Linus torvalds on security - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912 <comment><USER2> The worst part is that this kind of thing actually makes security worse.

If you force people to bypass security to do ordinary tasks, and train them to constantly enter the root password for everything, you don't actually _have_ any security. It's like the password policy that's so impractical that everyone sticky-notes passwords to their monitors, or the Vista UAC.

<comment><USER3> Too many alerts like that and you're all "Yeah, yeah, whatever, 123123abc here you go".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really ought to link to the proper URL for the post: [https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/1vyfmNCY...](https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/1vyfmNCYpi5)

<comment><USER5> The photo of Timberline was nice though:-) Linus has got to be one of Oregon's more illustrious citizens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little intemperate but pretty much right IMHO. It's far too easy, bureaucratically, for someone to tighten a security screw than loosen it. So straightforward goofs like this (e.g. there's no permissions system in place for printer or wifi addition yet, so you need root -- just a architecture thing, not an authentication requirement) get locked down by their interaction with the security subsystem. So no one wants to make the call as to whether "security will break" if you allow printer configuration to non-root users. So nothing happens.

That said, modern linux certainly has mechanisms in place to handle this stuff. Fedora and Ubuntu don't seem to have a problem with seamless system configuration from the console user anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> It really depends on the context / configuration (or at least should depend on). Imagine a host available to public at a library. Considering that people can come there to print out some sensitive documents, you don't want to allow normal users to change printer settings. Someone could remove the default one and set up a tunnel through his own host, capturing all documents on the wire before they hit the printer. Very similar situation exists for the WiFi networks.

Of course this doesn't make any sense on a laptop. But it doesn't look like there's any sane default. You need to choose your configuration properly and that's it. If OpenSUSE doesn't allow it, then yes... that's a bug.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. Defaults should be prioritized; they should optimize for the majority of the users, not the minority, and for the casual home user, not big organizations (like libraries), since they're more likely to have professionals configuring the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _... please just kill yourself now_

I don't think someone who actually knows what it's like to experience suicidal thoughts would ever say something like that to people in a technical/professional context.

There is something to be said for the "tough love" Linux culture, but IMO, language as extreme as what I just quoted is just not acceptable.

For me, this is crossing the line from "Linus has an interesting and entertaining character" to "this person seems to be mentally disturbed."

<comment><USER10> Yes I agree. And it is like every other quote from Linus contains similar exaggregations. I think it is his biggest weakness.

<comment><USER11> This type of 'edgy' language was very popular back on Usenet in the 1990s, and the Linux kernel mailing list never really got away from it. Very much a Generation X thing - Kill yourself, they're smoking crack, those retards, kick em in the nuts, etc etc, yawn.

<comment><USER12> Ouch, now you're making me feel old, I still do those things, and yes have done for 15 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's funny that some of the areas that he touches on are also things where Windows requires local admin. Clearly a messed up privileged action model seems to be common across OSes.

<comment><USER14> Don't get started on Windows. Just don't.

You know that UAC prompt you get when running setup.exe for an IM client? Ever wondered why there's an UAC prompt in the first place? Because Windows assumes that setup.exe needs admin privileges (unless .exe explicitly states that it doesn't). This piece of engineering doesn't even have a concept of ~/bin. In fact, there is/was an official W7 guideline that said that all programs must go into %ProgramFiles%, which is a system directory. Now, what sort of a imbecile decided that it's a good idea to let an underprivileged account install into a system directory - UAC or not - is beyond me. So, please, don't mix Windows in. While Linux distros have their dark moments, Windows is just one big service pack now.

<comment><USER15> The official installation path for Windows being Program Files is no different than the expected installation for the majority of .deb or .rpm files being /usr. In both cases, you can't install software with its default assumption as a unprivileged user. The defaults on both Windows and basically every Linux distribution assume software installs are done by a privileged account.

You can install to c:\Users\%USERNAME% if you want to, if the installer lets you pick a path, this is how Chrome installs. Just like you can install into ~/bin if you want to, but you are going to have to go a little out of your way to do it.

<comment><USER14> Windows is far more riddled with malware and spyware than Linux distros, their users are far more ignorant than the Linux crowd, so having %ProgramFiles% default to a system directory is substantially worse and damaging than letting apt-get (that can't even be run without root privileges) default to /usr. Take a look at a list of predefined paths available on Windows [1]. It doesn't have anything even approximating ~/bin. At the very least they could've said - "here, use %UserProgramFiles% if need be", but they just don't care. And if you try and install into C:\Users\\...\Program Files, you will quickly be mis- detected as malware or spyware. Unless you are Chrome, which you are probably not. So, yeah, Windows is really hopeless.

[1] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb76...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb762494%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)

<comment><USER16> You keep mentioning ~/bin, but I don't think any major distro ships with such thing. So I don't really see how the situation is any better on Linux than it is on Windows. And then Windows has the Folder Virtualization trick.

> And if you try and install into C:\Users\\...\Program Files, you will > quickly be mis-detected as malware or spyware

So it's Windows's fault if you use crappy anti-virus applications? If you'd use similar applications on Linux wouldn't it equally flag ~/bin as malware too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fedora had this problem last time I used it, things like adding printers prompted for the actual root password (according the docs Fedora 16 still prompts for the root password). Ubuntu (and Mint) got it right. There are privilege groups that can be set so things like adding printers and wifi networks don't ask for a password. For things the user doesn't have privileges for, if they are an admin it will prompt for their user password (sudo-style) instead of the root password.

As Linus said, the SUSE and Fedora way makes it hard to deploy in a business setting where you want users to be able to administrate their own machines but you don't want them to have the root password.

</comment><comment><USER18> > _.. and now I need to find a new distro that actually works on the Macbook > Air._

What would that be exactly? I didn't realize any Linux distro's worked well on MBA yet.

</comment><comment><USER19> I find it funny, how effortlessly Linus trashes people.

<comment><USER20> Seems to be part of the free OS culture. Everyone trashes someone. Theo and the OpenBSD devs think Linux is garbage written by people who don't understnd Unix. All of the free OS guys have someone they make fun of regularly. It's a bit silly I think, but that's just how it is.

"Look at them, they use C++... ha ha ha idiots. Oh look at them, they use Linux... utter and complete bloated garbage compared to _real_ Unix."

Wash, rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER21> If not overdone, I think it is fun. The community will mature at some point in future, but currently the evangelists comprise of not professionals whose jobs are to get these platforms/softwares to more people but passionate fans and contributors who believe in the product and think that their's is the best of them all. It does lead to an unnecessary increase in tension in the community but it also means that those who are involved will be true to their beliefs and contribute to their distro/software/platform in a much more personal and devoted way.

And it is not like commercial software community is never involved with any flamewars. When they do it, they do it for marketing and they do it professionally [1]

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4EbCkotKPU>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> He is spot on, but I find (and always found) his wording way too aggressive. Makes it kind of hard to have a constructive discussion on the topic, which by the way _really_ needs such discussion.

<comment><USER23> It's also kind of hard to have a constructive discussion on the topic if nobody takes notice. Without the invectives, it probably wouldn't have been noteworthy enough to spread like wildfire across the hacker sphere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> every now and then linus peeks in at what passes for linux, freaks out, gets pissed off at the state of things, vents, and everyone chimes in. so i'll chime in.

this is what you get when you are laissez-faire about how things operate in the land you helped create and ignore issues (via guidance and suggestions) for years on end. this happened with wifi some years ago, too, and didn't get attention until linus got a laptop with wifi.

this is just one reason why i stopped using linux day to day over ten years ago, happily.

<comment><USER25> >this is just one reason why i stopped using linux day to day over ten years ago, happily.

It's gotten a _whole_ lot better in the last 10 years.

<comment><USER24> use it on servers at work, it's gotten horribly confusing in terms of configs. real scary, inconsistent mess.

i don't use it as my primary machine or dev machine any more.

i'd say i'm pretty up to date with it (and alternatives) and still disagree with you. "whole lot"? i disagree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why is it news when Linus mention something so obviously frustrating as the security scheme is on OpenSUSE?

Would it make a difference if s/Linus/JoeBlog/ mentioned it if the issue is so frustrating?

<comment><USER27> It's all about the perceived level of intelligence related to the field. It'd be no different than Rand Paul making a fuss about budgets versus Joe Blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> He is wrong about date/time setting. Most computers have automatic time sync, and consistent time stamps are important for many business purposes. Giving end users the ability to manipulate time can cause significant issues.

Is it overkill for Linus's kids? Yes. But OpenSUSE wasn't put together for his kids.

<comment><USER29> _He is wrong about date/time setting. Most computers have automatic time sync, and consistent time stamps are important for many business purposes. Giving end users the ability to manipulate time can cause significant issues._

On a _laptop_? A seriously doubt it. Make the bloody distro learn to differentiate between a server and a personal installation, and change the settings accordingly.

<comment><USER30> Why does it matter if it's a server? I reckon, if it's a server, the only people that should have that sort of access to it _should_ be trusted to change the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The real problem is the `MacBook Air`, not security...

