The Illusion of Class - <AUTHOR> http://blog.javascriptroom.com/2013/01/29/the-illusion-of-class/

<comment><USER2> I generally write my constructor functions so I can easily forget 'new':

      function Point(x, y){
        if (!(this instanceof Point)) {
          return new Point(x, y);
        }
        this.x = x;
        this.y = y;
      }

then you can just call:

      var point = Point(x, y);

HT to issacs (node, npm) who I picked that up from.

<comment><USER3> Good workaround! I like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't use

      Point3d.prototype = new Point();

if the constructor has side effects. Instead,

      function fn(){}; fn.prototype = Point.prototype; Point3d.prototype = new fn;

does what you want.

<comment><USER5> and some sell javascript as simple and well designed...

<comment><USER6> I don't think I've ever heard even the staunchest JavaScript writers refer to it as "well-designed".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The JavaScript prototype pattern is the most poorly designed aspect of the JavaScript language. Cross-browser prototype compatibility is a total headache too.

My solution: abstract away the headache. Use Underscore's extends function or take a look at how Prototype.js handles inheritance: <http://prototypejs.org/learn/class-inheritance> .

Both solutions are much more simple and do the same thing.

Also, if you are going into a JavaScript interview, know the stupid prototype pattern, someone always asks about it.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. I think the prototype pattern is quite well designed. It's just not well-supported across browsers.

The Pseudo-Classical/Constructor pattern is the one that's broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Whenever I find myself needing to roll my own class-based system in JavaScript I use this function:

        function subclass(constructor, superConstructor)
        {
            function surrogateConstructor()
            {
            }

            surrogateConstructor.prototype = superConstructor.prototype;

            var prototypeObject = new surrogateConstructor();
            prototypeObject.constructor = constructor;

            constructor.prototype = prototypeObject;
        }

Then you can say things like:

        subclass(DerivedConstructor, BaseConstructor);

There's a full write-up of this approach at <http://www.golimojo.com/etc/js- subclass.html>.

<comment><USER9> This technique of the surrogate constructor is exactly what CoffeeScript uses under the table when using the _extends_ operator. E.g. [http://coffeescript.org/#try:class%20Derived%20extends%20Bas...](http://coffeescript.org/#try:class%20Derived%20extends%20Base). It also copies all the properties on the super constructor to the derived constructor, so you can have the "class level methods" in the derived classes too.

One of the main benefits i found of using CoffeeScript's sugar for classical inheritance is that i no longer need to stop and think "ok, so am i doing things right here?" every time i inherit from a class or call a "super" method, which was the case when writing JS. It Just Works (TM).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Question: in the object tree for Point3d, it looks like there are two __proto__ attributes at the same level of nesting. Should the second belong to Point and be indented? (I'm not that experienced with javascript so I could simply be confused.)

<comment><USER3> Yes it should! Good catch. (This has been updated)

<comment><USER6> Wow, that was super confusing. I had better reread. Otherwise, great article and examples. I had a pretty good notion of prototype, et. al., but felt like this article really escalated my intrinsic understanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can't help but picture GOB Bluth: "Illuuuusions, Michael!"

Great article though! This is a constant source of confusion for anyone not intimately familiar with JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER12> For a Class based approach -- CoffeeScript

</comment><comment><USER13> What is a "classically trained programmer"?

<comment><USER3> A programmer trained in classical (as opposed to prototypal) languages. Languages like C++, Java, and PHP are classical. JavaScript and Self are prototypal.

<comment><USER13> I thought that might be how he meant it , just seems an odd way to say it since it seems more like saying "classically trained musician".

<comment><AUTHOR> ryankinal is the author of the post.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


City-go-round: Open transit data for 89 cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.citygoround.org/

<comment><USER2> Nice one.

If you put any Sydney timetable info up the nsw.gov.au will sue your ass... because they can't afford to fix public transport but they got lawyers crawling out of every orifice in their body.

</comment><comment><USER3> This site defines "data" rather narrowly, as "transit schedules."

That's nice for commuters in that particular city, but a more expansive definition of data would include, e.g., how many trains came in on schedule, how many passengers on the train, where they got on and off, and so on. These in turn would allow a lot of interesting analyses-- comparing cities, studying how road networks interact with trains, looking for regional and seasonal variations, and so on.

