Dell To Go Private In $24.4 Billion Buyout - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/05/dell-buyout_n_2622223.html

<comment><USER2> Super interested to see if this turns around Dell and makes them a competitor to apples product line.</comment>


£1500 If you find me a job I actually want to do - <AUTHOR> http://uhftopic.wordpress.com/hireme <comment> raving-richard Sorry, but I'm not going to hire anyone for a technical position if they don't even have their own domain name. Seriously, talk about turn off. You're willing to spend £1500 on getting a job, but you aren't willing to spend less than £100 getting a domain and hosting for a year? (And I know that you can get domains for like $2 a year, and good hosting for less than $25, so £100 is far more than you need.)

Any professional tech person shouldn't having their email @ gmail (or any domain that isn't their own), or their website at something.wordpress.com or blogspot.com.

You can still use Gmail and Wordress.com, that's easy. If you're exceptionally lazy and can't be bothered using the incredibly easy ways of installing WordPress on your own hosting system (and using IMAP for email).

Also, for your education, I suggest recording it, to put the important stuff first: 2000-‐2004: Bachelor of Computer Science (or whatever it was in), Babes-‐Bolyai University, Cluj-‐Napoca, Romania.

And if you speak Romanian, put that as well in your language section. If you only speak English, take out the entire section (looks stupid with only one language).

<comment><USER2> You wouldn't hire the guy because he doesn't have his own domain name? That seems somewhat harsh.

I agree it comes across as more professional when you do have your own domain name, but with 10 years experience I imagine it's not that he doesn't know how to do it. It's probably just not a priority for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting post. Probably worthwhile writing something similar as a covering letter with a CV. It might, however come across as a little pretentious. I'm not sure how to fix that.

I work contract/freelance/run my own business because the whole permanent job thing invariably isn't and for similar reasons why you're offering 1.5K to find a nice role. Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> I get a feeling that he is going about this the wrong way. While he lists all the things that he is not comfortable with and why it might not work out and is also willing to throw money at someone to 'fix' this problem of finding the 'right match', he doesn't seem to be open to accepting the idea that he _will_ not get to choose every aspect of the company unless he also is willing to participate in every aspect. For instance:

        > the London startups I've interviewed with so far, all seem to have
        > committed the same sins: they're recruiting for a role to exercise
        > technical ownership after they've made their decisions about the stack
        > and technical strategy.

and then ...

        > While I do use Python, Ruby, JavaScript, etc for different (non-critical)
        > components in the solution design, I'm mainly a Java engineer. All of
        > these aforementioned have their time and place, but my skills and passion
        > are not around using any of them as a core platform.

        > Since I'm a backend engineer I don't do "full stack" when it comes to
        > coding. If you clearly need, but can't afford (or don't want) to hire
        > frontend or mobile developers, then we might not be compatible.

So, on the one hand he expects startups to not commit to a stack until he is there and be open to changing it if he feels there's a need to, after he comes in __but __he is not willing to accept the responsibility that comes with deciding the stack ?

If he doesn't do full stack (and that's a prefectly good thing) he should learn to interoperate with stacks that aren't decided upon by him.

Also, this:

        > With most startups I interviewed, I found the team dynamics and technical
        > stack to be more challenging than the business plan or the potential the
        > idea has.

That's just condesending.

</comment><comment><USER5> IMHO, offers of $2000 as referral bonus if you find us a rockstar (while for the exact same role, recruiters will be rewarded with 2 to 3 months of salary, i.e., $20000 to $30000 per $100k of salary) are asking for a ridiculous arbitrage that does not exist : I know the value of my time and I will not do the job of a recruiter for you without commensurate compensation.

This offer is the mirror of these "wow, free money of $2k if you do the job that we normally pay $20k for" offers. I will rather read about Constraint Handling Rules in Prolog or something else that is likely to impact my resume or my mind in a positive way in the time it takes to play recruiter (for either party).

Please let me know if I got the economics wrong. "Talk as if you're right, but listen as if you're wrong", said someone wise, and I listen.

<comment><USER6> He's not necessarily asking for you to burn time digging. Maybe you just know somebody, you know?

<comment><USER5> That's a good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found this to be rather big-headed and naive.

On one hand you're saying if someone finds you a job you'll give them £1,500, but on the other you're saying if a company comes across you via your wordpress blog then they OWE you £1500.

Demanding a referral fee for someone doing the work you haven't managed to do your self is ridiculous. Yes some companies offer it but its not a given. I'd think twice before hiring anyone who demands anything.

I like the idea of this post but the author comes across terribly.

<comment> andrei-dan I _think_ you misunderstood the bit regarding a company offering him a job that works out. Here's the bit about that: "if you contact me directly referencing this page and things works out between us, then you'll pay me £1500 less on the second month of employment."

So the company will pay him 1500 LESS.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps I should read things twice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Obtuse is not a verb. You want "object".

<comment><USER8> No you don't. Obtuse is an adjective, and he had used it correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Been there. Ended up running something on my own.

<comment><USER10> A business or simply freelancing?</comment></comment>


How We Used Karmurl to Improve Our Frontpage - <AUTHOR> http://gun.io/blog/how-we-used-karmurl-to-improve-frontpage/

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like the author of Karmurl is a HN'er: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lancashire>

but the Show HN post didn't gain any traction.</comment>


Ask HN: Family friendly beach town in California? - <AUTHOR> So I'm a work at home dad and software developer making an OK income doing open source development.  My wife and kids are liking the idea of moving to California, but not for the Silicon Valley type of life.
What we would be looking for is a laid back beach side town where they can learn to surf, is not too expensive so I can keep working part time, and so on.
We were in Carlsbad a couple months back and liked it a lot, but priced out of our range.  Years back I was around Ventura and liked it as well, but I have no idea what its like now.
Any thoughts?  We're also checking out Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Lived in the bay area, LA and San Diego for extended periods.

If I were remote, focused on family, and somewhat price conscious, first choice would be San Louis Obispo: beaches, nice downtown, college town. My next choices would be San Diego (north of La Jolla) or Santa Barbara. If you are less price conscious and want to move north, then Half Moon Bay or Santa Cruz. Can find more remote places too that are amazing if you want that, like the Big Sur area or north of the Bay Area. Tend to like the places mentioned more than Carlsbad or Ventura, but those places aren't bad by any stretch.

Been to Costa Rica, it's nice, but more expensive than people think and issues with crime, like don't ever leave your house unattended. Brother goes to Nicaragua to surf a lot, sounds like Costa Rica but cheaper and less stable. Mexico still feels too dangerous to me. About three months ago our nanny was scared to go home because of the crime. When I was in the military not too long ago, you needed a General's approval to go. Some areas are probably good but doesn't strike me as family friendly, more like retirement and vacation compounds. No idea about Panama, but all sound like an adventure.

Good luck and have fun. Remote sounds better by the day.

<comment><USER3> > Mexico still feels too dangerous to me. About three months ago our nanny was > scared to go home because of the crime. When I was in the military not too > long ago, you needed a General's approval to go. Some areas are probably > good but doesn't strike me as family friendly, more like retirement and > vacation compounds.

I have found parts of mexico that are pretty safe. E.g. Playa Del Carmen is safe, has a lot of expats (Europeans) who also have kids. It doesn't have too much surfing tho. Mostly kite boarding & cave diving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You asked in the right place. I recently spent the better part of ten years trying to find this place, for exactly the same reasons. Sadly, the short answer is that it doesn't exist.

Like you, I'm 100% remote, so my constraints were "Somewhere in the world, with pleasant living and good surf". Sounds easy right? The problem though is that they nearly always put the good surf _right on the beach_ , so anywhere that also has pleasant living will have $5m houses to go with it.

California crosses itself off the list immediately. Santa Cruz has tiny run down houses for around a million dollars in the Pleasure Point area, walking distance to some really good surfing, but you need to at least double that if you want a house that isn't being sold as a teardown. Santa Barbara has good waves and possibly four houses within 30 miles that you can afford, but none down by Rincon where you want to be.

San Clemente could work. If you drive far enough up the hill from Trestles, the soulless, yardless, cheaply built houses eventually come down to $800k. Further north, you might find a house inland from one of the urban breaks for that price, provided you don't mind people shooting at your kids on occasion.

As to Parts South? I'd recommend you spend a good full season in Nicaragua or similar before you buy there. You'll learn a lot about the psyche of your typical Expat Surfer In Central America. Turns out he's kinda bitter, and not a very pleasant guy to spend your time with.

And the places where you'd buy your house tend to be of the "cleared farmland on the coast between fishing villages" variety, with gates at the road to ensure you never meet any locals and Fancy-yet-Sad houses overlooking the sea at prices that aren't really as cheap as you'd expect. It's unlikely that you'll actually find a nice piece of land next to the quaint fishing village with an undiscovered point break out front.

We spent several winters in places like that, and never found one that really felt like we could make it home.

One ray of hope might be Puerto Rico, in the West Rincon or Aguada area. Spend next winter there and see if you can deal with the combination of dusty cinder block houses on the coast with giant Walgreens/KFC strip malls on the outskirts of every little town. With a good architect and a well chosen plot of land, you could make it work there. A lot of people have, and the vibe is a lot more friendly than the Mexico crowd.

All the best, and don't hesitate to hit me up with any questions!

<comment><USER5> I wonder how many people are in the same boat. Looks like a good idea for kickstarter project buy out a large island and setup all the amenities needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6>
       San Luis Obispo is awesome as others have said, but it is about 10 miles from the beach.
       Ventura County is also good, but has been getting very expensive that last 10 years.
       Carpinteria would have been great 15 years ago, but prices have gone through the roof.