<comment><USER29> Really? How so? Because the MacBook Air has nothing to do with the issue at hand, and it is by Linux admission the best laptop for him (from the thread: " _Trust me, I tried. Nothing better exists. It's sad. They are all big and clunky_ ").</comment></comment>


Spreadsheet showing SHA-256 calculations in step-by-step detail - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mOTrqckdetCoRxY5QkVcyQ7Z0gcYIH-Dc0tu7t9f7tw

<comment><USER2> I found an error in this spreadsheet: in the sheet name "primes ^ (1/3)", '/' \- invalid character. If you export to xlsx , document will be corrupted. But you can replace all references in formulas and it will be good.

<comment><USER2> \+ google doc has error in HEX2Dec function : B1 cell formula: "=HEX2Dec(B2)" B2 cell is empty result : #ERROR!, Ms Excel returns 0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Funny I never thought of using a spreadsheet as a stepping debugger :)

Time for euclid's division

<comment><USER4> Way back when, I used a spreadsheet to implement some digital signal processing algorithms for a class I was taking. It found it significantly aided in understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I saw the video and that was quite amazing. However, this spreadsheet seems pretty broken right now.

<comment><USER6> Where is this video you speak of?

<comment><USER7> My best guess would be this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3dqhixzGVo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3dqhixzGVo)</comment></comment></comment>


Why I don't answer most phone calls - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@adrienjoly/why-i-don-t-answer-most-phone-calls-4a71e1418854

<comment><USER2> > Solution: If you have to tell me something really urgent, you can leave a > message

If it's urgent, the caller needs (or maybe just wants) to have it passed _synchronously_. Text message is asynchronous, so there's no indication of when you have received the message. This is totally unsuitable for urgent things. You got it backwards.

> Many phone calls I receive are for planning a meeting, or asking me to do > something. But callers seem not to realize that [...]

It's your problem, not the caller's. Buy a tablet, or a bluetooth headset if you resist device dedicated to planning. Or insist on asynchronous communication to schedule things (this is actually mentioned in "solution" section).</comment>


20 Companies That'll Let You Work from Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/20-companies-work-from-home-hiring-now/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=remote_jobs_us17&utm_campaign=feb17_us <comment><USER2> oh yeah!! i was searching for those :)</comment>


China's mini Apple takes slice of smartphone pie - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/07/us-china-xiaomi-apple-idUSBRE8B60A420121207

<comment><USER2> I have followed China's handphone scene quite closely and want to chip in: XiaoMi no doubt has garnered a respectful number of fans early this year with its first generation of phone, XiaoMi 1. However, XiaoMi (the company, as well as its phones) are not as glamourous as it used to be because of two reasons: First, its lack of supply of XiaoMi 1S, and now XiaoMi 2, coupled with various hardware/software issues, has caused a lot of bad publicity. On the other hand, companies like HuaWei are showing their manufacturing and logistics prowess. Huawei's Ascend P1 is well-received ever since it is in the market. Second reason is nowadays a lot of China companies jump into phone-making business. In fact, beside the traditional phone makers like Huawei and ZTE, the top China Internet companies: Baidu, Tencent, Shengda, and Ali all have shown interest some point to jump in. However all these phones are Android- based running on ARM (usually Qualcomm). This leaves very little room for the phone makers to differentiate themselves apart. The fact a lot of phones allow users to install third-party ROMs actually worsens the effort to lock-in users. What I foresee ahead is a cut-throat price war which happened to the ShanZai (Clone) phones these smart phones replaced. History does repeat itself =)

</comment><comment><USER3> Xiaomi's phones run Android, so what sets them apart? Just the price?

<comment><USER4> They run a version of Android called Miui (<http://en.miui.com/>). It's based off of AOSP (Android Open Source Project) and also some off of Cyanogenmod (<http://www.cyanogenmod.org/>), another custom ROM for those unfamiliar.

However, it's diverged to have little in common with either AOSP or Cyanogenmod in the past few years. They more or less try mimic an iphone-like experience on Android, only with more customization and features.

I'm not a fan of it really due to the fact it's closed source and I won't touch any Android ROM that doesn't post its source. Quite a number of people like it, but there's many other options out there.

<comment><USER5> Presumably the parts of AOSP they modify are open sourced? Or do Chinese companies ignore licenses?

<comment><USER4> They ignore them, sadly. They did a PR stunt claiming to be open source a while ago, but all they did was release some patches to apply Miui to AOSP if one wanted to do so, but they infrequently update it as Miui updates itself every week (<https://github.com/MiCode>). They don't have to really give any of that out since it's all Apache Licensed.

However the ironic part is the areas of the Android source they must disclose under GPL, they avoid sharing. They don't release the kernel for any of their devices as well and that's a huge GPL violation. I would presume if they did release it for their own phones, it would be on here with the rest of their stuff. The rest of their official sites (there's a lot of non-affiliated English and other language sites that label themselves as Miui) are in Mandarin and much harder to navigate if you're an English speaker.

Doing a google search for Xiaomi MI2 kernel source, turns up nothing positive about their kernel or about them and GPL though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article doesn't even show one of their phones. The mi-1 looked just like a Samsung phone, the mi-2 kind of resembles the iPhone 4. Looks like a standard knock-off business to me, what's special about them?

<comment><USER2> XiaoMi was special because it was the first one (or even the only one for a good half year) to offer a smart phone with sub-RMB2k (~US$320) price point. Samsung and Apple phones were and are still selling for RMB4K+ (~US$640). Don't underestimate the price difference: it could very well be a typical worker's whole-month salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You know why this shit phone sold well? Because the advertisements of this shit are almost everywhere in China. Chinese now get one idea: if I want to buy a smart phone, there are only two choice, Xiaomi or iPhone. However, most people get another idea after they use Xiaomi for a time: Xiaomi is just a shit. This company, really spends all of their money on their advertisement. That really makes their phones become shit.

<comment><USER2> I really doubt you ever used a XiaoMi phone, or been in China. First of all, you mentioned you saw XiaoMi 'everywhere in China'. Where did you see XiaoMi advertisements? Here in Shanghai, I do see Samsung and even ZTE ads very often and I still fail to remember I had ever come across of any XiaoMi ads in Puxi. If they are 'everywhere', the Metro must be covered somehow, right? Sorry, no luck, I didn't see any. XiaoMi does do marketing, but mainly on Weibo, which is the China version of Twitter. Second, XiaoMi has fallen so far in supplying enough phones that people have been waiting for weeks (A lot of people this is XiaoMi's starvation campaign, well, it makes sense a few months ago, but not likely now since competition has been so fierce). So, up until now, if you wanna buy a smart phone in China, XiaoMi is usually not available at the counter, and you may be amazed to know Samsung has really invested in marketing and channel development in Greater China these days ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice, these copycats now took the next step: instead of copying Steve's stuff, they copied Steve himself. Kinda cool.

<comment><USER9> Pierre Menard, the author of Don Quixote...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I found the photo of the founder clad in blue jeans and a black polo shirt in front of a large, clean presentation to be arresting.

It instantly evoked the negatives that I read again and again about Chinese companies: brazen "pirating" of innovative products (in this case, Jobs himself!) with slight bastardizations (polo instead of turtleneck).

It took me a minute to recover and read the rest of the article and the comments, which suggest there is actual innovation happening, likely on the supply side, that lets Xiamoi sell at a disruptive price point.

<comment><USER11> I really hope this is sarcastic post that you can be offended by a person wearing clothes, I could chose to dress like Al Capone, would that invoke terrors of Mafia like memories?

<comment><USER12> Pretty sure Capone dressed like many others and didn't have a unique style. Wearing black shirt + jeans everyday (or perhaps as a public persona) is obviously intentional. I'd say those are like a football coach always wearing a fedora (Tom Landry) or a rapper always wearing a giant clock around their neck (Flava Flav) to name a couple of examples.

That said, I really don't care if they copy Jobs. I can think of several entrepreneurs I'd love to copy in an attempt to channel whatever insights they might have had.</comment></comment></comment>


Not Awesome: ES6 Classes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/joshburgess/not-awesome-es6-classes <comment><USER2> JS is such a mess these days.

While do prefer es6 class syntax over protypical inheritance, I have found compatibility and performance to be the issues that prevent me from adopting them wholeheartedly.</comment>


How I Discovered a Security Vulnerability in Twitter That Impacted 1.5M Users - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/02/03/how-i-discovered-a-security-vulnerability-in-twitter-that-impacted-1-5-million-users/

<comment><USER2> After reading this I have no idea how he actually discovered the vulnerability, aside from a handwavy statement about messing with form input.

Most of the writeup is just a narrative about what he saw and who he talked to afterwards. I'm a little disappointed. I was hoping for more technical detail.

<comment><USER3> Presumably, he submitted a ticket, went to the ticket status page, saw a list of tickets each with a link like "<http://support.twitter.com/tickets/1532547>, and changed the ticket number in the URL. It's possible that it was slightly more tricky than that (it may be that there's a sub-URL that doesn't enforce access control, and that the root URL always did), but from the writeup that appears to be the whole issue.

In standard Rails, which the Twitter support ticket site may very well be, this is a one line fix; call User.tickets.find_by_id instead of Ticket.find_by_id.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I didn't expect it to be thrilling. But some detail would have been good. As it is I'm not really sure what the point of the post was, except to say "Hey, I found something wrong with Twitter and then tweeted with some famous people and then once I found the right email address I told them and they fixed it. Oh and did I mention that it was really important because it affected 1.5 million users?"

