France wants companies to make appliances that last longer - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-wants-companies-to-make-appliances-that-last-longer/2015/03/02/b39b326e-c0fa-11e4-a188-8e4971d37a8d_story.html <comment><USER2> The title of the article seems... misleading. It implies the French government is forcing companies to manufacture products in a particular way, when what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer they planned lifespan of a product.

Which, by the way, seems like an excellent proposition. As a (potential) customer I can factor in lifespan with features and price for things I buy and make a better-informed decision about which best meets my needs. Anything that gives customers more accurate information should lead to better-functioning markets.

<comment><USER3> > The title of the article seems... misleading.

The content too…

> (...) what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer > they planned lifespan of a product.

This part was removed from the law mid-february by the senate as reported by numerama[1] on feb 17th.

What the law says is that deliberately limiting a product expected life during the design process is punishable by law with a maximum sentence of 2 years if prison and 300k € fine. Everybody understands that this is mostly for show as it is hardly enforceable.

[1]: [http://www.numerama.com/magazine/32252-le-delit-d- obsolescen...](http://www.numerama.com/magazine/32252-le-delit-d-obsolescence- programmee-adopte-au-senat.html)

<comment><USER4> That's actually an excellent first step. It makes it clear that such a practice is not just cynical marketing but actually fraud. It will clear things a bit for people who ask designs that break after a set time. It will allow engineers and designers to refuse such tasks as illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with the common belief of planned obsolescence.

In the industry the cheapest thing to make is plastic injection molding. By far. Like 50 to 100 times cheaper than the alternatives at scale.

Melting plastic at 200 Celsius is so much easier than melting metal at over 700 Celsius(over 1000 for steels) with all the contractions and problems this creates.

Any manufacturer could use metal in their products or create a plastic version at half(or 1/3) the price.

Most people just buy the cheaper alternative. Then they rant about planned obsolescence when the thing breaks soon(but over the warranty period).

But the reality is that thanks to plastic molding we get incredible cheap products, like a USD60 vacuum cleaner, when in the past it was more like today USD1000 for one when it was made with metal parts that lasted decades.

We want it all, cheaper and better. But having all is not possible(yet).

<comment><USER6> While I agree with a lot of what you say, planned obsolescence does exist and IS a factor in many products breaking soon.

You might want to watch "The light bulb conspiracy": [http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/light-bulb- conspiracy](http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/light-bulb-conspiracy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Companies build the type of products people want. Right now people want cheap products for the most part. For those that don't certain brands exist that have very long or lifetime warranties.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps an issue is that people have expected that products will last beyond their warranties. The French proposal would seem to clarify the difference between a warranty and an expected lifetime, if there is indeed such a difference.

My family lives in a house that was pretty much empty of appliances when we bought it, ~ 12 years ago. I'm extremely lucky to be handy at repairing things (thanks to my parents), but appalled that I've had to repair virtually every appliance...

Clothes dryer, three times (heat sensor, timer switch, motor)

Deep freeze (starter circuit assembly)

Microwave (replaced)

Toaster (replaced)

Fridge (repaired once, then replaced)

Cooking range (repaired one of the stove burners)

Dishwasher (repaired twice, then replaced due to rusted racks)

On the bright side, I've been able to find extensive repair info and spare parts online.

<comment><USER9> I think that there is a huge untapped market for selling easily repairable appliances to DIYers.

<comment><USER10> And go back to what has been the norm in the 50s. I have a few books from my grand father, by Eugène Aisberg: "La radio, mais c'est très simple", and the equivalent one for analog televisions. They explain the basic working principles of (analog, tube-based) radios ans TVs and how to repair them. The hardware was simpler and easier to fix back then.

<comment><USER11> And cars. Let's not forget about fault finding a car requires a considerable investment in diagnostics gear.

<comment><USER10> Motorcycles still win in that department, even if modern sportbikes are getting more and more electronic helpers.

<comment><USER9> Electronic helpers are fine, as long as you can easily replace them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In Australia, while manufacturers don't have to label their products with the expected lifespan, under consumer law they are obliged to honor warranties for the 'reasonable life span' of a given product.

This mean that if your $1k iPhone or $3k television break outside their warranty period but still inside what a reasonable person expect it to work (say 3, maybe 4 years for an undamaged iPhone, or 5-6 years for a brand name LCD TV), then you are entitled to repairs or replacement, regardless of the stated warranty period of the manufacturer.

<comment><USER13> Interesting that this is left open ended like this. The term "reasonable" means different things to different people. What is the point of having a defined warranty period?

<comment><USER14> I assume the point is not having to sue to fix your iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While on the surface this might sound good by evoking ideas of more sustainability and less and lower velocity of consumerism, we need to consider the goods in question.

For example, let's take a washing machine from 20 years ago and compare the efficiency of a modern washing machine -and subtract the added manufacturing input into the new machine. Or incandescent bulbs and LED lights. Or for that matter older cars and modern cars. I hope they take those things into account. Just because something will last long doesn't mean it's best in the long run.

Still, it's not a bad idea to consider. And then we could at least know how often we might have to buy phones ---but then someone will redefine what a functional mobile phone is "it can make a regular voice call and the battery will last 10 minutes by the 3rd year." The other measure, how long will it keep the same level of utility as it was when it was new? That'd be trickier.

<comment><USER16> You don't compare in the same dimension. Newer washing machine might be more water and energy efficient than a 20-year-old one. But why do you think this affects its durability? Are you arguing that Samsung can't build efficient washing machines that are also durable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I doubt planned obsolescence is common. Think about the reaction of the consumer to something breaking down. Do they go "that was a great product, pity it broke, better buy the new version" or do they say "that was a shit product, I'm getting a different brand". And what about people figuring out which products break early from Amazon reviews?

I think this law is probably heavy handed and unnecessary. Especially in an age where most people spend their money on items like phones and laptops, which are reparable and become obsolete very fast anyway.

<comment><USER18> I feel like planned obsolescence is much more common that we initially think. For example, on the phone market, battery lasts on day out of the box. If we consider the battery losing .05% of its total charge after each charge/decharge cycle, after 2 years of constant use, it already lost 30% of its total charge. Yet, despite everyone being annoyed with having to charge their phones at least everyday, apple, samsung and others keep making phones that last a single day on a charge. They make their phones bigger, bulkier, faster, but nothing on the battery side (I think there was an article linked here where the author claimed he cracked the apple battery equation and his thought was "they make it last a day, not more not less)". And we can add to that prohibitive repair price and refusal to support older platforms, even though it's often just a cross compilation away.

I get it that it's probably better for any company out there to sell new devices rather than support old ones for free. It just that the "I doubt planned obsolescence is common" strikes me as a bit naive

<comment><USER17> Everything is a tradeoff with phones. There is a tradeoff between phone size, battery life, and processor power. One day is a natural sweet spot since people charge their phones at night. Sure, this will result in a less-than- one-day battery life over time But people might have been happy to replace their phone anyway for other reasons.

Supporting old platforms is not _just cross compilation_ , or at least the cross compilation involved is highly non-trivial.

I would say that excessive cynicism is as bad a bias as naivety. Everything you describe is actually consistent with perfectly informed consumers and profit maximizing companies. You are just not looking for explanations along these lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the Netherlands we have a warranty system that works a bit like this. Basically you have a warranty on your stuff as long as it's expected lifetime. So for instance you claim your warranty on a dishwasher for at least 5 years and on your MacBook you will probably get it for at least 3 years (of course you can't claim such a long lifespan on your battery).

</comment><comment><USER20> Personally, I like to buy assembled goods on sale from a manufacturer with a decent reputation, and then I DIY replace parts from the cheapest supplier I can find, since I'm typically out of warranty already anyways. I'll replace my laptop fan as soon as my cheap thermal grease comes in. After that, if I feel good about it, I'll upgrade the memory and hope to get another few years out of it.

I liked the idea of telling consumers the expected life of a product. But they're actually not doing that. Instead, they're going to threaten people with jail time and companies with huge fines. [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.numerama.com%2Fmagazine%2F32252-le- delit-d-obsolescence-programmee-adopte-au-senat.html&edit-text=)

But when you're making a product, you plan its construction around its life- expectancy. You don't make a doohicky with a sprocket that lasts 30 years when the other parts of the doohicky will only last 3 years. Instead, you get the sprocket made more cheaply with a life expectancy of 3 years, and your savings helps you compete with other doohicky manufacturers for the business of consumers.

It seems to me that France doesn't understand the economics of manufacturing. This seems to be another brain-dead decision by socialists that will cost jobs and raise the risks (and thus the costs) of doing business in the country. They'll have to pay those engineers and managers who make these design decisions even more to take on those risks. Marginal manufacturers will just get out, and jobs will be lost. Like they can afford it. [http://www.france24.com/en/20150127-france-unemployment- hits...](http://www.france24.com/en/20150127-france-unemployment-hits-new- record-high-december/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Here in New Zealand all goods sold to a consumer have to have a 'reasonable' life-span, with repair or replacement at the merchant's expense. Reasonable depends on the appliance and is determined by a magistrate. Things like lengths of extended warranty offered can be used to determine that.

It works pretty well. Of course the retailers like to avoid their obligations and people chime up with the "that's why prices are high" argument. If you're located at the bottom of the world everything's expensive anyway!