       This would be my short list:
       - Between Carlsbad and La Jolla
       - Cayucos/Morro Bay/Los Osos (all pretty close to each other; I prefer Los Osos because not many people know about it and thus not a lot of traffic on holidays and weekends)
       - Some of the lesser known towns between Monterrey and Santa Cruz
       - Fort Bragg/Mendocino area

       If you're ok with living 5/10/15 miles from the beach, housing gets much cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER7> Surprised no one has mentioned the northern California coast. There are lots of little towns on the coast, of varying sizes. If you want something a bit more populated, there's Eureka.

I haven't lived in any of these places -- though my wife and I have enjoyed vacationing in Mendocino a few times -- so I can't offer an unqualified recommendation, but it certainly seems like they would be worth looking into.

</comment><comment><USER8> San Luis Obispo (and surrounding areas) - Went to Cal Poly, absolutely fell in love with the city. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZBLZDk4HTQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZBLZDk4HTQ)

Redondo Beach - Live here now. As another person said, not a lot to do, but it's nice and family friendly. Plus, you're not too far from Venice/Santa Monica.

</comment><comment><USER9> Arroyo Grande (AG). It's close to Pismo Beach and SLO (San Luis Obispo) along Highway 101.

My wife took my young sons to Pismo Beach often. She let them play in the surf with no worries, because the surfers were vigilant of little kids.

As for afforable housing, we have friends that live inexpensively in rural AG, back in the hills. Very beautiful.

SLO is a great college town. Lots of engineering students and faculty for potential friends. Lots of fun things to do in downtown SLO.

</comment><comment><USER10> Coastal towns are expensive everywhere, but that being said:

Santa Cruz suburbs are a good bet; Soquel, Aptos, Watsonville (last is inland).

Or in the San Luis Obispo area: Pismo Beach, Morro Bay. Cayucos, recommended already, is here too.

</comment><comment><USER11> San Clemente is pretty nice, laid back beach town. House prices are also not too crazy. Closer to Irvine/ New Port Beach.

</comment><comment><USER12> Naxos island in Cyclades , Greece [http://www.naxos.gr/en/](http://www.naxos.gr/en/) .

</comment><comment><USER13> Look into Redondo Beach CA. Amazing little town. By far one of the most affordable beach towns, not a ton to do but its quite and safe.

</comment><comment><USER14> cayucos - better weather than SC

[http://www.cayucosbythesea.com/](http://www.cayucosbythesea.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> South of Bodega Bay is going to be more expensive than North of it, but Nothern coastal communities are much more rural.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not on your radar, but I've been getting a solid answer for the same question. Cape Town

</comment><comment><USER17> Santa Cruz or Aptos.</comment>


Offer HN: free dedicated server for October on Uptano. LIMIT REACHED - <AUTHOR> https://uptano.com/

<comment><USER2> No IRC? From <https://uptano.com/aup>:

      UPTANO's services may only be used for lawful purposes. Users may not use UPTANO's Services to engage in, foster, or promote illegal, abusive, or irresponsible behavior, including:
      ...
      Internet Relay Chat IRC servers, bots, clients, or anything related to IRC.

<comment><USER3> Not sure I appreciate the implication that IRC is somehow unlawful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah! Me neither. Updated. The idea was only to prohibit public IRC uses, since they tend to attract the naughty people. Running your own private IRC stuff is fine. I've been on IRC for ~15 years myself.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean, public IRC uses?

<comment><AUTHOR> Some people run private IRC servers for their company/friends and that's something we want to allow. We just want to prohibit public IRC servers/clients/bots because they tend to be a magnet for network/server attacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Giving away some free servers during October to some fellow HN'ers. The beta code is good for one server hardware claim and 500 GB of bandwidth during October.

Uptano is my new project and I'm looking for early adopters and feedback. Enjoy, and Thanks!

 _Edit:_ Opened up some more slots for people.

</comment><comment><USER5> I cannot seem to find any information on what kind of connectivity they have/peering. Also, do you get anything like iKVM or even a way to power cycle it?

It sounds like anything you run is going to be virtualized anyways or at least under a hypervisor, or else why the 7.5GB of RAM?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll be adding remote console support. You can shutdown and reboot your servers from the web.

Our network is currently connected to nLayer, Tiscali, PCCW/BTN, and peered with Equinix and a bunch of others. We'll be adding a number of additional providers as well. Our US West1 location is in downtown LA, where just about everyone has a presence.

Yes, your hardware is dedicated to you alone, but you launch virtualized instances on it. They run on OpenVZ, which has very minimal performance overhead compared with things like Xen.

Thanks for the questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am TAing a course on computer security this quarter, and was just looking for a hosting provider to set up a CTF server for the students to play around with. I would need the hosting for November and the first week of December as well. Could I get this promo extended that long?

<comment><AUTHOR> This one is for October. Try sending me an email (firstname.lastname@example.com) in November and I'll try to help you out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why limit the number of VMs, rather than just have it limited directly by memory?

For example, why can't I have three instances with 2gb of memory and two with 768mb?

It would make it pull the trigger.

<comment><AUTHOR> Larger hardware profiles will have higher server limits. These are the "Standard Small" hardware profile, so splitting it up into 4 servers seems sufficient for most people.

How many would you want to run on this hardware? 5?

<comment><USER7> I'd personally go as high as 6-8 in some scenarios. You can do a good bit with 512mb of memory of it's only doing a single task. Sometimes it's nice to keep things separated and compartmentalized.

<comment><AUTHOR> For larger hardware profiles the limit will definitely be higher. Current plans are for Standard Medium and Standard Large to be 6 and 8, respectively. So far no one seems to need more that that. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's funny; I've never seen a 7.5 GB DIMM before. And I didn't know they still make 120 GB disks.

<comment><USER9> I would assume 0.5GB is for the virtualization.

As for the drive space, maybe it's an SSD, though I'm being very hopeful. Or maybe it's a bigger disk with a bunch of images on it so you can quickly create a virtual machine without waiting for a network drive.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are 10K RPM RAID1 hard disks, but we will be rolling out SSD options in the very near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm getting a "limit reached" message. I guess that's it then?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. Updated the title. I have been increasing the limit repeatedly to make room for more people, but it looks like there's going to be far more than I can allow in right now ;-)

I hope to offer something to everyone that signed up now but didn't make it in this time. Thanks for checking it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I signed up to check it out, and it definitely looks cool... The connection is lightning fast, but I'm wondering what other server options you'll have in the future. I'd love to have a few servers that are I/O beasts, and others full of 128GB or 256GB of RAM. Right now, we pay so much to Amazon each month, and we're playing with other options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we're going to announce a number of new hardware profiles in the coming weeks. We'll eventually have a number of "extreme" hardware profiles that are specialized for certain use cases.</comment></comment>


WAT – A lightning talk by Gary Bernhardt from CodeMash (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

<comment><USER2> I haven't been able to find any substantive discussion of this, despite there being at least twelve previous submissions. So many submissions, so little discussion ...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10092845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10092845)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9918165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9918165)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845637)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9706892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9706892)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9154382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9154382)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8529441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8529441)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8529309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8529309)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458673)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8387038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8387038)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8225418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8225418)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7698231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7698231)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7313186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7313186)</comment>


Nothing Says 'Hip' Like Ancient Wheat (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/06/27/483278049/nothing-says-hip-like-ancient-wheat <comment><USER2> I started making my own bread from einkorn.

The primary reason is that I have someone in my family who has a terrible allergy to gluten. They can eat this wheat since the gluten is different in some way. This was a life-changer.

The flour is expensive so I started buying the wheat berries and I mill them myself, its really easy, and the freshly milled flour is so much better tasting than already milled.

I use this countertop stone mill: (NutriMill Harvest)

I use this bread machine: (Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso)

<comment><USER3> Just saw a french documentary on TV5 about bread and one guy also had "gluten intolerance" just to find out latter he had an intolerance to insecticides and the like used when storing the grains. Large volumes of grains are attacked by insects and fungus and the easy solution are chemicals. To be found in flour latter on and in bread.

<comment><USER4> I've heard about this too. It may be why people are developing so many food sensitivities. Still though, most gluten sensitive people still can't tolerate the "organic" bread made from modern wheat.

<comment><USER5> Organic doesn't mean pesticide free, it just means a different set of pesticides are allowed.

... at least here in the US. Source: [https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/01/25/organic-101-allow...](https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/01/25/organic-101-allowed- and-prohibited-substances)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the labeling has become meaningless sadly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ancient Wheat is very 2016 now. I prefer Raw Wheat.

<comment><USER7> Anything like Kurt Saxon's "Perfect 3.3 Cent Breakfast"?

[https://www.survivalplus.com/foods/The-Perfect-3.3-Cent- Brea...](https://www.survivalplus.com/foods/The-Perfect-3.3-Cent- Breakfast.htm)

<comment><USER6> Haha, very hipster. I am sure that is popular in Brooklyn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> OK, so long as "ancient" doesn't mean "propagated from grain found in Egyptian tombs".

Modern wheat is an appetite stimulant, so the more you eat, the more you want. (Good for increased sales.) I wonder which of these other varieties have or don't have this property.

<comment><USER9> > Modern wheat is an appetite stimulant

[Citation needed]

<comment><USER10> "Put it all together: wheat and related grains are potent appetite stimulants and obesogens–foods that make you fat."

I was just reading this today in the Wheat Belly cookbook. I'll dig up the studies references if I get time but there is data out there that suggest this.

