Show HN: Duple – Private cloud at home - <AUTHOR> https://www.duple.io/en/?j <comment><USER2> I'm _really_ into home Cloud stuff. This answers none of my questions.

1) Where will my files be stored?

2) Does Duple store a copy?

3) What does Duple do with my meta data? What do they do with usage stats?

4) Does Duple have any third party contracts or contractors with access to my data?

5) How does putting Duple software on an RPI make my files available from anywhere? How do you enable access to my device from anywhere?

These guys are asking for an awful lot of faith from users who are looking to potentially store their entire lives on their service. We deserve to know how it _really_ works.

<comment><USER3> What is the purpose of having "the cloud" in your home at all? To me "the cloud's" primary value is that it is running off-site, in an environment that capably and regularly deals with broken equipment. If my work is backed up in Google/Dropbox's data center, I don't have to worry about it if my house gets flooded.

Having the cloud in your house, running on whatever stuff is laying around, just seems one small step removed from just keeping everything on your laptop and hoping it doesn't break.

<comment><USER2> You're not wrong about the benefits of the Cloud. Some people make bomb shelters in their basement, some people stockpile canned goods. I stockpile data. I even have an old text only offline copy of the English Wikipedia.

My main issues are privacy. I don't want Google peeking into everything I upload for marketing materials. I also don't want to trust a third party company with my kids photos. They can change their privacy policy in the blink of an eye, or disable my account by accident without reason or warning.

Then there's the security aspect, and I'm settling in for a fight here. Google, AWS, Azure... These are all consolidated attack vectors. When WWIII breaks out it's not starting in the physical world. It's starting on the internet, and the first casualties are going to be major infrastructure providers followed immediately by FB, Google, Microsoft, and AWS.

Take out those 4 companies and our world is in chaos. Your company won't get their emails, their apps will be offline, and half our economy will be out of business by morning time.

But not me. My RAID arrays are still spinning away and if I want to I can reach out and touch them. Who knows where everyone elses data is. That's not my problem.

<comment><USER4> Great dialogue here, you should turn it into a video with some epic music in the background, and fading images in and out, rock flag and eagle.

And host the video on a rasberry pi, at your home, on Peertube

I have been enjoying learning about self hosting, Matrix.org has been the next project I am interested in, once I get bored with other current hobby projects. Hosting my own node, that and I am waiting for the Google photos clone to get up version 1.0 so I can self host all my images too.

<comment><USER5> > waiting for the Google photos clone to get up version 1.0

What is the closest open source alternative to Google photos?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > No server needed. No expensive hardware required... You can use your Router, > NAS, Raspberry Pi, Smart TV.

So... it turns those things into servers then (many of which already run servers by default)? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but a device running server software is still a server, even if it isn't dedicated to only that task.

<comment><USER7> Cloud = servers someone else has and mostly maintains for you

Cloud...at home? This is a dumb headline. The definition of "server" has gone from big bulky slabs of bare metal to include smaller things like a RPi.

<comment><USER8> > Cloud = servers someone else has and mostly maintains for you

No, "cloud = on-demand provisioned server resources"; that was what distinguished cloud computing from pre-existing remote-leased or on-premises resources. "Private cloud" (usually, on-premises of the user) has been a thing since very early in cloud computing, and "at home" has been plausible for even fairly casual users at least since Ubuntu 9.04 bundled Eucalyptus.

But this service is just abusing "cloud" to mean "SaaS", I think (in that it's a demo of a paid SaaS product that incorporates your hardware.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From what I can gather from the FAQ, this won't work for routers behind a NAT, which is the case for me and I assume many others too, this should probably be mentioned somewhere.

A bit worrying that it'll be forever closed source, especially since it needs to expose your router to the internet and that it's written in C and also this sentence from the FAQ:

> Everything was built from scratch

<comment><USER10> Long live zerotier

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the tip. I'd never heard of it. For others like me: [https://www.zerotier.com/manual/](https://www.zerotier.com/manual/)

<comment><USER12> Here's their getting started page (not terribly mobile friendly though)

[https://zerotier.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SD/pages/8454145/...](https://zerotier.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SD/pages/8454145/Getting+Started+with+ZeroTier)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the offer:

"The beta version of Duple is now available. You can download it and use it for free. However if you'd like to participate in the Duple beta program, and get a lifetime discount as a reward, click here."

But I don't understand what we are paying for going forward. Presumably you pay for the software once. Is there a recurring charge of some sort? What for? If the software is on premise, you can't really turn it off or stop it from working.

Does duple, the company, ever touch the data?

If privacy is the killer feature, it seems that an open source version will ultimately displace this.

<comment><USER14> Better to use syncthing, simple equivalent & free / open source.

<comment><USER15> Syncthing is great (I use it for all my syncing needs), but it's scope is limited. It doesn't really solve file sharing in a user-friendly way.

<comment><USER16> While I agree Syncthing is about seamlessly syncing files with devices you own, not file sharing as such, it does a good 98% of what this program offers with a more open source background and is completely free.

I share files, what, once a year? Syncthing works great for that use case. If I want to share files too big to email, I can stand to upload to Onedrive/Dropbox/an open directory on my web server for that one-time use. For more frequent setups, sure an Owncloud/Nextcloud instance wouldn't be amiss.

<comment><USER15> Oh I wasn't arguing in favor of using this. I doubt I'll ever use non open software for my data again. Just saying I've run into problems trying to use syncthing for sharing files.

<comment><USER16> No offense intended or taken, you and are I are in complete agreement re: what software should be touching our data.

I believe you when you say you've had problems performing file shares to arbitrary people, my comments were directed only that my use case is somewhat different.

Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They have some fairly hefty competition:

[https://www.synology.com/en- us/dsm/feature/drive](https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/drive)

[https://www.drobo.com/homeoffice/#file](https://www.drobo.com/homeoffice/#file)

I'm pretty sure that most NAS vendors have some variation on "Home Cloud."

I think most folks that want to set something like this up, will want a turnkey solution.

<comment><USER18> Looking at their "about us" page removed my confidence from their product. They should fix that asap.

For my data, I want reliability and security. I want something that has been battle-tested, and that I am confident will be around in a few years. This is why I went with Synology. Two guys in a "garage/bootstrapping" does not instill confidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://doc.duple.io/duplecli-documentation/](https://doc.duple.io/duplecli- documentation/) [https://doc.duple.io/faq/](https://doc.duple.io/faq/)

So basically Dropbox but with an SFTP server or network/local filesystem for hosting.

</comment><comment><USER20> When someone says "modern day snake oil", this is what I think of. A "cloud" that isn't the cloud _at all_ , pretends to be more reliable and secure than it is, and over-sells basic features like replication. "This USB stick will solve all your problems for a low, low price!"

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm sorry but Nextcloud is getting a bit of an unfair shake here. I recently got a raspberry pi 4 and installing nextcloud on there wasn't rocket science: [https://smalldata.tech/blog/2019/07/12/setting-up-a- raspberr...](https://smalldata.tech/blog/2019/07/12/setting-up-a-raspberry- pi-4-home-server)

In fact the biggest issue that I faced was that my router did not support NAT loopback which led me to using the pi for DNS in order to be able to use my "private" cloud.

Nextcloud is an open-source dropbox and is written in PHP. It can be very easily installed via docker and is quite mature at this point with a rich ecosystem of 3rd party apps for functionality other than file sync. Big props to the folks working on it!

</comment><comment><USER22> It's not open source and it's not for sale, even though it's a business, so beware about what it's future may be.

However it might be reusable with an alternate core:

> Q: Do you plan to open-source it later? A: We'll open source everything > (server, interface, etc...), except from the C Library. Reason being that > the library is what gives us our technical competitive advantage (being that > you get the full private cloud experience with no need for a server). It's > also important to note that you can't patent your code/algorithm in Europe, > so there's no other way to protect it. But everything else expect from the > library will be open-source.

</comment><comment><USER23> How is this different from syncthing - [https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/](https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/) ? I am still trying to figure out

<comment><USER19> Syncthing is peer-to-peer, Duple is one master + many slaves.