<comment><USER11> There is a law like that in most European countries afaik. In the UK it was called (back when I did business law 20 years ago) "fit for purpose" which was a vague description of 1. if it's a tumble dryer it should dry clothes without ruining them 2. it should last as long as a tumble dryer is expected to last (really up to whatever argument you can make in court should it get that far). Of course the UK law might have changed a lot since I was a young whippersnapper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This will make everything more expensive.

E.g. take Bosch/Siemens and Miele. Miele stuff really lasts forever but costs 2x that of Bosch/Siemens household stuff.

If I could afford it, I'd buy Miele.

<comment><USER23> But how many times do you have to replace the Bosch and Siemens appliances? It might be a bigger initial investment, but over a lifetime it will likely work out cheaper.

<comment><USER24> "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."

(Terry Pratchett, obviously)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I find it amusing that the photo at the top of the article shows a display exclusively consisting of German and Swedish-branded vacuum cleaners.

</comment><comment><USER26> Overpopulation is not expected to be an ongoing issue in the upcoming century, but there is general consensus that hundreds of millions if not billions of people over that same time period are anticipated to enter current developed- world working- and middle-class living standards. And under our current understanding of household technology, that means a commensurate rise in consumption of white appliances. This new group of entrants into the white appliance markets are likely to have lower income profiles than their developed-world counterparts, due to the deflationary bias of ongoing globalization trends.

This confluence of factors could potentially open up an interesting and highly profitable business niche for a manufacturer that focuses on modular, repairable, maybe-hackable appliances.

Instead of promoting a consumption model where entire units are tossed out at the "end" of a "lifecycle", I can now concede a manufacturer could thrive on a far leaner capital profile than current industry participants where I wouldn't have thought it possible only 10 years ago, by focusing on the logistical tail of constantly repairing and improving "old" models, as opposed to concentrating on the new product manufacturing end.

This is also beneficial on the embedded energy cost and resource utilization efficiencies levels, which becomes extremely important as we scale up the population that participates in higher socioeconomic levels.

Human form factor-dependent design points can probably stay relatively static to benefit families in lower socioeconomic strata. For example, washing machines have not really changed their basic form factor in about a century. I'd rather sell a patching kit designed for my older tubs (a common failure mode) to those families today, enticing them to grab a used older model of mine than hope to capture them as customers ten years from now when they can maybe afford a new unit from me; it pulls in future sales without destabilizing debt schemes. Or if they can afford a little more, I can sell them a retrofit kit that supplies a newer future cleaning technology (like ultrasonic?) that fits older models. If they care about aesthetics, I sell them paint that exactly matches what they have on the old model.

All this while, I not only keep my units out of the landfill, but in the hands of more customers earlier than I normally could acquire them and out of the hands of my competitors in an inexpensive marketing/sales denial of service attack on that competition (and indeed, my customers are paying for that attack instead of me having to heavily spend on marketing to them). On top of this, my manufacturing costs shift increasingly out of the predations of the unpredictable turns and gyres of the commodities markets, and towards design (especially software) and small parts manufacturing. These can have higher margins than the whole units, and might be a lot cheaper than even JIT inventory to "stock" in the future, with local 3D-printing-style distribution centers for those parts that can be on-demand manufactured practically at point of sale. As the global population level stabilizes as currently expected, I'd already be positioned to sell into an economic environment where brand-new product purchases are made with increasingly razor-thin margins.

For those oldest models that fall below a logistical tail cutoff, I could release CAD/CAM and other design files to let hackers do what they will with those models, with the intent to temporarily boost those models popularity and continue to stymie competitors' entrance with customers of those models. When the cost of labor is low enough, making repairing and reconditioning possible can potentially be very remunerative for manufacturers who do not build around a business model of continuous, growing new unit sales (which in turn is predicated upon a continuous, growing population).

</comment><comment><USER27> Isn't this the task that warrenties are supposed to fulfil?

</comment><comment><USER28> While good intentioned, I think the customer actually loses.

Take the car industry for example. Quality control variance prior to the 90s (ballpark) was a huge issue, this a result from automakers just being cheap and but also the lack of modern statistical-based end of life testing/analysis. The gov't did have to step in: Lemon Laws. But a couple of automakers responded, produced cars that didn't fall apart, people then voted with their do!lars, and made Toyota and Honda the power houses they are today. Nowdays, 100,000 mile warranty are almost standard, and just about every make of car is reliable.

Now, compare to the appliance industry. A couple thoughts: why aren't their "10 year warranties" on appliances? It's clearly something one would think consumers value, there should be a mfg taking advantage. Instead I only see appliances sold by "authorized retailers", who then try to sell you some b.s. 3rd party warranty.

This shows the entire retail/distribution chain is in on the racket. So fixing the problem will come from a market player solving this problem to deliver more of what the customer wants. Imposing additional reporting requirements on the manufacturers will just result in a 'wahhh, wahhh' our costs went up, we have to pass it on to the customer. So now everyone's appliances are more expensive, and manfucturers and retail partners continue with status quo.

<comment><USER29> I would be interested to see a tracking of the change of new car prices during that time. New car prices today are extraordinarily expensive, and from anecdotal experience, most consumers will only buy new cars through a loan. Surely, it wasn't always that way.

<comment><USER30> GMAC was founded in 1919 - it has always been that way.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't know that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can i get initial signups for my software(Grow in Cloud)? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently looking for feedback and ways to market the product. Any kind of suggestion or help would be appreciated.<p>URL : http://www.growincloud.com <comment><USER2> Product Hunt is a nice option</comment>


Redeye VC: Microsoft/Yahoo - let the exodus begin - <AUTHOR> http://redeye.firstround.com/2008/02/microsoftyahoo.html

<comment><USER2> Not trying to be a jackass here but how talented is Yahoo! engineers?

I've heard great stuffs about Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other companies' engineers but never heard much bout Yahoo!.

Can someone share their thoughts?

<comment><USER3> Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon hackers seem to be roughly equivalent. Google hackers seem better.

<comment><USER4> I think in all 4 cases, there is enough variability within each company that speaking about "hackers from big company $X" in general is not particularly meaningful -- that is, the mean at Google may be slightly higher, but the variance is still dominant.

<comment><USER5> I think we all realize this. I think we all realize that "Nine-year-olds are taller than eight-and-a-half-year-olds" doesn't deny the fact that there's more variance among than between. But if you have two random samples from each group, are you going to bet that variance will swamp mean, or that mean will show up despite variance?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SoftBank Expects $24B Loss - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/13/softbank-expects-24-billion-in-losses-from-vision-fund-wework-and-oneweb-investments/ <comment> 88840-8855 No problem. Masayoshi Son (the founder and CEO of softbank) has lost over 70bn in the Dotcom bubble, then rebuilt everything from scratch as Vodafone Japan KK fucked up so badly due to their incompetence and arrogance in the early 2000s.

[https://marketrealist.com/2019/07/softbanks-masayoshi-son- ja...](https://marketrealist.com/2019/07/softbanks-masayoshi-son-japans- buffett-once-lost-70-billion/)

What do we learn? \- social capital makes you economic capital - know rich and powerful people and you will be rich and powerful \- Western people suck in Asia when trying to localise</comment>


Paint.Net 4.0 is now available - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getpaint.net/2014/06/24/paint-net-4-0-is-now-available/ <comment><USER2> I've been in several offices where people think they need Photoshop to crop or resize photos. Consequently no-one has Photoshop (because its expensive) and people end up pasting 2000x800 images of logos into their letterhead and wondering why all the word files got so big.

Paint.Net is brilliant for doing common tasks like that.

Its a shame you have to play 'guess the download link' \- that has really stopped me from recommending it to people recently.

<comment><USER3> > Its a shame you have to play 'guess the download link' \- that has really > stopped me from recommending it to people recently.

It's one of the tools available on Ninite. Point them there instead: [https://ninite.com/](https://ninite.com/).

<comment><USER4> Or Chocolatey: [http://chocolatey.org/packages/paint.net/](http://chocolatey.org/packages/paint.net/)

<comment><USER5> Exactly.

cinst paint.net

This is how you should install software on any OS. If you're still hunting for downloading links you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER6> Oh yes. Users who don't know how to crop a photo w/out Photoshop are _totally_ using a Package Manager and the command line to install stuff. </sarcasm>

Chocolatey is great, but unfortunately package managers don't work for every piece of software on every OS. Period.

<comment><USER7> How are app stores (something which users are used to already) different from package managers with a user-friendly GUI?

<comment><USER8> The only thing I can think of is that they don't really install OS level stuff, think software libraries or runtimes etc.

Other than that they're literally identical to something like synaptic.

<comment><USER9> On Android they sometimes do install OS level stuff (libraries, etc). I think he has a good point.

The biggest difference I see is that package managers on most Linux distributions are designed to be extensible to support other sources. Application stores generally are not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Paint.NET is one of the first things I get when I install windows somewhere. It's actually pretty frustrating that there isn't a nice simple image editing tool like that for Mac (or Linux). There's Gimp but...

<comment><USER11> Pixelmator is my go-to OS X alternative.

<comment><USER12> Massive fan of Pixelmator, my #1 goto option on OSX. Very few apps have Pixelmator's quality and polish.

Paint.NET is a great option on Windows for quick and easy graphic work, has been enough to keep me off Photoshop (as a web dev) for years.

<comment><USER13> What got me to buy Pixelmator was the amount of instructional material they provide on their website, that is well laid out and easy to follow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Once I read somewhere that Paint.NET developer is the only in the interwebs than can make a living out only of donations for his software. I don't know if this is true, but it is totally deserved.