[https://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2015/08/wheat-makes-you- hungr...](https://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2015/08/wheat-makes-you-hungry/)

<comment><USER9> The thing about nutrition is that we don't actually know anything about it, which means that the internet is full of pseudo-scientific woo. Pick a position and you'll find some obscure blog to support it. So what? You can find blogs about bigfoot too.

The claims in that link do not seem credible to me. If wheat increases the appetite, it does so because it's delicious.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.ijmedicine.com/index.php/ijam/article/view/7](https://www.ijmedicine.com/index.php/ijam/article/view/7)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Measuring galactic velocities with a USB TV tuner [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.sbrac.org/files/budget_radio_telescope.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary here: <http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-for-budget-radio-astronomy/>

</comment><comment><USER2> has the link changed? it doesn't describe measuring galactic rotation (does it?) (and how do you do that with the hydrogen line? what frequency accuracy do you need?)

but as it says in the conclusions, this is way cool. as part of my degree i used equipment from early radio work - my results were similar (well, worse - all i could see was the sun and cas a) but used a bed-sized aerial, fancy switching (tube?) amplifiers (that used ~20U rack space, in todays units), and lots of liquid N2 (i guess it was a bolometer? can't remember any details...)

<comment><AUTHOR> The paper doesn't specifically talk about galactic rotation, but it does demonstrate the measurement of velocities via the Doppler shift. Take a look at the plot on pg. 12, that shows "a 'triple humped' spectral structure, indicating that at the time of the observation, there were three distinct hydrogen clouds within the field-of-view of the radio telescope."

I'll correct the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Aw c'mon - perfect HN faire for a long weekend

Astronomy has always pushed humans onwards and its great that these things are within reach of a school or kids budget and its what we their parents need to be boneing up on (as well as phonetic spelling and new ways to learn arithmetic)

Fantastic stuff, didn't understand one word in three. Please do a MakeMag special</comment>


The $300 Prosthetic Arm - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2012/11/01/ts-prosthetic-arm.cnnmoney/index.html?source=cnn_bin

<comment><USER2> Amazing stuff. Simple, get it done, effective.

I wonder how much of the cost of prosthetics is associated with trying to make them look "real". Just making them be what they are probably relaxes so many restrictions that it makes making a cheaper alternative relatively simple.</comment>


When It's Bad to Have Good Choices - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/bad-good-choices <comment><USER3> There are a couple of popular TED talks about choice.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...](http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice)

It's something to keep in mind with your development work as well. Let's say you create an application to minify javascript. Your app has an input field, and a button that says 'Go', and that's it. Very simple, no confusion, people love it.

However, you notice 5% of people don't use the app, because they want to keep comments in their minified code, and you don't include that option. A lot of developers decide they'll add a checkbox to include comments, because now everyone can be happy. It doesn't quite work that way, because now the 95% of people that don't want comments see this checkbox, and start to question themselves. Wait, why do people want comments included in their minified code, should I be checking this box? Is there something I'm doing wrong? Do most people check the box or not, I'd like to know to validate my decision, otherwise I feel uneasy. The more options you add, the more this has an effect.

In the end, maybe the 95% are feeling so uneasy, 10% of them leave to another app, that just has a 'Go' button again, so they feel confident, and more happy. So, by adding the checkbox to include comments, the 5% of people that were asking for the feature now start using the app, but you lose 10% of the original audience because of the additional choice.

It's a difficult balance, and you really need to focus on the majority, and be careful about building out features the minority are requesting. If you look at apps like Twitter or Snapchat (or Yo, on the extreme side, and not yet proven), they succeed by limiting the amount of choice available to users. Many developers would have added more options, or in the case of Twitter given users the ability to write longer tweets because it seems harmless, but at the same time, it would have caused the businesses to fail.

<comment><USER4> Personally, while the research is interesting, I think it's also being _far too overused_ as justification to remove/not add options. The common counterargument of "just use another product that does have the option you want" often turns out to be as fruitless - that other product may not have some option you want (that this one does), due to the same reasoning!

I also fundamentally disagree that removing choices is a good thing - <USER2> research says it makes (most?) people feel better, which suggests that they don't want to think about making any choices because it is somehow difficult for them and causes anxiety. Logically, this means they would be most satisfied and happy if they didn't have to make _any_ choices or do any thinking at all, and something/someone else made all the decisions for them - the equivalent of having no freedom or control over one's life. Is this really what we want society to become?

"Making choices is hard, so just give up"? To me, that's where it looks like things are heading, and quite frankly it's a rather disturbing trend. I most definitely do not want to have nearly every decision in my life made by someone else, and find the anxiety/difficulty of the process to be absolutely normal.

Maybe there is a good balance somewhere in between, but I'm definitely strongly biased in the direction of being able to have the freedom to make choices, no matter how difficult, and take control of my life.

<comment><USER3> There is balance but it's not easy to find.

If I visit a restaurant, and they only serve chicken, that's kind of limited. Now, they give me the option of beef or chicken. Ok, this is a decision I can make, and be confident in selecting. Now, what happens if they ask whether I would like northwestern chicken, southern chicken, grain fed chicken, or korean chicken? Huh? I'm not a master of chicken, just give me the best one.

We hit a point where I no longer have a strong opinion, and this is where my confidence drops, and I start to question myself. This means they've given me too much choice.

This isn't the same for everyone, someone out there knows their chicken inside and out, and they have a preference for one specific type. If you want to cater your restaurant towards those people then give them that choice. However, you'll be scaring away the average person at the same time.

For the same reason it's difficult to make an application for casual and advanced users. Pick your audience, and that'll give you some guidance on the appropriate amount of choice to include.

<comment><USER5> How would you like me to give you the best one? Wine first, delay, then meal? Wine then meal with no delay? Drinks and chicken brought together on a tray?

Cutlery wrapped in a serviette or not? Chicken with sauce or sauce in a jug? Chicken covered in sauce, or with some on it, or with the sauce around it? What temperature sauce? How would you like the plate rotated - chicken towards you, or veg towards you? What kind of veg? How big?

Decisions are fractal, everywhere you look there are potentially huge numbers of decisions that someone, somewhere, might plausibly care about, but most people don't.

Beyond where you don't have a strong opinion (I guess one chicken option might be better, but I don't know which) and your confidence drops, you climb back up to a place where you have a strong opinion again and your opinion is "it doesn't matter [to me]", and from there onwards it's not a matter of "I don't know which to chose" it's a matter of "STOP WASTING MY LIFE WITH THIS POINTLESS NONSENSE".

I suspect that the internet puts people on both sides of this gap together, far more often, more quickly, and with less structure, than previous human history has.

<comment><USER6> This. > "STOP WASTING MY LIFE WITH THIS POINTLESS NONSENSE".

I work in datacenter solutions sales, and the majority of my customers know what they want in terms of vendor/product series. However, they need our help for specific performance and capacity sizing, as well as adjusting to fit a budget. This probably it true for about 95% of customers.

However, there is another 5%, that simply want a good solution for their needs. They don't care how, and if they're smart, they have some specific business requirements to share. These ones are EASY to upset as displayed in the comment above if we 'waste' their time asking detailed option questions they really don't care about.

To be successful in this, you have to triage early and set the customer engagement on the proper path!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When faced with a difficult decision, it probably doesn't matter which choice you take. Emotionally it's difficult to accept this. But logically it's easy:

\- If one of the two choices was clearly better, it would be an easy decision

\- But it is difficult. Therefore, neither of the two choices is clearly better.

\- Therefore, it doesn't matter much which you choose.

This doesn't work for people who feel irrational regret (ie, regretting a decision that turned out badly because of information that was not known at the time of the decision). Yes, irrational regret is very common. But it's just another logical failing that can be overcome.

If you still feel anxiety when forced to choose between two good choices, go visit a third world country.

<comment><USER8> > _" neither of the two choices is clearly better"_

"Clarity" is dependent on what level of information you already have and what analysis you've already done.

In some circumstances, you've already done whatever investigation, research, and thinking can reasonably be done. If the choice is still hard, _then_ the choice is likely to be of similar value either way and you may as well choose arbitrarily.

But in other circumstances, there's still investigation, research, or thinking that can be done (at a level of effort which is reasonable based on the importance of the decision.) In that case, one choice or the other may become clearly better if you are patient and diligent in the decision-making process. So be as patient as the decision warrants.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I don't think paulsutter's post holds up to much scrutiny, except in the limited case where you have to make a decision immediately, or in the near future before you have time to do any meaningful research or calculation on the problem.

A problem is difficult when its potential consequences are serious and the best option is not obvious. But the best option can be non-obvious for two very different reasons: either it requires a lot of information and thus a lot of work to gather that information (like choosing a medical treatment), or it depends on randomness or other variables outside your control and understanding (like choose your lottery numbers, assuming someone gives you a lottery ticket).

For the latter case, it's pretty clear that you can choose randomly and shouldn't worry about your decision. For the former case, it's reasonable to "worry" in the sense that you should feel an urgency to gather the required information efficiently. Of course, it's not really that simple, because you have to optimize the cost of gathering information against the potential cost or gain from the decision itself. Also, the two reasons from the last paragraph are more like a continuum, because "randomness" is often _effective_ randomness, i.e. you can't feasibly predict the outcomes despite them being deterministic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article focuses on the choice you have as a consumer. Which brand, which flavor, which stack of hay?

But I observe a similar crippling effect when working on software. Every step along the way of producing a software product involves making an incredible amount of choices. Choices like, 'what platform?', 'what programming language?', 'which algorithm?', etc. I believe that the the freedom we have as a software engineers forces us to make more choices than in any other engineering discipline.