<comment><USER4> Baby steps...</comment></comment>


Run IT as a business -- why that's a train wreck waiting to happen - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/careers-hr/my-career/how-to/index.cfm?articleid=2891

<comment><USER2> "Primarily, I asked him why he didn't transition from building web apps to instead creating a solution using cloud technology and true mobile devices like BlackBerrys, iPods, and emerging tablets. He could offer a better solution, at about a quarter of the cost. "

That quote made me chuckle since it just seems to be so out of context with what the article is trying to say.

Why not new buzzword instead of old buzzword?! At only a quarter of the cost! Seriously, if the development organisation is having problems creating CRUD- webapps maybe switching to "emerging tablets" is not the answer..

<comment><USER3> > That quote made me chuckle since it just seems to be so out > of context > with what the article is trying to say.

I too read and reread that. If you are trying to sell a new way to run IT, maybe you shouldn't make buzzword sausage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of a great editorial in the Wall Street Journal in the early '90s by the president of Cornell. He wrote about how universities aren't businesses and about how treating them as such will have disastrous long-term effects. He observed that there are many higher-education institutions that have been around hundreds of years but few commercial enterprises; also how the goals of higher education are compromised by the pursuit of shareholder value.

I would like to find that essay again. If anyone can point to a link please post it.

<comment><USER5> The implication, however, is that higher-education institutions that last for hundreds of years are better for education.

Who's to say Cornell is a better 'educational institution' than Wikipedia?

Sure a degree from Cornell looks better on your resume than reading a bunch of information on wikipedia, but that's not a measure of education.

<comment><USER4> "Better for education" might not mean "better for undergrads." It might mean expanding the sum of human knowledge through pure research. That's a lofty goal that might frequently lie at odds with the upstairs-downstairs nature of actual grad school but enough good work comes out of large research-oriented universities to note. Smaller universities and colleges that don't do much research can still contribute to a community in other ways - libraries, lectures, publications. A lot of the benefits of higher ed to society don't come from teaching (or babysitting) undergrads. That parallels the point of the OP - if you focus solely on the bits that make you money in the short term you may miss out on some other good stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In a perfect enterprise this would work. But in reality this is just a theoretical as the solutions the author debunks.

The problem with companies is that they have departments and whether you like it or not those departments compete with other departments for resources. That in turn means those departments have matters that they want to keep internal (like "we pushed a lot of next quarter's sales onto this year to make ourselves look better at review time")

To make the point try this and see what reaction you get. Go up to a senior exec. in your company and say "Hi. I'm from IT. I'm going to sit in on all of your internal meetings, have access to all your internal numbers and pretty much act like a part of your team. Except that I won't be reporting to you and will report everything you say and do to my own boss"

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I disagree with the author. But for his theory to work IT people need to realize they aren't the biggest hurdle. The bigger hurdle is to get your organization to buy into transparency. To adopt an open culture where people act as a whole organization and not a series of departments. Only then can IT integrate itself as the author suggests.

<comment><USER7> Your _In a perfect enterprise_ line carries the implication that no companies are like what he described. But I've worked in multiple companies that worked like this.

Just because your company doesn't do this doesn't mean that others don't.

As for your silly example, you're pushing enforced openness. But people, even in the most open companies, sometimes need to be closed. However if the company is working well then people have no problem reaching out to IT early.

Incidentally in my last job there indeed was a woman who was part of IT but sat in on another department's internal meetings, saw figures, etc. She took on that role after the previous project manager left. Said project manager was from that department but was managing several IT people. Either way IT and the other department are integrated together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Favorite quote: Nobody in IT should ever say, "You're my customer and my job is to make sure you're satisfied," or ask, "What do you want me to do?"

Instead, they should say, "My job is to help you and the company succeed," followed by "Show me how you do things now," and "Let's figure out a better way of getting this done."

Hear, hear! It's amazing what happens when people work together rather than against each other.

<comment><USER9> Ahh... I'd love to do that... but, unless you're the head of IT (and probably not even then), it's very difficult to get other departments to see it that way. I definitely see lots of opportunities for process improvements at my current job, but it's not easy to push them to the decision-makers (I'm quite low on the ladder :P )

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the problem with having people admit that it doesn't make sense to run the IT department as a business is that it flies in the face of capitalist ideology.