I use Paint.NET for a lot of things, most of them professionally. If I someday get lucky in this startup lottery thing, I intend to donate some thousands of dollars.

EDIT for add: I see a lot of comments talking about using Paint.NET for croping and resizing. I do so _much_ more than this. I actually create all kinds of communication materials with it. Flyers, images for a landing page, business cards, etc. The layers feature is what make it of great value for me. Also the feature to open different images at the same time is great to create an image that includes a logo, a stock photo, a standard background.

Two things that are missing: be able to save it using CMYK color scheme (better for professional printing) and saving as PDF (easier to send it to graphic stores).

<comment><USER15> Maybe he makes money also with the 50 pages displaying ads you have to visit before to be able to download the file. But this does not detract from the qualities of the software, that I use daily.

<comment><USER16> What am I missing? I had three clicks, zero ads.

I clicked here: [http://www.getpaint.net/download.html](http://www.getpaint.net/download.html)

Then I clicked here: [http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html](http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html)

Then here for the file: [http://www.dotpdn.com/files/paint.net.4.0.install.zip](http://www.dotpdn.com/files/paint.net.4.0.install.zip)

I use adblock, but when I fired up another browser, I still had three clicks, and the only ads were one typical square block ad, that didn't get in the way at all.

<comment><USER17> these are the ads:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9dzn78tfh2srnb/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9dzn78tfh2srnb/Screenshot%202014-06-25%2014.48.47.png)

It isn't really a bad thing. He's giving the software away for free. I'm never a fan of the ones that pretend to be the download link (the ad on the left linked to [http://www.mac- zip.com/lp/freezip_osx/df?mnag=155060&mnct=45...](http://www.mac- zip.com/lp/freezip_osx/df?mnag=155060&mnct=4528&mncr=0&gclid=COSOiI6Ilb8CFUcV7AodOT0Acw) god knows what kind of stuff you'd get if you downloaded/ran that...)

<comment><USER16> Interestingly, others seem to be seeing two ads. With Chrome I only get one ad square, the one on the left part of the page. The ad on the right never shows up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In case you don't enjoy clicking through half a dozen pages to get to the download, the actual link is on this page [http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html](http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Haven't really tried much yet, but initial impression is that it seems noticeably snappier than the older version.

That said, I mostly use it to crop images and highlight regions when documenting bug-reports with screenshots.

Most of these enhancements are probably not meant for me :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The major improvement for everyone is decreased startup time thanks to Multicore JIT. That was one of my few irritations with Paint.NET.

Paint.NET should perform better overal thanks to GPU acceleration and multithreaded rendering. I've personally used the alpha's and beta's for a while now and it just feels zippier.

<comment><USER20> Why wouldn't something like Paint.NET just be AOT compiled with ngen?

<comment><USER21> it's JIT compiling of the third-party plugins, which are dropped by the user in a folder and not AOT compiled.

      > Startup performance when many plugins are installed is improved, thanks to the Multicore JIT feature

Paint.NET assemblies are NGEN-compiled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My GF is a teacher who did some graphics design and typesetting part-time during her time at the university. She used the Adobe products of course. When teaching at a school for the first time, and doing image manipulation with the pupils, she had to use Gimp because it is free and because of that the "oficially recommended" program. She had real trouble adjust to the GUI and teaching it to her pupils and at the same time the tool was way oversized for the tasks. I showed her Paint.NET and it was like heaven-sent for her.

<comment><USER23> I agree the GIMP developers are missing out on a big opportunity by not making their UI look/behave more like the commercial products people are used to. But on the other side there are a lot of people used to the current GIMP UI as well.

Good thing there are projects like Gimpshop (though I havent' tried it yet), GIMP is a open source project so I don't see why we wouldn't have multiple UI's just like there are for Linux, KDE, GNOME, Xfce, ... as long as the core remains the same.

<comment><USER24> Every time image editing comes up on forums, so does mentions of GIMP. To me, there seems to be no shortage of "GIMP has UX problems" claims.

So what gives? Do they not believe that this is a legitimate problem hurting their adoption? Or do they not care about adoptions? Somehow it's not a priority? Or their execution is severely lacking.

<comment><USER23> I'm not in any way affiliated with GIMP or even a graphics professional but as a programmer I think part of it is ideological (GIMP is not a copy of photoshop, why would we spend a lot of resources to change something that works for us and copy adobe for example just to appeal to users who don't want to learn to use a new UI or workflow) and part of may be just because they are more or less happy with it, they have a steady user base (at least it seems that way guessing by the mentioning of GIMP on forums as you say), also it's not like they (programmers/community) are going to get rich off of it so there might be no profit motive in revamping the whole thing.

I think the project just needs some fresh blood, either a fork that strives for a (better) more familiar UX for people that are switching from commercial products or an easy way to decouple the UI from the core and build custom front ends. There's no point in re-developing all the functionality that's already in GIMP, it's a functional product with years of development behind it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's a bit sad that this program was open-source once, and then further versions got closed. (It's the other way around to what usually happens!)

<comment><USER26> There's some history there. Basically a scammer was passing it off as a paid app [1].

See also [2]:

 _" Excluding the installer, text, and graphics, Paint.NET was released under a modified version of the MIT License.[6] It was initially released as completely open source, but due to breaches of license, all resource files (such as interface text and icons) were released under a Creative Commons license forbidding modification, and the installer was made closed-source.[7]

Version 3.36 was initially released as partial open source, but the sources were later removed by Brewster, citing problems with plagiarism. In version 3.5, the license was altered to reflect this, and users are now prohibited from modifying the software. As free licenses cannot be revoked, developers can still legally develop forks based on version 3.36 and earlier. Brewster later stated that he hopes to release portions of the source code back into the public."_

[1]: [http://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors- beware-...](http://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware- of-%E2%80%9Cbackspaceware%E2%80%9D/)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.NET#Overview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.NET#Overview)

<comment><USER25> All opensource software is subject to scammers like this, so I think the Paint.NET author overreacted.

<comment><USER27> If the author see no obvious benefits with keeping it open source but sees downsides I don't see why it would be an over reaction. I did exactly the sane thing as he a few years ago. I've since opened sourced it again since people were wanting to contribute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Since my house got raided the only computers left were Macs. I really don't miss that much of Windows except Visual Studio and Paint.NET. Paint.NET is and feels really robust and everything it does just works like you expect it. I tried all alternatives for Macintosh and they all don't have the same features and have UI issues.

</comment><comment><USER29> Worth a donation. This is such an awesome app.

<comment><USER30> How about donating to some opensource project like Gimp or Krita, so that everyone benefits, not just Windows users?

<comment><USER31> Because the parent apparently doesn't like those as much as Gimp / Krita etc? Open source is a noble goal, but not equal to worth donations / money.

<comment><USER30> Or the parent doesn't know open-source alternatives exist. It doesn't hurt to remind about them, seeing as their development would benefit more people in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Paint.NET is one of the best free graphic applications. It' amazing how easy and fast it is.

I only miss a dark theme.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm unfamiliar with Paint.NET. I'm sure this question gets asked a lot, but could someone summarize the main differences between Paint.NET and GIMP?

</comment><comment><USER34> I appreciate that the author wants to get something back, but really? Why would I have to click through 4 or 5 pages just to get the download started, while nearly being tricked to click several abusive CNET "Download Here!" ads. Free apps like this would make a much more professional impression if they didn't clutter their websites with ads that no one will ever click (except for by mistake).

</comment><comment><USER35> For the people asking for a Mac or Linux equivalent, Paint.NET is actually a .NET Framework application (hence the .NET) and has been ported to run on Mono: [https://code.google.com/p/paint-mono/](https://code.google.com/p/paint- mono/) (a little out of date, but still.)

</comment><comment><USER36> hi, paint.net user here, using paint.net since netframework 3.0 and stopped upgrading from above v3.5 i think it may not madder for the programmer of paint.net, but... i stopped ugrading cause for me it seemed that all the newer versions are mainly fixing bugs which were not in v3.5, and it continues... yes, in all the years using paint.net errors/bugs only happend through plugins _smile_.

there are two points which i would like to be "nachgereicht" but thats something for the paint.net-forums...

what you can do with pixels when there are vector-based drawing programs...

maybe make others smile (?) heres an example truly inspired by frankie zappas: "bobby brown" direct link to image: [http://i.imgur.com/0CIgBXV.png](http://i.imgur.com/0CIgBXV.png)

</comment><comment><USER37> Yes, anti-aliased selections! I love Paint.NET. It suits all my image editing needs completely. I've been using it for over 2 years. It's my go-to image editing program and I recommend it to anyone who wants a professional, feature-full, and free tool.

<comment><USER38> Ah, excellent! I used to always use the feather selection tool but this should be more helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It is impressive that Paint.NET keeps on releasing updated software _for free._

<comment><USER30> Just like every other freeware ever? How is this impressive? Emacs has been releasing updates for almost 30 years!

<comment><USER40> Just because others do it, it doesn't mean it's not impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is there an app that comes close to Paint.NET on the Mac?

<comment><USER42> Pixelmator is brilliant. [http://www.pixelmator.com](http://www.pixelmator.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It would be great if Paint.NET could ship with Windows!

<comment><USER44> No kidding, if there's any Microsoft acquisition that makes sense, it's this! :P

<comment><USER45> Rick Brewster is a Microsoft employee and he still collects a paycheck.

But I am pretty sure that people at Microsoft have long forgotten him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Beware that it silently installs .NET 4.52!