There is a certain anxiety involved in make such engineering choices. Will this choice work out in the end, or am I going to waste a lot of time implementing and later reversing this for the other option?

<comment><USER11> Anecdote/data-point 90% of my side-projects never got out of "playing with the tech stack" phase.

It is definitely not optimal, but is pretty common methinks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In Poland there is very famous children's rhymed short story about a donkey regarding this paradox of choice, so polish children are very early confronted with this paradox and warned about possible consequences (donkey dies of hunger in the end). Rhymed form makes it stick so good that we even have a saying for describing person experiencing paradox of choice that is literally the first line of this story.

Story: [http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Chciwo%C5%9B%C4%87_os%C5%82a](http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Chciwo%C5%9B%C4%87_os%C5%82a)

Saying: [http://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/osio%C5%82kowi_w_%C5%BC%C5%82o...](http://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/osio%C5%82kowi_w_%C5%BC%C5%82oby_dano)

</comment><comment><USER13> I spent months of my freshman year highly anxious for similar first-world reasons. I excel at and enjoy lots of things and felt like school was making me commit to one field. I would spend days very inactive, stressing out about, for example, the pros and cons of being a game programmer versus an embedded software engineer or something. I could never seem to settle on one area. I thought game programming was a waste of engineering talent, but I found everything else about it extremely appealing. Luckily I'm over that crap now, as I accept what I knew all along: that it's not what you major in that defines you. It's what you do in life that matters. It also helps to be in a field that applies to virtually everything else (CS). I'd go even more crazy if I were in some highly specialized field. Strangely, I'd say the best cure for this is a brief existential crisis.

</comment><comment><USER14> _" (...) a concept that the Swarthmore University psychologist Barry Schwartz would then popularize and rename as the paradox of choice."_

Last time I checked, there is no such a thing as "Swarthmore University": Barry Schwartz is affiliated with Swarthmore _College_ instead [1,2,3].

Might seem pedantic, but the New Yorker of yore would never let such a slip --online or not. Such editing.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More_Is_Less)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Schwartz_(psychologist)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Schwartz_\(psychologist\))

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

<comment><USER15> It is a pretty big error by New Yorker standards. I expect it will be fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sounds familiar. I wish the article had some sort of suggestion or hint as to what to do when you're really prone to anxiety. I have several very good options in my life right now and have made a tenative decision on what to do, but I'm finding I'm crippled by anxiety over my decision.

<comment><USER17> paulsutter gave a good answer to this elsewhere in the comments. But I would add this: All other things being equal (or roughly equal), pick one at random.

Sure, there's opportunity cost, but there are also costs way beyond the time you take fretting over a decision. You said it yourself: You're "crippled" by anxiety. How is that better than making a random decision? Or just going with your gut?

<comment><USER9> I think it's naive to assume that simply making a random decision would remove or reduce anxiety. Anxiety doesn't only come from the fear of regretting your decisions; it also comes from the fear of receiving a negative outcome, even if that outcome was "chosen" by a coin flip or a third party. Hence people are anxious to receive news after a job interview, or a call about a loved one's medical condition, despite both having nothing to do with their own decisions.

<comment><USER18> It's not that making a random decision will remove or reduce anxiety. _It 's that making a non-random choice 1) won't improve the predicted outcome and 2) won't reduce or remove the anxiety either._

Given the alternatives of either 1) not making a decision, 2) drawing out the decision for a long time, or 3) failing to act in time on the option, simply making a random initial commitment addresses the decisionmaking aspect.

Many decisions are capable of being reversed or changed later. If you're ever in a situation where you _must_ decide (stay or jump from a burning building, say), there's still likely to be an option which is least bad. Even those who jumped from the WTC on 9/11 were making a decision. The outcome wasn't optimal, but in the circumstances, it may well have been preferable to the alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I submit that "anxiety" here could be better defined as: the mental taxation of evaluating the opportunity cost for turning down each of the available alternatives, given a person's position on Maslow's hierarchy of needs

</comment><comment><USER20> This article really resonnates with me, having had to choose between two very interesting jobs. It took me 2 weeks to decide and was a really anxious period, whereas without a choice I would have taken either without a second thought.

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems to me that, in pretty much every field, the most rewarding tasks, often with the most highly regarded results, are the most constrained— rhyming schemes and meter in poetry, immutability in programming, whatever.

It could just be freedom from the anxiety of choice (and just admiration for the creator's ability to succeed despite these constraints on the part of the audience). I feel like there's more to it than that, though.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Lipowski thought of Buridan's ass: an apocryphal donkey that finds itself > standing between two equally appealing stacks of hay.

> ...

> While Lipowski's work received some immediate wide attention, it soon fell > into relative obscurity.

> ...

> Schwartz would then popularize and rename as the paradox of choice

No wonder. It's so much easier to be told that you are experiencing a paradox than to be told that you are behaving like an ass. Buridan's or not.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cognitive dissonance is a similar concept that is not new.

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

As quoted from that article:

"Cognitive dissonance is also useful to explain and manage post-purchase concerns. If a consumer feels that an alternate purchase would have been better, it is likely he/she will not buy the product again. To counter this, marketers have to convince buyers constantly that the product satisfies their need and thereby helps reduce their cognitive dissonance, ensuring repurchase of the same brand in the future."

Sounds like the writer is referring to cognitive dissonance.

Leon Festinger published his work on cognitive dissonance in 1959 making his discovery 11 years before Lipowski's publication in 1970 (as referenced by the article). Festinger in my mind is the godfather of this theory. Anyone agree?

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

</comment><comment><USER12> > The choices between those objects that they valued most highly were both the > most positive and the most anxiety-filled. The more choices they had—the > study was repeated with up to six items per choice—the more anxious they > felt.

This sounds like nothing more than loss aversion. Until you make the choice you have opportunity to acquire some valuable things. When you make the choice you've lost all the things you didn't choose.

This leads to easy ways of alleviating anxiety. You just need to mentally devalue all the things you are supposed to choose from and when you make the choice, immediately devalue things you haven't chosen even more (getting hyped over the thing you just chose won't help because anxiety comes not for the lack of appreciation of what you gained but for too much appreciation for the things you've lost opportunity to obtain).

<comment><USER23> Sadly this is the sort of rationalizing that uunderlies racism/tribalism: hating people who are different feels better than feeling left out of their goodness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This validates something I've suspected for a while: that decisiveness is valuable in and of itself.

<comment><USER5> From 'Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman':

 _The lieutenant takes me to the colonel and repeats my remark. The colonel says, "Just five minutes," and then he goes to the window and he stops and thinks. That's what they're very good at -- making decisions. I thought it was very remarkable how a problem of whether or not information as to how the bomb works should be in the Oak Ridge plant had to be decided and could be decided in five minutes. So I have a great deal of respect for these military guys, because I never can decide anything very important in any length of time at all.

In five minutes he said, "All right, Mr. Feynman, go ahead."_

\- [http://quanta-gaia.org/reviews/books/FeymanJoking.html](http://quanta- gaia.org/reviews/books/FeymanJoking.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For those who prefer video to text, Barry Schwartz (mentioned in the article) gave an insightful TED talk about this, as has Sheena Iyengar[1] (but I didn't know so haven't watched it... yet). Baba Shiv has an interesting take[2].

[0]: [http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...](http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice)

[1]: [http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosi...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing)

[2]: [http://www.ted.com/talks/baba_shiv_sometimes_it_s_good_to_gi...](http://www.ted.com/talks/baba_shiv_sometimes_it_s_good_to_give_up_the_driver_s_seat)

</comment><comment><USER26> I was ecstatic when I got my first job offer. Then I got a second. And a few more rolled in. Choosing became the most stressful part of the job hunt.

The companies I didn't pick made monster gains in the stock market --30% in one month.

Cry me a river, right?

<comment><USER27> I feel realizing that one's stressing over "first world" types of problems just makes it worse by adding shame to the mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This article is a bit shallow. I recommend Schwarz's book, _The Paradox of Choice_ ; it's a fun read and I found it very insightful.

</comment><comment><USER29> The decisions are difficult because the gradient between them is low. So as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8124172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8124172) says, just pick one.

Humans are great a ranking from a low number of choices. Too many choices or of similar quality and our ranking mechanisms break down.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if this phenomenon might be the primary factor in certain kinds of delayed marriage. I'm thinking, for example, of two people in their late 20s who have been dating for 5 years, figure marriage is in their future, but don't "feel ready".

</comment><comment><USER31> The article doesn't distinguish between freedom to choose, and getting a ridiculous amount of trivial choice blasted at you in order to sell things. The latter is unnatural and psychologically abusive, and could easily cause stress.

But even supposed political freedom may be overrated. A demarchy might very well be better-performing, more representative, and less corruptible than an elected government. After all, term limits, devolution to more local government, and other "reforms" are just an approximation of demarchy. We sure don't get representation from our current system, but we do give authoritarians a veneer of legitimacy by voting. That's pretty stressful.

This is relevant to the Internet because the value and effectiveness of ads are an ongoing controversy, while at the same time funding much of what we use.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've felt this when deciding what kind of yogurt to buy at the supermarket. There were simply too many varieties, so I often ended up not getting any, because I couldn't be bothered to decide.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is why I hate that cinemas offer a choice between 2D and 3D. I just want to see whatever the director intended and not have to try to hunt down which version is 'better'.

Offering a choice makes going to the movies socially into an awkward experience. Inevitably there are people with diverging strong opinions and suddenly a social get together turns into dispute mediation. I think that if there was only one option, people would just deal with it.