<comment><USER24> First time I have seen Syncthing. I am currently using Resilio Sync to sync my "Sites" directory across my iMac and MacBook Pro. Resilio seems to work well, but it has not been updated in a long time (running v2.6.3) and sometimes it uses nearly 100% of a single CPU core for no apparent reason for extended periods of time.

How does Syncthing stack up against Resilio?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "military-grade encryption" in marketing materials always scares me. Just tell me what the algos are

<comment> kube-system ROT13 of course, designed to Roman military specifications.

<comment><USER26> Caesar ciphers mostly shifted by 1 or 3. Their alphabet had only 23 letters (no J, U, or W) so ROT-13 wouldn't had the cool property of being its own inverse.

<comment><USER8> ROT13 is 4 rounds of Caesar-3 and one round of Caesar-1, and multiple rounds of encryption and mixing different modes makes it that much more secure, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A bit offtopic, but does anybody know a micro server the size of an Intel NUC or Mac Mini, but with 100+W desktop/server (real, not cloud) hardware for use as CI server?

<comment><USER28> I wanted also a small, energy efficient server for CI at home. I was looking at SBCs (Single Board Computers) like Raspberri Pi and now others. Most are ARM based and max out at 2Gb or 4Gb RAM. I ended up buying an Odroid H2, which is x86 and takes up to 32GB RAM. I just received it so haven't put it together yet... also depends what you want to do with it how much you want to spend, I bought 32GB RAM, 1TB nvme and 6TB SATA HDD and plan to run everything on containers (docker). Also instead of say, Gitlab, Jenkins and Artifactory I think I'll use Gitea, Drone.io self hosted and I was looking at strongbox instead of Artifactory but not sure if it's production ready.

<comment><USER29> What kind of enclosure are you using for it?

I currently use a server I built inside a Fractal Node 304 case for that same purpose. While compact for a regular PC type server, it's still a little bulky for my liking.

<comment><USER28> Odroid-H2 Case Type 1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So how does this thing work? Does the private cloud only exist when the storage device is plugged in?

I see "smart TV" as a host option, does that mean the storage devices can use unaware USB hosts to be a communication mechanism?

Interesting idea, I'll have to try it @home. Whitepaper on how the tech works would be nice.

<comment><USER31> A white paper is necessary to understand this. It doesn't make sense otherwise. How would a smart TV or any TV for that matter be configured to export it's USB devices as a network mount? I mean, there's absolutely no way to reach a USB drive attached to your TV except from within the TV itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "You have one repository folder and one folder Duple on each device where you can access your cloud. This Duple folder works like a Dropbox folder, and everything is synchronized in multidirectional way between all the devices (all the Duple folders) and the repository folder which contains the totality of the private cloud."

So, here I am, exposing my 36TB nas using this new duple thing. Because every client needs the repository folder which contains the totality of the privace cloud, how is this going to work?

</comment><comment><USER33> I finally ditched SpiderOak for SyncThing about a month ago - and I haven't looked back. It solves all of these issues, I fully host it myself, and I can access everything, exactly the way I want to based on shares.

I have a machine in my office, a shared folder on my mobile, two machines at home, and my wife has her office, and her work laptop. It's everything these things should be, other than the lack of an iOS app for her.

<comment><USER16> I have a lot of devices as well - syncthing can handle em all.

3x phones for photo upload, music sync, TWRP zips etc.

2x personal laptops

2x work devices + a personal VM

2x close friend party shares for easy linux iso sharing overnight

And most recently, added one volunteer device for instant/eventually consistent overnight poor-man's offsite data backup.

I can mix n match folders for this on the fly and feel no loss of functionality with how little I do arbitrary internet file sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I need more from private cloud than just storage

</comment><comment><USER35> Apart from all the other stuff, it seems suspicious that they would use Serpent for encryption, rather than using AES or another more well-known cipher suite (also, no talk about AEAD).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(cipher)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_\(cipher\))

<comment><USER36> The article you link perhaps hint at why the developers felt like this: The NIST report apparently suggested Serpent was actually a bit more secure, but Rijndael was chosen for AES because it allowed for a more efficient software implementation. The developers may feel that that trade-off wasn't worth it, although obviously, going with a less-common strategy for encryption is generally discouraged.

<comment><USER20> Which is crazy. AES is good enough for TOP SECRET, it's the most widely supported & vetted modern cipher, and all modern hardware has instruction sets dedicated to it that prevent timing side channels (which Serpent can't claim). Not using AES here is a product design red flag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone remember younity? Same exact product, same exact tag line "personal cloud" etc. (ex-engineer here)

</comment><comment><USER38> I see [https://www.duple.io/en/blocked.html](https://www.duple.io/en/blocked.html) when I click _Try Duple_ What countries do they intend to not sell their software in and why? A FAQ would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER15> I found the FAQ[0] to be the most informative.

[0] [https://doc.duple.io/faq/](https://doc.duple.io/faq/)

</comment><comment><USER39> So I read the frontpage, download/try page and installation and still have absolutely no idea what this project is about.

</comment><comment><USER40> Somewhat related- I've gotten a lot of mileage out of using Cryptomator (no affiliation) with iCloud to have access to encrypted documents across devices without having to worry about the pain of self-hosting. Here's a blog post I wrote about it [https://karlshouler.com/posts/2019-05-31-secure-cloud- storag...](https://karlshouler.com/posts/2019-05-31-secure-cloud-storage)

</comment><comment><USER41> I clicked for a "Private Cloud", and all I saw was storage of files. Am I missing more?

</comment><comment><USER42> Home cloud is an oxymoron, no? At what point is it just "I have some servers"?

</comment><comment><USER43> Blocked in Venezuela. Not entirely surprised, but very disheartening.

</comment><comment><USER44> tl;dr:

It's an easier to install and use Nextcloud alternative, with open source components (to be released in the future) but closed source core.

<comment><USER45> I thought of nextcloud. Seems very similar:

For those unfamiliar nextcloud is kinda an open source Dropbox.

[https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nextcloud-13-how-get- st...](https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nextcloud-13-how-get-started-and- why-you-should)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Blocked in South Africa.

</comment><comment><USER47> how does this differ from owncloud/nextcloud?

</comment><comment><USER48> >How does it work?

>Just turn it on!

That's not an explanation of how it works, that's an explanation of how to use it.

(I mean, you just know something stupid like that is coming the moment you see a loading progress bar for a static page. It's not surprising, just disappointing.)

<comment><USER36> I mean, we need this sort of technology to take hold with non-technical users, so I applaud it from that aspect... but us technical users want to know what's actually happening here. And the fact that the source is "coming soon" doesn't help either.

Oh, here's what we're looking for: [https://doc.duple.io/faq/](https://doc.duple.io/faq/)

<comment><USER49> >we need this sort of technology to take hold with non-technical users,

I'm pretty sure non-technical users are not looking for a private cloud.

<comment><USER36> Are you sure? Eventually people are going to realize that the SaaS companies have sold them out. And they may not understand what a private cloud is, but that's what they're going to want: The convenience they're accustomed to in a device only they control which can't be shut down or taken away from them.

<comment><USER15> ISPs (at least in the US) have been selling their customers out for years. Nobody cares as long as Netflix works and their photos get to the people they want to see them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Terrible website design. Absolutely no reason to block all content just because I have js turned off.

<comment><USER15> While it would be nice if they provided HTML endpoints, there are valid reasons for using SPAs, even for text-heavy sites. That said, the loading bar is a bit mind-blowing IMO.

<comment><USER51> What are those valid reasons?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Turn Your Google Sheets into JSON RESTful APIs - <AUTHOR> https://sheet.best <comment><USER2> This is a great concept, but I'd really love if there were a way to use this with a private Google auth key rather than having to share my "database" publicly!

<comment><USER3> There's an open-source product I'm working on that helps with exactly that. Find it at [https://steinhq.com](https://steinhq.com).