It would have been more useful if the author included some details and possibly speculation (as you have provided) as to what was going on in Twitter's ticketing setup so that we could all learn from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I need to get better at creating these kinds of titles for my vulnerability writeups :P

<comment><USER3> No, you don't. I'm very much not a fan of how this was written up. This is a straightforward "forced-browsing"-style web bug that disclosed support tickets. You could write an article about how support systems are often ignored during software security projects, but that's not what this guy wrote. I'm not really sure what he's trying to demonstrate, other than that he is awesome and Twitter less so. Stay classy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "All support tickets – at the time, 1.5+ million! – were exposed"

* Was this actually 1.5M users or just tickets? Thats a lot of upset people if so.

<comment><USER6> These were users. I wrote 1-1.5 to set a wide range in case for duplicates, but I rarely saw any. From my observation, the number is closer to 1.5 million than 1 million (and growing by 100-200 per hour).

<comment><USER5> Wow, I can't even imagine some of the filtering that needs to go on within that system to find the legitimate tickets to address.

<comment><USER6> Most were actually legit. I asked one of the support guys how he and his team handles the volume. He responded with his secret: <http://twitter.com/#!/Charles/status/32971715290210304>

"@Charles Your team does a great job. 100-200 tickets _per hour_. How do you do it?"

"@Wayne My secret is keyboard macros and Text Expander. Some days can be pretty overwhelming though!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wait, account passwords were visible?

Was this a case of account passwords being sent to Twitter Support by users - 'hey, I can't login, my password is bigclown' - or does Twitter Support have a way to access the user's actual password?

If it's the latter, that's a time bomb waiting to go off.

<comment><USER6> Former. Also App developers posting their API keys and Consumer Secret keys. So, theoretically, this would allow a malicious person to control all the authorized accounts with that app (and these were big name apps). Autotweeting, DMing, access private messages, etc.

<comment><USER8> Only if they both stole the consumer token and were able to phish the user into going through the authorization flow.

<comment><USER3> The dev that posts OAuth secrets in support tickets also probably hasn't constructed a fortress of awesomeness around his own user's data, anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of some flaw with Skype's billing system which allowed me to download invoices for virtually every paying business customer just by replacing some chars in a URL. The invoices included a lot of personal details together with various bank account & phone numbers.

Took me 8 months to get someone at Skype to acknowledge the issue; to my knowledge it was never escalated. Wouldn't be surprised if it's still there...

</comment><comment><USER10> Twitter Support gets about 100-200 tickets per hour

<comment><USER11> Yeah it says so in the blog post. Which I just realized you are the author of.

<comment><USER10> co-founder, yup

<comment><USER11> It's a great looking site. You've got something good on your hands here. I wish you and your co-founders the best of luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good writeup.

Was the vulnerability in Zendesk or in how Twitter had configured the system?

<comment><USER6> I asked the same thing but was told that Twitter couldn't disclose this to me because of their NDA and other confidentiality agreements. Who is actually at fault is unclear. I wasn't able to reproduce this on Groupon or Rackspace Cloud's Zendesk though, but that doesn't say anything definitive.

<comment><USER12> belated thanks for the response. i guess we'll never know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You usually don't have to write headlines like "1.5M users compromised!" to get people to fix trivial web flaws. Also, before asking VC's and posting public Twitter messages and spending two days trying to track down a security contact, try mailing "security@" _first_ ; as you discovered, that sensible default generated an immediate response.

 _Edited out "not '96 anymore", the word "breathless", and my assessment of his effort to track down security@ as "hinky"; I wasn't happy with the tone of this comment in retrospect either._

<comment><USER6> No, the security pages were put up after I talked to Bob. (Those are new pages and are about a week old. They were put up precisely because it wasn't easy for people to report security issues.). Also the headline wasn't written by me. Boston Innovation editors modified it. My original headline is on my website at waynechang.com. And yes, it was hard to get a hold of someone -- I spent two days. Emailing email@example.com was less obvious then, since emailing email@example.com sends back a form rejection letter (try it).

<comment><USER3> You're right. The headline on _your_ site is "How I Discovered A Security Vulnerability In Twitter"; the "I found another security vulnerability that impacted 1-1.5 million Twitter accounts." copy is in your _subhed_. My mistake.</comment></comment></comment>


Cuddle Mattress - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/cuddle-mattress <comment><USER2> While this is a really cute idea, beds are not something to joke about, and I'd really like to see some good evidence that long-term sleeping on this bed doesn't do any damage.

I usually dislike people how just insult other people's ideas, but in this case there is a genuine chance of people causing themselves serious damage. Does anyone know of any evidence of this actually helping people sleep better?

If a few years down the line this has revolutionised people's sleeping, I'll be all for one. If instead people have trapped nerves by sinking slightly into gaps, then I'll be glad I let someone else test it first!

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

From experience (broken leg), any compression on your body including limbs leads to a shitty night's sleep so I don't think I'd want to wedge bits of my body in gaps then lie on them.

My other half would also hate this.

The best night's sleep we've both found is on a bed which is pretty much like a piece of concrete with a sheet on it :)

<comment><USER4> The best night's sleep we've both found is a bed each in different rooms.

<comment><USER5> That's one of the most sad realizations I've ever had, but I found it to be true, as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not enough robot battle space. :) <http://xkcd.com/335/>

<comment><USER7> Honestly, that's what I was expecting based on the headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have you looked into whether it is dangerous to have a newborn infant sleeping on this matress?

A cot/bed with a poor fitting mattress can cause death by the infant rolling into a gap/crevice and suffocating. (Infants don't have the strength to lift their head or crawl out.) For various reasons, it is also relatively common for parents to sleep with the baby in their bed (despite the risk of crushing). This mattress has crevices all over it, so would seem to present a severe risk of suffocation to infants.

\---

edit: crevasse -> crevice

<comment><USER9> You should never have a newborn sleeping directly on a mattress next to you. Ever. Regardless of the mattress.

<comment><USER10> Research does not support this view. See <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15911459>, <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18046747>, and <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8506461>, among others.

From one of these papers:

"At very least, we hope that the studies and data described in this paper, which show that co-sleeping at least in the form of roomsharing especially with an actively breast feeding mother saves lives, is a powerful reason why the simplistic, scientifically inaccurate and misleading statement 'never sleep with your baby' needs to be rescinded, wherever and whenever it is published."

Co-sleeping while breastfeeding actually reduces incidents of SIDS, and benefits both the infant and mother by allowing both to get more sleep. The biggest risk factor is if an adult co-sleeps while intoxicated, which is entirely preventable.

<comment><USER9> I have no problem with room-sharing, or even an in-bed cradle. Those have obvious benefits without some of the risks of placing a baby on a mattress next to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder why they don't have a single sized one. Because where cuddling is optional on a double bed, it pretty much is the only way to share a single bed.

Also interesting to consider is that it won't fit all types of beds. As with a lattice bottom bed, slices could fall through, and with a box-spring bed the slices at the top and bottom of the mattress could simply slip over the edge.

<comment><USER12> It looks like they run a pair of fasteners through the whole stack of slices, to prevent them from separating too much.

That will definitely prevent the ends from falling off. Not sure how effective it will be on a slat base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems like it solves the cuddling problems but creates a whole new how-to- have-sex problem, I can imagine a bunch of positions would be made rather awkward by this mattress.

<comment><USER14> Please, enlighten us.

<comment><USER15> When you try to put a hand/elbow/knee down on the mattress, there's a good chance you'll slip in to one of the slits in the mattress.

<comment><USER16> Although the leverage you could get by digging your feet in would be crazy. Silk sheets feel nice but are wicked slippery.

<comment><USER13> Good thinking!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like how there's a new Kickstarter ripoff explicitly for projects that have no prototype and whose "founders" have no industry experience. Makes it easier to get in the right mindset for maximum enjoyment before clicking.

Their price comparison chart also seems extremely misleading: I have a natural latex mattress and it was not $4000. It was $700.

<comment><USER18> because all kickstarters are created by reputable people with legit "industry experience" who always produce.

...NOT!

<comment><USER17> Though this is not the worst indiegogo project I've seen, Kickstarter at least has a policy against overhyping a product that doesn't exist. (That's why we see so many of these projects on sites that do allow this overhyping now.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How would you keep it clean? Imagine stretching out and finding something.. unmentionable .. hidden away in a crevice, urlgh!

<comment><USER20> Bedsheets...

<comment><USER19> stretchy rubber bedsheets?

<comment><USER17> Did you even read the linked site?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great idea. Some thoughts:

\- like xkcd suggests, the only really important slit is for the arms.

\- couldn't this be simulated by taking a regular mattress and simply cutting a slit in the right place?

\- has anyone tried doing that?

<comment><USER22> Uh, have you SEEN the inside of a "regular mattress"? Cutting a slit in it would destroy it, plus sticking your arm into would be like sticking your arm into a pile of chicken wire fencing.

One of those all-foam mattresses might work, though. Not sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting idea, but the name maybe should be nudged in a different direction. When I saw the title, I expected this to be the next evolution of those creepy Japanese full body printed cushions: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_pillow>

</comment><comment><USER24> Those looking to make less of a commitment to cuddling might consider the Cuddle Pillow:

<http://www.armadillow.com/>

</comment><comment><USER25> There are a lot of potential pitfalls with this, the first one I can think of being having sex. I wouldn't want to have slits in the mattress that my arms or legs could get caught in when having sex.