If a corporation can better succeed by having everyone work "as a team" instead of as businesses buying and selling services, maybe society can, too? But wait, doesn't that sound like "socialism"? ;-)

<comment><USER11> A corporation is a government construct, hence it is a socialist construct, not a capitalist one. It is a direct creation of and controlled by the government.

<a href="[http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0411e.asp>](http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0411e.asp>); "We should recognize that state corporatism is a form of socialism, and it is nearly inevitable in a mixed economy that the introduction of more socialism will cartelize industry and consolidate wealth in the hands of the few." </a>

Therefore, describing it as capitalist is misleading.

<comment><USER10> _It is a direct creation of and controlled by the government._

Well I'm not sure I'm with you on that one. Maybe that was the original intent, when government would revoke charters etc., but we're pretty far from that time now.

Anyway, what is a _capitalist_ construct then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a great article that really gets right to the heart of the problem with enterprise IT. I started cutting and pasting great lines for my response until I realized that were just too many of them. Read the whole thing.

This is, of course, a great situation for us hackers with consulting and software businesses. When people in enterprises can't get what they need from corporate IT, they turn to those who can provide it. I wonder how many web startups originally intended to serve consumers but ended up serving more people at work instead.

This is nothing new. PC's were originally targeted for the home until users in large enterprises found ways to buy them with them own budgets. The same thing is happening now with software and services.

When users have serious big dollar business problems and they're not getting what they need internally, that opens up the opportunity for someone else to step into the void, and I, for one, am happy to oblige.

OP also hints at the best news of all: this situation probably won't change much until _we_ change it from the outside. Let's do it.

<comment><USER13> I came to a screeching halt when I read past the pile-up of buzzwords: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1059925>

Is there something worthwhile after that?</comment></comment>


Up in the Air: Escaping from East Germany - <AUTHOR> http://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/#read-more <comment><USER2> If you ever get a chance to visit Berlin, make sure you go visit the museum at Checkpoint Charlie. Big sections of the museum are devoted to the outlandish and ingenious ways that East Germans went over, under, around or through the Iron Curtain. If I recall correctly, there may actually be the remains of this home-made balloon, or at least a replica. Two others that I remember in particular:

A West Berliner happened to own a convertible sportscar, and was dating an East German woman. One weekend, on returning from the East after visiting his girlfriend, he realized that if he put the top and the windscreen down, his vehicle was low enough to pass under the bar that was used at the East German checkpoint (this was relatively early, possibly before the Berlin Blockade, so security was laxer.) The next weekend, when he went to visit, he brought his girlfriend with him, and just gunned the car through the barricade, passing under the barrier into West Berlin.

Another was a former aeronautic engineer who built a home-made aircraft in his barn, and flew over the wall to the west.

<comment><USER3> Imagine if they'd had drones back then. How many drones does it take to generate enough lift and control to fly a 180-pound person?

<comment><USER4> Well, they had submersible underwater scooters back then. I thought that escape was pretty cool--Manfred Burmeister, 1969.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Disney actually made a movie out of this; they touch on it briefly at the end of the article. I watched it as a kid in once in school. It was called "Night Crossing" [0]. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's on any streaming service, but if you look around you might be able to find a DVD copy somewhere.

Also, as a side note, it's nice to see Damn Interesting on here. It's one of the better blogs out there even if they don't update as much as they used to. The article about the race to liquefy helium and chasing the lowest temperature ever was really, really good [1].

[0] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082810/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082810/)

[1] [http://www.damninteresting.com/absolute-zero- is-0k/](http://www.damninteresting.com/absolute-zero-is-0k/)

<comment><USER6> Thanks! I'm the founder of the site, and author of Absolute Zero is 0K. I wish we could post articles more frequently, but it's a spare-time-and-weekends project, and my spare time shrinks as I accumulate life responsibilities and such. And because I am the final editor I am a terrible bottleneck.

I have hundreds--if not thousands--of other topics I want to write about. I am optimistic that one day I'll be able to afford to quit one of my days jobs and spend more time on Damn Interesting, which would help improve our posting frequency tremendously. In the meantime I sigh wistfully.

<comment><USER7> Have you considered Patreon?