We've launched recently, and would love it if you could try it out! Let me know how it goes.</comment></comment>


The internet doesn't care about multiplayer games - <AUTHOR> https://www.networknext.com/post/the-internet-doesnt-care-about-your-game <comment><USER2> Paying for traffic to be prioritized is the exact opposite of net neutrality. No need to pay lip service to the idea then. The obvious danger here is that small indie studios may not be able to afford making enjoyable real-time multiplayer games.

How about improving public internet infrastructure instead?

<comment><USER3> I can pay FedEx to get my shit somewhere faster than my competitors.

My customers are delighted by this and in turn they spend more with me and less with my USPS shipping competitors.

Data packets are just digital shipped goods. The same rules should apply.

<comment><USER4> There are a number of feasible things which are not permitted by law. There are significant advantages to ensuring net neutrality exists and is maintained.

<comment><USER3> Great, so make it law that you can only allocate a certain percentage of your network to priority traffic.

Or that any unbought priority capacity is made available to neutral internet traffic.

It's not a mutually exclusive situation.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that the best method of preserving net neutrality was by not having it.

It really is a mutually exclusive situation, either all traffic is treated equally or it isn't.

This isn't animal farm, some packets are not more equal than others

<comment><USER5> This sounds like you are saying that reclassifying ISPs to be regulated under the FCC instead of the FTC would ban traffic shaping.

Obviously not all packets are equal. VOIP is an example of a high priority protocol. BitTorrent is low priority.

Legislating traffic shaping at this level would be absurd. Have I been living in a cave? Are Net Neutrality advocates arguing that it should be illegal for network operators to perform any kind of traffic shaping, even that which would prioritize the traffic for latency sensitive applications?

<comment><USER6> > Are Net Neutrality advocates arguing that it should be illegal for network > operators to perform any kind of traffic shaping, even that which would > prioritize the traffic for latency sensitive applications?

At least some of us NN advocates believe it should be illegal for ISPs to perform the kinds to traffic shaping that explicitly identify and prioritize certain ports or protocols over others. Because that kind of traffic shaping is not really necessary to offer good QoS, and thus there's no reason to continue allowing it.

<comment><USER5> > that kind of traffic shaping is not really necessary to offer good QoS

It is nobody on HN's responsibility to educate me on this, but I'd love some good hearty technical reading on this topic, because this is definitely counter-intuitive to me. If anyone has a link to a resource on this topic or feels motivated to type out a technical description of how QoS could work without explicitly identifying and prioritizing certain traffic, I will read it raptly and greatly appreciate the additional education.

<comment><USER6> For home routers, there was a major breakthrough in 2012 with the CoDel AQM algorithm, which was paired with a flow queuing system to create fq_codel and later Cake. These systems do not have any rule sets of the form "prioritize port N". fq_codel and Cake do look at port numbers and protocols, but only for the purposes of sorting packets into separate bins for separate network flows. Each bin gets the same set of rules applied to it, so in that sense they are Neutral.

CoDel on its own prevents a high-latency queue of packets from building up, but since it operates on a single FIFO queue is indiscriminate about which packets get dropped when it's time to drop something. fq_codel and Cake will tend to give priority to new or sparse traffic flows, and when they need to drop a packet they will drop from a flow that has a standing queue—on the assumption that those high-bandwidth flows are likely to be less latency/drop sensitive and probably can back off on their transmit rate. So any protocol with VOIP-like traffic patterns will tend to get prioritized enough to have minimal added latency and no packet loss (provided it's using a small share of available bandwidth), and the packet drops/ECN markings will hit the network flows that are behaving like TCP bulk file downloads. These heuristics do imbue fq_codel and Cake with a bias toward certain traffic-handling policies, but it's very analogous to the heuristics used by a typical operating system CPU scheduler, and well-grounded theoretically and empirically.

I said at the beginning "for home routers", because these new AQMs have not yet been incorporated into the kinds of ASICs used for carrier-grade equipment. But anywhere that it _is_ practical to deploy these algorithms, they are easier to configure and offer better performance than the now- obsolete QoS strategies that depend on things like trying to decide whether port 53 should go to the head of the line to speed up DNS queries. These new algorithms have proven that ISPs do not need to buy any equipment to do things like detect and throttle bittorrent traffic in order to prevent it from overwhelming their network. They just need to upgrade their routers and gateways to use good general-purpose traffic management techniques.

<comment><USER5> Wow that was an absolutely fascinating read thank you so much!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> irq-1 Valve offers this for free:

[https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/multiplayer/stea...](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/multiplayer/steamdatagramrelay)

> Steam Datagram Relay (SDR) is Valve's virtual private gaming network. Using > our APIs, you can not only carry your game traffic over the Valve backbone > that is dedicated for game content, you also gain access to our network of > relays. Relaying the traffic protects your servers and players from DoS > attack, because IP addresses are never revealed. All traffic you receive is > authenticated, encrypted, and rate-limited. Furthermore, for a surprisingly > high number of players, we can also find a faster route through our network, > which actually improves player ping times.

<comment> Const-me For 33% of your sales, not for free.

<comment><USER7> Don't they allow you to sell steam keys without giving them a cut?

<comment><USER8> The specific rules for key sales are covered here: [https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Probably should at least change the title, since this is a sales pitch for Network Next and not an article about multiplayer games.

<comment><USER10> Yup, this is just spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > every ten seconds, Network Next runs a bid on its marketplace to find the > best route for your players across our supplier networks.

> The winning bid carries your player's traffic for the next 10 seconds, then > the process is repeated every 10 seconds, for each player

Markets in everything! Like realtime ad markets, it's one of those things that's simultaneously an impressive technical achievement and a Randian nickel-and-diming nightmare.

Like surge pricing, I wonder if there's any incentive for some of the actors to manipulate the system to raise prices ...

<comment><USER12> You could start undercutting bids when your competitor's games come out, hoping that if their game's multiplayer is shitty enough on opening weekend it'll reduce the game's playing population in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A lot of games already (excusively!) use private networks these days, and even older games like Dawn of War 1 and Civilization 4* had their Internet multiplayer removed for Steam's (V?)PN.

A lot of blame is on "I"SPs filtering traffic and sometimes not even giving access to the router so that the host can do port forwarding!

*Non-Steam Civ4 still has Internet multiplayer. After complaints Steam also allowed to revert to the latest official patch using their "beta" feature (for some reason the new Steam patch also breaks the mods - even if they are played even more overwhelmingly in single player! - and Civ4 has one of the biggest mod communities thanks to its semi-open source C++/Python/XML modding).

<comment><USER14> I'm fairly sure Steam does not use a private network

<comment><USER15> It does. CSGO game traffic is exclusively routed through Valve's relay network for example.

[https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/multiplayer/stea...](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/multiplayer/steamdatagramrelay)

<comment><USER16> But... Steam isn't CSGO or even Valve for that matter? These are orthogonal.

<comment><USER17> It's a Steamworks API I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > The internet doesn't care about multiplayer games

Good. This is how things should be with regard to dependencies.

Games depend on the internet. If the internet gets rewritten, you'd have to rewrite your games. Low likelihood (of the internet changing), "medium" cost (to rewrite games).

If the internet _did_ care about multiplayer games, then changes to multiplayer games could require us to change the internet too. High likelihood (of games changing), enormous cost (to update the internet).

<comment><USER19> I think it should care about games and that it already does. A lot of development for computers was made possible because of gaming.

Today streaming is also a huge factor. But the principle is the same that any low latency application will profit from expectations that are created by consumers on a large scale.

So I think the premise of the article is wrong. The "net" does care about speed and latency. And I doubt a Balkanization of private networks will be advantageous for anyone besides the respective providers. Premium traffic shouldn't be the goal. Common infrastructure that can handle the load is and exclusive network access should be minimized to as few applications as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yet another network provisioner's marketing department trying to spin the 'network neutrality is bad' spiel as if life would be so much better if only those pesky regulators would allow any means for ISP's to extract the maximum profit out of every packet, even if that means creating artificial scarcity.