<comment><USER26> Maybe you're doing it wrong?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Thought I seen that somewhere.. Googling it [1] shows results as far back as 2008. So unless he is the inventor himself, he is just blatantly lying when he states "... the solution I came up with is the Cuddle Mattress."

<https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=cuddle+mattress>

<comment><USER28> If you watch the video, he explains he had the original idea for some design contest which he won in 2007 [0] and then received so many emails and requests that he eventually decided to do it.

[0] <http://yeahsnos.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/love-mattress/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Good idea. But in practice, how does it work with a bedsheet?

<comment><USER30> RTFA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've seen this idea before, and it does look like it would solve the problem nicely.

Hard to lug around a mattress when you're moving house (if you're renting), though.

<comment><USER32> This comment confused me on first reading. In Australia, it's very much common that you bring your own bed (and other furniture) with you from place to place. (You can get furnished apartments, but they're much less common, at least in Sydney.)

Are you in the US, or somewhere else?

<comment><USER33> Not the OP, but in the UK(well, London at least) it's very common to have furnished apartments and not to lug your furniture every time you move.

Access to many apartments and houses in London is very restricted. You'd have to take your furniture apart to get it through the door and up the staircases.

That said, a mattress will fold and bend round corners easily, so I don't think this is a big issue if you're renting. (Getting rid of the landlord- provided mattress may be a bigger problem in my experience)

<comment><USER31> Yes, I do live in the UK. At least for now, I can't afford an unfurnished flat. And so far, I've had to move quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Really nice idea and all...I have just one doubt, why would someone want a t-shirt or hoodie with the logo of a mattres?

<comment><USER11> To --- when in conversation with a nice lady --- nudge the topic towards the mattress, tickling her curiosity to try it out ;)

<comment><USER3> Way to get maced :)

<comment><USER35> Ah the dating life of HN

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think I may have just come up with their new slogan: "The seedless watermelon of mattresses".

</comment><comment><USER37> Very annoyed. I had this exact idea about 18 months ago, but didn't do anything with it. Just goes to show that success is really about hard work and commitment rather than just a great idea. Kudos to you. I hope it changes the world.

<comment><USER38> That's OK, he came up with the idea years ago and he posted on the web a few times. I don't think you would have got very far before being sued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This guy came up with a similar idea 2 years ago.

[http://txchnologist.com/post/33432483866/txchnical- improveme...](http://txchnologist.com/post/33432483866/txchnical-improvements- changing-the-shape-of-sleep)

<comment><AUTHOR> This guy won reddot design award in 2007. So this is much more older than 2 years

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Okay, I must be missing something...forget about sexual positions or suffocating infants for a second: how on earth do you keep this thing clean?

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm mostly curious regarding how you put sheets on this bed and still use it for its intended purpose.

<comment><USER42> Might I humbly suggest that you READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> So this is a HN-worthy piece of news.. :)

<comment><USER44> It's an innovative solution to a common real-world problem. This is exactly the kind of content HN is built for.

<comment><USER7> It used to be called Startup News after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> A regular memory foam mattress solves this problem more cleanly, comfortably, and safely.

<comment><USER7> I am not sure about that. I slept on a regular foam mattress with company, and the experience could be improved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Portlandia. zzz.

<comment><USER46> I'm sorry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Shut up and take my money.</comment>


Revenue / Browser on mibbit - <AUTHOR> http://axod.blogspot.com/2009/06/revenue-browser.html

<comment><USER2> Are you perhaps seeing the effect of differential distribution of browsers across nations rather than differential distribution of user behavior across browsers? (Quick test: filter down to US traffic only, then look at the numbers again.)

If the US uses Firefox more than everybody else (plausible in my experience, but check your own numbers) then I'd expect Firefox would have markedly higher CPMs associated with it. Ditto Safari -- sure, somebody using Safari is probably "a Mac users ready to spend money, click on ads, etc.", but more importantly somebody using Safari is not Indian, Chinese, etc. (Picking big nations with low CPMs, not picking on anybody.)

<comment><USER3> Yup I think you're right - I've added an update to the post. It does look like Opera usage is quite different geographically than the other browsers, which may explain the difference here.

</comment></comment><comment> andrewl-hn Too bad, original blog doesn't accept comments without logging in. Anyway, here's my thought about Opera.

First of all, the default adblocker is available in default Opera installation. Right-click anywhere on the page and choose "Block content".

Second, Turbo doesn't cut adds. It blocks the initial loading of Flash/Silverlight content though. So if you go to Youtube you won't see the video. Insted you'll have to click on the video area so the browser know that this content is required. It will download the video dirreckly (not through Opera servers).

If your website uses Flash for ads you might be in trouble. But this Turbo feature is very new and only a small fraction of all Opera users run the 10th version with it.

I just went to mibbit to take a look around and it seems like the only ads you run are from Google. It's a safe bet in general case but sometimes it doesn't work well. Here's the thing: Opera is big (I mean huge) in Eastern Europe and chanses are most Opera-running visitors come from that region.

What is also special about Eastern Europe and former SU is that Google is nowhere near as popular as it's here not only in search but more importantly in advertising. About a year ago when I lived in Russia the two major players were Begun (banner ads) and Yandex (adsense-style text ads). Google made an attempt to purchase Begun but the deal was blocked by authorities.

What I suggest you is to try to alter between Google Ads and, for example, yandex ads, depending on where do you users come from. May be that could work better for you.

<comment><USER3> Good thoughts, and good idea at the end. I'll likely run some different adverts and see which ones produce the best revenue for each country/browser/OS etc.

eastern-europe: opera=8% usage, compared with US: opera=2% usage

So you may have a point there - Opera users are less likely to be in easy-to- monetize countries. In terms of absolute numbers, there's more Opera users outside the US/EU, than inside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting.

A good explanation IMHO is that mibbit is an app with a very techie audience and these people tend to use non-IE browsers and non-Windows OSes.

I like your explanation of valuing time and I know a lot of techies that use OSX as "unix without the hassle". A lot of them are web devs, which again fits with the mibbit having techie audience again.

Did you check for correlation between Safari and Mac? That is, is the fact that Safari scores tops because people use Macs? What is the revenue of a Safari/Windows and a Safari/OSX user?

<comment><USER3> Amongst Safari users, the split is 8% windows, 92% not windows, so the vast majority of Safari users are indeed using Macs, I haven't drilled down in more detail yet though.

The thing that really surprised me was the low revenue from Opera users. Whether that's because of the type of people who use Opera, or some technology built into the browser etc, I don't know fully yet.

<comment><USER5> Opera has some content blocker built in. Rightclick on a website and select "Block Content". It supports wildcards. I guess most people who use content blocking have Adsense blocked. You can disable it per-site too (rightclick -> site preferences).

I too suspect a high number of Opera users to be very technical experienced.

Also I think Opera users are more prone to be quite cautious about being tracked online. I know several guys who stopped using Firefox and went to Opera since Firefox so prominently bundles Google with it.

Last but not least, choosing to use Opera is an active decision. IE/Safari/Firefox (Ubuntu etc.) are default browsers. Opera is not. So there is a high chance that the user uses it for a specific reason. Not something "John Doe" would do for "his internet".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In Opera: right click anywhere. Select Block Content. Click on any annoying banner ads which tries to find a block pattern. No default filter like AdBlock, but pretty easy and a core element of the browser.

I'm an Opera user on Linux because I found it somewhat faster than Firefox back N years ago but I'm not sure I'm hanging on to Opera out of anything but loyalty and stubborness. Both Opera and Firefox (which is better at handling Gmail) bloat up to awful amounts of memory with time (why is Opera using 400 megabyte RSS now after 3 days?))

<comment><USER5> Firefox still is awefully slow on Linux. I switched to Opera rather recently (~6 months?) because of this. Thanks to Opera's amazing session saver and the quick end/restart cycle I find it much less a pain in the backside than Firefox if it gets hoggy (not that it ever did that for me, sometimes it slows down for some reason though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "as you sort of imagine IE users as being less tech savvy, more 'used to' clicking on adverts etc."

IE users don't click on adds because they've been conditioned to think long and hard before clicking on anything in IE.

In fact...evolutionary principles state that IE users who are willing to click on any add they see have computers that are so horribly infested with nasty bits, they are unable to do anything useful on the internet.

They've been effectively removed from the internet gene pool...if such a thing exists.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just as an aside, does anyone else click on ads for great services like mibbit just to give some revenue to the site?

<comment><USER9> Isn't that fraud? (unless you buy something)

<comment><USER8> I can't imagine you'd be put in jail for a click?

<comment><USER3> If you as a webmaster told your users to click on ads however, you'd at least get your account suspended.

If any user tells me they clicked some ads to generate some revenue, I tell them politely to stop doing that, and only click if they're genuinely interested in the advert.

I think it's a very small minority though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most people using adblock I know disable it on sites they visit frequently, if that sites has reasonable ads. So do I.

But when anything makes a new window, sound, or pop up without me wanting it, it means war. And adblock is for such pages.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Apple users are good at generating revenue - they buy stuff"

Maybe Apple users are very prone to falling for advertising. That's why they are Apple user's after all :-)

<comment><USER3> I disagree. I didn't buy a macbook because it was advertised. I bought one because someone who I respect told and showed me how much less hassle it was than using linux on a laptop.