Now I dread inviting certain people to the movies because I want a social experience without endlessly dragging up the 2D vs 3D debate.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's me or there are a lot of articles from the newyorker which make the HN top?

<comment><USER35> >there are a lot of articles from the newyorker which make the HN top?

There has probably been a higher frequency lately since the New Yorker has gone no-paywall for the summer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I see a lot of decisionmaking especially as it's foisted on the public in commercial choices to be largely _false_ alternatives.

That is, there are a large number of options presented, under the guise of "choice is good", for which the ultimate effects of the outcome are "it doesn't matter".

The choices are also often not presented in a way that makes discriminating between alternatives straightforward. I'm reminded of a financial news program whose sponsor for a time was a credit card company bragging about "over 3,000 choices for consumers" in credit card options. That is, frankly, stupidly excessive.

But there are ways to present choices in a way which offers a very high level of tailoring of options _without_ overwhelming the user with those options. I like to use the example of automobile heating/cooling controls common in the 1980s-1990s (the tendency toward thermostatic controls is changing this now).

For American car manufacturers, the preferred style was a heat control lever which went from low to high, a fan switch, usually with "flow", "lo", "med" ,and "hi" settings, and a vent + AC selector. This would allow for dash, floor, or defrost vents to be selected, as well as another _addition_ set of vent settings in which AC was enabled. The presentation always struck me as confusing, and there were a number of vent/AC settings which weren't reachable.

This is pretty typical: [http://www.autopartsdb.net/images/productimg/C/CX1884.JPG](http://www.autopartsdb.net/images/productimg/C/CX1884.JPG)

Imports from Japan and Europe typically had four controls: a fan switch, a heat slider or dial, and a vent selector, plus an independent AC control. The method seemed a lot more sensible to me: are you hot (turn up the heat) or cold (turn on the AC), how much air do you want flowing (fan) and where do you want it (vent selector). Figuring out how to set the controls always seemed far more intuitive to me than the American controls.

Typical: [http://www.autoecu.com/images/ebay/01%20-%2007%20TOYOTA%20HI...](http://www.autoecu.com/images/ebay/01%20-%2007%20TOYOTA%20HIGHLANDER%20MANUAL%20CLIMATE%20CONTROL%20REBUILD.jpg)

One more recent modification is that often the AC is automatically activated (and sometimes cannot be _deactivated_ ) when defrost is selected, as the humidity reduction tends to improve defrost performance.

There's a similar design issue I've noticed particularly with clothes washers, where one style seems to specify the type of article you're washing: "knits", "delicates", "colors", "whites", and the other the specific wash conditions you want: water temperature, a

See: [http://content.aolstatic.net/ProductImages/rvLarge/ZWG6141P_...](http://content.aolstatic.net/ProductImages/rvLarge/ZWG6141P_WH_WashingMachine_CP1_AR_L.jpg) (article descriptions)

vs. load size, temperature, options, and agitator settings: [http://www.ajmadison.com/ajmadison/images/large/GTWP1800DWW_...](http://www.ajmadison.com/ajmadison/images/large/GTWP1800DWW_control.jpg)

My observation is that I know the _settings_ I want to apply, and where "outcomes" controls are specified, I've got to translate these into the _settings_ I hope to achieve. What I prefer are options which allow me to select for settings, preferably along a range (e.g., heater intensity, fan power).

Another point is that in consumer goods, the distinctions between products very nearly always simply doesn't matter.

In a Starbucks world, there's a coffee roaster I love which has an exceptionally simple product line. Light roast. Dark roast. Regular. Decaffinated. And you can get your beans whole or ground if you like. But basically four choices. The beans are, of course, excellent.

I've elected for choice in many food purchases by _avoiding mainstream grocery stores_ (the news late this week of P&G killing off a bunch of brands strikes me as comically irrelevant). While I've fewer "options" than MegaMonSantoFoods when shopping at Trader Joes, what I _do_ have are generally simpler, less expensive, less processed, and healthier products. I've long since abandoned prepared breakfast cereals for oats (and add my own nuts, dried fruit, or other ingredients as I prefer). Fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, dairy, and eggs are generally non-branded. Store products for cleaning, or vinegar and baking soda (both of which are surprisingly difficult to find in straighforward bulk forms) work fine. And the costs are lower.

My personal sense is that branding jumped the shark somewhere in the 1970s to 1980s, though we're only just starting to be aware of this in a broader sense.</comment>


Postgres vs. MySql Over Time in `Ask HN: Who Is Hiring?` - <AUTHOR>

keyword appearance count for HN hiring threads

  period      postgres    mysql
  <comment>--  </comment><comment>----  </comment><comment>-
  2011-05            4       13
  2011-06            7       29
  2011-11            7       32
  2011-12           10       19
  2012-06           12       23
  2012-09            8       13
  2013-04           23       34
  2013-05           22       39
  2013-10           32       44
  2014-04           40       41
  2014-05           34       36
  2014-08           44       59
  2014-11           47       35
  2014-12           58       68
  2015-02           63       42
  2015-03           47       47
  2015-04           65       57
  2015-05           65       53
  2015-06           64       38
  2015-07           57       46

 source: https://gist.github.com/cieplak/97ac11ece84e4528e1cf </comment><comment><USER2> My anecdotal observation is that the popularity of MySQL was closely tied to that of PHP. When PHP faded, ruby and python became de facto web platforms of choice. More intro tutorials to those languages recommended Postgres than MySQL.

Also, from working with Postgres source in a databases class... it is just so much cleaner and simpler than MySQL. Makes sense why the ruby/python influencers would opt for postgres over mysql. It's just a better product.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I'm not mistaken, the lack of mentions ~2011 will likely be due to the (thankfully dead) NoSQL craze.

</comment><comment><USER4> "MySQL" could be embedded in "LAMP" etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> one reason not to use MySQL is that it is owned by Oracle

</comment><comment><USER6> +1 for the source code!

</comment><comment><USER7> nice to see</comment>


Ask HN: Next feature for prototyping tool - <AUTHOR> Hey Everyone!
I decided to write here and ask for your input because we're conflicted on our next feature and what that means for the future of our product. We're a small team working on www.ux-app.com, a browser based mock up and prototyping tool that uses regular html elements for mock ups and a visual representation of JavaScript to create events. We're very proud of what we've accomplished in terms of flexibility and we think what's holding us back are more options in terms of imports & exports from the app.
We've been working all week on adjusting the html export to create production ready templates - no extra elements or classes, simple expressive Javascript to build on top of and we're very close! I want UX-App to let you plan your mock ups in low fidelity, and gradually upgrade them (it's just html) until they are real sites with better functionality than standard site builders.
I feel like this direction would really help people! But I'm not 100% sure ... so what do you guys think? <comment><USER2> Clickable: [https://www.ux-app.com/](https://www.ux-app.com/)

If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

To submit a link using the |submit| page, put it in the |url| box _and_ leave the |text| box empty. It is ok to add a comment after the link shows up on the HN |new| page.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the input, will update :)</comment></comment>


Thoughts on Low Latency Interrupt Handling - <AUTHOR> https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/04/22/thoughts-on-low-latency-interrupt-handling-samd51-microchipmakes/ <comment><USER2> The actual article is at [https://www.bigmessowires.com/2018/04/12/thoughts- on-low-lat...](https://www.bigmessowires.com/2018/04/12/thoughts-on-low- latency-interrupt-handling/) The current link is to some kind of aggregator at adafruit.com

</comment><comment><USER3> That scope display is a classic test of interrupt latency. One of the tests for QNX is to do that, and measure how long it takes from an interrupt until a user-space process can turn on an output pin. The important number for an real-time OS is not the average, but the worst case.

Some boards fail this test badly because they're doing something below the OS level in system management board. You set outliers on the scope. Those boards are unsuitable for real-time work.

<comment><USER4> A good trick is to set the scopes persistence to infinity and leave the thing running over the weekend.

> system management

Friend that worked on processors said some of them will 'go away' for a ms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The choice is also influenced by my desire for a mainstream mcu, with broad > availability, good documentation and community support, good development > tools, and a positive long-term outlook. This leads me to eliminate some > options like the Parallax Propeller and Cypress PSoC.

Can anyone elaborate what kills the Cypress PSoC in that scenario? Never used them, but the reconfigurable logic part looks interesting.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I'm confused about that too. I always had a positive experience with the PSoC, unless the author considers it a niche chip that most mainstream embedded developers will never encounter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For a second I thought the SAMD51 was an 8051-based part. Incidentally, some of the newish 8051 MCUs (SiLabs makes some good ones) have very low interrupt latencies too (<10 cycles) when running at 100MHz.

</comment><comment><USER8> OP complains about flash wait states but doesn't know you can move your handler code to ram to avoid them?

<comment><USER9> 'If the flash wait states are a major problem, it may be possible to copy the interrupt handler code to RAM and run it from there. I'm assuming the internal RAM has zero wait states, but I might be wrong on that point.'

<comment><USER10> Simpler MCUs have real hardwired SRAM access registers.

On more complex systems, even SRAM access goes through some stateful scheduling circuitry. So, interrupt latency on mainstream MCUs can't be reduced much.

If you want XIP with adequate latency, there is no alternative to spending money on Everspin MRAM. You will have accommodate the latency of SPI access, but that was never an issue in my practice.

<comment><USER11> There's also parallel versions of MRAM that you can hookup just like SRAM.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, just the amount of mainstream MCUs with external memory bus connection is smaller with each year.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Chrome Extensions - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/extensions/

<comment><USER2> I like how they have gotten rid of categories. I presume they have done so out of efficient laziness (you aren't gonna need it). Also, I'll bet they will observe the searches to see what people are actually looking for and then categorize after the fact.

