Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/augmented-reality-in-a-contact-lens <comment><USER4> How apt that the article is written in 2009 by Babak Parviz, who founded the Google Glass project.

<https://plus.google.com/100149980664588993669/about>

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a "display on your eye", not Augmented Reality. Nothing is mentioned on solving the real problems of rendering perspective correct imagery layered over the real world, adjusting for head movement, saccades, microsaccades, gait, movement of vehicles, etc.

This is what Google Glass isn't even trying to do.

<comment><USER6> Modern airliners have HUDs that display "perspective-correct imagery layered over the real world". It's useful for landing in the fog.

<comment><USER7> Airliners have almost none of the problems the OP mentioned. The displays are several feet away from the movement of the eye. Movement of the sensors is slow and smooth. The target distance is near infinity in optical focus. The overlayed target is a generally a giant flat rectangle. These are some delicious simplifying assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The application of augmented reality using contact lenses and other types of head up displays was explored in the wonderful science fiction novel "Rainbows End", which was written by none other than "Vernor Vinge".

<comment><USER9> I remember one of the characters from the story, Robert Gu's friend, clutching a laptop -- a hopeless relic in that era -- saying, "I want to see what is really there, not what they want me to see."

I get the impression that would be me in that future, worried about what was real or not, or how many false memories I'd be recalling because of something that was shown to me. I'm probably just being paranoid, but so was this character and if I recall correctly, it worked out for him in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm looking forward to Glass, but man, I wouldn't touch smart contact lenses with a 10-foot pole.

Maybe -- _maybe_ if they couldn't connect to the Internet. I know I'm playing paranoid devil's advocate here, but if they have any sort of connectivity, I'm going to be terrified (maybe irrationally so) of the prospect of someone figuring out how to intercept them and blind me.

<comment><USER11> Uhh what if no physical configuration of the LEDs is sufficient for blinding? This does not seem like an issue if the hardware is incapable by design.

Besides, such a product could arguably be more useful than a car, and certainly more safe; you've driven, haven't you? I think you're being a little naive and hasty. I could see a similar comment 20 years ago about cell phones and "brain damage."

<comment><USER12> Maybe someone could still maliciously make it display self-illuminated shock porn that stays in view even if you close your eyes.

<comment><USER13> . . . so turn it off? I mean, someone could hack your computer and (effectively) do the same thing for the couple of minutes it takes you to figure out what's happening and flip the power switch. It's a screen. They're _all_ screens.

The real danger is from more subtle manipulation, assuming most people come to trust what's being displayed. That's true of any information source that can be spoofed, though. GPS errors are bad enough already.

<comment><USER14> His point was that turning it off is not an option: The automated porn-feed injected into your glasses/contacts/etc could make it offensive enough to effectively deny service.

Even if not porn, Spam WILL be targeted at these eventually. I recall a scene in either "The Diamond Age" or perhaps a Gibson novel where the characters were using smart chopsticks that had been hit by malware which had once spewed ads but in that particular are of town had been spewing porn. Onto chopsticks.

(With my luck, it was Rainbow's End that had this scene -- I forget where I saw it, but it was memorable.)

There will always be someone trying to find a way to inject ads.

<comment><USER15> > _You could get a phantascopic system planted directly on your retinas,

> just as Bud's sound system lived on his eardrums. You could even get

> telæsthetics patched into your spinal column at various key

> vertebrae. But this was said to have its drawbacks: some concerns

> about long-term nerve damage, plus it was rumored that hackers for big

> media companies had figured out a way to get through the defenses that

> were built into such systems, and run junk advertisements in your

> peripheral vision (or even spang in the fucking middle) all the

> time—even when your eyes were closed. Bud knew a guy like that who'd

> somehow gotten infected with a meme that ran advertisements for roach

> motels, in Hindi, superimposed on the bottom right-hand corner of his

> visual field, twenty-four hours a day, until the guy whacked himself._

\-- Neal Stephenson, _The Diamond Age_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This again? As usual, the problem is casually swept away deep in the text:

> By now you're probably wondering how a person wearing one of our contact > lenses would be able to focus on an image generated on the surface of the > eye.

Yes, that is a bit of a problem. I'd say it's the main problem. Quite a bit of hand-waving here, just like the many other contact-screen speculations.

<comment><USER17> Got a minor in optical engineering minor back in the day. I think it is theoretically possible to create a waveform with those LED's that would converge to an image at a distance. It's a similar problem to the recent deep field cameras on the market today that look at the waveform across the thousands of lenslets and reconstruct the image at multiple virtual focal planes.

That said, those calculations are wicked complicated and take computational power, so hopefully some genius PhD comes up with an algorithm to generate those wavelet images in O(n).

<comment><USER18> An array of lasers which was columinated at the point of emission could do it (a well of 500nm cavities, with an LED module at the bottom could do it.

On the other hand: tensor displays are basically already there for what you say (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r6lY8S4A6E>).

It's a pretty solvable problem, we're just lacking the miniaturization (and power source) to make it practical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Forget about AR contact lenses, I'd be stoked if they made a lens that is safe and comfortable to wear and doesn't have to be thrown out every 2-4 weeks. :)

<comment><USER20> Curious to know what you've tried. I've been using B&L Soflens Torics [1] for about 10 years now, no complaints. They're supposed to last for a few weeks but I've found I can usually wear them with no discomfort or blurriness for 6 months at a time.

(For the record, I have terrible eyesight. Different astigmatisms in both eyes and approaching -10 diopters.)

[1] [http://www.bausch.com/en/Our-Products/Contact- Lenses/Contact...](http://www.bausch.com/en/Our-Products/Contact- Lenses/Contact-Lenses-for-Astigmatism/SofLens-For-Astigmatism-contact-lenses)

<comment><USER19> I've been using Acuvue Oasys (IIRC) for a while now. I'm on the 4-week disposables but my optometrist is getting worried about increased blood vessel growth in my cornea. I think my eyes may just be particularly sensitive - <USER2> is happening despite me wearing lenses for a max of 12 hours a day and not exceeding the recommended 4 weeks of wear per lens.

<comment><USER20> I had problems with Acuvue Oasys back in the day as well, but I'm sure it varies from person to person. Ask your eye doctor to order trial pairs from different brands. That's how I eventually found the ones that worked for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's just Google Glass 10.0. Let's not get too ahead of ourselves. We don't even have Glass-level glasses available in the mainstream market yet.

</comment><comment><USER22> One step closer to _Sight_ (a short futuristic film from last year).

<http://vimeo.com/46304267>

</comment><comment><USER23> I've had this nagging feeling that Google Glass type devices are going to gain traction far faster than anyone expects. Personally I have no inclination towards this type of connectivity. I'm fairly amazed by my regular eyesight, and already have a problem processing the information it provides.

My fear is that as ubiquitious, wearable computing takes over, it will increase the pressure to be connected all the time, as it further lay a meta network over the physical world. Of course culture will start to develop quickly around this new space, and those that don't want to wear such a device will be hopelessly left out of vital activities.

As a sliver of hope on the opposite end, maybe those who choose to stick with natural senses can improve those through mindfullness type methods. This might provide balancing benefits.

I don't understand the impulse towards this type of interface. I don't feel that great when I'm online, I have a feeling of being in alternate space, a mental space, and being kind of detached from "real" reality.

How about a drug that would improve standard perception and cognition at low cost and minimal side effects? That seems like technology that I could get behind!

</comment><comment><USER24> [2009]

</comment><comment><USER25> I wear contact lenses. I hate having to put contact lenses on every morning. The idea of having perfectly good eyeballs, but putting contact lenses on anyway seems very depressing to me.

<comment><USER26> I tried wearing contact lenses for a little bit and I found them to be horribly uncomfortable and they would fall out if I blinked too often. For people like me who do not get along well with contacts, I really hope that they don't become necessary anytime in the future.

<comment><USER11> You probably haven't found the right brand for you. I wear mine 14 hours a day and barely ever notice them. Experiment, you can usually ask for free samples.

<comment><USER26> The day I first tried on contacts, I tried every brand my optometrist carried, most of which wouldn't stay in at all. I took samples of both varieties that would fit to try wearing for a week. Both had issues staying in and both caused serious irritation so I couldn't wear either for more than an hour.

While there might be a brand that would work for me, I have had no luck finding it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This reminds me of a Futurama episode: <http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/EyePhone>

</comment><comment><USER28> Fancy. All I want for now is a pair of glasses similar to sunglasses - <USER3> with HDMI in at 1080p projecting a 30in screen at 3ft.

</comment><comment><USER29> My question is how would the human eye focus on something that close to it?

</comment><comment><USER30> Torchwood!

</comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one here who is amazingly creeped out by the very idea of putting anything directly on their own eyeball?

<comment><USER32> As a wearer of contact lenses I'm surprised how often people express this sentiment :-)

It takes some getting used to (I seem to remember, but I've been wearing them for 15 years), but it's not that bad, honest!

<comment><USER33> While I have given it a try and had terrible panic attacks. Maybe if I kept at it, I'd get used to it but crossing that barrier was too much for me.</comment></comment></comment>


Hybrid materials could smash the solar efficiency ceiling - <AUTHOR> http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/hybrid-materials-could-smash-the-solar-efficiency-ceiling <comment><USER2> Always makes for a great headline, always disappoints down the road. It reminds my of the comedy sketch talking about how the flying pig they are developing is going to cut the cost of delivering bacon to market to practically nothing.

