evil Empire of Software - monopolistic, profiteering gluttons who will do anything to make a buck.

 _le sigh_ it's all right, I still love you guys anyway. :-)

<comment><USER36> You seem to come across as petulant rather than someone who is challenging an entrenched competitor with innovation or whatever. Less talking, more doing. Just a thought.

<comment><USER35> _You seem to come across as petulant rather than someone who is challenging an entrenched competitor with innovation or whatever._

I'm not sure how "petulant"[1] fits into this, but OK.

 _Less talking, more doing. Just a thought._

We don't do a lot of talking, is the thing. One offhand comment on HN so far... I have to say, I'm a bit surprised at the downvote frenzy. No Metallica fans here, I suppose. _sigh_

As for doing, if you find somebody doing more "doing" than we do, mark it down on a calendar. I've coded until my wrists feel like they're about to fall off, put in 100 hour weeks for week after week after week after week after week, flown back and forth from Chicago to RDU dozens of times just to keep in touch with my co-founders, and sacrificed more opportunities to go out with my friends, go on dates, or otherwise have fun, than I can count... to write code, do customer development work, do market research, competitive intelligence, you name it. If we fail, it won't be for lack of "doing," that I can promise.

Geez, I'm not usually so defensive either, but I find your comment amusing given the circumstances.

Anyway, back to the grind...

[1]: <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/petulant> _moved to or showing sudden, impatient irritation, especially over some trifling annoyance_</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to speed up the Rust compiler one last time - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2020/09/08/how-to-speed-up-the-rust-compiler-one-last-time/ <comment><USER2> Nicholas Nethercote didn't just speed up Rust. He went in & did the dirty work of dredging through Firefox profiling

> It's rare that a single micro-optimization is a big deal, but dozens and > dozens of them are. Persistence is key

Persistence is work. Mozilla is cutting the people who put in the work of staving off bitrot

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words.

To clarify: I am still at Mozilla! But I will be working fully on Firefox for the foreseeable future. I have edited the opening paragraph of the post to make this clearer.

<comment><USER3> Rust's loss is Firefox's gain. I'm sorry to see you leave your Rust work, but I think Mozilla is right to have their best engineers focus on their core product. If we hope to see Firefox survive and remain relevant, then Mozilla really needed to refocus their energies onto it. Also, I assume someone of Nicholas's caliber has a great deal of agency over their own career path, so perhaps a return to Firefox is not entirely unwelcomed by him.

<comment><USER4> I'd honestly rather see Rust survive, than Mozilla. Mozilla is few years away from going Blink, and on deathbed.

Rust is up and coming language.

<comment><USER5> While I'd begrudgingly agree the two are not independent. I moved back to Firefox from Chrome exactly because Firefox became once again performance competitive thanks to Quantum. Most (all?) the big Firefox improvements were integrations of Rust code pioneered in servo. The only chance I see for Firefox is doubling down on that and replacing more and more components with those Rust rewrites. If not for that I don't see Firefox remaining competitive with Chrome for long.

<comment><USER4> Didn't Mozilla like fire all of their Rust devs? There is no plans for supporting Rust in Firefox AFAIK.

<comment><USER6> There already is Rust in Firefox and has been for years.

<comment><USER4> True, but not what parent is saying.

> The only chance I see for Firefox is doubling down on that and replacing > more and more components with those Rust rewrites

If Firefox has no more Rust developers now, it can't "double down" on replacing components, and all software is prone to bitrot, so after a few years, it will be an unmaintainable, buggy mess.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there is confusion here over the meaning of "Rust developer".

Mozilla did lay off most of its employees that were working directly on the Rust language and its implementation. This was a handful of people.

Mozilla also laid off some employees that were using Rust, such as the Servo team.

But Mozilla still has plenty of employees that know and use Rust, both in Firefox (e.g. the WebRender team), and in code relating to Firefox such as services. This is a much larger number of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The improvements I did are mostly what could be described as "bottom-up > micro-optimizations".

> I also did two larger "architectural" or "top-down" changes

My summer intern started doing profiling work on compile times with clang: [https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm- dev/2020-July/143012.h...](https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm- dev/2020-July/143012.html)

Some things we found:

* for a large C codebase like the Linux kernel, we're spending way more time in the front-end (clang) than the backend (llvm). This was surprising based on rustc's experience with llvm. Experimental patches simplifying header inclusion dependencies in the kernel's sources can potentially cut down on build times by ~30% with EITHER gcc or clang.

* There's a fair amount of low hanging fruit that stands out from bottom up profiling. We've just started fixing these, but the most immediate was 13% of a Linux kernel build recomputing target information for every inline assembly statement in a way that was accidentally quadratic and not being memoized when it could be (in fact, my intern wrote patches to compute these at compile time, even). Fixed in clang-11. That was just the first found+fixed, but we have a good list of what to look at next. The only real samples showing up in the llvm namespace (vs clang) is llvm's StringMap bucket lookup but that's from clang's preprocessor.