<comment><USER6> I have indeed considered it, but there are some technical hurdles for me to overcome first. Most notably, our current donation system has a lot of automation included that I would need to reproduce for Patreon (e.g., sending 5% to our Kiva fund, putting funds into various buckets depending on multiple variables, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is still much suspicion in Germany. Families still remember their 'missing' members.

One the way home, stopped in Germany early 1991 to see a good friend. While sitting at sidewalk table, my friend abruptly arose and got in the face of another patron. Words were exchanged, and they went behind the building. My friend returned later, with blood on his sleeves and hands, with his pocket notebook out. With a grim smile, he indicated that he now has a "list of people to talk to...".

The wounds of Germany will not heal until their people of my generation have been buried.

<comment><USER9> the wall fell in 1988. 3 years before your event.

its been over 20 years since then - there is no real witch hunt or hostility anymore.

<comment><USER10> Well it was on 9th of November 1989. Not 1988. But yeah, there is no witchhunt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Super account of an extremely dangerous and imaginative way to escape the East. They were extremely lucky, the prevailing winds there are West-to-East.

Every time I crossed back from East Germany into West Germany after spending time in Poland I had my car pretty much taken apart at the border (the head of the 'corridor', at a place called Helmstedt, if you drive by there today you can still see the watchtowers and the old border to the right of the highway) to make sure I wasn't hiding anybody in the strange bodywork of the car (a Citroen model DS which has a lot of weird curves and spaces).

Very frustrating because the border guards would be very diligent about ripping everything up but they would definitely not help putting things back together again.

One day I had my engine overheating on the Eastern side at the border and was greeted by rounds of tracer behind the car when I tried to back out of the cage that the car was in in search of water.

Another time I got arrested at 'Checkpoint Charlie' by one Oberwachtmeister Krause because I wasn't supposed to be there (on the Eastern side). He was entirely correct that I shouldn't be there, the reason was that I'd helped a bunch of people that were stuck in their car (a Trabant, a small two stroke car with an extremely small engine that was prone to stop working for no particular reason) by the side of the road (East Germans were allowed the use of the corridor as well, but visitors and West Germans could not leave that road except with special permission) and I couldn't find my way back to the corridor. I had followed the signs back saying 'Berlin' but did not realize soon enough that this would not work. After many hours waiting and interviews and threats we were finally allowed to leave again. The Americans were quite surprised that a car with Dutch license plates approached from the East German side of the most guarded border in Europe, probably a first for them.

No fond memories of the officials in 'The East', I hope their children and grandchildren will remind them periodically that they were part of the problem.

Many of them went on to positions in the current German police force and military, not without resistance of their former West German colleagues who saw them (rightly) responsible for the many deaths on the East German side.

Fortunately these families made it, many did not and it is good to remember that this was only a very few short years ago. Especially worth remembering given that if the East German authorities had had access to the kind of information that current governments have access to that these families likely would _not_ have made it out at all and/or would have been killed in the attempt.

<comment><USER12> _Especially worth remembering given that if the East German authorities had had access to the kind of information that current governments have access to that these families likely would not have made it out at all and /or would have been killed in the attempt._

Isn't that a bit of an exaggeration, disproved by the many criminals (arguably the the _existence_ of otherwise traceable crimes) and people under surveillance who regularly get away?

Useless anecdote: I've sometimes seen border guards checking passengers' faces/details against faxes as they exit the plane I'm on. I'm nosy, and have hung around a couple of times to see what's happen - in the end, absolutely nothing.

It seems that _even if_ they know you've got away, the _how_ and _where_ can remain elusive, even in this day and age.

Edit: Forgot to add, I loved your comment! I would love to hear more about your times in e.g. Poland at that time in your life.

<comment><USER11> > Isn't that a bit of an exaggeration, disproved by the many criminals > (arguably the the existence of otherwise traceable crimes) and people under > surveillance who regularly get away?

It's proven by the many people that were picked up before they could make their attempt because the VoPo's picked up on that before they could actually do it.

These guys would happily turn in their mothers if that's what it took to rise in the ranks:

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

A bit of 'big data' (to use a popular buzzword) magic would have turned up the names of the two buyers of fabric from the story linked in mere seconds.