Yes, and as the author says, _"If we can combine materials like pentacene with conventional semiconductors like silicon, it would allow us to break through the fundamental ceiling on the efficiency of solar cells."_ Which is both true, and the bane of several billions of dollars in investment in genechips and various other mixed organic/silicon design concepts. That is a really really really hard problem, and if you can crack it then all sorts of fun stuff is possible, not the least of which are chips that could talk directly to your neurons (my personal favorite). Nice to see that they have some additional insight into photosynthesis though.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the big sticking point here is that it's an absolute nightmare to try and figure out what is going on at the interfaces. Current theory does not do a very good job at all and is monstrously computationally expensive, especially if they are going to wave their hands and point to "wavefunction overlap". You need a 1-D electronic theory to describe singlet fission - talking about wavefunctions is meaningless when you're in a bosonic sector. You need to talk about _fields_, not a mention of which I see in these papers.

EDIT: To be less cryptic, this is what I mean: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_quantization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_quantization)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I study the theory of singlet fission with collaborators at Brookhaven. It's great to see they're moving towards inorganic substrates, but they're barking up the wrong tree with this Dexter transfer theory. The experimentalists keep insisting on viewing this as a kinetic phenomenon when the key is really geometric effects on the electronic structure of the polymer - they are failing to interpret their own data correctly. I really hope we can convince them to try topologically nontrivial materials as substrates - I fear the surface traps in QDs will be a roadblock otherwise as they say.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel like "Could" needs to be added as a corollary of Betteridge's law of headlines.

Maybe I missed it in the article, but it doesn't sound like they've replicated this effect on the macro scale.</comment>


Terror and wonder in Kiev: This is what real protest feels like - <AUTHOR> http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.573142

<comment><AUTHOR> Full article (thanks Google Cache!): [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mMuR8w4...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mMuR8w4W5AMJ:www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.573142+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ar)</comment>


My Man Jeremy - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2013/11/25/131125sh_shouts_cera?currentPage=all

<comment><USER2> This is fiction. Apparently the 'Shouts and Murmurs' is entirely fictional parody.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like how it's dated next week monday. Freaked me out for a second.

<comment><USER4> Pick up any (current) weekly magazine at a newsstand and you'll see the date on the cover is in the future. Commonplace in the business. It can be a little odd to see this practice transferred online, I admit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone confused, this is part of the /humor/ (see URL) section.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this supposed to be funny or something?

</comment><comment><USER7> very strange.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't get it...

This just seems really obnoxious to me.

<comment><USER9> You have to know Cera for context, the kind of humor in the roles he does, offbeat humor in general, appreciate the surreal a little etc.

Else, there's always Jay Leno.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Welp, that made sense.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is horrible and awful.</comment>


Remove Wikipedia SOPA Blackout (GreaseMonkey script) - <AUTHOR> http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/123455

<comment><USER2> Or... just turn off javascript for a moment and refresh page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh thank FSM, I've already hit it 23 times since it started.</comment>


Firefox: Not A Good Citizen on OS X Lion - <AUTHOR> http://zerodistraction.com/blog/2012/4/28/firefox-not-a-good-citizen-on-os-x-lion.html <comment><USER2> Firefox is not a good citizen on any OS other than Windows.

In Linux, the Firefox button becomes an awkward-looking upside-down tab in the tab bar, because you're apparently not supposed to intrude into the sacrosanct title bar. (What about Chrome?) It also takes quite a bit of tweaking on the distributor's part to make Firefox look and behave like the rest of the OS (e.g. icon theme and font anti-aliasing), though this has gotten better in recent releases.

But most Apple apps like Safari and iTunes aren't good citizens on Windows, either.

Anyway, I think we should have a bit of leniency on web browsers. Part of the reason for the perceived incompatibility is that a web browser is not an ordinary app. A web browser is an environment in which most people spend most of their time. It's almost like an OS in itself, with its own UI paradigms such as tabs and add-on bars. Therefore browser designers put in a lot of effort trying to polish their UI exactly the way they want, and it's not easy to reconcile that with the native UI of several different OSes. It'll take time, especially since all the OSes are in the process of revolutionizing their own UIs.

<comment><USER3> The Linux problem is a limitation of Linux. (I worked on some similar code in Chrome, which only works 90% and is full of workarounds and hacks.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For what it's worth,

1\. Lion/iOS-style scrollbars are currently enabled on the nightly builds of the "UX" branch, and will hopefully be merged into the mainstream release soon.

2\. Lion-native fullscreen landed in Firefox 14, which is the current "Aurora" build. It will enter Beta in 6 weeks, or Stable in 12 weeks.

<comment><USER5> Yes, all of the above is true as well as smooth scrolling will be enabled by default in Firefox 13.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd just like to say that I'm very thankful Firefox has neither invisible scrollbars nor inertial scrolling. F11 is full-screen in Firefox.

<comment><USER7> Adding to that, I've no problem whatsoever with Mozilla's choice to not implement these (braindamaged without exception, IMHO) features, as these choices are partially what drives me to use Firefox, and the only feedback Apple might ever listen to with regard to _drunk scrolling_ and suchlike is user uptake.

Here Firefox enables me to vote with my feet.

<comment><USER8> Friend, using terms like "braindamaged" is really not that constructive. I've seen an uptake in these kinds of posts lately on HN, and I wish you would all tone it down.

Just be polite, rational, constructive and helpful. Only lazy people turn to these spiteful remarks.

<comment><USER9> Telling the hacker community not to use the term "braindamaged" is one of the most braindamaged things I can think of.

<comment><USER10> It is sad that a large percentage of people who seek common interests can be so dark to each other. Why does disrespect and self pride seem, at least in the nerd culture today, to be tolerated by so many? I have been in environments where it was cool to be a bully but where the stereotypical computer scientist are known to have been bullied at some point in his/her own life, I am surprised to find such negativity here. I know I shoot myself in the foot when I decide to read the comments from the feeds but maybe I am just looking for a bit of chat and thoughts from fellow people who share my eagerness. I look for guidance and influence from people like the regular viewers on HN.

You do not know it all. You started from somewhere. Your opinion is an opinion. If you are more fortunate in your experience or knowledge then the contributor above you, do good with it. These logical statements above should be a mantra before submitting a comment anywhere online. The web can not be dictated or controlled but a common culture and mass influence can make it a happier place within its communities.

<comment><USER9> You are making many faulty assumptions, attacking a culture you clearly do not understand in the least. To call something braindamaged in hacker culture is well understood as a personal value judgement with certain connotations. It has absolutely nothing to do with bullying, "darkness", or negativity.

If anything, it is you who is being a bully, barging in and telling us how we should behave without even grasping who we are and how we are behaving now.

<comment><USER10> Hmm, I humbly admit I was ignorant with the terminology. Obviously I am not deep in the culture you speak of. I am sorry that I pushed my opinion under your comment. These thoughts have been building from other situations. I should have seen this coming.

Maybe I "do not understand in the least". I personally still feel what I said has some merit and was not hard to see that I meant to inspire positivity more so then to come across as judgmental. I think you and me both know I was not bullying you to be something you all are not. I say "all" because you spoke of "we". If you are justified in saying "we" and can't relate/respect what I am saying, then I don't think I want to be part of your circle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Firefox was never the best Cocoa (i.e. OSX) implementation of Gecko, Firefox aims to be the best CROSS PLATFORM implementation of Gecko. Camino has always been the OSX optimised browser, but unfortunately they don't have the same level of support and they can't do as much as they would like.

While I have more then enough gripes about the mozilla project, this just comes off whiney. Have you checked Bugzilla? Have you discussed on the Mailing list? Is there a Request for enhancement? Is their code in the repo that is about to drop in an upcoming release?

From memory the firefox UI is coded in XUL, so the actual changes are to the XUL controls, which have to be made as close to identical between all supported platforms. Not in the case of look, but in the scroll gradiant and event chain.

While its easier to take pot shots from your blog and HN you could actually help the situation by advocating it as a priority to the developers by talking to them, by testing code and even contributing. People have already pointed out that most of your complaints are already coming in later versions.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, it seems like he read the release notes for Firefox 13 (now in beta) and wrote a rant about how those features aren't in 12. See <http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/13.0beta/releasenotes/>.

</comment><comment><USER13> That the UI additions are missing is a deal breaker for the author is fair enough, we each like to use our machines our own way, but Lion is less than a year old, and Firefox is not a small product, so it seems a bit harsh to call out missing UI candy that is completely unrelated to the softwares core purpose, displaying web pages well, after pointing out the amount of effort that has just been put in to improving that core functionality.

Personally I went back to Snow Leopard as I think these very Lion features was a step backward in usability for my tastes. I don't like the disappearing scroll bars, and mission control is a poor replacement for spaces/expose.

</comment><comment><USER14> An aside: Lion's fullscreen support is awful. I have my TV hooked up to my computer and can't fullscreen anything that uses Lion's fullscreen API.

[http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17941/how-do-i- run-...](http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17941/how-do-i-run-an-app- in-full-screen-mode-on-os-x-lion-on-my-second-monitor)

<comment><USER15> Lion's fullscreen support is a security hazard as well. Leave something full screen, close your laptop, and come back to it hours later, and you can open up your laptop without it asking for a password.

Pretty sure that's not intended.