* GCC beats the crap out of Clang in compile times of the Linux kernel; we need to start looking for top down optimizations to do less work overall. I suspect we may be able to get some wins out of lazy parsing at the cost of missing diagnostics (warnings and errors) in dead code.

* Don't speculate on what could be slow; profiles _will_ surprise you.

> Using instruction counts to compare the performance of two entirely > different programs (e.g. GCC vs clang) would be foolish, but it's reasonable > to use them to compare the performance of two almost-identical programs

Agree. We prefer cycle counts via LBR, but only for comparing diffs of the same program, as you describe.

<comment><USER8> > for a large C codebase like the Linux kernel, we're spending way more time > in the front-end (clang) than the backend (llvm). This was surprising based > on rustc's experience with llvm.

rustc sends large, generally unoptimized chunks to llvm, compared to clang. In Rust, the translation unit is at the crate level, causing llvm to do more analysis. MIR is also still relatively new and I think there is still work to be done doing optimizations in it to get less data sent to llvm.

<comment><USER7> Clang doesn't do optimizations though. It generates llvm via a simple tree walk.

<comment><USER9> What's big in C or C++ translation units are header files, but since these mainly contain declarations, and declarations do not require code generation, they don't create any work for the compiler backend.

Rust translation units do not have the header file problem (so the frontend does less work), and they are also much larger in terms of definitions, often spawning multiple files, so there is more for the backend to do per translation unit.

The consequence is that Rust spends more time on LLVM relatively speaking than C and C++.

The solution to this problem in Rust is naively simple: write smaller translation units.

Rust programmers just want to structure their code however their want, and still have good compile-times. Which is kind of the opposite of how C and C++ programmers typically structure their code in the largests projects, because they value faster compile-times over that kind of "ergonomics"/code organization.

<comment><USER7> Ah. Same problem with static inline functions defined in headers in the kernel. They may not end up generating code, but clang doesn't know that and will still generate llvm for the backend to determine is dead, after clang has already done lots of work performing semantic analysis on it.

Orthogonal to your point:

Also, aggressively marking functions __attribute__((always_inline)) we found was blowing up compile times (reoptimizing the same code again and again).

Finally, expansions of function like macros containing GNU C statement expressions could cause the preprocessed source to bloat very quickly (megabytes of input, IIRC).

<comment><USER9> Rust doesn't have the "static in header" problem, but it does have the "always inline" and "macros" problem.

The "always inline" problem is smaller in Rust, because it does Thin LTO by default, compiles partially to bit-code, that can be partially inlined if necessary, etc. So essentially the Rust toolchain is a bit better at inlining when its profitable than C and C++ toolchains "by default" (you can tune C and C++ toolchains like clang to be as good as Rust).

In C and C++, macros are generally frowned upon, not because of this compile- time issues, but rather because they are dangerous, tricky, non-hygienic, powerful usage requires complex patterns, their interaction with header files and PCHs, etc.

Rust macros are awesome, super useful, widely used, etc. So people end up using them a lot, and this is by design, not a flaw of the language. This ends up resulting in a lot of duplicated code being expanded, and that leads to the problem that you mention, but much worse, because there are just many more macros in Rust.

This kind of applies to templates / traits as well. There are many C++ that don't write templates, but all Rust programmers use generics because they are great. Rust can pre-compile generics, so the cost of this is not as bad as for C++ where the same generic might be instantiated by multiple TUs. But still, just by the fact that they are more widely used, the size of the problem grows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > I was surprised by how many people said they enjoyed reading this blog post > series. The appetite for "I squeezed some more blood from this stone" tales > is high.

There's something satisfying about seeing code get cleaned up and optimized. I also enjoyed following the LibreOffice commits back when they were in their "heavy cleanup" phase after it became clear OpenOffice was dead (which meant they didn't have to worry about diverging from the upstream anymore).

<comment><USER11> the early neovim posts were very absorbing too

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Contrary to what you might expect, instruction counts have proven much > better than wall times when it comes to detecting performance changes on CI, > because instruction counts are much less variable than wall times (e.g. > ±0.1% vs ±3%; the former is highly useful, the latter is barely useful). > Using instruction counts to compare the performance of two entirely > different programs (e.g. GCC vs clang) would be foolish, but it's reasonable > to use them to compare the performance of two almost-identical programs > (e.g. rustc before PR #12345 and rustc after PR #12345). It's rare for > instruction count changes to not match wall time changes in that situation. > If the parallel version of the rustc front-end ever becomes the default, it > will be interesting to see if instruction counts continue to be effective in > this manner.

This is a supremely surprising conclusion, especially in 2020. Is instruction count really still tied to wall clock count? I would have thought that some instructions could be slower than others (especially on x86) so that using more faster individual instructions could be faster than 1 slower instruction. Similarly, cache effects & data dependencies can result in more instructions being faster than fewer instructions.