It's like hearing Nestle arguing how the availability of drinkable municipal tap water is bad for their bottled water business.

<comment><USER21> Their entire business sounds like a way to circumvent network neutrality, by claiming their network of interconnected private networks is something other than the internet.

<comment><USER22> It doesn't really seem to be circumventing NN any more than a VPN.

I see no reason people shouldn't allowed to build interconnects not connected to the wider internet and charge for their use.

<comment><USER21> I'm not necessarily against the concept in every case. But where do you draw the line between that, and just an alternative internet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In my fairly broad experience, the biggest enemy of performant gameplay is lack of servers, or incredibly shitty netcode.

It's interesting that there's apparently no average netcode. Multiplayer either functions (apparently) perfectly, or it's shit.

<comment><USER24> > _the biggest enemy of performant gameplay is lack of servers, or incredibly > shitty netcode._

If an ISP were down-prioritizing unknown packets (such as most games since they don't usually use HTTP) then how would you notice that instead of "incredibly shitty netcode"?

<comment><USER20> There is no such thing as an 'unknown packet'. Your ISP employs Deep Packet Inspection. So they can downgrade your game but not mine because I pay them to.

[https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/deep- pack...](https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/deep-packet- inspection-DPI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> From my experience of playing way too much computer games in my youth, the Internet seems to work extremely well for multiplayer games... Of course, if you play against someone on the other side of the world, there will be some lag but that is mostly due to things that are not so easy to change, like the speed of light.

<comment><USER26> > the speed of light

We still have quite a bit of optimizations to make until real-life latencies are limited by the speed of light over such distances.

For any given two points, the shortest distance between them along earth's surface is never going to be longer than half the earth's circumference. Light travels that distance in 67ms:

      $ units --verbose 'pi * earthradius / c' milliseconds
              pi * earthradius / c = 66.763248 milliseconds

Double that for a full roundtrip time.

In reality, the ping time between myself (in Germany) and the opposite site of the earth (in this case, my company's datacenter in Sydney) is more like 300 ms, i.e. less than 50% of the speed limit imposed by the laws of physics.

<comment><USER27> Your calculation doesn't seem to account for the fact that light in fibre travels slower than in vacuum, 2/3 if memory serves, so it's a lot closer than you think.

A lot of the latency will be due to the conversion between light and electricity for processing in routers/switches. If we had all optical processing that would probably bring the latency down close to the theoretical limit

<comment><USER26> As I said, we still have quite the margin for optimization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Isn't this why we used to get together and have LAN parties, so that we could play on a 10/100mbps network without other Internet traffic in the way? (And so that if a player started trash-talking the rest of us could beat the shit out of them?)

Also, was the sales pitch in the second half really necessary?

<comment><USER29> The point of the post is the sales pitch.

<comment><USER30> And the submitter is the CEO as it seems.

"user: gafferongames

created: November 26, 2014

karma: 173

about: Founder and CEO, Network Next."

<comment><USER31> Is this within HN rules to post sales pitches, esp. by HN members, at least without being very clear about it?

<comment><USER32> Surely this is preferable to the trivial circumvention of your proposal where you just ask a friend to post something for you. A trick that basically silences all Redditors that would otherwise complain about "ads". I'd rather people just post their own stuff and we judge the content on its own basis.

<comment><USER33> It is preferable to the extent that the poster is transparent about their intentions.

The user name posting this could be 'NetworkNext' or a brief disclosure could be in the original post -- either of these would provide some transparency. With transparency there would be fewer clicks on the link but greater trust in the content.

<comment><USER31> Exactly this. I'm fine with people posting their own stuff but _I want to know_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Paid advert from a private transit provider.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why is obvious marketing material allowed here?

</comment><comment><USER36> This reflects the fact that a shadow 'internet' is emerging: alongside the public internet with its tier 1 ISPs, there are global private networks with vast bandwidth, ostensibly for a company's own use, but with opportunities arising for use cases just like this, selling off surplus bandwidth via marketplaces.

</comment><comment><USER37> The Internet also doesn't care about near-zero latency for things like telerobotic surgery, so this could very well be a step in the right direction.

Granted, regarding the specific details of _this_ solution, I don't think I want to trust my telerobotic surgery to a system that could let a multiplayer game distributor out-bid my knife control packets...

</comment><comment><USER38> This must be why there aren't any multiplayer games that use the internet.

Oh. Wait.

<comment><USER22> This is also why behind the scenes large game publishers have their own private networks. Valve is probably the largest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think at a high level we can all agree that there are _two_ main classes of networks. Bandwidth sensitive: for example Netflix, or a JS bloated website. And latency sensitive: for example gaming and autonomous vehicles.

My top concern is transparency with respect to what routes are available. I wouldn't want my domain to be excluded.

How the backend economics play out will influence this. Large players will eat the variations (in the beginning at least), and small devs could have access to a better tier of networks.

I just fear pricing models will become even more user hostile however (compared to the current service economy). Think Uber pricing for games. Surging to 4x+ prices after school, for example.

</comment><comment><USER40> "Net Neutrality" is a poisoned term. All it means is "good prices on MY use case."

People whom want free stuff claim "neutrality" means "same price for everything (without defining the units of 'everything'), and no QoS"

"neutrality" means not discriminating on the basis of _identity_. It means offering the same terms to everyone, and not letting Disney pay a fee to ban Comcast or BitTorrent, not offering only one flat price for all possible services.

</comment><comment><USER41> This looks and smells like an advertisement, rather than an article.

<comment><USER3> It's pretty well disguised

<comment><USER42> Not really. The entire article is about pitching their service and the post here was made by the founder of the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I see a bunch of network neutrality confusion here.

This is not anti-net neutrality, nor is it pro-net neutrality.

It's saying: Rather than accept the unknown path between your customers and you, pay for this service and you can use our optimized backbone reducing the amount of time your traffic is on random networks that aren't optimized for the exact network tuning you need/want.

Network neutrality has to do with public transit networks not favoring certain traffic, generally identified by having _paid_ for preferential treatment.

These folks are _not_ running a public transit network, they're running a _private transit network_ with peering points back to the public internet for access by consumers and producers.

</comment><comment><USER44> Articles should declare up front if they are sales pieces. I got most of the way through this article without realizing Network Next was a product and I was reading a marketing piece. Not cool.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm a bit lost. Which of these is this advertisement claiming:

\- Without their route planning, latency is introduced by packets spending too much time in a device while it chooses which route to send them?

\- Without their route planning, latency is introduced by packets traveling geographically inefficent routes?

\- Internet routing technology isn't able determine the best path to send packets along?

\- The internet links are too saturated, route onto our network as fast as possible?

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if something like a gaming VPN is any improvement on the current way games use networking resources. This could be a service that 3rd party games require, or could be built into Unity etc., such that online multiplayer (at least on PC) could be secure and also fast.

<comment><USER47> It is useful, or in some cases required when inbound ports/nats can not be opened up. That's why hamachi was so popular with gamers for a while. You basically bridge your LAN with the other players. Valve is just doing this in a way that is more integrated into their platform. In garry's mode, they call it "Peer to peer" but they are using this relay network.

<comment><USER46> Ah nice, was wondering if Valve did this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Depends on the game: a real time first person shooter needs better latency than a real time strategy game which needs much better latency than a turn based game.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's the Internet We Deserve™

</comment><comment><USER49> whats with the advertisement on HN? it's not even an issue for none of my multiplayer games.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is obviously a thinly veiled ad. Why is this here?

</comment><comment><USER51> > neutral marketplace

Nothing neutral about that. The one with the most money gets the better QoS. We don't need yet another market ruining things the real world uses so that some finance type can make bank. I wish ads for hostile ideas like that one would be flagged as such.

</comment><comment><USER52> Ok, tell that to the wow classic servers all operating a medium to high capacity.