<comment><USER16> I've never seen that. I use lion fullscreen mode all the time and i am very certain that my macbook still asks for a password after waking up.

<comment><USER15> I've had it happen to me several times. It's always been jarring. Last time it happened, it was Preview that had been full screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have to say, while Chrome has a few issues on OSX, I was really impressed with how quickly they added full screening, Lion-style scrollbars, elastic scrolling, and surprisingly polished two-finger swipe gestures. Hopefully Firefox will get up to speed soon.

<comment><USER18> I mostly agree, but I find Chrome's two-finger swipe gestures to be terrible. It's really hard to "cancel" a swipe if you've already (accidentally) started swiping.

<comment><USER19> That doesn't really make any sense. The two finger swipe in chrome is the only implementation of the two finger swipe I know of that gives you ANY opportunity to cancel the swipe once it has started. You can also completely control the swipe by not removing your fingers from the trackpad, unlike the 3 finger swipe, which is instantaneous.

<comment><USER18> I see that they've updated it since I last used Chrome. It's better but not perfect, although that might just be a matter of getting used to it. I expect to have to swipe longer before it goes back and I expect the same momentum effect that is all over Lion.

I don't understand why they don't simply use Safari's default behavior, it's not like Apple has a patent on physics and smooth animations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find Firefox has much smoother scrolling for me on OS X, compared to Chrome. The rubber band effect for me normally is quite a slowdown.

<comment><USER21> The rubber band is terrible, I wish it would stay out of the desktop OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's generally the problem when multi-platform software wants to "feel" the same on every platform. It just doesn't work. Mac users are used to a different UI, so even if you think that you approach is better, just don't do it. When it comes to usability, try to do it how everyone else developing for the platform is doing it.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's an opensource project run by a nonprofit.... nothing is stopping you from contributing ... did you even file a bug report or look one up regarding this issue?

not even apple has updated all of it's software to support these new features.. hell they can't even get xcode to stop crashing constantly yet...

<comment><USER24> Oh to be young and think (or project that you think) you know everything!

(..says the old curmudgeon who realizes that despite all efforts to the contrary, he's getting increasingly less knowledgeable percentage-wise of what's out there. However you can't fault the kid for trying!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For what it's worth, the rubber band thing having a patent on it, I am not sure shipping it in Firefox is only about implementing it. I do know sometimes patches wait in bugzilla for legal approval, and I do know implementing native-like features often involve much more work than most people think. It makes me a bit sad to see that people judge the entire browsing experience in term of how native it feels rather than how well standards are implemented and what actual features are provided (not the look of a scrollbar, which is a matter of taste and generates debates that don't interest me much). There is some work in progress for more UI smoothness in firefox. Using xul instead of native UI has its pros and cons, but reducing the dependencies between UI code and the OS-specific APIS enables Firefox to be available to many platforms which is valuable in my opinion. It looks to me like people in general prefer to complain on blogs and comments rather than doing the same on bug trackers were it is actually useful and where one can get feedback from the guys that actually know about the stuff.

</comment><comment><USER26> Since fullscreen and disappearing scroll bars both suck, and inertial scrolling appears to work fine for me, this article is moot.

<comment><USER27> Amen brother. Preach it.

A parallel article could be written on how Firefox is the best browser because careful attention has been paid not not ruining the user experience by implementing widely acknowledged design errors in Lion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unless I'm mistaking inertial scrolling has nothing to do with it bouncing back specifically, it's inertial meaning having inertia, the tendency for something in motion in this case tr window to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. Bouncing when you reach the end would be a simulation of elasticity not enertial

</comment><comment><USER29> I've followed Mozilla.org since the project was first announced in 1998, and I've been a Mac OS X user since 2004.

Unfortunately, they've routinely shipped OS X versions of Firefox with show stoppingly-bad performance and UI bugs, and they've been far too conservative in addressing such issues. For years I rolled my own builds of Firefox just to include patches for important bugs that had been left languishing in bugzilla. (I see they finally fixed horizontal scrolling, only 7 years after two-finger scrolling was first introduced. Nice.)

As soon as Safari was able to match Firefox's performance, which was about 5 years ago, I left Firefox behind for good. Firefox was always, and probably still is, a fine browser on Windows, but the OS X version of Firefox is second class and really only suitable for Firefox superfans.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm curious if there are any statistics on what percentage of Firefox users are on OSX.

Perhaps we can approximate. Here's Firefox's user feedback dashboard:

[http://input.mozilla.org/en- US/?q=&product=firefox&v...](http://input.mozilla.org/en- US/?q=&product=firefox&version=--&date_start=&date_end=)

According to this, it looks like 5% of Firefox users are on OSX (or at least 5% of the users who care enough to submit feedback). I've heard (anecdotally) that Mozilla _is_ planning on supporting the features mentioned in the OP, but perhaps it's just not a high priority due to the percentage of their total users that it would benefit (of course, this is a circular argument).

</comment><comment><USER31> As much as I hate to say it, Firefox is not that good on Windows either - I'm kind of tired of it using 1.5 GB of RAM and lagging most of the time. If not for the awesome Adblock and NoScript plugin and the AwesomeBar, I'd use Chrome all the time...

</comment><comment><USER32> wow, this page sets 20 cookies, loads 16 external javascripts, and has a 280kB image file in the banner. Just to deliver 7 paragraphs of text.

</comment><comment><USER33> What bothers me most is that if I'm using multiple desktops in OS X, Firefox is in all of them. There's no defence of this as a UX decision.

</comment><comment><USER34> The only good browser for mac is chrome.</comment>


LinkedIn decides to focus on Java 8 instead of Scala - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Is-LinkedIn-getting-rid-of-Scala/answer/Kevin-Scott?share=1

<comment><USER2> I don't think Java 8 is on par compared to Scala in terms of expressiveness. If I have a choice between a Scala job or a Java 8 job, I will chose the Scala one. I can't go back.

Here is a more elaborated explanation why I don't think Java 8 is there yet to move me back: [http://eranmedan.com/will-java-8-kill- scala](http://eranmedan.com/will-java-8-kill-scala)</comment>


IKEA: Flat-pack accounting (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=6919139

<comment><USER2> Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a diagram of the fund structures:

[http://landofthefreeish.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/02/ikea-...](http://landofthefreeish.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/02/ikea-tax-evasion-scheme.png)

<comment><USER4> 403_http_forbidden

<comment><USER5> Anti-hotlinking. Copy/paste the URL into a new tab (so there's no referer).

<comment><USER6> Or, how about a link to the document in which the image is embedded - [http://landofthefreeish.com/offtopic/ikea-has-the-most- aweso...](http://landofthefreeish.com/offtopic/ikea-has-the-most-awesome-tax- evasion-scheme-ever/)

I know linking directly to image files is in some circles the hip thing to do, but I don't get, as it creates a frustrating dead end if one is interested in more information on the subject that may be on the page with the image or available from following a link on the page.

And, apparently this site admin doesn't like it.

<comment><USER7> That site admin also stole the entirety of the article from the Economist.

So I stole his image and threw it up on imgur: <http://i.imgur.com/Qov1B.png>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't see anything bad with that. IKEA is a non profit and its rules apply. Dereck did that too:

<http://sivers.org/trust>

Ingvar Kamprad is the prototype of Calvinist, hard working, humble and low expenses man. When he came here to Spain, to visit IKEA's stores, he used regular line airplane, and public bus transport.

IMHO, he don't want to make his family stupid rich(think Gucci family,wasting on luxury, power, drugs, sex, fights for the money and murders between them) when he is dead, but wants them to have something they can make a life from.

<comment><USER9> > Ingvar Kamprad is the prototype of Calvinist, hard working, humble and low > expenses man.

Ebenezer Scrooge was hard-working and low-expense too. Would he have been a great and charitable man if he had just been a little less arrogant?

> IMHO, he don't want to make his family stupid rich(think Gucci > family,wasting on luxury, power, drugs, sex, fights for the money and > murders between them) when he is dead, but wants them to have something they > can make a life from.

How many billions, exactly, does that require? (Feel free to round to the nearest hundred million.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder: if IKEA had been paying income taxes all along, how much less in _personal_ income taxes would they have generated?

Corporate income is the single source of income most likely to be productively reinvested, because corporations function more like _homo economicus_ than any other kind of entity. And since they're entirely owned by either a) people, or b) charities, it doesn't make sense to talk about taxing corporations instead of individuals--rather, you should refer to corporate income tax as a tax on individuals and nonprofits, instead of just individuals.

From that perspective, IKEA pays the socially optimal corporate income tax: zero.

<comment><USER11> If corporations are 'incorporated' they become citizens, citizens pay tax. You can't have it both ways.

<comment><USER10> Citizens also vote. I've never understood why people consider 'corporate citizenship' so meaningful; it's a terse description of a legal hack, not some profound statement about what a corporation is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Similar structures using foundations have been used in the USA for many years, at least since the 1950s if not before.

Congress investigated in 1952-53...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reece_Committee>

While it was not the thrust of the investigation, it did come to light that many rich people were using foundations as a way to shield themselves from taxes or to retain control of a company via a two-tier voting class for shares.

</comment><comment><USER13> Note that the article is from May 2006.

<comment><USER14> Are you aware of what (if anything) has changed significantly since then?

<comment><USER15> As far as I know it hasn't - there's an article like this every year or so in the British press, and they all have similar conclusions.