Maybe there is some truth though... for iPods and the app store anyway.

<comment><USER12> I also disagree. I bought a MacBook Pro for many reasons, none of which was advertising. I _do_ value my time and will therefore spend $$$ before I spend hours configuring some freeware, piece-of-crap application. I don't think I'm alone in the Mac crowd in this regard either.

<comment><USER11> Of course you wouldn't know it if you bought it because of advertising. Otherwise it would just be bad advertising.

Anyway, enough of the teasing - as is well known, Apple users don't take lightly to jokes about Apple users ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So does that equate to roughly $1,114.91 of revenue for those 800,000 visits that were by the big six browsers you list?

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting.

However, I was just about to enable javascript but then I read the message:

       Look. It's 2009. Each time you visit without javascript,
       another frog dies (It's automatic - wires from webserver
       to frog electricution chair. Took me 3 weeks to wire
       that). YOU are responsible. How does that make you feel?
       hmm? Save frogs. Enable javascript.

I won't enable javascript.

Enabling javascript is about TRUST, not technology. And the basic problems with trust are the same whether it is 2009 or not.

I do _not_ trust you!

<comment><USER14> _"And the basic problems with trust are the same whether it is 2009 or not.

I do not trust you!"_

Well, axod who runs mibbit is a respected HN contributor who works very hard on his client and is also available to chat/help often in #startups on irc.freenode.net

You however, I have no idea who you are and the fact that it looks like you created this account just to take a stab at axod makes me wonder who you really are on HN and why you have a bone to pick with him.

These kinds of actions do not engender trust in someone.

In summary, I'd be more likely to _trust_ axod over you.

EDIT - for those reading this comment later, when I read the above comment, the comment was written "40 minutes ago" and then I checked his profile, it stated that the account was created "42 minutes ago", so that is where the perspective comes from. It appears like he created the account just to say something nasty.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I agree with you.

But he has earned his trust with HN community. I have not been around that long haven't earned your trust but that just supports my point about trust vs technology and his stupid "enable javascript you __*" message. As I am new to your community, he does not have my trust yet and does not deserve any based on what I know about him so far.

That might change over time but so far it seems he is making web a bit more unpleasant for people who do not throw themselves to the sharks by blindly enabling javascript to whoever asks/orders to.

<comment><USER15> I browse with JavaScript disabled, and agree that enabling it is about trust.

However, I fail to understand how axod is making the web "a bit more unpleasant"? His message is humorous, and offers more value than no indication of required technologies at all (which is how the majority of sites deal with issues such as JS dependence).

Clearly you do not use mibbit on a regular basis, and therefore what use is your overly critical contribution?

(For the record, I have JS enabled on mibbit.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Estimote SDK updated with accelerometer and temperature sensor support - <AUTHOR> http://blog.estimote.com/post/81380655308/estimote-sdk-updated-with-accelerometer-and-temperature

<comment><USER2> It's not an April Fool's joke!</comment>


Play GTA V in your Browser, Sort of - <AUTHOR> http://phoboslab.org/log/2015/07/play-gta-v-in-your-browser-sort-of <comment><USER4> I wonder how long before games start being developed for server side rendering.

Stuff like MMO for eg. you dont care about latency as much, your payment model already works with it and it solves several major issues :

* no hardware barrier to entry for high end graphics

* no instalation/play anywhere

* optimizations from shared state rendering, potentially advanced rendering techniques (world space lighting) - you can share computation and memory between multiple clients this way

* probably an order of magnitude harder to cheat

<comment><USER5> _> I wonder how long before games start being developed for server side rendering._

A while ago I was working on a flappy bird clone (as a test bed for the technology) that kind of did this. The app ran locally on the device, however it created a text-based record of all objects and their movements on the screen, and at the conclusion of each game, had the ability to ask you if you wanted to upload a video of the game you just played to YouTube. If you selected yes, the small text record of the game was uploaded to the server, where it was used to create a video of the game as you played it and upload it.

The idea was that if it were super-easy and used almost no mobile bandwidth to upload video of game sessions where people liked their results enough to share, it would go viral. The technology worked well in tests, but then flappy bird popularity kind of died before I released it. Now I'm working on implementing it in another game.

<comment><USER6> This is very reminiscent of two things for me:

\- the introduction of replays in Halo 3 (which worked the same way - <USER2> saving the data of the entire session, one could freely move the camera around the entire map and observe any part of the game at any point in time)

\- Super Meat Boy's level-end combined replays (which replayed all of the user's attempts simultaneously, creating a pretty amusing sort of "heatmap" effect)

I think this will eventually become standard for games where replays would be valuable or fun to watch. But I'm not sure about actually rendering live games server-side until we're at a point where input latency is unnoticeable.

<comment><USER7> Server side rendering for live games is a really bad idea. If there's a single hickup with a packet, the whole game will stutter on the client's side and they won't be able to do anything, not move, not look, not pause, whatever.

Server side rendering for replayed games on the other hand is totally fine, not everyone has capture cards. They actually had this service on Halo 3 where you could pay bungie for the number of minutes you wanted footage rendered out at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a nerd I love numbers, 'Latency is minimal' doesnt do it for me. Display this [http://tft.vanity.dk/inputlag.html](http://tft.vanity.dk/inputlag.html) or any other stopwatch, and record both screens. What is the bitrate and cpu overhead at hd/fullhd resolutions 30/60hz?

Some very slow MVA monitors lag as much as full frame behind input, so in extreme cases you could get equal delay on your laptop.

<comment><USER9> > 'Latency is minimal'

Tell me about it, I've been trying to gather info about a solution where I can record with a camera, probably 1080p (via ethernet or via hdmi to capture card) and use the frame information as inputs in a simulation with a latency around 20 ms and am unable to get hard data on the actual latencies. Nobody cares about input lag because practically no one records as a real time input.

Incidentally, if anyone knows or has experienced with a similar setup I'd be forever grateful.

<comment><USER10> Gamer care about input lag. Pro gamer on PC don't use wireless input devices, they prefer cable based ones for exactly that reason. The input lag is also what (afaik) almost killed Gaikai. Sony recently bought it for some older PS3 titles. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaikai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaikai)

<comment><USER11> I never played at the pro level but I did play competitively and I would never use wireless internet, mice, or keyboards. These days there are some great mice, keyboards, and headphones but most people I know won't leave it up to chance and always go with wires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This kind of technology is amazingly promising for being able to play games anywhere on any hardware.

However, the thing that worries me the most is not latency or graphical fidelity, but the way this will affect the actual design of AAA games. If I as a developer/studio know that my AAA title is going to be remotely controlled, possibly accessible only via subscription, and the end user's progression monitorable at any point, the opportunities for monitization skyrocket. You think DLC now is bad? Try playing Skyrim and being able to buy in-game gold at any point via browser pop-up. Just died in Dark Souls? Respawn with no lost souls and kill all enemies in the vicinity for only $1!

I'm not saying that all games will end up being this way, but a certain amount of AAA titles may end up going with more mobile-oriented pricing models if this sort of remote gameplay becomes mainstream.

<comment><USER13> I watched an extra credits video the other day that touched on this thought;

one option is to have AA studios / publishers fund teams of "indie" devs with license to go nuts exploring new aspects of the medium.

Personally, since we're running full-tilt towards needing something to replace "jobs," I'd like to hope that, at some point, that some places ( countries, planets(?)) might institute a universal minimum income, along with a flat-rate fair tax. Then folks could earn currency by playing games ( or creating art, music, solving interesting problems, whatevs...

Could go a long way towards building space-ships & eliminating poverty / starvation...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Possibly stupid question: Isn't this how the Playstation 4 plays Playstation 3 games (in a nutshell)?

<comment><USER15> Yes.

<comment><USER16> Interesting! Could you elaborate? Where do the frames come from?

<comment><USER17> I believe it's a server farm consisting of hundreds of "bladed" PS3s.

<comment><USER18> How does this work? Are the dvd images uploaded to Sony's servers? Do they have PS3 datacenters in several locations?

<comment><USER17> I have no first-hand knowledge, but it could be done like this…

1\. Take a pile of PS3s, throw out the cases, and attach the motherboards to some custom-built rack arrays (these are the "blades")

2\. Build one huge SAN that contains all the games, and tweak the PS3 BIOS's to read from the SAN as one huge internal HD. (BIOS tweak possibly not even necessary if the SAN was good enough at pretending to be a simple local drive)

3\. Hook up the AV-out and the USB inputs to a series of XEON servers that simply pump out live h264 streams (and pump controller input back in) from the PS3 blades. One Xeon ought to support at least a dozen PS3s.

This is how it could be accomplished prior to Sony's acquisition of Gaikai and OnLive. Since then, they'd have access to Sony's own knowledge of the PS3 platform, and possibly make PS3 VMs that would cut the hardware blades out of the equation.