EDIT: oh I see, this is an ad, not news, got it.</comment>


Python 201: List Comprehensions - <AUTHOR> http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2012/07/28/python-201-list-comprehensions/ <comment><USER2> The preferred syntax, which is more flexible and doesn't leak the loop variable, is to use generator expressions:

      >>> x = ['1', '2', '3', '4', '5']
      >>> y = list(int(i) for i in x)
      >>> y
      [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

It also works for tuples:

      >>> y = tuple(int(i) for i in x)
      >>> y
      (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

And for dicts:

      >>> y = dict((i, int(i)) for i in x)
      >>> y
      {'1': 1, '3': 3, '2': 2, '5': 5, '4': 4}

And if you want a lazily-evaluated generator:

      >>> y = (int(i) for i in x)
      >>> y
      <generator object <genexpr> at 0xb7655eb4>

Also, as I mentioned before, generator expressions don't leak the loop variable:

      >>> i = 42
      >>> y = list(int(i) for i in x)
      >>> i
      42
      >>> y = [int(i) for i in x]
      >>> i
      '5'

See <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0289/>

</comment><comment><USER3> List comprehensions are extremely handy. I'm sure it's probably hard to come up with simple examples without using something that can be done better another way, but the last few example could be done with map() and itertools.chain(). I'm surprised itertools isn't mentioned in the Python documentation he linked to.

<comment><USER4> List comprehensions are actually preferred over map() because they are typically clearer. Guido at one point was actually planning to remove them from Python 3000.

<http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=98196>

I do wish itertools.chain() was a built-in, however. So useful.</comment></comment>


Fast Facts on Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2010/12/28/fast-facts-on-node-js/ <comment><USER2> I find a number of the fast facts to be horribly misleading due to their brevity...

"Node.js runs everything in 'parallel', meaning that all of your tasks can be run at the same time. For example, let's say you have a webpage that has 100 lines of code with 10 database calls. With a web server like Apache, these 10 database calls must be made in succession. While running node.js, you can run all 10 of these database calls at once, which makes the webpage load faster."

errr... maybe...

"Current web servers must open many connections to interact with their operating system (OS), while node.js only needs to open 1 connection. Each connection costs the system memory, so using fewer connections is more efficient and faster for the entire system."

there are many lightweight polling webservers like nginx, lighttpd etc

<comment><USER3> Hey Spooneybarger, I wrote that article. I by no means intended to mislead, I just wanted to keep it simple for a more mainstream audience to digest.

In programming or technical environments, there are literally thousands of factors that come into play, so to avoid the inclusion of all of them, I kept it brief.

Is there any different way you'd phrase the above?

<comment><USER4> I'd get rid of the 'node.js runs everything in parallel' BS unless you can back it up with facts and numbers. It reads like complete rubbish atm.

Also I have no idea what you're talking about with 'connections to the OS'. Sounds like more FUD to me.

      The code that makes up node.js is carried out by the V8
      javascript engine.  This engine (read: the component that
      processes javascript so that it can be understood by your
      operating system) is the same one Google uses in Chrome,
      which makes the processing of node.js very, very fast.

It should also be noted here, that it makes it very, very fast "when compared to other js engines", however, it makes it pretty slow when compared to a ton of other languages/runtimes. It's just misleading marketing speak to omit that.

<comment><USER5> "It should also be noted here, that it makes it very, very fast "when compared to other js engines", however, it makes it pretty slow when compared to a ton of other languages/runtimes. It's just misleading marketing speak to omit that."

Actually, I'd disagree on both counts. V8 isn't faster than contemporary JavaScript engines anymore (although it's a tad faster than Safari's Nitro engine, perhaps). However, V8 _is_ much faster than most of the other languages used for web development: Ruby, Python, PHP, and Perl. The only exception is Java.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. It's not about being faster than other Javascript engines, it's about compiling down to Machine code, and being way faster than all the other scripting languages.

Unless you use Java, C, C++, etc you would do better with Node.js

<comment><USER7> Still bytecode interpreted not native, but Node.js wasn't better: [http://blog.mysyncpad.com/post/2073441622/node-js-vs- erlang-...](http://blog.mysyncpad.com/post/2073441622/node-js-vs-erlang- syncpads-experience) (at least cpu / memory -wise)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fast Fact: due to a v8 bug, a Node.js process currently only supports a max of 1.9gb of RAM

<http://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=847>

<comment><USER6> That's fine if you are running a 16-core machine with 16GB of ram, isn't it? Just have one Node.js process per core.

<comment><USER8> Yep, easy enough to workaround. Seems like a needless limitation however. Would be nice if someone on node.js core (or v8 team at google) would try to fix that bug.

Also wonder what other bugs are going to emerge as a result of trying to use a client side app on the server.

<comment><USER9> Do note clearly that V8's garbage collector is fairly slow (think old Java GC) so having more instances of node with smaller heaps is a good idea anyways.

<comment><USER6> Argh, I was afraid of that. Can we have something that is a hybrid of refcounting and stop-the-world GC? I read some nice academic paper a few years ago about how people made a GC that combined the benefits of refcounting and stop the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> also, if anyone is an expert on node, please email me at kevin at bostinnovation dot com so I can fill in some of the holes in this article

<comment><USER10> Stop into #node.js on irc.freenode.net, and see what feedback they have (if you haven't already).</comment></comment>


Eagle.js: A hackable slideshow framework built with Vue.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zulko/eagle.js/ <comment><USER2> Would be 10x more awesome if an "auto-play" mode were possible, with associated audio-file, and pre-programmed transitions.

Would take sound file attachment, and array of minute/second offsets; once timed to audio file, this would be better than YouTube videos, and supplement conference talks.

<comment><USER3> Would also allow a solution for LMS (learning management system) that employees can actually use on a mobile device.

<comment><USER4> No, that's not allowed. And it needs to be in broken Flash with slides you can't skip.

<comment><USER5> Also should require hunting down juuust the right version of internet explorer, which is not the version it claims compatibility with but rather the version listed in the middle of paragraph three of the emailed instructions.

<comment><USER6> you got an email?

<comment><USER4> We jest, but seriously, maybe there's an HN moment here.

Outsourced corporate training/indoctrination software honestly seems to satisfy the legal department to the point they can say "ass covered, check," but does not go as far as the victims learning anything useful to the company or their career.

What kind of market would there be for corp training tools that actually satisfy everyone without resembling a force-feeding tube?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like it could actually hit the sweet spot I've been looking for. It won't make people dizzy (Prezi) and it supports reasonably sophisticated branches and interactions - making it useful as both a presentation tool and something you can send as a companion to a presentation, after the fact.

Other than Prezi, Reveal and Eagle, are the other presentation tools we should check out?

<comment><USER8> No specific endorsement besides that it's made by a local (to me) guy: [https://slidewriter.io/](https://slidewriter.io/)

<comment><USER9> This is awesome, thanks for sharing. I love the use of markdown, emojis, code format and auto-embed from web sources!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Formidable Labs also has a similar project written in React: [https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle](https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle)

</comment><comment><USER11> The sample was actually a good sample!

What I mean is, it demonstrates the code which is important in a readme if you want other people to adopt your product. But, it was also rather funny and kept me engaged throughout it.

I hardly ever make slideshows beyond just black text + white background (or one of the default themes) which I tend to do with google docs as it's the standard at work.

But it's a neat product, good job!

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks like a good solution for a developer. Most people who create slide shows won't be tech-savvy enough to use it, so an interface (dare I say wizard) to get anyone started with a few slides i.e. images and text with sound default values would lower the barrier to adopt this.

I understand that a value is to have the slide show available as a link for someone to view at their leisure.

For the use case of a live presentation one could look into some audience interaction. Here's a side project I contributed to [0] which I used myself to poll the audience and and present the results in real-time. As a presenter you had the problem that you needed to switch between Powerpoint and the web browser, which confused the presenter. If it "just works" then there could be some value in doing something similar.