</comment><comment><USER47> without further ado

<comment><USER48> [http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/ado- versu...](http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/ado-versus- adieu?page=all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I had this, but got rid. I find my mastery of regular paint suffices and for anything else, I can hop into Photoshop.

<comment><USER50> Well, Paint.NET is for people who don't want to buy Photoshop. Adobe products are not priced for people who only use them occasionally.

<comment><AUTHOR> Plus Paint.NET occupies a sweet spot: it is simple enough to easily do easy tasks like cropping, while complex enough to do so slightly more advanced things.

I find it to be especially popular among IT professionals as they usually don't need to do photo-manipulation ("photoshopping"), but need to process images every so often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I never used it because I've got Photoshop installed on Windows but just gave it a try.

The first thing I noticed was the enormous lag of the mouse movements. So I think for an free alternative I will stick to Gimp.

<comment><USER52> I just used it without lag. Consider making a bug report instead of a snarky comment on HN?

<comment><USER53> What was snarky about it? I agree, he should file a bug report, as I'm on a modern system and don't have lag (I use paint.net and Gimp on Windows 7). But his comment was fairly emotionless and to the point.</comment></comment></comment>


Thinking About Groups - <AUTHOR> http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/07/thinking-about.html

<comment><USER2> I would say Fred is arguing against his own desire for comments to be less fragmented. Just as the 'groups' by those portals are different, those reading his blog also read in groups, such as the HN group here.

I'm not sure I see the sense in taking comments out of their group context and mashing them all together.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interestingly, groups can use Ning for all of this, can't they. It comes built in with all the stuff talked about?

</comment><comment><USER4> _The point is, every group is different, so the idea of one particular group software solving everyone's problem is never going to work._

You can say that about _any_ kind of software.

Your choices are:

\- buy a package and settle for the lowest common denominator

\- write custom code

\- get a customizable platform and shoot for the best of both worlds

</comment><comment><USER5> Agree.</comment>


Rich Wolsky on AWS Outage: When the Lights Go Out   - <AUTHOR> http://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2011/04/23/when-lights-go-out

<comment><USER2> I was sincerely hoping that this article was about to touch on the issue that having uptime calculations (like, "99% durable") is actually not terribly useful when, in the case of the 1%, the entire system goes offline at once, taking out multiple "availability zones" and leaving 10-20% (the remainder after you take out what Amazon likes to call a "vast majority") of the infrastructure broken for days on end.</comment>


Why do some Americans say 'like' so often? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-Americans-say-like-so-often?share=1 <comment><USER2> And... "here's the thing"</comment>


VCs Privately Seethe Over Facebook's New Direction - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/71029/vcs-privately-seethe-over-facebook-plans-"no-one-wants-to-moon-the-giant"/

<comment><USER2> This would have a lot more teeth in it if it were VCs backing facebook but they are not, so what's there for them to seethe over, it's not exactly their money.

They're anonymous as well, so it really doesn't carry much weight at all.

<comment><USER3> If Facebook's ... posture poisons the Web 2.0 well, at worst case by prompting heavy handed government intervention, then they have plenty to seethe over.

<comment><USER2> You mean like enacting privacy legislation? I'd see that as a positive move.

<comment><USER3> You're assuming that any product of the US Congress (under either party) would be an improvement over what we have now. I find your faith touching but unrealistic.

E.g. has the law segregating the web into under and over 13 years of age portions really improved anything ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act))? Very possibly something needed to be done here, but from my perspective it's shut out formal access to a lot of adolescents who need access to various sites. Implicitly encouraging them to lie about their age is also not a good thing.

<comment><USER2> I'm not American, but Dutch, and we already have such laws here and they function pretty good.

<comment><USER3> Well, that's my point (e.g. I knew you are European).

Something that works in your society and system of government might not work in one that's significantly different. We have good evidence in many directions, e.g. laws that don't really protect privacy, laws who's cure is much worse than the disease and laws that only make privacy worse (e.g. Dodd's bill as far as I've read accounts of it WRT to privacy), to make us leery of anything but the most important and desperate privacy concerns. And I don't think what Facebook is doing needs a government solution, I think we, the society and the market, will work it out.

One question: do you have a law that requires government registration of private databases about people? I know the U.K. did that.

<comment><USER2> I don't think so, I've been looking for a while now and I can't find a clear statement that that is a requirement.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hi I'm Hank, and I bought a bus - <AUTHOR> http://www.hankboughtabus.com/a-tour-of-the-bus/ <comment><USER5> Holy hell. I'd love to live in that. Sure, I live in a rather cheap apartment right now, but come on. That's beautiful work, cheap, and probably could sell for a hell of a lot more.

The only stipulations coming to my mind that would stop me from rushing out and doing it /right now/, are

* What are the laws like, regarding parking and sleeping this somewhere? Do I have to find campground or something, or just live in Walmart parking lots all the time?

* What's done for cooling/heating? Does this require a pretty temperate environment, or is it relatively well sealed?

* Is all power generated by the bus? If so, does that make traditional tasks on the computer or other places hell, with the shaking, and if not, what generates it and how much can you support?

In general, I LOVE the idea, and the execution. That bus looks as roomie as my(once again, crappy, but still, a real) apartment.

<comment><USER6> _What 's done for cooling/heating? Does this require a pretty temperate environment, or is it relatively well sealed?_

Vehicles leak like sieves unless you seal them up yourself, which could be a catastrophically bad idea if exhaust starts to find its way into the vehicle while it is running.

Aside from opening windows or bundling up and shivering, your cooling/heating options are either typical house HVAC appliances, or extending the functionality of the onboard heating and cooling and hoping that you bought a diesel, which are much more tolerant than gasoline engines of idling all day. Which brings me back to the risk of exhaust gasses when the passenger compartment is mostly sealed.

For electrical power to run appliance-type HVAC, you could use a small generator.

<comment><USER5> Shouldn't all mechanical areas be able to be sealed off from the living area, given enough insulation at the windows? I could see the driver area not being sealed off, but still having the living area be absolutely safe.

<comment><USER6> Not a chance. Vehicles leak _everywhere_. Through the firewall, the doors, the windows, the roof, the floorboards, the... everywhere. We aren't talking about the metaphorical submarine with a screen door. This submarine was _built_ out of screen.

You can seal it! Yes, you can, absolutely. The question, remember, is what happens when you seal it and accidentally miss that one critical leak (of which there are many) through which the exhaust then hotboxes you in your nicely sealed cabin.

<comment><USER7> I suspect this is why so many people that live out of vehicles (Cars, RVs, whatever) have a fire/carbon monoxide detector.

<comment><USER8> I think having more than one for redundancy would be a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Traveling around countries, continents, or the world is becoming more and more popular in 4x4s and unimogs converted in this way. See this [1] for a good example of what the back of a Land Cruiser capable of driving around the world can look like.

I drove Alaska->Argentina in 2 years, and now I'm in the planning stages of an around-Africa trip which will flow into a Europe->SE Asia->Australia trip.

For anyone interested, checkout [http://wikioverland.org](http://wikioverland.org) for all the logistical info you'll need, and forums like [http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum](http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum) and [http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/](http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/) to meet people actually doing it.

[1] [http://www.geocruiser.nl/images26/inbouw2-100.jpg](http://www.geocruiser.nl/images26/inbouw2-100.jpg)

<comment><USER10> Hi Grecy,

Do you speak German? www.kohlbach.org/Download/kohle_afrika.pdf

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of Gabriel. He bought a Firetruck.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5432962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5432962)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it true that in the US you could drive this monster with a regular driving licence? In the EU you would need either a C class licence(if it's over 3.5 tonnes) or a D class licence(if it can seat more than 9 people). Both are rather difficult to get if someone is not used to driving large vehicles, and require completing additional 20-30 hours of learning, not to mention the fact that you can't get them until you held a regular(B class) licence for at least 3 years(in most EU countries, exceptions apply).

<comment><USER13> In the US, you can drive a vehicle with up to 15 passengers on a regular license.

The bus has been converted and _should_ be registered as a non-commercial recreational vehicle, so it would be the same license for that... probably a Class A, depending on gross vehicle weight rating.

It's a slight step up in training from your normal vehicle, and would probably require a health certificate, etc... but not as expensive as a CDL (commercial driver license), which would usually entail a few weeks of training and ~$2,500 in costs.

<comment><USER14> Class C and Class A RV licenses _do not_ require anything above a standard driver's license.

Disclaimer: I own an RV.

<comment><USER15> It's a little scary just how far this applies.

We're building military 6x6's into motorhomes, and as soon as they meet the requirements for a living space, there's no special regulation.

<comment><USER16> What's the mileage like on those? I had done some reading up and was considering one of those instead of a bus.

<comment><USER15> We're picking up the newer series of 5 tons, which get about 7 MPG with the latest revision turbo diesel. Earlier ones get about 4.

Little hard to swallow the fuel cost if you're planning on back-and-forth trips, but my route is a long, drawn out squiggle across north and south America, so we'll only be doing a few hundred miles a month. And, hey, no rent to pay!

<comment><USER14> Where are you getting your 6x6s from?

<comment><USER15> Trucks, and everything else your tax dollars go to that the US government doesn't want, all sell at auction on [http://govliquidation.com](http://govliquidation.com) for pennies on the dollar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Beautifully clean lines.

I sure hope he used Formaldehyde-free plywood though. It would be terribly noxious to live in if he just used the standard stuff.