</comment><comment><USER3> After installing a few extensions (adthwart, sidewiki), I've noticed some problems, so I'd say that the implementation is still a touch buggy. But, still, this is an awesome step forward for Chrome.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the feature I've been waiting for for me to switch to Chrome. Just waiting for ChromeBug now, if there will be one.

<comment><USER4> You do already have the webkit inspector at your disposal (right click -> inspect element)

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I've been loving that feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know when the extensions will find their way into the stable branch? Or is it so that it comes when its ready?

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=984036>

</comment><comment><USER7> Submitting this at the same time as the Google Mac Beta is just cruel.</comment>


Sophia – A modern embeddable key-value database - <AUTHOR> http://sphia.org <comment><USER2> Im actually embedding this in place of leveldb, in a project im working, because i just want a compact db file, and not several like leveldb use to do, and giving the benchmarks are saying this is even faster, its a plus..

But i was just worried about the api using void pointers to represent heap state like db, cursor, etc.. im not a security expert but isnt that considered harmful? giving it could be used as a cursor to point to any arbitrary memory address by a black hat? (or that work just if the handle points to a invalid address? in a bug for instance?)

<comment><USER3> While it is unfortunate they don't use forward-declared structs instead of void pointers, that only means that potential type checking that could otherwise be done by the compiler does not happen, the use of void pointers in and of itself is not a bug, it just can make it more likely that code using the library won't know about bugs until too late.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for clarifying. So its more about type safety than

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does it compare to sqlite? (Yes, sqlite can do K/V if you structure your table simply.)

<comment><USER5> This, so much this, but also some of how proper DB modeling and not being afraid of denormalization can really let you solve lots of problems in efficient-enough ways with SQLite and/or MySQL / Postgres.

I tried out a few different mongo db-like embedded DBs for Python for a project a few months back, and I came away largely unimpressed. I ended up using couchdb for the PoC, later moving to ElasticSearch and letting that handle the "hard" parts for me (aggregations, JS in queries, and rivers are awesome). Even though it's hugely overkill for my data needs (~100mb uncompressed JSON), ElasticSearch is stupid fast and now handles a big part of what my app actually did. Embedded DBs couldn't do the same.

<comment><USER4> ElasticSearch is a fantastic document database in its own right. It gives you everything CouchBase does, is obscenely scalable, AND it does search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How it compares to LMDB?

</comment><comment><USER7> Would love to see where it fits in terms of performance here: Symas Micro database benchmarks [http://symas.com/mdb/microbench/](http://symas.com/mdb/microbench/)

I'm an MDB fan.

<comment><USER8> I've tried to test it, several times. You're welcome to try too. [https://github.com/hyc/leveldb/tree/benches/doc/bench](https://github.com/hyc/leveldb/tree/benches/doc/bench)

It crashed every time for me [https://github.com/pmwkaa/sophia/issues/53](https://github.com/pmwkaa/sophia/issues/53) (single-threaded)

It's also not thread-safe, and the docs never mentioned this limitation. [https://github.com/pmwkaa/sophia/issues/54](https://github.com/pmwkaa/sophia/issues/54)

I would call it a toy but isn't even that - toys are fun.</comment></comment>


The stray dog ecosystem of Moscow - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/628a8500-ff1c-11de-a677-00144feab49a.html?a

<comment><USER2> This was a great article! Thanks for posting.

I noticed a bit of this went I was visiting the ruins of Pompeii. Many stray dogs were waiting by the food court area but there were a few that followed us for the entire day. I'm not sure why they chose over everyone else but they did end up with some food.

It's possible that the strays that chose to follow us may not be allowed into the food court by the other dogs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, the metro dogs are particularly interesting. I can see myself "adopting" one that shared my commute.

 _...they definitely do clean the city. They keep the population of rats down._

I wonder if the dogs have learned to relieve themselves in places more acceptable to people or if the people just tolerate it. Piles of crap on the train is not very appealing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if Dawkins is aware of this ecosystem?

Recent discussion: the truth dogs reveal about evolution

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057835>

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd be interested in seeing what Brian Thomas's analysis of the ecosystem is. I couldn't help but think of this article: <http://everything2.com/title/Vampire+Population+Ecology> as I read about the Humans and Strays co-existing with each other.

</comment><comment><USER6> The selection for intelligence is appealing, but the low rate of reproduction impedes evolution. Although breeding by-design is probably a more effective selector, we don't breed for intelligence in a community of dogs nor for the inter-pack relationships, and intelligence is more effective in communities.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought that, by far, the most interesting bit was that some of the dogs had learned to use the transportation system. I think we underestimate the intelligence of animals.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great article. Reminds me of the dogs in Sri Lanka. What I couldn't work out - was whether they were being looked after and by whom. I don't think they were aggressive though.

</comment><comment><USER9> The dogs, from experience, are well fed enough to ignore the post-drinking blintz I tried to share.

Several also keep a regular schedule on the metro, riding at the same times and getting on and off at the same stops. I brought enough food to become friends w/ several whose schedule overlapped with mine.</comment>


Amazon AWS had a power failure, their backup generators failed - <AUTHOR> https://www.twitter.com/PragmaticAndy/status/1168916144121634818 <comment><USER2> This seems to be getting slightly overblown in that thread. To be clear, this impacted one datacenter out of ten that make up one availability zone out of six in AWS's us-east-1 region. So we are talking 2-3% at most of that region's capacity was impacted.

I haven't seen a report yet on exactly why their generator failed, but from what I've heard, the power failed, and the backup generator kicked in and ran fine for over an hour, but then it failed. This sort of thing sucks to deal with but it's also inevitable. Of their hundreds of datacenters, a mechanical failure is going to happen occasionally no matter how good their maintenance plans are.

So the key when using cloud services like AWS is to plan for the possibility of failure. EBS expects an annual failure rate of 0.1%. So one out of a thousand EBS volumes will fail in a given year. If you operate at the scale of thousands of servers in AWS, you see this sort of thing all the time. Luckily, EBS also makes it trivial to take volume snapshots which are stored in S3, which has much much higher reliability and durability. So if you have data in EBS that needs to be kept safe, take regular snapshots. Here's a doc that explains how you can set up scheduled, auto-rotated snapshots: [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/snapshot...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/snapshot- lifecycle.html)

<comment><USER3> Don't disagree with your point that this is overblown, but here's an important related point

"Your nines are not my nines" \- [https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2019/07/15/giant/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2019/07/15/giant/)

<comment><USER4> If I recall correctly this is nicely covered in the book "Release it!" which BTW I recommend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This conclusion "The cloud is just a .. blah blah blah" is weak: Amazon offers isolated availability zones within each region to mitigate this risk at the system level, it gives you the ability to take EBS snapshots that you can backup on S3 (with 11 9s of durability), and scaling features you just will not find on "just another computer." And you are meant to architect to this with multi-AZ designs.

It's managed infrastructure not some miraculous alternative universe where probabilities do not apply to you.

From the docs:

"Amazon EBS volumes are designed for an annual failure rate (AFR) of between 0.1% - 0.2% ..."

<comment><USER6> the conclusion is weak but true. people do tend to forget the cloud is also a bunch of computers, and they might fail. however, it's not an argument to avoid cloud entirely, and in that sense its weak as an argument against cloud.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. If the cloud is somebody else's computer, I'm glad to let it be a computer that belongs to an extremely specialized and demanding company that focuses on providing that computer to me as a service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We had a similar problem at our hosting facility last winter during that "Ice Vortex" storm that was all over the news. The facilities guys had been very proud of never having a power outage, I've had servers with them for 15 years now.

The morning of the worst of the storm, we completely lose access to all services at that facility. Super unusual, everything we have there is redundant. So I do some minor investigation, and get on the horn to them.

They were being super cagey. "Hey, we lost all access to our systems." "Ok, I'll open a ticket and we will investigate." "Uhhh. It feels like it's a big problem with the data center, are you guys having problems or is it just us?" "I can't say anything more until we've completed an investigation." "I'm trying to decide if we need to start failing over to our DR site, or if I need to put chains on the truck to drive 50 miles to the data center in this storm. Is anyone else having problems? Are fire alarms going off?" "We have received multiple reports of problems."

Power was back on in less than half an hour, but they still weren't saying anything for a few hours. Spent that time trying to figure out if we should shut everything down and ride it out, or if they were back in business. We had one system that suffered disk corruption, despite having a (according to the weekly testing) correctly operating BBU on the RAID.

So what happened? It shouldn't have been possible, our cabinet was being fed by two lines from independent PDUs. Each PDU is fed by 2 independent UPSes (one shared between the two PDUs), each UPS fed by a dedicated generator. Should have required 3 failures to bring us down.

They eventually reveal that they had had one of their UPSes down for weeks, waiting for replacement parts. The other two UPSes had independent failures (one was a controller board, one was battery related). They said they still did quarterly full load tests of the power systems, but reading between the lines I think they weren't testing these two UPSes because the other one was not there to back them up.

Still, one power event in 15 years isn't too shabby.

<comment><USER9> I had a similar situation in the early 2000's at NTT/Verio in Sterling, VA. They lost power because someone dug through a utility line and introduced a ground a fault into their system. They switched to generators and then against protocol (basically human error) tried to force override a transfer switch onto their other utility which ended up killing the generators. Eventually the UPSs were all drained, but we had to shutdown servers long ahead of that because with no AC, they were overheating. People were taking servers out by pickup truck to stand them up at their other offices and data centers. 48 hours of pain.