Your experience with passengers exiting planes is probably not comparable unless it is in a country like Israel or North Korea. Keep in mind that it wasn't that the police was looking to stop particular people at the border but that they were simply trying to stop _everybody_ from leaving (which tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands would have done if given the opportunity)

I've written a bit about what it was like to be in Communist Poland here:

[http://jacquesmattheij.com/a-western-kid-living-in- communist...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/a-western-kid-living-in-communist- poland)

Joke from the era:

Erich Honecker ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Honecker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Honecker)) has been abroad for a state visit and returns home. Upon reaching Berlin looking out from the windows of the aircraft he notices that the streets seem very quiet. After landing this is confirmed, they drive around for hours on end without encountering a single soul. Finally, in desperation they drive up to the Berlin wall and search along side it, when they reach a very large gaping hole in the middle. Next to the hole is a wooden post with an envelope stapled to it, addressed to Honecker. He opens it and finds a note inside:

"Honecker, du bist der letzte, mach bitte das Licht aus...".

<comment> vezzy-fnord _" Honecker, du bist der letzte, mach bitte das Licht aus..."_

I think there's a little typo, it should be "macht". Then it yields the sentence "Honecker, you're the last, please turn off the lights."

<comment><USER13> "mach" is the imperative form of "machen" and perfectly fine in that sentence in the sense of "Honecker, please turn of the lights!".

With "macht" the sentence would be more of an observation and the "bitte" (please) would sound weird: "Honecker please turns of the light."

Edit: as tazjin stated "macht" can also be used to address the whole group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Actually there are many stories like this. German newspaper _Der Spiegel_ once had a whole series of articles.

My favorite is about two guys escaping from East Germany an surf boards[1]. They built their own equipment, they never surfed before but still successfully crossed 70 km Baltic Sea in about 4 hours.

The article link is just Google translated, the photo gallery is also interesting[2]. It has images from the trip of the surfer guys as well as other escapes including the balloon of Strelzyk und Wetzel.

[1] [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Feinestages%2Fddr- flucht-auf-dem-surfbrett-a-997114.html&edit-text=&act=url)

[2][http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/spektakulaere- mauerfluchte...](http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/spektakulaere- mauerfluchten-fotostrecke-120035.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for the link! I am not the author of the article, but I am the Managing Editor of the site and I worked with the author in getting it ready.

The funnest part was exchanging emails with one of the fellows involved (Günter Wetzel). His English is poor and my German is rustier than a tetanus factory, but with the help of Google Translate we were able to stumble through a conversation. He ended up sending me scans of a bunch of photos from his personal collection, several of which appear in the article (though a few required some restoration). Günter's a swell guy.

</comment><comment><USER15> Escape by swimming caught on camera - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7CWajaOx4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7CWajaOx4E)

</comment><comment><USER16> My father got thrown out.

My uncle was in prison because he wanted to leave and after his release the administration told his family (my father, my aunt, my uncle and their parents) they should leave on the next day. They grabbed everything they could carry, packed it in their car and got out.

<comment><USER17> I always wonder... How did they start a life from scratch in another country? Without a job and roof for a few days you can quickly turn into a poorness cycle.

<comment><USER18> Obviously they were supported by the FDR's welfare system. To this day, ending up without a roof over your head is very rare without other problems like substance abuse or untreated mental illness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of the story of German actor Thomas Kretschmann (you might know him from playing Baron von Strucker in Avengers: Age of Ultron & Captain America: Winter Soldier). From his Wikipedia page: "At the age of 19, he fled East Germany and began a month-long trek to West Germany to escape the East German state. During this trek, part of his finger was lost but surgically reattached. Kretschmann crossed four borders (Hungary, Yugoslavia, Austria) with nothing other than his passport and the equivalent of $100 in his possession." Pretty incredible!

</comment><comment><USER20> There's a book[1] written by a Russian guy in the US about his efforts to escape from the USSR by... swimming the ocean! It's a highly entertaining book, although there's a chapter in which he describes his incarceration in a Soviet mental facility, and that one is pretty gruesome.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Inclined-Escape-Yuri- Vetokhin/dp/B0006...](http://www.amazon.com/Inclined-Escape-Yuri- Vetokhin/dp/B0006OX6UG)

</comment><comment><USER21> Another escape story is Bernd Boettger, who built a mini submarine:

[http://www.hisutton.com/The%20Escape%20of%20Bernd%20Boettger...](http://www.hisutton.com/The%20Escape%20of%20Bernd%20Boettger.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> The toggle animation combined with the click at the beginning of the audio is wonderful. Anybody know any non-game UIs with great sound like that? They're pretty rare but it could be cool if they come back in really subtle ways. Off the top of my head I think of iPod scroll wheel, iOS keyboard, and Facebook message alert sound. The first 2 are extremely subtle and well done, alert sounds are kind of just a necessary evil.