[http://www.epa.gov/iaq/formaldehyde.html](http://www.epa.gov/iaq/formaldehyde.html) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanal)

<comment><USER18> Oh man.

After smell of VOCs, etc. Fire is the other concern. Exits gotta be clear and plenty.

<comment><USER19> All those windows can be converted into exits on the fly via the application of a $5 emergency hammer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This brings back memories of the first school bus conversion I ever saw covered extensively online, from the genius mind of Jake Van Slatt [1]. He took the reuse of discarded materials as his main inspiration, and really turned out something beautiful. His blog is full of all sorts of kooky inventions and reclaimed item builds.

He posted two great summaries of the bus interior and construction on his newer website: [http://steampunkworkshop.com/bus2.shtml](http://steampunkworkshop.com/bus2.shtml) [http://steampunkworkshop.com/bus1.shtml](http://steampunkworkshop.com/bus1.shtml)

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

</comment><comment><USER21> This is great, but living in vehicles is not a new idea, I'm sure there are thousands of people in the US living in buses/trucks/etc. Hank did a great job on the design though. It reminds me of the interior of a canal boat - <USER2> often have the same layout techniques.

Here's a UK couple that converted a double-decker bus: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- kent-18651140](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-18651140)

<comment><USER22> It was apparently quite popular in the 60ies. Where I'm from in Eugene, Oregon, there are even hippy busses that got permanently parked and added on to as they formed the nucleus of a house.

If I'm not mistaken, this is one such example:

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Fox+Hollow+Rd,+Eugene,+OR,+US...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Fox+Hollow+Rd,+Eugene,+OR,+USA&hl=en&ll=43.952015,-123.156567&spn=0.025983,0.066047&sll=45.406504,11.891245&sspn=0.202712,0.528374&oq=fox+hollow&hnear=Fox+Hollow+Rd,+Eugene,+Oregon+97405&t=p&z=15&layer=c&cbll=43.951995,-123.156418&panoid=6sr2cT1Lhfm_rllcGE8Vyg&cbp=12,22.58,,2,-2.77)

( I'm kind of amazed that I managed to find that - I haven't lived there in years, although I did ride my bike up and down that road dozens of times )

<comment><USER23> Saw an example of this in Homer, AK

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting project, and it looks well executed. I wonder whether Hank took a look at British narrowboats at all? The design constraints are very similar and there's a couple of centuries of experience to draw on:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat)

</comment><comment><USER25> I live on a canal boat in London ([http://everythinginthesky.com/tagged/boatlyfe](http://everythinginthesky.com/tagged/boatlyfe)) that I'm looking to do up in a similar fashion. It's a long road, though - <USER4> installed solar panels and a basic 3G wifi setup, but it's all been delayed while I have it stripped back to bare metal and rebuilt. The nice part about the boat is that the arrangements for moving it / living on it are a bit more formalised than I imagine this is and are part of the lifestyle. Still, this seems like a much more mobile solution. Good post!

<comment><USER26> Aaaawesome! Are you planning to post some new photos?

<comment><USER25> Yep, will do when the work continues. It's on pause right now while I'm away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I designed (but did not build, alas) a yacht in architecture class. Researching and designing the interior cabin was incredibly fun and challenging... I bet Hank had a blast designing this thing.

Ideas for the empty space currently being used as overflow storage:

* Water and/or fuel tanks (more necessary on a boat than on a bus)

* Shower

* Brig

* Pantry

* Rifle stowage

* Server room

(I went on to be a naval architect for a short while but never had a real project as fun as the catamaran design.)

</comment><comment><USER28> It's called living in an RV like a modern day Nomad. People have been doing it for years in America, what is new about this?

<comment><USER29> I hate to be a downer...but this has been all over the news and I don't get why. Bus conversions have been around for ages. From the most basic to the most space shuttle like... It's a nice project and congratulations to Hank - <USER4> converted a van myself recently - but I fail to see the wow factor here.

<comment><USER30> He himself acknowledges that it has been done before, but he wanted to explore it further. I don't think claimed anywhere that this was somehow revolutionary or ground breaking. Why does it have to be so? Is there anything wrong with appreciating a well executed and beautiful project (with great documentation)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Nice sales pitch. Not so sure about the end result.

It's quite pretty and the bed arrangement is novel although I'm not sure how practical it would be for a couple over time.

The loo is very basic considering what you can rip out of a 15 year old caravan.

I don't like the long central aisle design although it makes everything look bigger. Most boats, vans and caravans tend to use L shapes to break things up a bit.

Still, an interesting part of the USAian dream... [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travels_with_Charley:_In_Search...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travels_with_Charley:_In_Search_of_America)

</comment><comment><USER32> I didn't read all the comments, but I did see a few people mentioned boats. I was going to say that there are many, many, many layouts for small, mobile, livable spaces such as RVs, motorboats, and sailboats. Given that many are more creative and better done than this example (straight line), I'm not too impressed. In fact, I don't like the openness--it looks too much like ... a school bus.

I do like some of the details, such as the ceiling lighting and the modular bed/storage. But the kitchen and dining and bathroom areas are uninspired. I much prefer the little U-shaped kitchens in modern sailboats, where everyting is easily reachable. Also, if I had such a project, I wouldn't be constrained by the existing ceiling either: I'm thinking a pop-top loft sleeping area or a roof terrace with interior ladder/staircase access.

Not to be overly negative, but I don't see the connection to architecture here. There are a few tenous links, such as the shape of the ceiling (dictated by the bus) and the thought that went into the bed-storage. But all the rest seems more like rough out interior design (fit and finish of the furniture)--and the unfinished bathroom and kitchen aren't appealing at all. I do think he got a lot done for a short project, but is it architecture?

</comment><comment><USER33> My oldest brother built a bus too. It's a different approach but similar concept. Love these builds. Check out my brothers bus and build log here:

[http://www.bunedoggle.com/skoolie/](http://www.bunedoggle.com/skoolie/)

</comment><comment><USER17> My dad did something similar back in art school. He bought a used postal delivery truck and it was his semester project to convert it into an RV.

Once completed, he'd take weekend trips. Leave SF Friday evening and drive an arbitrary direction until he was tired. He'd find a place to park and in the morning wake up in a new and unknown location to explore for the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER34> Imagine this being a self driving car/bus. You could fall asleep in Berlin and wake up in Barcelona.

Now imagine it being electric and solar powered.

Is that the future of cities? On wheels.

<comment><USER35> Or not wake up at all.

<comment><USER36> I think you're implying dying from carbon monoxide poisoning? I think that it can't happen if it's "electric and solar powered".

And leave at least one window fully open (or the sunroof) for fresh air and the other cause (suffocation) is eliminated as well.

<comment><USER37> I'd think of road accidents.

I'm not sure vehicle's AI would gracefully handle a case of meeting some idiot full-speed cruising through a red light.

<comment><USER38> Well, we're not equipped with radar and they are. Also, when self-driving cars become reasonably common, there is no excuse whatsoever to allow idiots to continue driving. Things like DUI should lead to a lifetime loss of privilege to operate a manual vehicle, and the penalty for violating should be reckless endangerment, not "driving with a suspended license".

<comment><USER23> Usually it's lidar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Out of curiosity, what are the laws on these? (in USA, Canada or UK)

Can you legally sleep in a vehicle?

<comment><USER17> Same as an RV. Varies from city to city. In mine, (in California) they try to prevent people from sleeping in their vehicles by posting signs like "no vehicles longer than x feet" or "no parking between 3am and 6am" on certain city streets. Fortunately, they allocate some parking spaces in city lots specifically for RVs. Also, some private organizations (churches, etc.) allow a few RVs to park in their lots during off times.

It's definitely a challenge though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If you want to some of the more 'rustic' end of the bus conversion world check out [http://www.travellerhomes.co.uk](http://www.travellerhomes.co.uk) \- full of interesting traveller bus conversions, mainly from the 80s. My sisters bus is somewhere on the site, though she gave up living in it years and years ago.

</comment><comment><USER18> As to possible improvements (it's both a house and a vehicle, so there's plenty to keep one busy if that's the choice):

Solar panels are much better these days and a bus has obviously tons of space to put them.

AGM batteries are also the way to go.

If there were an raspberry pi + app to remotely report battery charge level on a mobile, that would be awesomesauce.

</comment><comment><USER41> Very nice, I was also very inspired by this guy's bus : [http://steampunkworkshop.com/bus1.shtml](http://steampunkworkshop.com/bus1.shtml) which has a Victorian theme going on.

Converting school busses into RV's is quite a hobby, there are _lots_ of them out there. But more importantly there are lots of good resources for not getting screwed in terms of buying a bus with 3M miles on it that needs a new engine or something. Also "filling up" is not for the faint of heart when you drive a bus.

Things I like about this conversion are the simplicity and ability to re- configure easily. Things that might be a challenge are stuff flying around when you turn corners and what not.

</comment><comment><USER42> I would say that in the EU you would have a nightmare with this bus. You'd be able to drive anywhere, but parking over night would be a major problem.

I did a 6 month stint over winter, in the UK, 'stealth' living in a converted Ford Transit HiTop LWB Van (had bed, cooker, toilet, bank of 3 batteries and a diesel heating system.) It worked well, but primarily it worked because you could pull up anywhere and park for the night without calling attention to yourself.