Furthermore, if the linked article is right, it should be pretty difficult to change this structure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think it's a shame they are using these kinds of aggressive tax planning tactics, while still marketing themselves as being Swedish/Nordic. And to put this view in context, Sweden does not have the same social system as the US. But this would be aggressive even for an American company.

<comment><USER17> Let's just say that everyone up here doesn't love our high taxes. :-)

You could of course wish that IKEA would pay its corporate taxes like a good corporate citizen, but maybe the same traits that makes Ingvar Kamprad want to save expenses on everything, including taxes, is the same trait that has also made IKEA the huge success it is?

<comment><USER16> Expressen recently listed the "top" tax-payers in Sweden [1]. What's interesting is that the second wealthiest person in Sweden after Kamprad, H&M owner Stefan Perssson, tops the list and pays more tax than the ten following people combined. It's also interesting to find one of the investors in Skype at #4 and one of the founders of MySQL at #11.

[http://www.expressen.se/ekonomi/1.1797308/h-m-miljardar- beta...](http://www.expressen.se/ekonomi/1.1797308/h-m-miljardar-betalar-mest- i-skatt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I understand US law correctly, a non-profit corporation is allowed to own a for-profit corporation (just like it can own any other asset), but that doesn't exempt the for-profit corporation from taxes; it just means that all the after-tax profits go into the non-profit's coffers. And when a non-profit corporation pays its employees or directors, that money becomes taxable income. Does Dutch law work the same way? How much are the Ikea companies actually saving from the taxman this way?

<comment><USER19> I think the implication is that the main for-profit companies make virtually no profit at all. The "profit" is emitted via the franchise commission which is handled as an expense. What exactly happens in the INGKA foundation isn't clear to me. Presumably the non-profit actually pays the designers who create the products, handing the designs back over to IKEA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the root of the problem exists in the simple fact that tax laws are different in various states/countries. Accountants/lawyers are paid to figure them out, and rewarded well when they find benefits to the myriad of rules and regs. I was even employed once to optimize a large corporation with 100s of entities in different taxing regions. I enjoyed the work, but it was evil (only looking back in retrospect of course).

<comment><USER21> Have you watched the _Tax me if you can_ documentary? You might enjoy it:

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/>

<comment><USER20> thanks, I will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When reading a story like this it's hard to know whether to smile wryly at the accountants' ingenuity or weep quietly at the injustice of it all.

<comment><USER21> Where's the injustice? I doubt the Kamprad family has cost the Swedish welfare state what the state wants to tax them. He's merely doing what's best for him, instead of subsidizing the education and medical care of other parents' children. Frankly, I don't see any injustice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> US politicians are learning this trick too.

While non-profit foundations belonging to US politicians typically don't own shares of corporations, it's very hard to see these non-profits doing any charitable output; a lot of these organizations just have huge administration costs: plane tickets, dinners, and so on

</comment><comment><USER24> I think systems like this are in place in many different companies.</comment>


Asynchronous PHP: Why? - <AUTHOR> http://sergeyzhuk.me/2018/02/02/why-asynchronous-php/ <comment><USER3> IMHO, the biggest reason to use a language like Node when you want to do async programming is that for any random library you choose there's a 98% chance that it properly supports async as well and won't block on you. For better or worse async is pervasive in the ecosystem. Even in good languages like Python that have (allegedly; I've not used them) good async frameworks, most libraries will block as it's the normal I/O mode for the language, which really limits what you can use. I can't imagine the situation will be any better in PHP.

<comment><USER4> People keep saying that Node is async native, but the GC is global and synchronous, and that property will bite you on availability even at moderate traffic, i.e. sooner than you'd expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am an experienced PHP developer - and I also ask the question "why asynchronous PHP" all the time - except in a different context.

Every time I start thinking about doing some strange magic "asynchronous" function - I realise I can just use the standard queue systems built into most frameworks today. i.e. get the task - push it onto a queue - then do something else without waiting for the queue itself.

The thought of dealing with "forked" processes, memory leaks, strange race conditions etc and all the stuff that comes with async PHP does not seem worth it. It is very easy to "reason" logic behind a queue system. I can test it extremely well, and essentially break the process up into sub sections and not have to worry.

Note - I'm not saying there is no place for true asynchronous functions - <USER2> I think people reach for them in PHP when other easier solutions might suffice in the first place.

<comment><USER6> One example that I think fits very well is a websocket server. As you often have a large number of clients with long-running connections and relatively low-volume bidirectional communication, a single process running react/amp can easily handle hundreds or thousands of clients.

The majority of the examples out there are indeed contrived and better suited to a queue system as you've described.

<comment><USER7> +1 to this. I like Ratchet for websockets written in PHP. One nice thing is that I can share certain things like session code between my websocket server and my backend framework. Having both be in the same language, in the same project, makes things a lot cleaner for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > When you already have a solid background in PHP, it will be much easier for > you just to dig in some libraries and tools for your use-case, instead of > learning a new language and a new ecosystem.

The main challenge when going async isn't learning new syntax. It's dealing with non-linear flow control and with different abstractions.

So, I remain unconvinced that picking PHP's comparatively obscure async ecosystem is a good longterm strategy.

<comment><USER9> This sounds very plausible to me. As well as PHP, I've written a bunch of Java and threaded Java. I treat the latter two as different languages: yes you can use the same parser for both, but _adding_ threads to the semantics also _removes_ a lot of the mental models and assumptions we could previously make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr for the most useless article I've ever read. See links:

[https://amphp.org/](https://amphp.org/) [https://reactphp.org/](https://reactphp.org/)

Was basically the article. r/savedyouaclick

</comment><comment><USER11> Elixir has gotten this down perfectly.

I always wished js was sync by default and only async when you tell it to. Now you have the words async/await (and not too long ago promises, bluebird, waterfall), spread out all over your code for that since you only need async perhaps less than a quarter of your code base. but i dont see js ever becoming procedural first anytime soon.

then I discovered Elixir, i was curious to see how they tout their highly concurrent functional language solved this issue. and surprisingly its as simple as wrapping a block of code inside an async block. its such a pleasant experience finally having best of both worlds, especially coming from years of callback hells and trying to debug what becomes a set of spaghetti code for performing simple things.

<comment><USER12> > I always wished js was sync by default

`let res = await someAsyncOperation();`

<comment><USER11> so, i was hoping for not even having to type in async/await and make this possible: let res = someAsyncOperation()

and whenever you want an async operation (non-blocking), thats when you do something like:

async { let res = someAsyncOperation() }

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure what that's supposed to solve since you want to handle error/results at that top-level `async` in your example.

For example, in Javascript, you would often just have a top-level async function and stay inside async world the whole time.

Putting your example in the middle of some random code can already be done by calling a promise but not putting the downstream code inside its .then() block.

One of the nicest things about Javascript is the absolute simplicity of its concurrency model, one of those perks coming from its single-threaded nature. I look at something like C# and Kotlin with their BYO await semantics as something I'm glad Javascript doesn't have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> just use [hack]([https://hhvm.com/](https://hhvm.com/)).

hack has language-level support for async tasks[^1]. and is 99% compatible with PHP.

On the other hand, I _would_ love to see PHP8 bring language-level support for async tasks.

[^1]: [https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/async/introduction](https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/async/introduction)

<comment><USER15> I think you are missunderstanding this a bit, hack has async io.

If you have only 1 external system that both indexes the data and stores it, this won't help you that much.

But if you have an indexing system and another, with many read slaves, that stores the data, then async will help you.

You will do 1 external io request to retrieve a list of ids/identifiers then as many replicas paralel requests to retrieve and format the data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tried to do this. Limited to the context of database queries. Run them asynchronously, and pick up the results later.

It works with MySQL, it doesn't with PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL has options for asynchronous queries, but it's clear than even the person who made them has never actually used them!

Take a look at the docs for pg_send_query: "multiple queries cannot be sent over a busy connection. If a query is sent while the connection is busy, it waits until the last query is finished and discards all its results."

If you actually try, it will block on the next query! Who wrote this useless library?

There is also no callback or anything, you simply have to allow it to block in order to pick up results. (There is the undocumented pg_select which might work.) Queries must be sent and received in order, and one at a time. You can't run 2 at once (say a long running query, then a quick short one later in your code). You can't even send another one while the first is running (and block), because that causes the results from the first to be discarded.

Very disappointed with PostgreSQL because of this.

In contrast MySQL has mysqli_poll() which actually works like you'd expect.

If I had a job that needed asynchronous database queries, I'd definitely pick MySQL.

<comment><USER3> Make multiple connections to the database. A transaction is at the "scope" of a connection anyway, and I don't think there are any useful semantics for multiple SQL statements being executed in parallel in a single transaction anyway, so it's likely Postgres is trying to save you from yourself here.

I'll agree that the PHP Postgres API appears to be very low-level, and the fact that it does not offer callback support may be due to the fact that PHP doesn't have a standard event loop to plug into. There may be higher-level libraries that do better here. (I don't know much about PHP.) Postgres is perfectly usable in an async manner from other languages, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Of course, when PHP was created its goal was not to be a programming language that can be used to build large complicated applications. When it happened there was no JavaScript and no asynchronous stuff in mind._

I just came here to say that ... neither was Javascript :)

</comment><comment><USER18> On the topic of asynchronous PHP, swoole ([https://github.com/swoole/swoole- src](https://github.com/swoole/swoole-src)) is very interesting. Lacks documentation at the moment, but outperformed Node on a variety of tests I tried with MySQL.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Asynchronous PHP; Why? Because it's there." I was expecting some actual reason.