I _think_ what the author is trying to say is that when evaluating micro- optimizations, cycle counts are pretty valuable still because you're making a small intentional change & evaluating its impact & _usually_ the correlation holds. The dashboard clearly still measures wall-clock since just comparing instruction count over time would be misleading.

I'm curious if the Rust team has evaluated stabilizer to be more robust about the optimizations they choose: [https://emeryberger.com/research/stabilizer/](https://emeryberger.com/research/stabilizer/)

<comment><AUTHOR> > This is a supremely surprising conclusion

That's why I started the paragraph with "Contrary to what you might expect".

As for Stabilizer: "Stabilizer eliminates measurement bias by comprehensively and repeatedly randomizing the placement of functions, stack frames, and heap objects in memory." Those placements can affect cycle counts and wall times a lot, but don't affect instruction counts.

<comment><USER12> So have you not found in practice any data dependencies or cache issues show up as bottle necks? Or do current tools just make this more of a blind spot for optimization?

Also is there any work to multi-thread the Rust compiler on a more fine- grained level like the recent GCC work? I know you allude to that potentially that would make the instruction counts potentially less reliable so wondering if that's something being explored.

Finally, while I have you, I'm wondering if there's been any exploration of the idea of keeping track of information across builds so that incremental compilation is faster (i.e. only bother recompiling/relinking the parts of the code impacted by a code change). I've always thought that should almost completely eliminate compilation/linking times (at least for debug builds where full utmost optimization is less important).

<comment><AUTHOR> I mentioned in the post several areas I myself haven't looked at, including cache misses. There may be room for improvements there.

There is an experimental parallel rustc front-end, e.g. see [https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/help-test-parallel- rustc/1...](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/help-test-parallel-rustc/11503)

> any exploration of the idea of keeping track of information across builds so > that incremental compilation is faster

That's exactly what incremental compilation does.

<comment><USER12> There's an effort to track which functions are modules & what the downstream implications of that are in terms of needing recompilation? Are there any links to technical descriptions? Super interested in reading up on the technical details involved.

<comment><USER13> You might want to look into Salsa:

[http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2019/01/29/sals...](http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2019/01/29/salsa- incremental-recompilation/)

[http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/04/09/libr...](http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/04/09/libraryification/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's sad to see your rustc contributions stop, nnethercote. I guess rustc now has to run an experiment on how quickly performance improves without you :(.

IMO compiler speed still remains the main ergonomics hurdle in developing Rust software.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for all you've done over the years here. I'm sad you won't be able to do more of it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nnerthercote own the best blog on performance profiling that I've ever seen, congrats to your huge skill set, Firefox, chromium, and programming languages need more people like you.

</comment><comment> Ar-Curunir Thank you for your excellent work over the years! Your efforts have gone a long way to making Rust enjoyable to write =)

If there are any smart rust-using company, they should definitely hire nnethercote to continue their excellent work!

<comment><USER16> Considering that nnethercote is still with us at Mozilla, I sure hope that he _doesn't_ get hired away! :-)

<comment> Ar-Curunir Oops, missed that part :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > ... Perhaps this relates to the high level of interest in Rust ...

I would have loved these blog posts regardless of what code was actually being optimised.

They offer a fascinating glimpse into a workflow that requires expertise, experimentation and creativity.

Sadly something that most developers can't engage in very often, due to the nature of their work or time constraints.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a fascinating blog series. I've been dabbling in Rust lately and really appreciate how powerful and helpful the compiler is even to beginners.

> Due to recent changes at Mozilla my time working on the Rust compiler is > drawing to a close.

This sort of statement makes me a bit worried though. I don't mean to echo what a lot of the community has said over the past month, but I really hope that development on Rust doesn't stagnate because of the layoffs.

</comment><comment><USER19> How hasn't Google taken over and hired the Rust team? Weren't they practically funding them by funding their parent, Mozilla?

<comment><USER6> Well, most of the Rust team was not employed by Mozilla, so that's one reason why they have not.

<comment><USER20> What about the Servo team? Wouldn't they have an impact on Rust development?

<comment><USER6> They certainly contributed, yes, but there are like two hundred people total on all of the Rust teams. Losing them hurts, they're fantastic folks, but Rust is just way bigger these days.

<comment><USER19> It's just that the team is _right there_ for the taking and it's so easy to hold control over the most exciting language of the next five years as Google instead of MS EEE'ing Rust soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> gg man. Really enjoyed your posts since starting rust.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hmmm... Rust needs alot more given its slow reputation

<comment><USER22> Don't know why I get down votes for pointing out the slowness of Rust which is well known

<comment><USER23> Probably because you just stated something that is well known without adding anything constructive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The title made it sound like the Rust compiler is at its performance limit and they doing the last possible optimization.</comment>


Writing programs for people to read - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/04/writing-programs-for-people-to-read.html <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1017702></comment>