A problem with live presentation that any such solution faces is that speaking publicly and giving presentations is a nerve-wracking experience for most mortals. So:

a) Powerpoint / Keynote are viewed as safer bets (no connection issues, older projectors will have smaller resolutions and scaling content can be trickier)

b) The presentation will have too much text (a safety net for the presenter to make sure they don't get lost but a poorer experience for the audience) - maybe some constraints would nudge the presenter to create a better presentation (analogy: PechaKucha)

Anyway, thanks for sharing!

[0] [http://www.ipet.io/demo/demo](http://www.ipet.io/demo/demo)

</comment><comment><USER13> Is anyone using this or Reveal.js for non-programming/creative talks? I'm in science and haven't tried either solution yet, because it never feels right to only show either a bullet list or a single image on a slide.

Obviously getting a gridded layout via grid/flexbox is possible, but isn't this a common need that was solved by someone else?

Edit: just had a closer look at Eagle.js and it does support a gridded layout via its .quarter class.

<comment><USER14> I use reveal.js a lot and hack around with plain html and css if needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A hackable slideshow framework for hackers on hacker news. :) From now on everyone should call their project hackable if it has a public API.

<comment><USER16> By hackable we actually mean this library is not that easy to use for non- developer, because it requires you to be familiar with Vue and modern front- end app work flow. It's not "inject script tag, write some html and it just works" kind of library, it offers a set of raw and minimal APIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wouldn't use Pug to show a demo. I don't know how intuitive it is to people that haven't used it. Seems like you're going to turn off audiences that are not using node/pug.

But, other than that it looks interesting!

<comment><AUTHOR> Pug is wonderful, and this project is aimed at programmers since you need to know your way around Vue.js if you want to make anything with it.

From their docs:

"If you are not familiar with Vue.js you will find eagle.js harder to use than, say, Reveal.js, but on the long term eagle.js makes it easier to organize your slides and implement new ideas."

In any case Pug is really easier on the eyes as it's a lot less code to read/parse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> To be honest I've found fullpage.js to be very slick and can do a lot more.

See here: [https://alvarotrigo.com/fullPage/#examples](https://alvarotrigo.com/fullPage/#examples)

It also supports mouse wheel and touchpad and tablet navigation which I'm not sure this does. The latest versions work with plain old HTML too and doesn't even rely on jQuery any more.

<comment><USER19> You can't do that with "plain old HTML", you would at least need css. I assume you mean JavaScript.

Slideshows and scrolling websites are not the same thing.

<comment><USER18> Sorry, I wasn't clear. I linked to a Javascript library so I assumed you'd understand that I meant that the markup is in the page and you enhance it with this library. Crazy old fashioned idea I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is really sweet. I feel slideshows necessarily doesn't even have to be for just slideshows, it can even be done effectively as a webpage too!

</comment><comment><USER21> It says that scrolling up should go to the previous slide, but it advances to the next slide for me. (using Apple Magic Mouse 1)

<comment><USER16> Can you add an issue on github?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> You should replace `Ctrl + >` to 'Cmd + >' for Mac browsers. It looks cool overall.

</comment><comment><USER23> Permalink demo doesn't work.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the feedback! Will fix it later

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> fantastic contribution! Good shit!

</comment><comment><USER25> lol this slideshow thing is pretty cool

<comment><USER16> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Why funding open source is hard - St-Clock https://medium.com/@codesponsor/why-funding-open-source-is-hard-652b7055569d <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR; Code Sponsor brought funding to small and large projects on GitHub. But GitHub didn't want ads and Code Sponsor shutdown.

Starting in January, Code Sponsor will take on a new role of matchmaker between sponsors and developers. Funding will be provided at a flat monthly rate. Code Sponsor will represent the developers as an "agent" and negotiate the highest rates on a month-by-month basis.</comment>


Owner who demolished famed San Francisco house must build replica - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46585537 <comment><USER3> Interestingly, the city determined a few years ago that the house was not a historic resource: [http://citypln-m- extnl.sfgov.org/link.ashx?Action=Download&O...](http://citypln-m- extnl.sfgov.org/link.ashx?Action=Download&ObjectVersion=-1&vault={A4A7DACD-B0DC-4322-BD29-F6F07103C6E0}&objectGUID={C8414AD2-85B7-43BB- AE6C-184CB1243DB1}&fileGUID={409B8946-2091-4EBA-B57B-75ED28BEE3DB})

Although the owner clearly exceeded the scope of the remodel permit issued by demolishing the house entirely, it's possible that the permit had authorized the removal of everything short of the wall framing (commonplace for "remodel" permits on non-historic buildings in SF.)

<comment><USER4> Ah, that's why my new neighbor tore down the house and rebuilt an entirely different structure with a handful of original studs scattered throughout the framing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ah, the "little people" of multi million dollar inherited homes and land really got some justice here. Real justice.

<comment><USER6> Actually, we did. I own a house and I have to go through the pain of jumping thorough all the hoops of applying for renovation permits. If you can just ignore the law, it's a slap to the face for all the people that follow it, irrespective of where they live and how wealthy they are.

<comment><USER7> I want to build an ADU on my Mountain View property but was denied because the permitting department in anti-ADU and will obstruct any way they can, despite the rule changes. Yet others have gone ahead and built an ADU on their property anyway, under similar circumstances, ignoring the permitting department.

Morally speaking, did these people injure me? Did they slap me in the face? Are they wrong? They increased the housing supply during a shortage, but at the cost of ignoring the law.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I don't know about morality, didn't realize we are discussing it here. All I know is that you have 2 options: either ignore the law but make sure you are ready to face the consequences, or don't ignore the law. I don't think there is a 3rd option where you knowingly ignore the law and then cry about being punished for doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most cities, you have to get a building permit to do any major renovation. Those permits tend to be pretty specific on what you can or cannot do - <USER2> even require the exact construction plans.

The article makes it sound that the owner went well outside what he got the permit for. If so - what in the world did he think was going to happen? Where I live, they get you for cutting down one extra tree than what you were permitted.

<comment><USER9> > In San Francisco, property speculators have made a game out of tearing down > historically protected homes, then retroactively applying for demolition > permits, and using the now-empty lots to build massive mansions that sell > for millions.

[https://boingboing.net/2018/12/16/unscramble-the- egg.html](https://boingboing.net/2018/12/16/unscramble-the-egg.html)

I'm assuming that the money to be made is greater than the fines they have to pay for demolishing a historical home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Historical preservation is stealing from the future. (In this case, it's stealing from the future in order to preserve an ugly house dominated by a garage door for posterity. The owner here did a public service.)

<comment><USER11> Wow I can't believe the comments on this thread. Do you not see any value in preserving our past for future generations? Are we stealing from the future when we preserve more notable old buildings like castles as well, or do you just not like the way this particular building looks? I think the criteria is notability, not aesthetics, for what it's worth.

<comment><USER12> It's almost impossible to demolish structures in San Francisco, because somebody considers each one historic in some sense. A great example was the recent "historic laundromat" in the mission.[1]

The concept of property rights in SF is basically a joke. You can't do anything to your home unless you spend months and thousands of dollars navigating the bureaucracy. The burden is so onerous that it leads to people going rogue and ignoring all building codes and safety regulations. I have friends who live in places where the internal structure is totally different from what the city has on file. The electrical wiring and plumbing are a haphazard mix of amateur and professional work. The elevators haven't worked in years. But I'm sure if the property owner wanted to tear the place down and build something new (the only sane choice), they would be blocked.

1\. [https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/21/san-francisco-man-has- spe...](https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/21/san-francisco-man-has- spent-4-years-1-mi)

<comment><USER11> Sounds like there's local politics or pervious experiences in SF that I don't know about that might be driving people's negative reactions.

Where I live I cherish the work that's been done to preserve old buildings so I can see them today, and I hope they're preserved so my ancestors can see them as well.