</comment><comment><USER20> I know a decent amount of php, but I'm primarily a Python developer who writes most code with asyncio and twisted.

I tried doing a relatively trivial async php script(basically a script that was supposed to make an outbound redis pubsub connection and outbound websocket connection and relay messages) using reactphp and found it to be nearly impossible due to language/framework constructs.

It was easy enough to make the outbound connections but there was no obvious way to actually pass messages between the two connections.

Async style really just does not seem to work well with php at all.

<comment><USER7> I recommend looking at ZeroMQ for this

<comment><USER20> Not sure how that would help much, I needed something that could talk with redis and websockets and pass messages between the two. I was trying to use php since that's what the main portion of the application was implemented in so that I could share code, I ended up just using python in the end though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I remember when node was new and everyone was trying those real-time chat tutorials. After following the cliché tutorial i realized in order to share the session between node and the rest of the php app I had to basically hack it.

I ended up having to read the source code of ReactPHP and add the functionality to my framework. Sure it is not one line of code like with node, but it's not rocket science either. I would definitely recommend trying ReactPHP to see the benefits.

</comment><comment><USER22>
        ... our CPU has to wait and does nothing, instead of doing some useful job.

Please correct me where I'm wrong, but IIRC your CPU is never waiting if there is more work to be done. Yes, there is the overhead of context switching if you're using mod_php. Otherwise I think most operating systems are smart enough to make use of resources.

EDIT: Maybe an OS expert can clear up how this works?

<comment><USER23> Correct. If a process is waiting on a recv()/send() (or any other non- asynchronous IO syscall on Linux), the userspace process will go into (un)interruptible sleep and another process can be scheduled in it's place. When data is ready to process (or a signal needs to be delivered) the original process will be scheduled again and the syscall will return. It would be absurd for the CPU to busy wait on data.

And if the language you're choosing is a slow interpreted language like PHP then I'm fairly sure the context switch overhead is negligible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Slightly off but, what I loved most about Node's async/await is that its backwards compatible with promises.

Most of the third-party packages were built during the promises and callback era, and I'm so happy I can still use them. Imagine if its a BC break ala python 3, that would certainly fragment the community and would hurt the adoption of version 7.x.x and above.

</comment><comment><USER25> Event-driven asynchronous & concurrent & coroutine networking engine with high performance for PHP. [http://www.swoole.com/](http://www.swoole.com/) [https://github.com/swoole/swoole-src](https://github.com/swoole/swoole-src)

</comment><comment><USER26> What are some of the best resources to use when getting started coding async PHP? Any tutorials?

<comment><USER27> Here's a list you might find useful: [https://github.com/elazar/asynchronous- php](https://github.com/elazar/asynchronous-php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Brace yourself for virtue signaling about how bad PHP is because <insert wart from 10 year old version>. On a less cynical note, working in both Node and PHP, async is often more cumbersome than it's worth (for me) and a queue suffices.

</comment><comment><USER29> just use NodeJS or Go

<comment><USER30> JavaScript is a worse language than PHP in some ways, for example no native type hinting, no native filter map reduce on hash tables, no explicit variable import into scope

I'm not saying PHP is a better asynchronous language than NodeJS but I'd definitely be wary of JavaScript unless you're interested in compiling

If you're interested in compiling then there are some very good languages in that space that are not JavaScript, Go, #F, etc

<comment><USER31> Use typescript or flow if you want types.

<comment><USER32> Now we are compiling (sorry transpiling). If we are going to do that why not use e.g. Go?

<comment><USER33> Technically transpiling is just a more specific kind of compiling, so you're not wrong in saying compiling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> i'm sure the spec for async in php is well designed and implemented.

(is "/s" still a thing?)

</comment><comment><USER35> PHP was originally called Personal Home Page Tools. Perhaps people should consider that before building large and complex systems using it.

<comment><USER36> You know, I understand a certain amount of PHP bashing. It's far from the most sane language that I have ever used and parts of the syntax are flat out painful.

That said though, the version of PHP you are talking about was written 23 years ago. The language has changed a tremendous amount over 23 years. The state of the tool 23 years ago would be a very poor reason to choose or avoid it today.

Hell, Java is roughly the same age as PHP. Nobody in their right mind would dream of using that first version of Java today. It isn't that the tool itself is bad. Rather, the tool has improved dramatically over the last two decades.

<comment><USER37> > It's far from the most sane language that I have ever used and parts of the > syntax are flat out painful.

Also applies to JavaScript, and to be fair, many other scripting languages. None of them were perfect in v.1 and to add missing features it was often necessary to bend them in ways that are inconsistent with the rest of the language.</comment></comment></comment>


The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor's Pursuit of Immortality - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/art-not-dying <comment><USER2> My small town in Japan was heavily influenced by a scholar who was searching for this elixir for Qin Shihuang. There's a park dedicated to the scholar, Jofuku:

[https://www.shinguu.jp/en/spots/detail/A0005](https://www.shinguu.jp/en/spots/detail/A0005)

</comment><comment> man-and-laptop Being mummified was a clever move. If his brain were preserved long enough, then he may hypothetically have been brought back to life. A bit like cryogenics.

<comment><USER3> I'd give it roughly the same chance that I give the heads sitting in cryogenic storage being brought back to life: 0.

<comment><USER4> No need to bring the brain back to life. When memories and the connectome are finally understood, simply scan the brain, even by destroying the original if needed: cut it into slices, scan it, then upload it to a robotic body, or even a simple computer simulation (good enough for me!)

I do not want to be "flesh and bones" when we will have better alternatives.

I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what we are? I can't even express these things properly, because I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me.

<comment><USER5> This doesn't the answer the "how does cloned consciousness work" question.

For re-vitilization, I don't give a fuck if it's a perfect copy of me walking around. I want it to be _me_ , the current stream of consciousness. To the abyss I say, no thank you.

<comment><USER6> Better not go to sleep then. You woke up from the abyss this morning.

<comment><USER7> > You woke up from the abyss this morning.

Actually I woke up directly (and, apparently, seamlessly) from a dream. (I went lucid a little too carelessly surged to a waking in the same manner as you come up from the bottom of a swimming pool).

To be fair, though, I did wake up into the dream from the abyss. But since the abyss is timelessness, how would we know the difference?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was I the only person hoping this article would go into the daoist concept of immortality and its meeting with modern day sciences understanding of physiology?

<comment><USER9> Possibly! But I'm curious as to these connections - could you expand?

<comment><USER10> Yes please, seconded!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For a different perspective, I recommend _The Western Lands_ by William S. Burroughs.

</comment><comment><USER12> No one wants to die. However it seems that it's mostly powerful people truly believe it's possible to escape death. Lawrence of Arabia, Walt Disney, and Peter Thiel come to mind as examples. Clearly there's something about amassing a large amount of power in life that lends itself to believing you can overcome death.

<comment><USER13> Maybe they've seen in life that if you try you can maybe achieve stuff ? And when you have billion you don't lose anything by spending some of it in high- risk/high-reward projects.

<comment><USER12> Obviously if they're powerful, they think they can accomplish anything.

But maybe they've witnessed history. Every king, industrialist, or self- absorbed person has tried exactly the same thing, living forever. I have no problem when any rich person tries to do this, it's just frustrating when they claim that this desire is unique, when "not wanting to die" is probably the most basic desire of just about everyone, and has been through the ages rich and poor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To me fear of death is a sign of not really having been born yet. If you can't make 50 years worthwhile, you can't make 50000 years worthwhile, and if you can't cope with being limited to 80 years or so, you will not be able to cope with the heat death of the universe. It also stands to reason that if you feel it's impossible to give up 100 years of grown personality and memories, it will be even harder and more painful to give up orders of magnitude more of that. It seems like power in that those who want it the most deserve it the least because they are the worst at using it.

On a very basic level, if I feel myself to be entitled to live forever, then I couldn't rightfully deny that to anyone else. So at some point this would mean less new births. If it didn't, it would mean an even more crass explosion of the human footprint, an even more extreme choking out of other lifeforms -- and it could very well mean both. But that would suck, since being healthy and alive isn't just great because I can see 5000 million particles rendered in 3 lines of CSS, or watch the clouds go by, it's also because of the flora and fauna, and because of other people. Beings that surprise me, that come into the world and "become". Knowing there will be future question marks born is something way more sublime for me than "attack ships on fire" or having this one video that got 7234 million views.

Life isn't just me, it's also a river in which I am a drop. If I want to not be a drop, so I can keep seeing the river, well... if everybody does that, there is no more river, and if I want to reserve immortality for just myself, I am an asshole. I don't mean to brag, but I figured that out as a kid, and no immortality advocate I read or heard or saw so far managed to put a meaningful dent in it.

Yes, I am for medicine, I think it's great when people can live longer and stay healthy longer (even though we then ignore their wisdom when it's inconvenient, e.g. [0]), but no, I cannot draw you an exact line, except that I know "immortality" as extreme and as espoused by technophiles or emperors or preachers does not interest me, at all. If anything I'm curious about the biographies of the people looking for it; they point at some clouds that may or may not have a moon behind it, but I can't help but look from the finger to their arm to their shoulders to their head. I feel that's where the majority if not all of the action is.