<comment><USER10> Power seems like the big wildcard in data center management. So tough to properly test your failover preparations, and so many different ways things can go wrong.

I know of a large company that had the data center emergency cutoff button next to the automatic doors on the way out. Sure enough, a contractor hit it one day thinking it was the way to open the doors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So dude is mad because he didn't have a redundancy plan? You can take snapshots of EBS volumes which backs everything up to S3. They even tell you that EBS volumes can fail in the documentation. But blaming someone else is easier I guess...

<comment><USER12> AWS need to add a button/option to ebs to have volumes be automatically backed up by aws itself. Without this few will do it or are even aware that it's possible to do.

It doesn't help that ebs backup takes forever, especially initially.

<comment><USER13> They did add that: [https://aws.amazon.com/backup/](https://aws.amazon.com/backup/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not only should you be architecting your app to survive an az going down you should be planning on an entire region going down and maybe even an entire cloud provider.

It's annoying when amazon has outages but they have local outages all the time and they give you all the tools you need to handle them.

<comment><USER15> money money money though - all that time and effort (and fees) doesn't help you to lowball the next contract, cross your fingers and hope not to get caught out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This just sounds like a bad architected solution, nothing else. The same problems that can happen in your own datacenter can happen in the cloud; it's just not your responsibility to fix it. If you lack that knowledge as an architect, rethink your title.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the real complaint is:

>>Then it took them four days to figure this out and tell us about it.

<comment><USER18> I must have missed something entirely, did this all happen before the weekend? Where is the 4 days coming from? Amazon's RSS feed hit our Slack on Saturday morning with an explanation that the power had gone out and the backup generators failed.

Is there some post mortem that just came out?

>>We want to give you more information on progress at this point, and what we know about the event. At 4:33 AM PDT one of 10 datacenters in one of the 6 Availability Zones in the US-EAST-1 Region saw a failure of utility power. Backup generators came online immediately, but for reasons we are still investigating, began quickly failing at around 6:00 AM PDT. This resulted in 7.5% of all instances in that Availability Zone failing by 6:10 AM PDT. Over the last few hours we have recovered most...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember somebody on here writing out how when they worked at AWS they wrote custom firmware for their generators to get max performance.

<comment><USER20> I couldn't find the HN post but I found an article that talks about firmware mods they do.

[https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/04/07/how-...](https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/04/07/how- amazon-prevents-data-center-outages-like-deltas-150m-meltdown)

> _The piece of technology Amazon designed to avoid this type of outage is the > firmware that decides what electrical switchgear should do when a data > center loses utility power. Typical vendor firmware prioritizes preventing > damage to expensive backup generators over preventing a full data center > outage, according to Hamilton. Amazon (and probably most other large-scale > data center operators) prefers risking the loss of a sub-$1 million piece of > equipment rather than risking widespread application downtime._

> _When everything happens as expected during a utility outage (which is the > case most of the time), the switchgear waits a few seconds in case utility > power comes back (also the most common scenario) and if it doesn't, the > switchgear fires up generators, while the data center runs on energy stored > by UPS systems. Once the generators are stabilized, the switchgear makes > them the primary source of power to the IT systems._

> _Last year's Delta data center outage was attributed to switchgear "locking > out" the generators at the airline's facility in Atlanta. That's what most > switchgear is designed to do when it senses a major voltage anomaly either > in the data center or on the incoming utility feed. Plugging a live > generator into a shorted circuit will usually fry the generator, and > switchgear locks generators out to avoid that._

<comment><USER21> Diesel generators at Hospitals and diesel motors running pumps for fire suppression systems are normally set up to keep running closer to the line of risking damage to the generator and engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People tend to make a habit of treating AWS like a VPS provider, in my experience. And you can skate by on this for a while, but it really isn't designed for that. And that will, eventually, lead to pain and suffering.

Sometimes instances just go out to lunch. Sometimes an AZ goes down. Chaos Monkey isn't just a good idea, it's required for reliable operation.

But please, please, if you are going to treat AWS like a VPS, at least don't do it in us-east-1! It seems to have more outages.

Our setup related to instances and EBS includes: At least 2 instances in different AZs, an ELB in front of them, a backup running at our hosting facility (though this could just be a different AWS zone, or different provider), and DNS with full-paper-path health checks that switch DNS over to the colo servers if any component of the primary fails.

</comment><comment><USER22> Although this was not reported on the status dashboard, this also affected elasticcache as well.It was acknowledged by the rep on the phone and via email issue got resolved. We weren't able start/reboot any redis instances on us- east-1a so had to launch on us-east-1c.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there a reason it often seems like backup generators fail? Is it that we don't hear the success stories of all the times they don't fail? Just due to not being tested often?

<comment><USER24> We generally only hear about the failures, but it's also a tricky thing to test. Simple setups won't put load on the generator during the periodic tests, which can result in outages if the generator will start, but can't run the load for whatever reason (ex: mechanical problems, or load size grew beyond capacity). More complicated setups may be able to switch the load to the generator, but not switch back to utility fast enough in case the generator under test fails during the test. The transfer switches themselves are prone to failures and hard to make redundant.

It seems that it's pretty hard to get this right from the beginning too, every large datacenter ends up learning this again after they have a sequence of power incidents. That said, successful switch to generator for 1 hour and then generator failure is not a terrible outcome; if there was a notification, that's enough time to evacuate critical systems (assuming you have a plan).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there a source for this other than an angry Twitter user?

<comment><USER26> I came across this news article: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/04/aws_power_outage_da...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/04/aws_power_outage_data_loss/)

The headline sounded so clickbaity that I ignored it before seeing this thread

<comment><USER27> The Register often uses snarky or tongue-in-cheek headlines, I like it tbh

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Forgive me, What may be a stupid question.

As far as I can tell, the number of a Mechanical / Hardware Failure is far higher than Software. And it is always Power, UPS, Generator, BBU, Raid Card Failure etc.

Why is it that we keep hearing failure in these segment? And it doesn't seems anything have been done? Are there any Innovation happening in this space?

</comment><comment><USER29> This tweet might be in response to the AWS Post event summary from August 23, 2019:

> We'd like to give you some additional information about the service > disruption that occurred in the Tokyo (AP-NORTHEAST-1) Region on August 23, > 2019. Beginning at 12:36 PM JST, a small percentage of EC2 servers in a > single Availability Zone in the Tokyo (AP-NORTHEAST-1) Region shut down due > to overheating.

[https://aws.amazon.com/message/56489/](https://aws.amazon.com/message/56489/)

<comment><USER25> But the guy's tweet specifically mentions Reston (Virginia). This is in the vicinity of us-east-1.

By the way, I'm pretty sure none of the actual AWS datacenters are in Reston proper. They are in Ashburn and other more sparse suburbs.

Source: I live in the DC area and regularly visit Reston and Herndon. There are large AWS offices in Herndon but not so many datacenters. Real estate in Reston is pretty expensive.

<comment><USER30> > By the way, I'm pretty sure none of the actual AWS datacenters are in Reston > proper.

Pretty sure you are right. The physical AWS data centers I know of in Reston area are:

4 DCs on Smith Switch Rd in Ashburn, VA

2 DCs (IAD54 and IAD67) elsewhere in Ashburn, VA

3 DCs on West Severn Way in Sterling, VA

3 DCs on Dulles Summit Ct in Sterling, VA

2 DCs on Prologis Dr in Sterling, VA

2 DCs on Relocation Dr in Sterling, VA

2 DCs (IAD69 and IAD76) elsewhere in Sterling, VA

1 DC in South Riding, VA

4 DCs on Westfax Drive in Chantilly, VA

3 DCs on Mason King Ct in Manassas, VA

2 DCs elsewhere in Manassas, VA

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> mLab was affected by this, and based on their own status page it looks like some volumes are permanently unrecoverable: [https://status.mlab.com/](https://status.mlab.com/)

<comment><USER13> I can confirm that. We had a single-AZ RDS instance whose underlying storage (a "magnetic" EBS volume) unrecoverably failed, according to AWS. It had to be restored from a backup. Fortunately, "point-in-time recovery" meant there was very little data loss, just some downtime.

(Not that data loss or downtime mattered for this instance, which was just used for internal testing.)

Power-up is very stressful for hard drives, so it's not too surprising that some failed when the power turned back on. EBS does offer spinning rust storage options, so maybe mLab was using those for some of those failed volumes. I don't know if the same is true for SSDs or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> EBS is persistent right?

I mean the failure of backup is not a surprise. Entropy is just everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is this North Virginia AGAIN???? How ironic that a company named "Amazon" cannot keep it's servers up when ever there is rain. This has happened practically every time hurricane season appears. Obviously being a bit hard on them (for humor) but come on guys, get a giant umbrella or something.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if they perform routine tests on their support infra: power, cooling, et al

<comment><USER16> No, they just let it ride and hope nothing breaks.

<comment><USER35> I know you're being sarcastic but you're probably more right than you realize. Many many "redundant" systems turn out to not be so redundant when it counts.

talk to some datacenter admins and you'll learn there's a lot more bailing wire and hope-for-the-best out there than you would think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Scary that AWS can't restore EBS volumes properly after a power failure. Snapshot are not a solution to this in a live system.

<comment><USER37> If you lose power mid-write to an HDD, of course you can lose data.

This guy sounds like if he'd self hosted he'd be complaining about an HDD failure. It happens- you need to design around it. Luckily, EBS volumes, snapshots and AZs make all of this pretty straight forward.