OnLive had five datacenters in North America, Gaikai ran on… 300? I imagine many of them were running virtualized Windows machines, as Gaikai and OnLive didn't start out as console streamers. [http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/gaikai-will-be-fee- free-u...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/gaikai-will-be-fee-free- utilize-300-data-centers-in-the-us/)

<comment><USER19> The PS3 already support game streaming, you can play from your PSP and PS Vita, you doesn't need another server for the actual stream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks awesome, and saves someone the headache of trying to setup the VPN, but is not using the nvidia GPU's ability to use hardware encoding which is much faster than going the CPU route in most cases. If someone could adapt that, and open source it, that'd be the game changer that people are looking for to build this sort of stuff.

<comment><USER21> Afaik nvidia's NVCUVID API only supports H264 encoding, which would require a JavaScript H264 decoder. So far I haven't been able to get the one JS H264 decoder I know of (Broadway) to work reliably and fast enough for large video sizes.

I wish the industry would just get their act together and support a common video codec in browsers along with a JavaScript API that can deal with decoding single frames. Currently native streaming support for the <video> element in browsers is extremely poor and proposed solutions like MPEG-DASH or HLS add around 10 seconds(!) of latency.

<comment><USER22> Media Source Extensions[1] may be an option. It allows you to feed bytes to a video element, sourcing those bytes from wherever you'd like. There is a demo[2] that literally opens a video and split it in to parts arbitrarily. Chrome, IE, and Safari all have support for MP4 with MSE.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions) [2] [http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/media- source.html](http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/media-source.html)

<comment> TD-Linux MSE is too high latency for this application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is really cool, after watching this demo I wonder how the future of gaming might look like, e.g. we could pay subscription for a game and remote machine to run game on. This way even with cheap laptop we could play AAA games remotely. No more issues with hardware, drivers fps.

<comment><USER24> This is very much what OnLive where doing a few years back - I had a subscription for a while but never used it as much to justify it. They would have some problems from time to time but for a casual gamer like myself that only had an ancient and linux-only laptop it worked surprisingly well.

They're since defunct, Sony picked up their assets end of April this year ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnLive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnLive)).

<comment><USER23> I have never using OnLive, did they support playing via browser? Browser solution is key to this as almost every device support modern browsers capable of ruining OP solution.

<comment><USER25> The browser is the key to what? Doing stuff in the browser?

It's certainly not the key to getting a game on every device. I can't think of one browser game that people play on their devices. Even Words with Friends, the simplest 2D game you could think of, is not used from a browser - <USER3> people run the native app for that.

<comment><USER23> >It's certainly not the key to getting a game on every device. I can't think of one browser game that people play on their devices. Even Words with Friends, the simplest 2D game you could think of, is not used from a browser - most people run the native app for that.

Because of performance, but streaming games solve this problem. Full screen browser wouldn't be any different than native game client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Are there any advantages over Guacamole? Possibly higher framerate?

[http://guac-dev.org/](http://guac-dev.org/)

<comment><USER27> Guacamole is a text protocol. The screen is sent as PNG images in base64. It was built before websockets were compatibly implemented across browsers.

<comment><USER26> Any idea what the actual performance impact of that is?

<comment><USER28> For fullscreen 60FPS, it's probably going to increase the bandwidth requirements by an order of magnitude, which will lock out a bunch of users on less-than-ideal connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm surprised at the reactions in the comments. Both OnLive and Gaikai were doing this around 2008 and nobody seemed to give a shit.

</comment><comment><USER30> Well, it kind of makes a lot of sense. If you've got an ultrabook or something similar. Laptop graphics cards are very underpowered on the whole...

Actually, I could see this being handy while travelling. Sure, at home I've got a decent gaming rig. But it'd be nice to have decent quality gaming on a low-end laptop...

I think it's cool

</comment><comment><USER31> The latest round of articles encouraging streaming from the cloud to your local client focusing on latency sensitivity is very interesting because it might finally make things like high-performance, low-latency remote virtual desktop for development solutions approachable.

Chrome Remote Desktop works OK and it's a sign of things to come in the field of virtual desktops. Right now, the state of the art for on-demand cloud remote development desktops to help facilitate intensive development environments, like IntelliJ / Visual Studio / Mathematica, on underpowered clients, (i.e.12" MacBook), is to rely on proprietary protocols that barely work if the targeted remote machine is a Linux desktop.

Yes, I know about x2go etc, but I've had so-so experiences with it. Compared to streaming _games_ , I wonder if there's a product in here somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER32> So I just bought a new Macbook which although is amazingly thin is also somewhat underpowered. I also own a beefy Mac Pro (the trash can) and the thought had crossed my mind that I might use remote desktop to utilize the power of my Mac Pro from the convenience of my new Macbook. For gaming, latency is a huge issue, but I could deal with 50ms latency when doing my work if it meant not having my system lag in other respects. I only wish there was a OS X equivalent.

<comment><USER33> You should try Steam streaming - you can run your full and regular desktop in it (by using fake passthrough apps), and is how I often use Lightroom and Solidworks from my Macbook in bed.

Coming from VNC and Remote Desktop, it's remarkable how low the latency is. In many cases, because I can get a signifcantly higher framerate by remote rendering, the latency is better than if I was doing stuff locally.

For games, it's worked pretty well with everything you'd be happy playing with a gamepad (e.g. GTAV, but not CoD).

<comment><USER32> I will do just that. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How much work would be required to adapt this to use WebRTC with native H.264 instead of websockets with a javascript-based MPEG1 decoder implementation?

<comment><USER35> Probably not much. The WebRTC reference implementation[1] by Google and Mozilla is fairly easy to build and embed, assuming your Internet connection can handle a complete checkout of the Chromium repository. Unfortunately it only supports the VP8 codec for video. There is also OpenWebRTC[2] by Ericsson, but it doesn't work on Windows.

[1]: [http://www.webrtc.org/native- code/development](http://www.webrtc.org/native-code/development)

[2]: [http://www.openwebrtc.io/](http://www.openwebrtc.io/)

<comment><USER36> There's VP9 too - [https://plus.google.com/+JustinUberti/posts/3FLVapCvDaG](https://plus.google.com/+JustinUberti/posts/3FLVapCvDaG)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How likely is it that we can _actually_ bring the bandwidth and latency down to reasonable levels in reasonable conditions? High-def YouTube videos sometimes skip or buffer for me, and that's on cable broadband in a medium- sized American city, pulling from Google-backed servers. How do we make this good enough that most urban Americans can enjoy it without constant frustration?

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone have any idea how to Stream audio with something like this? Would be awesome if that same process could stream the audio

</comment><comment><USER38> Hey so I currently work on this technology - check out [https://www.x.io/](https://www.x.io/) if you'd like to learn more. You can sign up for free and get some free minutes to try it out.

We can run arbitrary windows apps and stream them to your web browser, including videogames.

</comment><comment><USER39> The "vnc" suffix on the name could be a bit confusing to some because it looks like this project does not use any existing VNC code or libraries using RFB protocol. This could come in handy for streaming applications to my mobile devices over LAN if I need to control something easily.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, that's what I thought too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Nice hack ! WebGL decoding looks pretty effective.

I think the major challenge with remote gaming is input latency.

Even here on a local network, it looks like there is at least ~200ms between input and frame, wich is a blocker for many game types.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is awesome. I can see it being handy for demo'ing things. :)

One thing to note: It gets a bit confused about where your mouse is if you try to stream one monitor in to a browser on a second monitor.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm rather curious if this could be used (or changed to support) two people playing a local co-op game. Would open up a lot of games in my library for play with a friend.

<comment><USER43> It probably could be used as-is. Some people use screen sharing tools like Teamviewer to do just that, by the way.

<comment><USER42> Interesting, I hadn't heard of Teamviewer as an option for this - will check it out. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Hey guys, what about doing this on a chromecast? Since it's a browser app, we just need to know if chromecast can handle the decoding.

<comment><USER45> You would still need to send input to the app somehow, which possibly could be done with a phone/tablet which is setup with just the controls and no video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I highly recommend the Xbox One streaming feature that's coming with Windows 10.

It allows you to play your Xbox games on your PC.

</comment><comment><USER47> Sad to see everyone late to the party on this. There was a great company, Onlive doing this for the past 5 years. Not browser based in their case, but they were the thought leaders. They recently closed shop and were 'acquired' by Sony. I believe thats what spurred this recent trend of articles.

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone have a sense of how well this setup would do w/ an Oculus Rift?

<comment><USER49> I imagine the network latency would be more than enough to induce motion sickness as the display would not keep up with your movements.

<comment><USER50> Yep, big time. The latest Rift SDK added depth-aware timewarp though, so if you could stream the depth buffer as well you could get something maybe non- sickening, but full of artifacts (transparent objects aren't even written to the depth buffer; when a nearby object is occluding the background and you peak around it in a warped frame it gets filled in a way that can stand out; specular highlights are all wrong wrong in warped frames; lossy compression of the depth buffer for streaming would cause glitching on the silhouettes of objects).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> \- This support one connection, right?

\- How feasible would it be to host multiple client connections (each running their own instance of the hosted program) ?

</comment><comment><USER52> Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER53> This is the coolest thing ever

</comment><comment><USER54> Clickbait much?

</comment><comment><USER55> I'd like to see GTA III & Vice City (or a good clone) running in the browser, client side via asm.js or wasm.

Edit: Not that they couldn't do it with GTA V I just prefer those games over it. Saints Row the Third or Just Cause 2 are also acceptable.