Last, but not least: even if you managed to completely overcome all aging and disease, assuming no asteroids and other surprises: the only way to _ensure_ you will live "forever" is to severely restrict the agency of anyone else but you. Other humans acting would be a potential threat, in infinite time it would become an infinite threat, while at the same time you have an infinite lifetime to lose. Nothing might be too crazy and machavellian, and like junkies people might just keep going down the spiral long after they lost all joy in it.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17721280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17721280) <\-- 99 years...

<comment> Engineering-MD Personally, I think the optimal aim is agelessness. There are issues with immortality, as there is with any unlimited concept. I think what most people fear is a fixed time limit. I want to be the master of my own destiny, and not have biology telling me when to go. if we become ageless, people still die from trauma and suicide, but we lose that pressure of knowing we have such a limited time. That might be good for altruism, long term outlooks, and delayed rewards. Plus it addresses another major issue: the slow decline into frailty.

I think by becoming ageless we can gain many advantages of immortality and avoid many of the problems.

<comment><USER14> All these issues can also be overcome with a "live and let live" attitude, and expanding ones empathy beyond oneself, and tentatively even beyond the present. At least to me, the main difference between me living for 1000 years, and me and 9 other people living 100 years each, is that 10 people would probably be more interesting, even though I would only get to see a tenth of it.

Like that Roman dude said, the mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled, so it seems with life. To have or to be... if only I could live 1000 years, if only 10000, if only 100000... is it so absurd to at least consider it possible that we would treat it just like we treat RAM and CPU now?

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

Sure, it's apples and oranges in a way, but satisfaction really is something that happens in the mind and not just the external circumstances, so I don't see why we wouldn't be able to consider any amount of time "not long enough" at some point. Doesn't mean we would, but if we did, we would have gained nothing, other than less diversity of persons.

> _We feel free to express ourselves because we are ready to fade into > emptiness. When we are trying to be active and special and to accomplish > something, we cannot express ourselves... So we have enjoyment, we are > free._

\-- Shunryu Suzuki

> _Of short duration are those who praise as well as those who are praised, > those who remember and those who are remembered. And even that happens just > in one corner of the world, and even there not everybody agrees with one > another, a single person doesn 't even agree with themselves. This whole > Earth however is but a dot._

\-- Marcus Aurelius

This does not change meaningfully, to me, if you replace Earth with Universe and short duration with 10^10000 years. It's the same basic problem, and even I am constantly in flux, not ever the exact same person I was an instant ago. So why not get over that? For me letting go of some things doesn't mean giving anything up, it's more like having the hands free to receive better things; I like the tiny actual place I have in reality more than an imaginary big one that requires all sorts of ballast and images, layers of abstraction and alienation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The whole discussion is a side track, the essence of who we are is and always was immortal. Do you honestly believe in a universe that would throw away the results of the experiment?

There's no proof either way, but it seems the least likely alternative to me. As to Buddha, Gandhi, Tesla, Einstein and many more otherwise respectable thinkers.

Examine what you're not supposed to think, what is collectively ridiculed; that's where truth is hiding in plain sight.

<comment><USER16> > Do you honestly believe in a universe that would throw away the results of > the experiment?

It does not. 'Results' are the survival of our genes. That's how we came to be here. Also, survival of our ideas, in culture and technology.</comment></comment>


SimCity: Will Wright's City in a Box - <AUTHOR> http://www.filfre.net/2016/06/simcity-part-1-will-wrights-city-in-a-box/ <comment><USER2> I absolutely adore this blog. Each entry is incredibly detailed and well written. My favorite is the one on Nintendo's influence on the PC industry:

[http://www.filfre.net/2016/04/generation- nintendo/](http://www.filfre.net/2016/04/generation-nintendo/)

<comment><USER3> That Nintendo walled-garden story reads like Steve Jobs's playbook for Apple Mac and iOS!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> People who liked the old Sim City games might also like OpenTTD, a gplv2 licensed and heavily improved clone of the old Transport Tycoon Deluxe, it also includes Multiplayer. Under active development and also a nice community.

You are the manager of your own startup transport company and have to build infrastructure, manage finances, routes, build rail system and set up signals to manage your trains, ...

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

[https://www.openttd.org/en/about](https://www.openttd.org/en/about)

<comment><USER5> OpenTTD is awesome, but it's really not the same without the original soundtrack.

I remember my friend getting both Simcity (MS-DOS) and Transport Tycoon for his birthday one year. We were super excited about Simcity, but that quickly waned once we learned to play Transport Tycoon. Such a great game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I, for one, thought SimAnt was one of the most fun games of my childhood. And SimTower... I have a coding interview modeled after it.

<comment><USER7> I would like to try that out - if you're ok sharing?

<comment><USER8> I'm also interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great read.

Jumping ahead a little: The Sim City 4 community is one of the better ones I've ever seen. 13 years after the release, and people are still releasing high quality mods and custom buildings. The community has kept the game alive for all these years, and made the SC4 experience many times better.

<comment><USER8> How do you feel about the new games like Cities Skylines? How would you rate it against SC4?

<comment><USER10> Not OP either...

I am a fan of city games and tried to mod SC4 with official sanction of EA (more on that later).

Currently I like SC4 much more than C:S, for two reasons:

1\. When properly fixed, SC4 is a much better simulator and challenging game than C:S

2\. I like SC4 graphics more too, C:S graphics resemble cities that I never saw in my country, they are too bright, spacious, saturated and "happy" and "calm", it is nothing like São Paulo for example, so C:S to me is too uncanny- valleyish, too "Alien" to me.

Still, sometimes I wonder if I should go ahead and make the SC4 successor I want, I was trying to fix SC4 to make it run properly on new computers and finish some features, but it required stuff that go against the EULA, so I asked EA about it (the asking part took months... very hard to ask EA!), and when they finally replied it was along the lines: "Oh, yes, X, Y, and Z are broken, X is driver's fault, we will work with hardware makers, Y is serious, we will THINK about fixing it." then no mention of Z, or much less "W" that I told them about.

I understand their position, and think the open-sourcing of EASTL in a way was a great step, still I feel very disappointed they miss the mark about such stuff.

<comment><USER9> >I like SC4 graphics more too, C:S graphics resemble cities that I never saw in my country, they are too bright, spacious, saturated and "happy" and "calm", it is nothing like São Paulo for example, so C:S to me is too uncanny- valleyish, too "Alien" to me.

I really like the SC4 graphics too, looks much more realistic. Guess it's easier when you just got 4 angles at various zoom levels to handle. Don't you think much of the problem with CS can be solved with custom content? We got color mods, and there are buildings being created without the cartoonish art direction of the default content.

>Still, sometimes I wonder if I should go ahead and make the SC4 successor I want, I was trying to fix SC4 to make it run properly on new computers and finish some features, but it required stuff that go against the EULA, so I asked EA about it (the asking part took months... very hard to ask EA!), and when they finally replied it was along the lines: "Oh, yes, X, Y, and Z are broken, X is driver's fault, we will work with hardware makers, Y is serious, we will THINK about fixing it." then no mention of Z, or much less "W" that I told them about. I understand their position, and think the open-sourcing of EASTL in a way was a great step, still I feel very disappointed they miss the mark about such stuff.

Oh man, when was this?

I've longed for an SC4 like game without grids. That'd be sweet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Article forgot SimLife, the most complex but ultimately boring of all, but made for some fun animations of animals that looked like office furniture: [http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/4996/SimLife.html](http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/4996/SimLife.html)

From the manual: "The family that Transmogrifies together eats flies together!"

</comment><comment><USER11> Also see the New Yorker's 2006 profile of Will Wright: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/11/06/game- master](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/11/06/game-master)

</comment><comment><USER12> The black-and-white Mac version looks _so_ good - I wish I could play that. I got as far as downloading an old ROM image but can't quite get it in a format that 'Mini vMac' will accept :-(

<comment><USER8> Somewhere there must be a forum where people can help you with that. Or at least some Wisdom of the Ancients

[https://xkcd.com/979/](https://xkcd.com/979/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Really a very compelling telling of the story behind SimCity and its effect on the world.

</comment><comment><USER14> When I was 10 (so 1990) I broke my foot which required 6 weeks off school (I wanted to go to school but the school wouldn't let me as it was considered unsafe).

I spent the entire 6 weeks playing SimCity on my old CGA XT, it is still one of my fondest memories of childhood and by the end of the 6 weeks I'd pretty much perfected that city.

</comment><comment><USER15> >Wright shows off some of the RX-7's gadgetry using the same rapid-fire, jargon-laden diction that journalists and tech-conference attendees would later come to know if not always love.

I was confused. Will's not the one talking in that video, I imagine it's the aforementioned Rick Doherty.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting perspective, I never looked at Trurl as a "god-like" being.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is an absolutely amazing read.

</comment><comment><USER18> posted here days ago without receive attention. happy to see that someone noticed this amazing article!

<comment><USER19> Speaking of SC4, has anyone been able to get it working on Windows 10?

What about OpenTTD on Windows 10?</comment></comment>


Why Regret Is Essential to the Good Life (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/regret-is-essential-to-the-good-life/

<comment><USER2> Well I made it about 50% of the he way through and was filled with regret for starting the article. I found it whiny and introspective, all the things the author feared.