<comment><USER36> Data, sure. Lose the volume, no.

<comment><USER38> In my 15 years of experience as a sysadmin and architect, hard drives are far and above the most frequent hardware casualty of power failures.

The EBS documentation states that there's an expected AFR of 1 to 2 per thousand volumes, so you should plan accordingly. Replicate any data that will cause harm to your business if lost to other sources. Keep backups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> He is just having a temper tantrum. Everything can fail and everything does fail. There was an outage a few years ago in a well known colo/ip/managed services provider where the feeder line from the power company failed, the ATS flipped to the backup power which had a limited run time. And, due to one of those 1/1000 events that should never happen (because that ATS should flip maybe 5-6 times a year) it fused to the new position. And it happened in a place where the DC operator would cut off the service on the second line to ensure they can safely work on removing the affected ATS. So the redundant power lines + backup power did not work. If you happened to be in that specific area of the building and happened to know building engineers and data center engineers and power company engineers you would have had heard what actually happened. Otherwise you just got "Imminent power failure" notification. Hopefully you knew that it means you want to shutdown all your workloads remotely and send someone you have on call who can reach the data center in 10-15 minutes to physically disconnect your PDUs from the incoming lines just in case someone messed up when they play at fixing the power so you don't blow 10-30% of your PDUs.

That's the reality of the life in a data center. So yeah, either accept that stuff like this happens or build for stuff like this happening. Engineering around physical problems in the cloud environment is far easier than in the data center environment.

<comment><USER40> I've seen at least 3 variations of the problem you mention, where power failover caused protracted downtime requiring rush delivery of niche replacement hardware. (That last is big: I've seen 8-figure enterprise hardware spends down for a week because it requires flying someone in to fix it, whereas AWS/Google has 24x7 staffing along with redundancy).

Anyone thinking this doesn't happen with private data centers is either very green or selectively excusing problems.</comment></comment>


Russian hacker engineered worldwide crime spree - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/03/fbi-busts-russian-hacked-created-zeus-cryptolocker/9919985/ <comment><USER2> I like this in particular. It highlights the social manipulation part of such a exploit.

>To draw attention away from the massive transfers, the hackers often created a diversion, such as a "denial of service" attack that would bombard the website with traffic in an attempt to shut it down, the law enforcement official said.

Corporate banking applications have multitudes of layers of approval, authorised signatories, transaction limits, multiple approvers, etc, and increasingly mobile alerts. By creating chaos in an organisation, it does not mean these break down, but everyone is panicking about something they feel is important, and give scant regard to what seems credible and routine. Exploiting a human fallibility.

Disclaimer: I used to do compliance and security training at a very large financial institution. A huge amount focused on social manipulation via stress and pressure being placed in someone at a critical node of the transaction process.

<comment><USER3> This is concerning in conjunction with the trend for a cashless society.

[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/australia...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/australia- charges-towards-a-cashless-economy/story-e6frg926-1226942638254)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "By the time the bank realized the money was missing, the hackers had laundered it through so many accounts it became untraceable."

How is that even possible?

<comment><USER5> With access to thousands of bank accounts, you can issue small transfers to and from those accounts, over and over and over again, to the point that the transfers are so many, that tracing them becomes significantly difficult.

It's not untraceable, but the cost associated with unraveling a single theft becomes prohibitively expensive.

<comment><USER6> Are the banks liable for these kinds of losses? I'm guessing no; if they were, I doubt they'd consider it "prohibitively expensive" to track down losses of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

<comment><USER5> "hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars." is quite a large range when talking about money.

My comment was specific to the example given in the article, where to amount was about $195,000. While not a tiny sum of money, the amount of man hours spent to unravel those transactions, to ultimately get to recoverable sum, would be close to if not more than the original amount. And getting to the amount, may not guarantee that you can recover the funds anyway.

<comment><USER7> Putting aside the cost/hours of recovering the money, is this the only reason its 'untraceable'?

I understand it becomes tedious to unravel the transactions, but is it still a tractable problem? Or do these people eventually shift the money into offshore banks that refuse to co-operate with authorities? It seems such a bank would be quickly cut off from the rest of the world if it existed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As always, someone talked:

      A confidential informant tipped the
      FBI off to the syndicate administrator's
      email address...

Humans are the weakest link in any crime machine...

<comment><USER9> Wait till we have bad actor autonomous corporations. What a nightmare.

<comment><USER10> are you sure what we don't have them already? :) At least the high frequency hedge-funds seems to be pretty close to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd just like to say, as someone who was in charge of a network that got hit with crypto-locker (we had backups, no payout needed), I'm very glad that it's stopped working.

Now we just need to wait for the next bunch of greedy, malevolent sociopaths to create the next round of ransomware... Although I'm sure this has already been done.

<comment><USER12> Given that they shut down a lot (all?) of the C&C servers, does that mean that people who _did_ need to purchase a key are out of luck?

<comment><USER13> If they have a tech-savvy friend, they should be okay. I recall reading an article describing how a flaw in the CryptoLocker encryption process and that the keys were actually stored on the PC itself -- meaning it's possible to "unlock" it on your own.

<comment><USER14> You're thinking of CryptoDefense, one of the more recent CryptoLocker knockoffs. This flaw was also patched in early April if I'm not mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Please. We do not need to use the word "dazzling" in this context. This encourages people to spend their considerable mental resources "orchestrating" simple fraud.

<comment><USER15> (Thanks for the quick edit.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sure he must be skilled, but other than cryptolocker's novel approach which gave the victims no other possibility than to comply, on a purely technical level I see (once again) no genius, just a guy who has a lot of free time to spend on illegal activities...

<comment><USER17> The sheer scope of it is impressive. To infect that many machines, have them network with each other, engineer massive wire transfers that are somehow silent and untraceable, not get caught to me is genius. Seems harder than finding a couple of 0-days (even though that's ridiculously hard as well), even on a technical level.

<comment><USER16> That's true the numbers are impressive. He did get caught though, not him personally but his network was brought down by the FBI. The thing with the FBI is that of course, in the long you can't win, once you get in their radar it's time to abandon ship IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Had to be paid in untraceable money cards or bitcoin" Visa, Mastercard, and American Express shoud be required to pay for any fraudulent/suspected activity on their prepaid cards? I know they charge us more than enough interest to cover these types of frauds? As to Russian Hackers, I heard in many small Russian towns these guys' are considered heroes? I really wish Russia could get rid of corrupt politicians/Officials, so the Russian people could have a fighting chance at a system like ours(America). That sentiment goes for Mexico too. A system without trust must be like hell?

<comment><USER19> With all the problems and corruption in the American system I honestly hope that there is something better to aspire to. Russia is incredibly corrupt, and so is Mexico, but America is not without it's faults either.

<comment><USER16> What about Norway, Finland, Canada and New Zealand?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm still not sure why ISPs cannot detect when customer machines have been turned into botnet nodes and, effectively, disable them until cleaned. Seems that the machine's Net activity would leave tell-tale signatures that wouldn't be too hard to detect.

Yet, about the most I have seen an ISP do is block port 25.

In general, it seems that ISPs have a lot of unweilded power in this fight.

<comment><USER21> God this sounds like a nightmare. What looks like botnet traffic to an ISP (irc, ssh, just about anything other than 80, 443, and 53) is stuff that I use all day, every day, as part of my work.

Even filtering out SMTP traffic has been really frustrating for me at points in the past.

I really hope ISPs _don 't_ start doing this. I want them to be as dumb of a pipe as possible.

<comment><USER20> I hear you. I was frustrated by the SMTP thing _once_ myself. Thereafter, I knew what was going on.

Anyway, as devs who need access to this stuff we are in the minority, and I am sure they can find a way to make exceptions for people like us who are "power users".

But, to leave the other 98% of grandmothers, etc. completely vulnerable to botnets by default seems an unreasonable approach.

What seems clear is that they will eventually have to do _something_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sorry for the tangent, but does this guy look to be 30 years of age to anyone? I'm having a hard time believing that based on the photos. I'm not implying that someone who is 30 isn't capable of these acts, but perhaps they have his age, photo or identity wrong?

<comment><USER23> Here are a few more images. [http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/evgeniy- mikhailovich-bogache...](http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/evgeniy-mikhailovich- bogachev) He's 30 according to the FBI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wish someone would persuade the Russian authorities to crack down on their cyber criminals. It mostly seems that when they do get tracked down the Russians basically ignore it and allow them to continue business as usual.</comment>


iCloud Reminders in Org-mode: Talking to OS X with Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://msnyder.info/posts/2012/05/icloud-reminders-orgmode/

<comment><USER2> Phenomenal.</comment>


New Rails Identity - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2016/1/19/new-rails-identity/ <comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931469)

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the aesthetic and the simple, friendly front page. This is probably a bad place to give suggestions, but I think the call to action could be friendlier: the big red button now basically goes to the change log for a beta release. Shouldn't the most obvious button instead go to a page that teaches me how to install the latest stable Rails and get a test site running? (To the "Getting Started" page, I suppose, which is linked inline in the copy paragraph.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I really like it, but I've also liked the old design. I'm not sure what gradients have to do with early adopters, though:

> We aren't courting cutting-edge early adopters, so we can lay off the > gradients.

And as far as minor nitpicks go, I find it hard to scan the blog - <USER2> articles blend into each other, making it hard to skip a blog post by quickly scrolling downward. And the Call-to-Action button looks 3D-ish, but I can't depress it :( (No :hover, no :active)</comment>


Facebook XAR: executable archive format - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebookincubator/xar/ <comment><USER2> This is already on the FP</comment>