<comment><USER56> Well, we can emulate an x86 PC: [http://win95.ajf.me](http://win95.ajf.me)

<comment><USER55> Actually there so much more you can emulate:

[https://github.com/jsmess/jsmess](https://github.com/jsmess/jsmess)

[https://github.com/dreamlayers/em-dosbox](https://github.com/dreamlayers/em- dosbox)

[https://bitbucket.org/tsone/em-fceux](https://bitbucket.org/tsone/em-fceux)

and others

[https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki/Porting- Examples-...](https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki/Porting-Examples-and- Demos#emulators)

<comment><USER56> win95.ajf.me _is_ em-dosbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> This is pointless and nothing new. Remote desktop in the browser has never been an issue, so obviously playing games isn't an issue either.

The pointless part is that he's connecting to a "server" that's next to him, not in a DC in London. I guess if you _really_ wanted to play GTA V on the toilet, on your phone, it solves the issue - but really...

<comment><USER58> Nothing is new. It's simply a case of joining the dots.

1\. AWS can run Windows and therefore Steam. Nothing new. 2\. Steam home streaming works over VPN. Nothing new. 3\. VNC can stream games. Nothing new.

etc.

But put all these pieces together and the first person to wrap it up and make sure all the legal parts are in place might make a fortune.

<comment><USER57> What are you talking about, these pieces have already been put together multiple times.

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2359241/how-steam-in-home- str...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2359241/how-steam-in-home-streaming- can-turn-your-old-laptop-or-windows-tablet-into-a-pc-gaming-force.html)

[http://shield.nvidia.co.uk/play-pc-games/](http://shield.nvidia.co.uk/play- pc-games/)

[http://store.steampowered.com/streaming/](http://store.steampowered.com/streaming/)

This guy isn't running it from AWS though, like I said. He's running it from a "server" that's right in front of him. By the way, have you ever tried RDCing a remote Windows machine and done some trivial tasks in the GUI?

<comment><USER45> I actually have an AWS machine that runs Steam + VPN and I can stream games to my home laptop, it works really well.

I also have non-steam games that I've added like Star Wars: The Old republic, Starcraft II and Diablo III and they all work well using the same system.

The only glitch I've noticed is that if steam starts before the VPN, I have to RDC in and restart steam so it picks up the VPN network. (If anyone has any idea how to fix this I would be very grateful)

<comment><USER59> what AWS instance do you use?

<comment><USER45> I'm using one of OTOY/ORBX (ami-8ff2b9e6) instances ( I tried setting up my own, but never got the graphics to work right )

<comment><USER45> I used the old version of this guide, the new one may work better but I already have a working instance:

[http://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-and-much-faster-run-your- own...](http://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-and-much-faster-run-your-own-highend- cloud-gaming-service-on-ec2.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Phased-Array Optics - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased-array_optics <comment><AUTHOR> >"Phased-array optics is the technology of controlling the phase and amplitude of light waves transmitting, reflecting, or captured (received) by a two- dimensional surface using adjustable surface elements.

 _An optical phased array (OPA) is the optical analog of a radio wave phased array._ [1]

By dynamically controlling the optical properties of a surface on a microscopic scale, it is possible to steer the direction of light beams (in an OPA transmitter[2]), or the view direction of sensors (in an OPA receiver[3]), without any moving parts."

My curiousity is this: Could an Optical Phased Array be used one day to do the equivalent of Electron Beam Lithography ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron- beam_lithography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron-beam_lithography)) -- but with light -- or could the optical phase array be modified to output electrons, and then could it be used for lithography?

?

Maybe today's answer is no... but I think the answer might be "yes", _eventually_ , given enough iterations of research and experimentation...</comment>


Ask HN: What data science blogs do you follow? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Someone created [http://www.datatau.com/](http://www.datatau.com/) as an HN clone for Data Science.

</comment><comment><USER3> My daily fix:

Run by biostatisticians Jeff Leek, Roger Peng, and Rafa Irizarry, Simply Statistics ([http://simplystatistics.org/](http://simplystatistics.org/)) it's more than stats - and it's a must read.

R-bloggers ([http://www.r-bloggers.com/](http://www.r-bloggers.com/)) is the hub for everything R.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've recently started following datasciencelab.wordpress.com as well as your standard R-bloggers and the like

</comment><comment><USER5> Any good Podcasts?</comment>


Alenka: GPU database engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/antonmks/Alenka <comment><USER2> I keep hearing the promise of GPU databases but they don't seem to be terribly useful for most real world workloads.

It reminds me of the big hoopla for GPU h264 encoders. When they came out everyone realized the quality was worse and not much faster.

Some things don't lend themselves to parallel processing, notably anything linear like transactions.

I mean yeah the GPU can sort a hundred billion items a second but how often do you really need to sort that many items using a database? In 99.9% of uses you have indexing or limits on the number of results.

Just saying, this program looks more like a stream processing platform with a SQL-like frontend than a full database

<comment><USER3> You're thinking about transactional databases, and you're right. Transactional databases will probably not benefit hugely from a GPU. That's not saying it's impossible, but probably not worth the effort.

However, there are so many types of databases around. Lambda architectures are all the rage now - you keep one database for your transactionals, and another for analytics. Analytics are huge, in the multi-billions of dollars every year and they've become one of the most important parts of steering a business and deciding on new strategy. Larger businesses don't just 'go for it' anymore, they analyze, and inspect, and dig deep into their historical data to find out if something is worth doing.

GPUs tend to lend themselves well to analytics, contrary to transactions. Specifically, columnar databases. When the columns are all of the same data type, and the data locality is high, GPUs perform /very/ well.

Regarding your sorting point you may not really want to sort everything, you got that bit right. But what if you want to perform a `JOIN` on a bunch of data?

It makes more sense to sort it first, because the JOIN would be much faster - matching keys would be much easier.

Now, if you were performing really fast SORT on a GPU, you're saving precious processing time.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't the overhead of moving things back and forth between GPU memory and main memory wipe out most potential gains, though?

If you're running analytical workloads on big data sets, you're typically I/O bound to start with. It seems like managing moving little pieces of it back and forth to the GPU to compute is going to be a big PITA, add lots of little latencies, and gain you absolutely nothing. What am I missing there?

<comment><USER3> 1\. Not everything needs to be pushed up to the GPU. Some things are better left in RAM.

2\. What if you only push indexes or similar up to the GPU, like an AB-tree index? You're keeping all of the 'heavy' stuff down, and only uploading a representation of it, to be later replaced with the actual data.

3\. Think compression/decompression done on the GPU directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For postgres checkout [https://github.com/pg- strom/devel](https://github.com/pg-strom/devel)

<comment><USER3> I don't think the development of pg-strom is still active, as far as I can tell

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anyone is interested in getting this setup I put together some install notes along with some speed bumps I encountered while benchmarking Alenka a few months back: [http://tech.marksblogg.com/alenka-open-source-gpu- database.h...](http://tech.marksblogg.com/alenka-open-source-gpu- database.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Calling this a "database" is a bit of an exaggeration.

<comment><USER8> why?

<comment><USER9> We don't really call pandas a database either. It looks like a data processing tool/library. "real" databases have integrated persistence models, as well as discussions and design tradeoffs regarding ACID transactions and scalability. There are query planners and indexes, constraints (type, value, foreign key) and other logic that can help enforce business rules around the data. There are triggers and embedded functions too.

Still, it is pretty cool technology and I think something that will be integrated with a "real" database near you sometime soon.

<comment><USER10> That's a matter of perspective. I don't think this is too different in concept from, say, Bigtable, which is billed by Google as a database.

<comment><USER7> BT wasn't actually billed as "database" internally, until they had to sell it in Google Cloud where the definition of what constitutes a database is much looser. Inside Google it's known as a multidimensional hash table.

<comment><USER10> I would definitely agree that's a more precise definition. Constraining "database" to only ever refer to RDBMS is what I really have a problem with.

But there really isn't a brightline between what's a table, and what's a filesystem, and what's a database. You can put a blob in a database or BigTable, and MongoDB is really close to being a flat file conceptually. You can have a filesystem or database that is content-accessible. You can have a filesystem that is atomic and supports rollbacks and can store relational data like symlinks. A virtual filesystem like LVM can support schema-like volumes on top of it.

At the end of the day it's all just technology that lets me abstract my writes so I can deal with a more simplistic model backed by certain guarantees about behavior. I want to write a program that does XYZ, not write a filesystem/database driver. From there it's all just various tradeoffs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> good to see open source activity in this space given the eye-watering prices that mapd is charging.

[https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B01M0ZY2OV?qid=1484735...](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B01M0ZY2OV?qid=1484735254624&sr=0-1&ref_=srh_res_product_title)

</comment><comment><USER12> Should say CUDA instead of GPU.

<comment><USER13> That's true. Anyone knows how good are the CUDA -> OpenCL translators? Or has an open CUDA compiler has been written (LLVM front end, likely)?

So, in a nutshell, is it possible to run CUDA on a non-nVidia GPU nowadays (AMD or else)?