<comment><USER13> Much of the existing bureaucracy in SF is purposefully byzantine in response to the urban renewal of the 50s and 60s which saw the "redevelopment" of the Western Addition, Fillmore, Japan Town, and the construction of the interstate highways which bisected neighborhoods. In the case of the former, victorians in historically black neighborhoods (see also: redlining) were torn down to be replaced with projects which went about as well as you can imagine. In the case of the later, we have the Loma Prieta earthquake to thank for restoring Hayes Valley and the Embarcadero to booming, walkable neighborhoods. Instead of learning from its mistakes, SF did a full 180 and landed on the opposite extreme - nothing may change unless all agencies, stake holders, and onlookers alike are perfectly satisfied. In practice, agencies are in the dozens (SF has no right to build, even when meeting all zoning restrictions!). Onlookers are neighbor homeowners who like increasing housing prices and less traffic and organizations like Calle 24 which are indistinguishable from protection rackets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The city mandates that a person rebuild an ugly little house. Wow. I wonder if they'll also demand 2-prong outlets, asbestos, lead paint, and real fuses.

The neighbor who complained is a truly sour toxic person. She should be delighted to have the neighborhood improving. Instead she blocks it (which should be impossible) and creates a hostile neighbor situation.

<comment><USER4> No, they'll be allowed to do new wiring and latex paint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I expect situations like this in the future will result in sad "accidental" fires.

<comment><USER16> How does that get around the problem of mandated reconstruction with the insurance payout?

<comment><USER7> Unless the city is pitching in $$$ for the effort, this seems legally questionable. Insurance will only pay the market rate (and barely that), and the cost of such a process would surely run higher.

<comment><USER17> I live in a community where there is very little oversight like this (by design), but my mortgage requires that I cover my home for the cost to rebuild, not the market value. I questioned this because in my case it's more than twice the value, but apparently it's how things are normally done.

<comment><USER7> Well, market rate in this context meant the (regional) labor and material costs to construct a generic, equal sqft house with X rooms and Y baths. I perhaps chose the wrong term.

It'd likely require a lawsuit to make them shell out an additional $200k+ for the specialist architect and master carpenter to help recreate the original structure.

<comment><USER16> I don't know about "market rate", but I believe that items are typically insured for their replacement value.

There may not be a requirement to insure a protected structure at all, but it's plausible that such a measure could be introduced because of the perceived externalities (i.e. heritage value to society) of a protected building.

<comment><USER17> That's it exactly.

I live in an inexpensive area, and purchased my five(-ish) bedroom home for ~$125k. It would cost about $240k to rebuild, exclusive of the cost of the land.

When buying homeowner's insurance, my interest is that I would not lose value in the event of my home's destruction; I want to be able to buy another home of similar value and not owe more money than I already did. However, my mortgage requires that I insure the home's replacement value, and no insurer that I could find would cover me for only $125k.

This results in what I believe to be a negative incentive: assuming no equity, I currently owe $125k and have a home. If my home were to burn to the ground tomorrow, I would have a check for $240k. I'd then use that check to pay off my existing mortgage and buy a home of similar value outright - leaving me a profit of ~$115k in the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not mentioned in the piece, but California actually has a voluntary, arguably market-based tax incentive for historic house preservation, the Mills Act:

[http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=21412](http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=21412)

</comment><comment><USER19> I just wish they cared about environmental preservation as much

</comment><comment><USER20> Behold California, where you can't tear things down and where you definitely can't build them[1]. A shining beacon of good government for all of America.

[1] Except a decade and your first-born in legal fees later.

<comment><USER21> California is a large state, the majority of it not being the ultra-desirable overrated pockets like the bay area where the barriers to development are considered necessary to preserve the region from the hoardes of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I hope he appeals. You can't create an ex post facto covenence.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is exactly the type of pointless bureaucracy that causes USA to fall behind China. Rural areas are dying because of centralization and consolidation of corporations which primary are headquartered in large cities. Those large cities then oppose residential construction but not commercial construction which causes a massive imbalance of jobs to homes. The ensuing increase in real estate prices makes people consider their house as an investment first and they try to prevent further construction to the point where they mandate that even existing buildings may not be rebuilt.

This situation is equivalent to a city investing in an electric bus fleet but then the federal government sues the city and sentences them to reinstate the ICE bus fleet. Nobody will disagree that this is crazy. Meanwhile, in this HN thread people argue in favor of the "historic" value of a random building.

Obviously this is an extreme example but just think about how less severe situations are invisibly slowed down by excessive bureaucracy in the very successful cities and how this causes massive inefficiencies on the scale of an entire country which is highly dependent on those cities.

Lost your job in <town>? Well, you're not welcome here in <city>.</comment>


Harvard and class - <AUTHOR> http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/07/11/harvard-and-class/

<comment><USER2> Seems strange to write an article complaining about the Harvard bubble when the only reason it's getting printed in the Paris fucking Review is that it's about Harvard in the first place. People have weird/terrible/difficult college experiences all the time, but the guy who went to Iowa State never gets a similar forum to talk about himself.

A lot of people at Harvard were uncomfortable there. I wasn't. I loved the place and made great friends. It was a safe place where I could challenge myself intellectually. And the plurality of Harvard students aren't wealthy legacies, they're striver upper middle class kids that worked their asses off in high school.

<comment><USER3> This author sounds like a poor fit for Harvard. Nothing wrong with it. But after two years should have really looked at transferring. Sure it's "Harvard", but you can still do quite well at other schools like Berkeley (where you get to stay a year on campus at best, and then you're off to fend for yourself).

The author admitted not being ambitious, and it really felt like he just took what was handed to him, rather than really seeking uut what would really click with him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an aside: I don't recognize the Montreal he is talking about at all.

Lived there my entire life, but never really encountered the sorts of interesting people he mentioned at the start. I wonder how much has to do with having contacts through the older Jewish Anglo community as opposed to the newer Pakistani-Canadian Anglo community.

I am envious that he had such awesome experiences at 18. I only had situations like that after I turned 28 and found myself on the other side of the world.

<comment><USER5> "Political theatre in lofts"? I think the word is _hipster_ , not interesting.

<comment><USER6> I've lived in Paris (12 million people) for 10 years - but I grew up in Montreal (3.5 million people). Montreal has better nightlife than Paris, and it's no contest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> i guess it's a bit too late to ask, as this is sliding off the front page, but why the animosity here? the article rings true with my experience of yale (lived in new haven last year) and, a little less so, of cambridge (where i worked for 7 years).

surely you're not all offended alumni (especially since i suspect alumni would recognise the truth)? is this the same wannabe attitude that makes americans defend tax cuts for the rich? it's not that you _are_ benefiting from the cronyism, but you sure would like to be?

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought most of the article was painful to read as it resurfaced the same set of stereotypes as in the Social Network movie or the Mezrich book.

I felt the did article make a valid point at the end - about the lack of elite university-based social networks in Canada. While having gone to Harvard (or another elite American school) makes you stand out in Canada, I didn't feel it gave people the same rolodex advantages as being in NYC. I have a sibling who went to a top ranked American school ... I had to stop wearing the t-shirt she gave me in NYC because people would stop me and start having conversations (assuming I went to school there)!

Caveat: I went to school in Canada so this is all from an outsider's perspective.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think everyone wonders "what if?"

</comment><comment><USER5> How many times can you use the word _weird_ in one paragraph? A lot it seems.

<comment><USER10> In one paragraph, the limit seems to be two. That said, having gone to another similar school, it is a weird place. Not bad, necessarily; quite enjoyable, once you learn to accept the quirks. But certainly weird. And to the extent that there is an upper class in the US (even if it isn't entirely hereditary), it does largely seem to be populated by Ivy Leaguers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know what the Paris Review is, but that's pretty shit poor writing. I hope it's not a classy, intellectual magazine.

That said, minus the wealth and power parts, he pretty much described my experiences at "generic american land grant university". I think he's maybe having American culture shock?</comment>


GitHub thread about malware being spread through trusted domain - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aluxian/Messenger-for-Desktop/issues/1153#issuecomment-283514347 <comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this, because it's an attack vector I hadn't considered before and it's quite a reality check. I was lucky not to have installed this, because the "New Update" dialog sent me to a url that was blocked by Chrome, which caused me to instantly uninstall the software.</comment>


Hubble is back - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/update-on-the-hubble-space-telescope-safe-mode <comment><USER2> Ha!