Showers where provided by whichever local sports centre I could find :)

Oh and this is an exceptional site if you ever want to try this [http://www.parkopedia.co.uk/](http://www.parkopedia.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER43> Really awesome. About the heating/cooling, maybe you could just drive to a nicer climate, like down to Florida for the winter. Of course, life obligations permitting. Seems like a great setup for retired people. Ultimate snowbird vehicle.

</comment><comment><USER44> My favorite bus conversion is at [http://digitalmastery.com/creativecruiser/?page_id=107](http://digitalmastery.com/creativecruiser/?page_id=107) or [https://www.facebook.com/CreativeCruiser](https://www.facebook.com/CreativeCruiser) for more recent updates.

Lots of design and construction pictures.

</comment><comment><USER45> This reminds me of the shipping container turned relocatable dwelling: [http://www.fabprefab.com/fabfiles/containerbay/059MDU- lotek/...](http://www.fabprefab.com/fabfiles/containerbay/059MDU-lotek/MDU- UCSB-home.htm)

Of course you'd need to rent a truck to drive it around, but it expands similar to some RVs.

</comment><comment><USER16> That looks like a very limited conversion. Did you do an electrical system at all or a powered water system?

</comment><comment><USER46> Love the morphed school bus. I'd just take this idea to the next level and design a nice Volvo/Scania bus into a mobile living space. Would cost a hell lot more but this design is way way way better than any of the custom Scania/volvo designs that I've seen.

<comment><USER23> There's someone who converts Volvo semis into RVs Asa business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> What is the milage on the thing by the way? Wonder what part of his monthly budget is allocated to Gas.

<comment><USER16> Most full sized buses get 7-8mpg. It's like driving a Hummer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> [http://tinyhouseblog.com/yourstory/the-novelty-unschool- bus/](http://tinyhouseblog.com/yourstory/the-novelty-unschool-bus/)

Another, slightly more lived-in one, slightly lower-design one.

</comment><comment><USER49> Beautiful and neat hacks. Wood is a good choice for the project since it's cheap and looks good if you put labor (which he has) into it.

Wood is also extremely heavy, which makes it a terrible choice if you actually plan on driving.

<comment><USER50> Buses are designed to be driven everywhere while full of human beings so, although the mileage might be atrocious, there should be little concern about the safety of a wood interior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> A friend of mine has a school bus, but it needs a new suspension bladder and those a) aren't cheap and b) are hard to replace. There's nothing more expensive than a cheap (insert noun here).

</comment><comment><USER52> All I can see in my imagination is Hank Hill working on that bus.

</comment><comment><USER53> Because there seem to be some people that have seen similar projects: Is there like a website for such cool conversions of vehicles and other places into living spaces?

</comment><comment><USER54> Not to knock his accomplishment, because this is really cool. My first thought was: this thing must creak and squeak like crazy as you head down the road.

</comment><comment><USER55> I did a search for the word splinters, and found none in the comments or in the post. Has this issue been addressed?!

</comment><comment><USER56> What are the rules for this in Australia?

<comment><USER57> That is up to each state. Here are the rules for Victoria: [http://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/19ADFB21-5D33-49...](http://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/19ADFB21-5D33-49BC-B0CD-1CFC642AFD07/0/VSI5_WEB.pdf)

<comment><USER56> Thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> that is sofaking amazing. cheers to Hank!

If he can figure out how to convert it to a serial gas/electric hybrid that would be cool. cover the roof in solar panels - blinds could be solar panels too.

</comment><comment><USER59> Could it be viable to refurbish old busses into mobile homes?

<comment><USER60> While cool, I'm betting a used mobile home + mods is cheaper. Of course you have to give the bus some points for the wow factor.

<comment><USER61> There was a chap living in an old 20 seat bus some time ago in the Midlands, UK. No conversions, just basically sleeping rough in a bus.

I've seen much nicer converted railway carriages in Scotland, and there is at least one converted railway carriage you can rent for holidays. These are static of course.

This chap should do a line of those storage bed units for people in small flats!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> My question is: Do you take turns smoking and driving?

</comment><comment><USER63> Wonderful....Great blog and photos..Keep em coming.

</comment><comment><USER64> Bloody hell. I want to do this. Good job, dude!

</comment><comment><USER65> This is a refreshingly good post.

</comment><comment><USER18> Probably ~16 mpg, so a donation link for fuel budget would be fair. I think people would help because of the awesomeness.

<comment><USER66> He wrote 10mpg in the comments [1]. That means $0.39/mile on average driving in the U.S. [2].

[1] [http://www.hankboughtabus.com/a-tour-of-the- bus/#comment-508](http://www.hankboughtabus.com/a-tour-of-the- bus/#comment-508)

[2] [http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/](http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> It beautiful, I really like it!

</comment><comment><USER68> awesome. he should sell advertising on side of bus as he tours the country.

</comment><comment><USER69> >about $6000 in improvements

He could have saved around $2000 if he didn't include the riced Macbook.

</comment><comment><USER70> This is great....

</comment><comment><USER71> This is awesome!!!

</comment><comment><USER72> I'm a big fan of this type of living. We need to provide cheap places to park overnight RV's/buses. We have been conditioned to believe we need to live in high priced boxes. If things don't work out for me, it's a boat off Dunphy Park. It will have a very well designed 12v solar system.

<comment><USER73> > We have been conditioned to believe we need to live in high priced boxes.

The housing market in the US (and the UK) always surprises me. People here just rent medium-priced parts of boxes, often far after they found a family and only move into their own homes in their thirties/fourties, if at all.

In the US/UK, on the other hand, it appears to be much more common to buy and sell houses like commodities whenever you feel like moving.

<comment><USER74> I'm in the UK and my general impression is that people absolutely hate "throwing away" money paying rent, and would rather they were "investing" in property. Of course, they often don't take into account that they might end up paying more on mortgage interest than they were on rent anyway, and if they hate the place they're going to be out potentially 10s of thousands in fees

</comment></comment></comment><comment> o0-0o So much taste. So much style. So much... Coors light? Gosh, Hank. Ick.

<comment><USER75> That's Coors Original. Not much better, but still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Its this kind of out the box thinking and guts to follow through with your idea that makes a true difference in this world.

<comment><USER77> > Its this kind of out the box thinking and guts to follow through with your > idea that makes a true difference in this w

I'll be the first to say this is a sweet bus & transformation and kudos to Hank for finding something he wanted to do and going after it. BUT, I think it's a bit of a stretch to say it's going to change the world. Maybe Hank's got bigger plans for it - but is it too much to ask to just call this a "freaking awesome project" and congratulate Hank on his out-of-the-box thinking without saying it's "revolutionary", "world changing" or some other hyperbole?

<comment><USER6> Maybe the best thing to do is just run with the hyperbole, join in with songzme, and pray like hell that when the hyperbole reaches critical mass it will implode on itself.

<comment><USER78> Maybe it'll lead to a hyperbolic chain reaction, destroying everything in a hundred mile radius. That fallout will linger in the environment for decades, from molehills to mountains, killing all living discussions or grossly mutating them into beastly overstatements.

It's a horrid picture.

<comment><USER6> See, you've got the right idea already!

<comment><USER78> Fools, turn back. In 1908, Tunguska, my grand-grand father, at least so he tells, was involved in a similar happening. Two russian farmers in the area had come up with a new breed of cold resistant potato, and after sucessful tests, they took to a local inn to celebrate. Little did they know that the congregation had just a little too much liquid joy, and how focused the praise would be. After several days of nonstop praise, the hyperbolic density reached critical levels, and the russian authorities were alerted. Realizing the magnitude of the problem, they knew that they couldn't disperse it by themselves. They sent a letter to Prussia, world reknown for its somberness under Bismark, to send a congregation of the most straight faced military officers that they could find. My grand-grand father was within that troop. But alas, they came too late, as by the time they reached the village of Kezhemskoe, a flash was visible and loud explosions were heard, as the inn had reached critical hyperbole. You may not want to believe me, as all signs of the potatoes, the inn are gone, and all records were wiped during the cold war.

Overstatements are hell.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AWS Customers Rack Up Hefty Bills for Moving Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/aws-customers-rack-up-hefty-bills-for-moving-data?pu=hackernews7d0vdx&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=unlock <comment><USER2> I recently started running more Google Cloud VMs in the UK instead of the US. It was costing me £2 a day to run the VMs, but somehow I also paid £12 a day for "GCP Storage egress between NA and EU".

Turns out that by default Google's Docker container registry only stores the Docker images in the US. So each time I launched a VM the Docker image was downloaded from the US. I wrote more about it here: [https://www.mattzeunert.com/2019/10/13/reducing-docker- image...](https://www.mattzeunert.com/2019/10/13/reducing-docker-image-size- and-cutting-gcp-cost.html)

The billing interface didn't show that the Cloud Storage cost was related to the Docker images. I was investigating my normal Cloud Storage use, but it didn't explain why I was being charged so much. Only after a few days did I get the idea that it might be the Docker images that were causing it.

<comment><USER3> actually there is a eu mirror for the gcp registry eu.gcr.io

<comment><USER4> That seems like the kind of thing that should be configured by default on servers in the EU.

<comment><USER5> It's in their docs

<comment><USER6> Their docs say it's configured by default on EU servers?

<comment><USER7> You say what image to use. There is no default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a plausible explanation why egress fees from cloud providers costs around $0.1/GB? "Traditional" server providers such as Hetzner are able to offer bandwidth at orders of magnitude lower price (eg. $1.1/TB). I understand that cloud providers may have better interconnects or better uptimes, but that doesn't justify the magnitudes higher pricing.