<comment><USER14> [https://github.com/GPUOpen-ProfessionalCompute- Tools/HIP/blo...](https://github.com/GPUOpen-ProfessionalCompute- Tools/HIP/blob/f052f43b3b3d48ac79f2111c7da74c24f1ad29b2/docs/markdown/hip_porting_guide.md#porting- a-new-cuda-project%22)

CUDA → HIP translator. HIP is an abstraction over CUDA and AMD's HCC: [https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/hcc/wiki](https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/hcc/wiki)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks interesting. Need a lot more information.

</comment><comment><USER16> License information missing.

<comment><USER13> Apache 2.0, going by the source files. Edit: though the "bison" files are GPLv3+, son It might be a safer bet.

<comment><USER2> Wot? Somebody threw up this "database" without even checking the licenses? I'm sure it works great

<comment><USER17> fyi, the Bison GPL exception is in its documentation: [https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditio...](https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditions.html)

The exception is littered throughout bison generated code: "This special exception was added by the Free Software Foundation..."

<comment><USER2> Fair point, I'll leave my comment up so yours make sense. The downvotes should be fun :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Creating Bitcoin from Scratch in JavaScript - New Medium Series - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/blockthought/creating-bitcoin-wallets-in-js-69c0773c2954 <comment><AUTHOR> The first installment goes over wallet creation. More to come, including digital signatures, networking, etc.

It has been really fun recreating the original protocols and scouring the original source code. Feel free to ask me anything.

<comment><USER2> Why did you decide to use Javascript? Good choice since we all have it, but I'm wondering if there's hashing or other advantages that the crazy world of Javascript provides.</comment></comment>


AWS stops some EC2 servers without warning - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/20/aws_ec2_servers_retired_with_little_warning/ <comment><USER2> Not really news...</comment>


Could this mean a CDMA iPhone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/05/20/new-zealand-telco-seems-to-further-verify-new-iphone-on-twitter/

<comment><AUTHOR> A quick look at the network provider on wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecom_New_Zealand>

Points to this being a CDMA provider, meaning this opens the iPhone to many more carriers in North America.</comment>


Mozilla is launching a new browser specifically for developers on November 10 - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/11/03/mozilla-teases-new-firefox-browser-developers/?utm_campaign=Twitter%20Publisher&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=Mozilla%20is%20launching%20a%20new%20browser%20specifically%20for%20developers%20on%20November%2010&awesm=tnw.to_g4slH

<comment><USER2> Although I personally rather like the new Australis theme of modern Firefox versions, when it came out I heard a _lot_ of people annoyed at the 'dumbing down' of the interface, and I thought maybe there would be room for a different browser, with less laser-like focus on simplicity and more on extensibility... a browser that would be to Firefox and Chrome what Firefox 1.0 was to IE6, back in the day.

I thought of it as "browser for developers and power-users", and wondered if it would actually happen. This headline sounds promising, but I'm not sure that's actually the niche they're aiming for.</comment>


Pirate Bay Verdict: Pirates Win Either Way  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/pirate-bay-verd.html <comment><USER2> "Different ways of looking at and spreading culture" --- isn't doublespeak just doublespeak, no matter who is saying it?

</comment><comment><USER3> Does an over/under of 65% not guilty sound about right?

<comment><USER4> The only thing intrade.com has under "Legal" is which supreme court justice will be the next to leave (Justice Stevens leads at 35%).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How is it a win-win for the defendants? Being a martyr is only fun if there are 72 bisexual women (or men, whatever your into) after said martyrdom.

A conviction would be a bad thing for the actual people involved I would imagine.</comment>


Microsoft and News Corp eye web pact - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a243c8b2-d79b-11de-b578-00144feabdc0.html <comment><USER2> I can't see this working. I believe that the sums needed by websites to forgo Google-sourced revenue are likely to be overestimated by the sites themselves, and would require Bing to overpay, even though accurately measured costs would still likely be enormous.

Mark Cuban wrote a little about this recently:

<http://blogmaverick.com/2009/11/13/google-murdoch-madoff/>

He estimates 125k sites at 1,000 USD average per site, with that distribution favouring larger sites.

Thing is, my sole significant web presence is my occasionally updated blog with a mere few hundred subscribers, but even _I_ wouldn't take 1,000 USD to delist it from Google - and that wouldn't be what's on offer for my end of the spectrum.

It's simply too dangerous not to be found. If you did a search for a key phrase, and it didn't turn up in Google, would you turn to Bing or some other search engine? Not likely for me: I would rather think that the site had gone out of business, or has some technical issue, or a malware infection, or something similar long before looking at these kinds of business issues.

It's like not showing up in the yellow pages, or a storefront disappearing from a casual stroll down Main St. To accept a bribe like this marks you out as a non-serious business, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER3> Murdoch seems to think that people use Google to search Murdoch's sites.

By Murdoch's logic, clearly if he withdraws his sites from Google, people will stop using Google to search his sites. _But hardly anyone using Google has the intention of "searching his sites"._ People just want information--most people don't care which site has the information as long as it's good information.

If Murdoch pulls out of Google that just means fewer people will visit Murdoch's sites. Nobody is going to give a toss about the fact that Fox won't show up on Google. This entire strategy suggests that Murdoch misunderstands his own readers.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can only see this bringing more eyeballs to Newscorp's rivals and wasting microsoft's money.

<comment><USER5> ...and News corp not going bankrupt, and the eyeballs having no choice but to go to the remaining news sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This makes me think of what Paul Graham said in his "Apples Mistake". This is going to dig Microsoft deeper into the Evil hole. Just when people started to forget how much they hate Microsoft and how embarrassing it is to work there...

"Should Apple care what people like me think? What difference does it make if they alienate a small minority of their users?

There are a couple reasons they should care. One is that these users are the people they want as employees. If your company seems evil, the best programmers won't work for you. That hurt Microsoft a lot starting in the 90s. Programmers started to feel sheepish about working there. It seemed like selling out. When people from Microsoft were talking to other programmers and they mentioned where they worked, there were a lot of self-deprecating jokes about having gone over to the dark side. But the real problem for Microsoft wasn't the embarrassment of the people they hired. It was the people they never got. And you know who got them? Google and Apple." -<http://paulgraham.com/apple.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> This may be a publicity opportunity taken by Microsoft: a great opportunity to credit bing with having better results. Here is the interview about pulling down links from google:

[http://mumbrella.com.au/murdoch-well-probably-remove-our- sit...](http://mumbrella.com.au/murdoch-well-probably-remove-our-sites-from- googles-index-11366)

</comment><comment><USER8> What do you think they're thinking?

MS could possibly bring all big news companies to Bing, create a news vertical and share revenue with the news companies. Then if you want news search, have to use Bing.</comment>


Startup Quote: Jessica Livingston, co-founder, Y Combinator - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/3485274715

<comment><AUTHOR> The media often glamorizes successful founders and makes their paths seem easier than they actually were.

\- Jessica Livingston (@foundersatwork)

<http://startupquote.com/post/3485274715></comment>


Sciencescape - First Online Map of Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencescape.org/news/launchstory

<comment><USER2> Actually, I would really like to see a navigable map of science. What web of science has is weak (you can check two citations back and forward) but it really doesn't let you check out nodes or unexpectedly valuable but potentially under-cited papers in your field. (Think a paper that several big papers cite but no one else seems to.)

It would be nice to look at a field and be able to figure out what links together and what areas are connected well and which are poorly. (A possible indicator of people studying an artifact? Or perhaps an area missing out on a possibly useful technique? Would over-linking mean a trendy field? What would a broadly connected field mean? What would an incestuously connected one mean?) This would also be a good way to find the 'best' reviews that everyone cites. Add in a way to sort by year, field, and to rapidly zoom in and out on papers and topics and you'd have a fantastically powerful way to visualize science.

It would be even better if you could 'play the tape back' and show what the network looks like year by year. Do fields follow a stereotyped network behavior before exploding? Or does each explosion look different? What does the citation map of an explosion look like? What does a field that is about to 'die' look like?

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool illustration but that lander is very vague, did some digging: "Sciencescape is a Social Map of Science. It lets you explore fields, follow teams, and share papers to stay on the leading edge and pinpoint significant discoveries throughout history." ([http://startupnorth.ca/index/index/companies/view/sciencesca...](http://startupnorth.ca/index/index/companies/view/sciencescape))

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm wondering how it's related to <http://wbpaley.com/brad/mapOfScience/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can listen to one of the founders here <http://sciencechat.podomatic.com/>

Mendeley, Academia.edu and ResearchGate not 'maps of science' but facebooks/linkedins for researchers

</comment><comment><USER5> There's a lot of activity in this space, e.g. see <http://www.mendeley.com/> and <http://academia.edu/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Where are they getting the citation graph from? They hint at PubMed, but PubMed doesn't have it.

<comment><USER2> Could be Google Scholar. There isn't an API yet (I think) but I've seen sites that use its numbers. It's a very vulnerable measure, unlike Web of Knowledge's numbers. But it would work with proper filtering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What exactly is this?

<comment><USER8> Lazy marketing, linking to HN.

<comment><USER9> not true. the poster doesn't work for this startup <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bane>

<comment><AUTHOR> That is correct. I just saw it and thought it looked interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dear Google, I'm ready to pay a monthly subscription fee for Google Reader. - <AUTHOR>

Dear Google, I'm ready to pay a monthly subscription fee for Google Reader. How much do you want? <comment><USER2> what are the best features in googlereader you can't find on other platforms?</comment>