They were able to recover the failed backup gyroscope by executing a series of attitude maneuvers while switching between operational modes on the gyro.

They literally shook the spacecraft and turned the gyro off-and-on.

Sometimes you gotta bang on something to get it to work!

I would love to buy a beer for the mission operations team member who came up with that idea!

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/percussive_maintenance](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/percussive_maintenance) ftw

edit: I have to add, i just found out about the extent of the definition.

>make a malfunctioning device or person work.

<comment><USER4> Packing a punch is not only useful to fix things, but often the best way to get you an answer. Or as my control theory professor used to say:

 _If you want to know how an unknown system reacts, first thing you do is to hit it hard._

What he meant was that applying the Heaviside function to the inputs of a system to determine the step response [1] is one of the first things we should do.

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

<comment><USER5> I remember that thinking from control theory classes, but I thought you use a Dirac delta as a hard shove.

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

(Actually, our control classes told us to do both to get a basic view of a system.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading about the specs and the planned degradation of the gyros is a very interesting exercise in planned reduction of a service.

They know the gyros will eventually give out and they have contingency plans around what kinds of science they can continue to do even when they're down to 1 gyro.

Very impressive. I'm always discouraged hearing people say NASA is wasting money and science and that's just not true IMHO.

<comment><USER7> While people may think that this is wasting money, I see that this these teams gain unieque knowledge and experience on how to resolve issues on "machines far far away", and if we are ever to explore/move humans to a new planet, you want THOSE exact teams as 'helpdesk' that use anything and everything to bring things back to life and operation.

<comment><USER8> I think its reasonable to assume AI will be able to fix these kinds of problems in the future. They could run simulations of all the possible failures and solutions ahead of time or during operation eventually

<comment><USER9> I think the creativity and imagination required to solve this kind of problems is not really within current AI reach yet. The ability to take existing ideas and combine them in unique ways to come up with something new is very powerful, and not yet easily replicable by AI.

<comment><USER10> Genetic Algorithms are pretty creative. I think a bigger problem is that we have no general way to turn "what we want" into a mathematically formalised goal that an AI can work towards — we can only manage specific cases like "how many components does this signal generator circuit use" or "make a new face based on these examples of faces".

<comment><USER11> You can probably train them using dwim

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From this link...

[http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/team_hubble/#hubbletime](http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/team_hubble/#hubbletime)

 _Each year astronomers from dozens of countries vie for precious minutes of Hubble 's unrivaled view of the cosmos.

A review committee made up of experts from the astronomical community determines which proposed observations address pressing scientific questions and make the best use of the telescope's capabilities.

Each year more than 1,000 proposals are reviewed and approximately 200 are selected, which represents roughly 20,000 individual observations._

I feel bad for all the projects that got delayed. I wonder if they'll be rescheduled, or have to be resubmitted or are just out of luck.

<comment><USER13> Some of them might not actually need Hubble specifically. There are a fair amount of observation platforms, maybe they can get their work done on another satellite.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps, but given the competition for Hubble time, if you can get the data you need from another observatory you're generally better off doing so. For these competitive observatories you usually need to explain why your project actually requires those facilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I will never cease to be impressed by the sheer skill and quality of design at NASA, that allows them to keep missions like Hubble or Opportunity operating far beyond their planned lifetimes.

<comment><USER16> It amazes me that they are still in contact with the voyager probes. NASA does some amazing stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Amazing. It's like they performed the Epley Maneuver on a satellite.

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

<comment><USER18> That reads worse that it actually looks like: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqokxZRbJfw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqokxZRbJfw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amazing. HN community disagrees on almost all topics, except something like this. Best news in the past few weeks. Kudos NASA.

</comment><comment><USER20> Didn't the NSA gift NASA two hubble class telescopes with a note along the lines 'bought a ton on bulk discount and never ending up using these two before the new model was released'?

<comment><USER21> Yes, but it was the NRO (I doubt the NSA owns any telescopes).

NASA has plans to maybe use one of them sometime, but because of how expensive the James Webb Telescope turned out to be doesn't have money to do anything with the second.

The wikipedia article gives some more context: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA)

<comment><USER22> NASA has gotten out of quite a few pickles by using Earthside clones/spares of spacecraft to troubleshoot issues with the ones actually in space. Even if NASA had the money to launch the spare telescope, they'd be wise not to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting read.

On the other hand, I remembered that hubble was manually repaired by astronauts mutliple times back in the space shuttle era. I'm wondering that, do we have capabilities to perform in-space non-ISS-kind repairs now? Soyuz may be able to do in-space rendezvous but cargo space is limited. Soyuz+Progress composition (may be too complicated)?

<comment><USER24> No we no longer have this capability. Soyuz capsules are not really designed for EVA.

<comment><USER25> You can do EVA with Soyuz [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_5#EVA_details](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_5#EVA_details)

However that mission will unlikely be possible for both technical and political reasons.

<comment><USER26> Servicing HST with a Soyuz is basically impossible. Hubble is in a higher altitude orbit in a significantly lower inclination than the launch site for crewed Soyuz vehicles. To perform the plane change maneuver (of 23 deg.) would require a delta-V of 1.5 km/s (20% of the orbital velocity at the typical Soyuz destination altitude). That would require bringing nearly 4 tonnes of extra propellant onboard the Soyuz, which isn't feasible. Additionally, this doesn't include the added weight of the docking adapter and Hubble replacement parts that would need to be brought along.

It's conceivable that a repair mission might be possible with the soon to come into service US crew capsules (Dragon 2 and Starliner) since the rockets that launch them have more performance than the Soyuz, but even then it would be a pretty ambitious mission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> For those interested in learning the spectacular engineering that went into the Hubble: [http://a.co/d/4kLahfW](http://a.co/d/4kLahfW)

<comment><USER27> That's definitely not what I expected to find at the link! Thanks for posting it. My father was an engineer on the Hubble, Hexagon and other reconnaissance satellites, and I'm sure he'll get a kick out of this "manual" as a gift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "so we just gave it a shake et voilà!"

\- some NASA scientists, probably

</comment><comment><USER29> "Last week the operations team commanded Hubble to perform numerous maneuvers, or turns, and switched the gyro between different operational modes, which successfully cleared what was believed to be blockage between components inside the gyro"

And here I am on Earth, barely capable of debugging JavaScript code.

<comment><USER30> It's also fun to compare programming to surgery, where they work for hours straight with no backup on a production system that is actively trying to die.

<comment><USER31> It has always amazed how hard it must be to debug an issue in a human being, you need to check A, B, and C, but if you check C your human will be scared since it could indicate your human has cancer, if you check B it will be expensive since it involves a lot of studies, you can also check with A giving some medicament but it also is expensive and maybe other people needed more. So you end up testing all three, but none gave you any feedback, the issue must be somewhere else, those tests took months and it doesn't help you had been testing hundreds of other humans and for each case you must understand the whole context, so you have to start again, meanwhile your human starts to think you are not capable since you haven't fixed his problem so he starts looking for a "second opinion".

<comment><USER30> Perfect explanation for why for House, M.D. was so entertaining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love that they basically mashed all the buttons till it started working properly :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Yay! Cheers to Hubble!

</comment><comment><USER34> Because NASA is awesome.

<comment><USER34> Well, they are. Yeah, I am a fan. NASA is one of the few all good things from government.

Government can be better, and I hope we can make it better too.

What else to say? I love a good NASA win, geek, nerd, engineering story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Url changed from [https://twitter.com/NASAHubble/status/1056189182274625537](https://twitter.com/NASAHubble/status/1056189182274625537), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER36> 1990-?

</comment><comment><USER37> Hubble is back but nasa.gov is black. A blank black page. All because their web devs wanted (or were pushed into using) some crap front-end lib that has no fall-back for no javascript.

nasa.gov's accessibility is absolutely terrible for a government website.

<comment><USER38> So enable javascript?</comment></comment>