Regret to me means you didn't take away the lesson when something didn't go the way you wanted. If you learn the lesson, and then apply it, what is to regret? There is no sense in living in the past.

</comment><comment><USER3> Retrospective analysis is important; is regret? Is it crucial to have the emotional distress that comes with rational evaluation of past choices? Does negative emotional reinforcement really work at such long time remove?

<comment><USER4> > Does negative emotional reinforcement really work at such long time remove?

So, I don't know about regret specifically, but when researchers asked people to remember instances where they felt specific emotions, and asked how strongly the emotions reoccurred during that process, the number one emotion was embarrassment. Some theorize that fear of embarrassment driven by memories of making mistakes is one of the leading factors in the fluency gap between the first and second languages of children to foreign parents (who speak English [or the language of their peers] much better than their parents native language, even when their parents don't speak English at all -- somewhat odd considering children _need_ to communicate with their parents to survive and get basic needs met).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Regret can be a very strong motivator. Cold retrospective analysis does not guarantee that the lesson will be imprinted in the consciousness. If you do regret something though, chances that you repeat the same mistake again are much smaller than if you just analysed the old situation.

You can look at the opposite of regret - say you really like doing something (for example - programming) - you will be doing it much better (via motivation) than if you just decided to do it because it is worth doing it (ie. via cold analysis of the potential outcome like good pay in the future).

</comment><comment><USER6> If you never regret anything, you've never taken responsibility for anything. Saying "No regrets" is not something to be proud of.</comment>


Bluetooth headphones are annoying - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/7/12109384/wireless-bluetooth-headphones-battery-life-video <comment><USER2> Lauren Goode is either a hack or just incompetent at using things.

> Late for a conference call you need to dial into? Hold on — you need to jam > your Bluetooth buds in your ears and pair them to your phone if you're not > already paired.

Is she serious? In what universe do you have a pair of BT headphones that aren't paired to your device? You do that when you get them.

> Got a sudden burst of motivation to work out? Sorry, no music — headphones > are dead.

Right... things with batteries need charging.

The rest of the article is just as poorly thought out.

I agree that there are issues with Bluetooth headphones, but I find the benefits so great that I've stopped using my RHA T10i in-ear phones almost entirely.

<comment><USER3> Well, yeah maybe Verge has a history of being a little over-dramatic. I wouldn't blame Lauren Goode for that. The Editor-in-chief has been lamenting all over the place about the removal of the 3.5mm jack from iPhones even before the product has launched!. I understand it could be a stupid decision, but a reasonable tech publication should at least wait to hear what Apple says before jumping to conclusions.

As far as pairing BT headsets are concerned, I do have to visit the bluetooth setting and select the headset everytime. This is different from the initial pairing.

<comment><USER2> Agree to your points, but and if the article was "Removing the 3.5mm jack is stupid", I wouldn't take issue with that. But that's not her claim, and my issue is with her absurd non-points in support of her claim that bluetooth headphones are annoying. Here's one more:

> A plastic three-button remote is a poor substitute for an entire phone > interface when it comes to controlling music, answering phone calls, or > using Siri.

In what way is that different than wired headphones??!!

I'm surprised by your need to select your headset each time you use it, though. If that was her issue, if it was widespread, I'd absolutely concede the point. That's not been my experience at all, though. I've used 4 different headsets (all Jabra, though), a half dozen portable speakers, and am currently using two different headphone/mic models -- JayBird BlueBuds and Turtle Beach Elite 800X. Not a single one of them requires that behavior. I power them on, they connect.

What is more, if I'm getting a phone call, and my headset isn't already on, when I _do_ power it on, it connects and immediately answers the call.

The only time I need to use the device selection preferences is when I switch which device I'm using the headphones with. And that works flawlessly for me. When I leave the house, I turn on my headphones and they attach to my iPhone. When I get to work, I use the bluetooth menu mar item to select the headphones and they switch over to the MacBook. When I leave I select them again on my iPhone and they switch back. If I pull out my iPad to watch a video, I switch over to them.

Hell, not only does that work well, but iOS even tries to guess what app I want to switch to when it detects a bluetooth connection.

Obviously this is a case of YMMV. I don't doubt that your headset doesn't work as smoothly with the iPhone. And if Lauren Goode's article had even a shred of that nuance, I wouldn't call her a hack. But both times I've noticed her work lately I've found it riddled with non-evidence in support of her claims (see her article about why WatchOS 3 is "an admission that Apple had it all wrong when it came to interactions on the first-generation Apple Watch": [http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11926314/apple-watch- os3-n...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11926314/apple-watch-os3-new- software-faster-third-party-apps-wwdc)).</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ●●|●●●●●|●●|● - <AUTHOR> http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2521 <comment><USER2> I don't think this fits "Show HN".

Unrelated though, but I just found that SCP entries have discussion forum, link at bottom (cmd+f 'discuss').

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry but i am missing something here. The guy is scary though.</comment>


Ask: what do you think about my website design? - <AUTHOR> https://mibelo.com I'm trying to check if my website is looking good from all type of mobile devices. I want to make it truly responsive.<p>One code, all devices. <comment><USER2> the indication that you are always on the main page can get a bit confusing.</comment>


Why It's Hard to Hire a Perl Developer in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rajiayinla858/why-its-hard-to-hire-a-perl-developer-in-2020-c282ca33128c <comment><USER2> Perhaps ironically, the author himself aspires to become a lawyer (and thus leave the shrinking pool of Perl devs).</comment>


Building a 10BASE5 "Thick Ethernet" Network - <AUTHOR> http://tech.mattmillman.com/projects/10base5/ <comment><USER2> There are some technologies from not all that long ago that I'm really happy are truly dead and in no particular order coax based ethernet and token ring are amongst those.

Building those networks was doable (with the right tools), but debugging them was an absolute nightmare. Good riddance.

<comment><USER3> _Good riddance._

This can't be overemphasized. Both 10BASE5 and 10BASE2 were a "shared medium". Everyone connected to the same cable. It really was "an absolute nightmare" to debug.

There were no hubs and/or switches to isolate users from each other.

<comment><USER4> I don't know if they existed in the early days, but when 10Base-T got popular both hubs & switches would often have a 10Base-2 segment interface or two as well.

I'm fairly sure there was some possibility of segment isolation, because people thieving BNC terminators (seriously, they're like crack to schoolkids, along with mouse-balls) would drop off chunks of the network, but not the entire thing.

I guess it could have just been multiple NICs in the server, though.

<comment><USER3> _I 'm fairly sure there was some possibility of segment isolation_

This discussion seems to have died off, but here's some stuff I dug up mostly from Wiki (it's been so many years since I was directly involved with any of it):

       10BASE5 could be a max length of 500 meters
       and have up to 100 nodes

       The 10BASE5 cable must be one linear run;
       T-connections are not allowed.

       10BASE2 could be a max length of 185 meters
       and have up to 30 nodes

So there was need for some "segment isolation" as you call it. A single Ethernet would have multiple segments (all activity fully visible on all segments), because given the restrictions on physically routing the network cables around, it wasn't possible to connect everyone in even a relatively small building to a single segment. E.g. 185 meters isn't much when it has to be snaked around the backs of desks and around the perimeters of rows of cubicles.

There were devices called "repeaters" (originally very dumb two-port amps/isolators) that would connect segments of the same Ethernet. IIRC you could even connect a 10BASE5 segment to a 10BASE2 segment.

You were limited to how many segments you could have overall, and limited in overall distance to IIRC about 1500 meters for pure 10BASE5. Every packet was visible everywhere else, it was all a single "collision domain". The distance limitation had to do with all devices needing to observe a collision within a certain amount of time (active transmitters were monitoring the wire to see if any other packet collided with theirs). CSMA/CD protocol meant all active transmitters would stop sending and "back off" an exponentially increasing random amount of time when they detected a collision.

Combine all that with "quirky" Ethernet controller chips for even more fun.

I sure don't miss any of that. Thankfully those memories have faded over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still have a 3C905B handy. Those and the NE2000 were fantastic for Just Working in Linux. I think I still have some 10BASE2 "N" coax terminators and T-pieces too. All this kit was first used to play DOOM multiplayer in the mid-90s under MS-DOS using the Novell IPX drivers.

All of these technologies are now dead, except Doom.

Edit: it's kept in a box with a 56k modem, an ISA Action Replay, a Soundblaster 16, a Trident video card, and a loose Cyrix processor.

<comment><USER4> I still have a bunch somewhere. I got quite excited at the 'going for an outrageous sum on ebay' quote, but sadly they're only ~£5 each.

The NE2000's were the bane of our lanparties. Super cheap, and about as reliable as a politicians promise. They wouldn't just stop working, they'd stop _everything else_ working.

Now that I think about it, I can probably still claim to have an SLI gaming rig (12MB Voodoo II's), if I could find something to put them in.

<comment><USER6> I have an Obsidian X-24... So I guess I do too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cached: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://tech.mattmillman.com/projects/10base5/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Well this certainly brings back (not so) fond memories of trying to figure out why the .200 net was down only to find that the intern has somehow yet again kicked apart the 10base2 tee behind his computer.

Really, really not missing physical bus topology networks.

</comment><comment><USER9> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8514169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8514169)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you remember this, then you also probably remember IBM's 4Mb token ring. Talk about proprietary. Even the cables used really weird and proprietary connectors.