<comment><USER9> Disclaimer: I worked on an AWS service team.

This is, oddly enough, similar to a debate people have about consumers TV or Internet: should pricing be "unlimited" or "a la carte"?

AWS is combining all your networking charges into one lump "outgoing data transfer" fee. So it's heavily marked up in comparison to what they're paying for the outgoing data transfer, and you're not sure how much is profit vs. whether it's going to cover all their other costs.

So it might be fairer if AWS broke out separate line items for internal, incoming and outgoing data transfer, plus all the additional systems a customer uses.

I think AWS's billing is probably already on the falling side of diminishing marginal returns. That is, it's complex enough that more information would tend to hinder customers from getting the best price. Right now, if I plan to reduce my data charges, I have one variable to tinker with. If we expand this, it would mean I'm having to balance incoming / internal and outgoing charges. That sounds simple, but in terms of engineering it can be very complex.

The next claim is that this biases customers not to move. Of course, Azure and GCP have the same arrangement, so while you pay to move _out_ of AWS, you don't pay to move _in_ to Azure or GCP. So all the vendors are attempting to lock you in to their product, and at the same time trying to extricate you from their competitors, overall it's a wash.

So, yes, part of the motivation for egress charges is that ingress is a loss leader. But it's also true that egress is a metric that does, for the vast majority of their customers, directly translate into customer value. If there's a compelling case for doing it differently, someone should do it and see if it works.

<comment><USER10> > If there's a compelling case for doing it differently, someone should do it > and see if it works.

Cloudflare doesn't charge for bandwidth. I always throw cloudflare on top of anything I do, not because I really need a CDN or anything, but because the bandwidth cost would bankrupt me otherwise. The ceo of cloudflare gave the rationale on why they don't charge:

> There's a fixed cost of setting up those peering arrangements, but, once in > place, there's no incremental cost. That's why we have similar agreements to > Backblaze in place with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Digital Ocean, etc. It's > pretty shameful, actually, that AWS has so far refused. When using > Cloudflare, they don't pay for the bandwidth, and we don't pay for the > Bandwidth, so why are customers paying for the bandwidth. Amazon pretends to > be customer-focused. This is a clear example where they're not.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20791563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20791563)

<comment><USER11> According to Cloudflare, they do not have any bandwidth pricing arrangement with Microsoft for Azure users.

They also do charge for Enterprise plans, but instead of transparent pricing I got high-pressure sales techniques and black box pricing offers - which then anchored our rate so that as we grow past our current contract, we're forced to upgrade at any point with pricing based solely on our original negotiation.

Frankly, while I save money using Cloudflare over Azure's CDN right now, it's left a very sour taste in my mouth and I'll be jumping their ship as soon as I have time to find a suitable alternative.

<comment><USER12> > high-pressure sales techniques and black box pricing offers - which then > anchored our rate

If you have the ability to shift your entire enterprise CDN away from them, why not first try renegotiating?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've actually been working on a library to help mitigate cloud storage lock- in. The idea is to treat cloud storage providers like disks are treated in RAID. For example, you have 3 separate cloud providers. Cloud providers 1 and 2 have every other byte of data striped across them. Cloud provider 3 has parity data. To pull a file you can only need 2 of the 3 cloud providers. If you don't like how a cloud storage provider is treating you or charging you just pull from the other 2 providers and use them as a backup in case one goes down. You can also just remove them entirely from the equation, but then you have no redundancy if one of the others goes down. It gives you a lot of negotiating power to lower egress costs because you can just pull them out of the equation at any time and reinstate them once you get better pricing.

<comment><USER14> Sounds exactly what is Tahoe-LAFS for.

<comment><USER13> Yeah it's pretty similar. However, I'm focusing entirely on the cloud, keeping the package lightweight, and giving the consuming application decisions on how to store the data based off their needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _" The charges don't appear to be a case of cloud providers gouging their customers"_

I disagree on this one. The margins on egress are, well...egregious.

<comment><USER16> If I'm not mistaken AWS has the highest egress rates of the major cloud providers.

<comment><USER15> All of them (AWS, GCP, Azure) are priced outrageously compared to high quality, well peered, bandwidth.

<comment><USER17> GCP is pretty good though. Cold-potato, very fat backbone, and very good presence at a ton of PoPs. When using GCP you basically have the same global, high-bandwidth direct connectivity presence that Google uses for its products, and that is very difficult to match by traditional T1 ISPs.

<comment><USER18> Ok, help me out: "cold-potato"? :D

<comment><USER19> Vs "hot potato"

Hold onto the packet for as long as you can vs hand it off to your peer as quickly as possible.

Most networks do "hot", Google does "cold" since their network is almost always better than that of the peer.

<comment><USER20> The origin of which, for those who aren't familiar, is a game called "hot potato" where you try to pass a ball around as quickly as possible as if it was a hot potato

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I recently saw a talk by a couple of former Google employees who have a business helping cloud customers save money, and they were saying that they see a lot of money being wasted by companies in overprovisioning and neglecting to shut down or delete unused resources like VMs or virtual disks.

Some of their advice for saving money was to keep track of who created each resource and why, so there's less reason to doubt whether an apparently unused resource can be deleted, and to make some limits regarding how many resources can be automatically created (especially in dev environments). Some other ideas were to look for signs of inactivity like low CPU or bandwidth use, and consider deleting such little used resources.

There was much more to the talk, but those were some of the highlights that I can remember without digging out my notes. It was a good talk.

<comment><USER22> Makes sense. If you're not properly tagging your resources then it can be very hard to track down if/where it's been used, how often, or when it was used last. You can automate/template as much orchestration as you want with stuff like Terraform to bring up well-defined resources, but there will always be outliers without tagging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > A person close to AWS said its data transfer charges reflect a range of > technology costs customers would normally pay if they weren't using cloud > services, including fiber optic connections, networking hardware devices and > software, cybersecurity services and network monitoring software.

I'd believe this more if the pricing of bandwidth on AWS hadn't stayed pretty flat since its launch.

Plus, it's frustrating that AWS Lightsail ([https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/)) offers a $3.50/month plan with 1 TB of transfer. That terabyte alone will cost you $92.07 on a normal instance, and the $3.50 includes storage and an instance!

</comment><comment><USER24> It does appear like price gouging. Once you're in, you're locked in.

Any chance some of those high costs are due to movement of data due to GDPR compliance? Maybe Apple did all its prep in 2017.

Also there are some misconceptions on inter-AZ data transfer as well: ([https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-cross-az-data- transfe...](https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-cross-az-data-transfer- costs-more-than-aws-says/))

<comment><USER25> I assure you there is nothing sinister about the price asymmetry. Fiber and routers have as much bandwidth coming as going. The inbound traffic is mostly composed of little http(s) requests. The outbound is full of images and mountains of JavaScript. Cloud providers don't charge for ingress because they got it for free when they grew their egress capability to meet demand.

<comment><USER26> When was the last time AWS reduced egress rates?

And they could negotiate the best rates on the planet given their scale.

<comment><USER27> I get the impression cloud providers don't "negotiate rates" but rather "build infrastructure" most of the time.

<comment><USER28> They don't own many of their data centers. Locations were leaked a while ago, most are colocated in major data centers. They won't dig new trenches and lay cables between those but rather negotiate rates for existing fiber.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Fairly large optimization if you're smaller and a large amount of your data out is cachable is to run a varnish cache on some of the clouds that give you "free" bandwidth.

ie a $20/mo instance on linode gets you 4TB of transfer -- $0.005 per gig. Scale enough of these in various DCs around the world and you have a pretty cheap self-hosted CDN.

<comment><USER30> a $20/mo old server from hetzner gives you unlimited 1Gbps - thats 324TB /mo

<comment><USER29> Good deal - I do most of my work in the US, I don't know of a similar deal here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Maybe I missed it but where did they get this info? Was it stolen from AWS?

As far as I know, Apple would _never_ share cost data like this, nor would a lot of others on this list. Apple doesn't even publicly acknowledge that they are customers.

<comment><USER32> >"The chart, which is based on internal AWS sales figures obtained by The Information,"

I'm not sure that "stolen" is the right word but, yes, it certainly appears based on what The Information wrote that either someone at AWS or a third- party with access to the info (probably not too likely) leaked the confidential numbers. Disgruntled former employee or... Who knows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have recently talked with a friend about a very cheap way to egress from AWS, at $2.5 per TB with the AWS lightsail $5 instance which include 2TB of egress per instance. This friend have extracted 200TB of backups for $500 instead of $17,000!

<comment><USER34> That's against Lightsail TOS, if you care.

<comment><USER35> To save everyone else a lookup:

> 66.3. You may not use Amazon Lightsail in a manner intended to avoid > incurring data fees from other Services (e.g., proxying network traffic from > Services to the public Internet or other destinations or excessive data > processing through load balancing Services as described in the > Documentation), and if you do, we may throttle or suspend your data services > or suspend your account.

Source: [https://aws.amazon.com/service- terms/](https://aws.amazon.com/service-terms/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Wow, does it really cost 4-5x more to download a 1 GB file from S3 or Google Cloud Storage than it does to store it for a month? That is mind-blowing.

<comment><USER37> Bandwidth is expensive, storage is cheap.

<comment><USER38> cloud providers _charge_ a lot more for bandwidth yes, but in reality bandwidth is much, much cheaper than storage for them to provide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Just curious, how on earth did Kevin and Amir get such incredibly detailed of AWS spending of these accounts.