</comment><comment><USER11> Arcnet was my first network at home. Bought four cards and a passive hub for $50 from a friends father's company upgrading to ethernet. We used it for playing Doom and Duke Nukem in my basement.

Then we upgraded to 10base2 once the cards came down in price. Then finally the 4 port 10baseT hubs with a 10base2 uplink dropped in price. We had a 10 player game of Duke Nukem one night in my basement.

But up until now I have never seen a 10base5 network.

<comment><USER12> Was the go to guy for networking for the local boys for some years. I may still have a few 10baseT and 10base2 devices sitting around somewhere.

Craziest i manage to set up was a combo of baseT and base2 that got extended in real time as more people piled in for the weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember helping out at my elementary school, where we had LocalTalk (RS422 with upstream and downstream cabling using special self-terminating adapters) and thinnet, with a Power Macintosh 5200 (or something similar) as a bridge in between. It ran fairly well, but troubleshooting issues on bus networks was tricky.

<comment><USER14> The even cheaper version of LocalTalk was Farallon's PhoneNet, which used cheap and available RJ11 phone cables rather than the more expensive Apple DB-3 connectors, and a terminator on each end that was basically a resistor crimped into an RJ11.

<comment><USER11> So that was what the classroom networks in highschool were. The PCs had cards with the two RJ11 connectors and I remember the terminators that the troublemakers would loosen.

The backbone network and teachers network were token ring. Those connectors were huge.

<comment><USER15> That could as well be ARCNet which in addition to coax also supported single- pair Cat3 cables. From ARCnet cars I've seen I assume that pair of RJ11's was standard connector for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is very cool.

Also check this out - at a "mere" 490 USD you can buy a 10BaseT to 10Base2 converter kit, USB based. [http://www.icsaero.com/products/groundtest/lantap-10](http://www.icsaero.com/products/groundtest/lantap-10)

</comment><comment><USER10> I worked on those. Anything was better than Arcnet. The painful part was dealing with the "frozen yellow cable". Really thick and unwieldy stuff.

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember those large yellow coax cables from back in the day. I never knew they were vampire tapped.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Fast forward to 2012, and 10BASE5 is now truly a vintage technology. Anyone > studying a computer science degree will at some point have been told about > this stuff, because it's very important in the history of computing.

10BASE5 is not computer science.

<comment><USER19> No one said it was, including in that quote.

<comment><USER18> I think that some connection was implied. Why else mention it?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you aggregate thought and content snippets? - <AUTHOR>

During the day I find various interesting things (urls, thoughts, quotes) with various level of interest (read now, read later, follow-up if similar topic comes up).
I'd like to organize them, but keeping tabs open and putting the URLs and text selection into docs is not really scalable. It kind of works, but now I have 40+ topics, and I'd like to automate parts of it.
I'm looking for a solution that would allow me to post these in a non-public way (e.g. e-mail, social network post, custom hosted app) with a limited metadata (url, title, tags, description) and query it periodically (few times a day max) to get all the metadata in a format that I can later reuse (JSON, XML).
Of course the easiest would be to create an e-mail account, fetchmail and text processing tool for this, but before doing it, I'd be interested in how others may be doing the same thing. Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> Evernote does much of what you're looking for other than JSON/XML format.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking at a command-line client (geeknote) I think I can go on without the json/xml format. Thanks for the suggestion, I haven't used evernote for a while and forgot about it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SpatialStats – A Rails/PostGIS Gem to bring stats to spatial apps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/keithdoggett/spatial_stats <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I've been working on this project for the past few months and, while it is far from being completed, I think it's at a point where it can be used/tested.

My goal for this project is to bring a complete, performant spatial stats library to the Ruby/Rails ecosystem. Right now it includes functionality for computing spatial weights and autocorrelations/hotspot stats. I have plans to extend the package to support point pattern analysis and regressions soon.

Right now it is tightly coupled to Rails/ActiveRecord, but eventually, I plan on splitting this into separate Gems to reduce dependencies on different modules and allow this to be used in plain Ruby.

Let me know what you think and if you have any issues/features you want to see, feel free to open it up in the Github repo!</comment>


Create an MP3 player with Adobe Flex
 - <AUTHOR> http://www.brighthub.com/hubfolio/matthew-casperson/articles/55003.aspx

<comment><USER2> The link goes to an article called "Using the Flex ProgressBar". The article about creating an MP3 Player is here: [http://www.brighthub.com/hubfolio/matthew- casperson/articles...](http://www.brighthub.com/hubfolio/matthew- casperson/articles/54989.aspx)</comment>


Atlassian announces Bitbucket Deployments: Confidence to release early and often - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bitbucket.org/2017/12/05/introducing-bitbucket-deployments/ <comment><USER2> Cool feature! I will be pushing this into our pipline scripts this week.

I'm pleasently surprised that bitbucket-pipelines has actually worked this well. So well that we have turned off our Jenkins server.

Nice work, atlassian!

<comment><USER3> So did this guy- [https://medium.com/@shanecfast/firing-the-butler- migrating-f...](https://medium.com/@shanecfast/firing-the-butler-migrating- from-jenkins-to-bitbucket-pipelines-3712db5ba0ab)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice move, Atlassian, linking directly to this post from the promo email.

<comment><USER5> That's why im here :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Will there be support for deployments to a (test) environment per branch?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the early release, it's not possible: the 3 default environments are at the moment just for the repository, not per branch. You can deploy from multiple branches to the same environment though. Can you elaborate on why this would be helpful for you?

<comment><USER6> I was asking because we build a product that is deployed at customer site, so deployments would not be useful for that. But, we do deploy our own product to test environments for manual testing. (We also have automatic testing, but thats per commit and removed after testing... so not relevant here.)

We have the following branches (simplified): master release-4.2.x release-5.0.x release-5.1.x

Now, I was thinking to use the deployments feature to track the deployment of the test environment of each branch. So our testers can see the status of their test environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks great but imagine there are no plans to release it for Bitbucket Server as with every other feature that comes 2 years later. AKA Abandonware

<comment><USER8> Bamboo integrates with Bitbucket Server and has great deployment support. In many ways, we're just catching up on the cloud side.

Do you use Bamboo? Anything you'd like to see improved in the deployment support there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My main pain point with deployment is with servers that are not directly accessible from the Internet. For example, an EC2 instance that sits in a private section of an AWS VPC. Accessing the server is done through a Bastion server/Jumpbox. AWS CodeDeploy is the only solution I've found in this environment and it sucks. Can the new system ssh proxy through a Bastion server?

<comment><USER8> Yes, you can set up SSH keys to connect to your jumpbox from Bitbucket Pipelines: [https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/use-ssh-keys- in-b...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/use-ssh-keys-in-bitbucket- pipelines-847452940.html)

At the moment, direct access to your Amazon resources requires an access key configured via secure variables in Pipelines. We'd consider adding support for IAM roles/key rotation if a lot of people would find it useful.

<comment><USER10> Would be useful for stuff like;

\- kubernetes \- elastic beanstalk

I'm currently using the "custom" section with a plugin I developed to deploy to environments. In the default build it pushes the build to Elastic Beanstalk and then deploys to test. The custom builds merely promote the build for other environments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't wait to use this. Is there planned support for FTP/SFTP? I only saw deployment plans for container-like services. Right now I have a pipeline script wrote using lftp but I'd prefer first-party support for SFTP deployments.

<comment><USER12> You should be able to deploy using FTP or SFTP with Bitbucket Pipelines already. A guide on how to set up SFTP (including SSH keys) can be found here: [https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Bitbucket- questions/How-d...](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Bitbucket- questions/How-do-I-set-up-ssh-public-key-authentication-so-that-I-can- use/qaq-p/171671)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd like to see a mechanism to coordinate deployment dependencies - if the front-end and back-end(s) are stored in separate repos it may be necessary for the back-end to be upgraded before deploying the new front-end.

</comment><comment><USER13> How are roll-backs performed? Can a roll-back be executed automatically if smoke tests fail?

</comment><comment><USER14> hi team

this is birru you're shared new future in bit-bucket (bit-bucket deployments) but it not visible in bit-bucket account i am searched is there any add-on future there no add-on there is no future in bit

how can i go to use deployments future in bitbucket

</comment><comment><USER15> When will you provide this awesome feature?

</comment><comment><USER16> TOP!!! When will you provide this feature?

<comment><AUTHOR> This feature is live now for anyone who signs up for early access: [https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/pipelines- alpha-8...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/pipelines- alpha-877358733.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> does this support any other CI like jenkins apart from bitbucket-pipelines?

<comment><USER18> One idea I've seen broadly recommended if you don't want to run your whole tech stack & all environments (Test & Prod environment servers/DBs) in the cloud, i.e. as a DockerHub container or something, is to instead use WebHooks or CURL requests to call localized Jenkins CI within your private/local network to then kick off final builds/deployments to real environments that way, after the initial build succeeds and possibly even a throwaway environment gets spun up and tests pass in the Cloud.

That can be done using either the built-in Jenkins API [https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Remote+access+API](https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Remote+access+API) or "Trigger Builds Remotely" Build Trigger option (which basically uses the same mechanism with your own Job-specific token/key). Nice feature is that BitBucket Pipelines supports "environment variables" to enable securely storing Jenkins API keys or tokens that let you securely tunnel through corporate FW rules and the like: [https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/environment- varia...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/environment-variables-in- bitbucket-pipelines-794502608.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Seems good</comment>