Either they put it together from public resources, or (more worrysome) someone at AWS leaked them line-item based expenses of their top customers.

This has got to be incredibly sensitive data for AWS, not something they'd want leaked. If I'm (say) AirBnB or Snap, I'd worry that this data leaks information that would be detrimental to their ability to negotiate for cloud computing with Google, Microsoft etc.

<comment><USER40> The article specifically says its based on internal data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> does anyone know of a cheap service to order large amounts of data by mail on physical media?

I am often interested in some dataset for which I can afford the storage in the form of a hard drive but not in the form of a download through my home connection.

If a service existed that simply offered the following:

* customer provides URL (and optionally hash checksum)

* customer pays, and later receives hard disk drive / SSD drive with the download contained

* democratic pricing for the media, or alternatively send your own media (hence at twice media shipping cost...)

* possibly eventually local brick and mortar locations / affiliate locations to drop off and pick up media, in the larger cities

* preferably without account, although an account is not a large impediment

* definitely not coupled to a financial account in a credit fashion, i.e. no qualms with topping up the account, but the service should not be able to withdraw money from my financial account. i.e. debit only (like the typical european bank cards, yes I know credit cards are available in europe as well...)

This would seem like a profitable side business for many programmer types who have high bandwidth connections (or have access to them and are allowed to use the connection for this purpouse).

If someone builds the software stack for a main portal such that affiliates can advertise their physical location, and their pricing for media, for download and for copying to media, then customers could compare and choose on the basis of price.

<comment><USER42> I don't think it would be a cheap service if you set a modest goal of earning a cinema trip with popcorn and a drink for every trip to the post office.

1TB HDD: 59 AUD International Shipping (assuming we can keep it under 1kg with packaging): 38 AUD

That is 97 AUD before considering any profit you might want to make (35 AUD for the movie + small popcorn and drink), fixed setup costs like a NAS to cache data sets or the bandwidth costs.

<comment><USER41> If someone hails a cab on uber, one doesn't hail a cab from a different continent...

there seems to be plenty of opportunities here, like buy or rent an old bank building with the individually lockable drawers, put your drive in the locker which has a USB cable or ethernet cable, close the locker, use some app to set the URL / hash, pay, and you get a ETA, download complete notification, and a deadline to pick it up (or else incur a fee to unlock the drawer proportional to overtime).

I guess the idea could be pitched to those operating rentable local PO boxes, using similar lockers, but with internet connectivity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The only thing worse than the data transfer costs is explaining them to your non-cloud-savvy stakeholders. Go ahead, try explain this sh*t to your board.

</comment><comment><USER44> AWS Azure or Google cloud data transfer: 9 cents per GB

Digital Ocean: 1 cent per GB

The really weird thing is this should be the absolute lead on all Digital Ocean marketing but they don't even mention it. It's their single biggest selling point.

</comment><comment><USER45> For a service I built on AWS lambda, the far majority of the cost was just data egress. Unfortunately I haven't found a competitor that offers the same kind of features that I'm using lambda for (running golang with additional custom binaries)

<comment><USER46> Azure is part of Cloudflare's Bandwidth Alliance[1]. If you use Azure's serverless functions and put your service behind Cloudflare, you'll get free egress.

[1] [https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth- alliance/](https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/)

<comment><USER45> I was aware of the bandwidth alliance, though looking on their KB for now it's only discounted egress [1]. Same with Google, though not part of the bandwidth alliance, data delivered through their CDN Interconnect program starts at $0.04/gb (NA) [2]

[1] [https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/36001614391...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/360016143912-How-do-I-get-discounted-data-transfer-with-my-cloud- provider-)

[2] [https://cloud.google.com/interconnect/docs/how-to/cdn- interc...](https://cloud.google.com/interconnect/docs/how-to/cdn-interconnect)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's nickel and diming all the way. I always thought the S3 pricing was sort of ridiculous. Pay for the amount you store (fair). Pay for the egress data (less fair but ok...). Pay for the number of API calls! (lol!)

<comment><USER48> It wasn't true at first but people abused the hell out of it, for example, by storing data only in the filename. The API cost prevents very inefficient use of S3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Data transfer fee is the biggest reason stopped me from using AWS/GCP/Azure. Anyone using Oracle Cloud? I found their bandwidth is really cheap.

<comment><USER50> The thing about that is that it's Oracle. You might survive stuffing your hand in a hornet's nest, but it's unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Cloud providers can launch and advertise and advocate every little product they're able to refactor out of the prevailing development and systems engineering practices, but transit remains expensive, and basically consistently so. Not only that, but AWS transit is like 20x the price of boring old hosting providers, providers who don't also charge for egress.

</comment><comment><USER52> My GP's practice went to a SaaS provider for electronic health records. Never mind transmission costs -- there is no standard way to export their patient records in order to move to a different provider. It requires a custom consulting services contract with their existing provider to retrieve their patient records, at an exorbitant price tag.

<comment><USER53> This is quite typical. Even with MIPS PI measures and the push for interoperability. Getting patient data in bulk out of a hosted EHR can be a frustrating exercise. What they are doing is holding the providers' data hostage, in the name of HIPAA and security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Even the huge-looking bill for Apple is only 6.5% of their total bill. Moving data into AWS is free, so it's not totally surprising that they pay for that by making other stuff more expensive.

I found it more interesting just to see a list of their top ten customers. In particular I didn't realize that Capital One had so much infrastructure.

<comment><USER55> > Even the huge-looking bill for Apple is only 6.5% of their total bill. > Moving data into AWS is free, so it's not totally surprising that they pay > for that by making other stuff more expensive

Moving data into any network that is outbound heavy is free because both paid peering and transit is settled based on a peak percentile traffic (unless it is flat rate).

That's why the "gansta" position is to have a balanced in/out for any network as in that case you get to effectively double charge for the same pipes -- your eyeball heavy customers pay for incoming and your web farm customers pay for outgoing.

<comment><USER54> This doesn't deserve to be downvoted, it makes a good point! I had not thought about the likely-to-be-outbound-heavy nature of cloud providers and how that affects things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Cross AZ traffic:

[https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-cross-az-data- transfe...](https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-cross-az-data-transfer- costs-more-than-aws-says/)

No connection to the blog.

</comment><comment><USER56> It sounds very similar to physical documents/records storage service "roach motel"-like fee structures.

Make it nearly free to move documents in.

Charge monthly rent per box of documents.

But charge like a wounded bull if customers try to permanently remove documents.

</comment><comment><USER57> We mostly deal with this by keeping the data inside an AWS/Azure region as much as possible. You pay to get it in there, and you pay for storage, but you can access it for free within the same region.

</comment><comment><USER58> Anyone (no longer under NDA) know if Apple intends to migrate user iCloud data from AWS and GCP object stores to their own data centers at some point?

<comment><USER59> > no longer under NDA

Do NDAs expire? AFAIK you sign an NDA and you're bound to respect that forever. Unless the knowledge becomes publicly available.

<comment><USER60> IANAL

I have spoken to a lot of lawyers about contract terms and what I've been told for both NDA and Non-compete style agreements is that they have to have very clearly defined scope to be enforceable.

For a non-compete for example, it requires distance and specific field with a clearly defined time period (that's reasonable).

For an NDA you have to ensure that the covered information is explicitly labeled (which is why people have confidentiality labels in email footers) and that there is a defined time to expiration. An NDA without those two criteria place an undue burden on a person who is not being compensated for their compliance.

Reasonable time period is generally 2 years.

<comment><USER61> This is typically true of all contract law. "In perpetuity" is not a thing and if it is, it usually nullifies the contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> The $0.01/GB inter-availability-zone data transfer cost can be a killer for misconfigured workloads. It's a shame AWS doesn't make this more clear on their pricing page. I've seen people run Spark clusters across multiple AZs, incurring a huge costs whenever a shuffle happens.

</comment><comment><USER63> What's up with Apple's spend? Did they move most of their data out of AWS?

<comment><USER64> My take is also that they were moving out. The article does acknowledge that they spent a fraction of that on the next year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I've worked at at least one company where we found using Direct Connect to a data center somewhere and egressing via that data center instead of amazon saved us significant bandwidth costs.

<comment><USER66> amazon still charges for traffic through direct connect(50%), dont they?

<comment><USER65> 2cents per GB vs 9cents per GB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Where is the article getting these numbers from? Did they say and I missed it?

</comment><comment><USER68> where's Corey Quinn

</comment><comment><USER69> Cheap shovels and expensive ladders.

<comment><USER70> Amazon has gone one step past that and made the shovels expensive too. The fear of buying a computer has made them billions.

<comment><USER71> >The fear of buying a computer has made them billions.

Are you saying that AWS service aren't providing value to their customers but it's fear-based marketing?

<comment><USER72> I think you read too much into that comment. AWS didn't have to market the fear into the customers. People are naturally afraid of things. AWS does provide value, but it comes at a steep cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> The cloud is like the Hotel California. Can checkout anytime but never leave.</comment>


Recap from Startup Lessons Learned Conference - <AUTHOR> http://node.typepad.com/1/2010/04/recap-from-startup-lessons-learned-2010-.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This gives a good flavor for the talks but is more at an impression level. I thought the three best quotes here came from Ken Beck's talk:

"Don't want the company to fail fast, want the bad ideas to fail fast & make room for the new."

"A number of those failed startups of mine were building...carefully polished products that nobody ever actually bought"

"Start with what you want to learn, and work backwards to the build"</comment>