<comment><USER23> If you're into this type of UI perfectionism, I recently read a book on the subject called 'Microinteractions' which I highly recommend:

[http://www.amazon.com/Microinteractions-Full-Color- Designing...](http://www.amazon.com/Microinteractions-Full-Color-Designing- Details/dp/1491945923/)

They give examples of designers using sound to enhance interactions. For example, slot machine designers make sure there are sounds every time the user interacts with the machine. The sounds and music also get louder and louder as the game goes on - to heighten the excitement and get the person addicted to that rush. One of the reasons why slot machines bring in more money than the movie or video game industries.

Website designers should definitely utilize this more often!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you like this story, you'll love this one:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110719094747/http://www.myspys...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110719094747/http://www.myspystory.com/intro.html)

All ingredients hackers will find interesting:

Surveillance, suspense, number stations, encryption, a human touch - and on top it's true as well.

Amazing read.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's a great story.

The introduction though - this took place in 1979. The Marshall plan was a limited program in the immediate postwar era. The rise of the West German economy was much more to do with the liberalization of the economy, restriction on government and of course the personal economic, speech and actual freedoms of the West Germans. By 1979 they were already exporting products to the USA and everywhere else by the container load. 'Mercedes Benz' by Janis Joplin was released in 1970 - the West German economy was in good shape by 1979, all from the work of the West German people.

</comment><comment><USER26> Another story of escape from East Germany that took place in 1972.

[http://www.dadinani.com/capture-memories/read- contributions/...](http://www.dadinani.com/capture-memories/read- contributions/the-unforgettable/86-escape-from-east-germany-1972-by-kailash- mathur)

</comment><comment><USER27> I would recommend everybody to take some interest in the 'damninteresting' podcasts. They are absolutely fabulous.

If you donate a bit, you get 8+hours of stories like this.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm only a third of the way through the story, but I'm struck by the contrast between the intro's description of poverty in East Germany, and this family's ability to procure such vast amounts of fabric, and they fact they owned a car.

</comment><comment><USER29> Naila resident here. Ask me if you want to know something :P

</comment><comment><USER30> How far did the wall / barrier go? Could it be walked around? Were there any weak spots in obscure fields in the countryside?

<comment><USER31> It went all the way through. While The Wall means the border that separated West Berlin from the East, there was a deadly border dividing all of Eastern Germany from the West.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > However, the Soviets were still angry with the Germans for having done so > much damage to their homeland in the Second World War three decades earlier, > so they did not care about East Germany's bleak economic prospects.

Not true. East Germany was socialism's window to the west so they were supposed to look their best all the time. As a result, they had the best lives in the Soviet Bloc. The rest of us had it much worse.

<comment><USER31> In fact in the very early days young people fed up with their nazi parents actually moved to the East to start something new. While the Soviets let East Germans build a pipeline for free once in a while, it was not generally their intention to let them suffer economically. Communism managed to do this on its own.</comment></comment>


I 3D printed a complete camera and its lens - <AUTHOR> http://amosdudley.com/weblog/SLO-Camera <comment><USER2> So cool -- can't believe he also made the lens!</comment>


Ask HN: What are you using to build apps? - <AUTHOR> It has been a while since I have built something?  Last time I used Meteor, which was pretty intuitive to learn and had a good ecosystems.  What would you suggest that I use today?  I'm looking for something that has a community and some free tutorials to get me started? <comment><USER2> Hey,

For Mobile App, I am using Ionic 4 and React Native. The main positive point is in the end you will be able to build for iOS and Android with same code.

For backend, I am using Google cloud, Firestore, google functions , graphql.

o/</comment>


Twice the R&D Budget Doesn't Get You Twice the Innovations - <AUTHOR> http://web.hbr.org/email/archive/dailystat.php?date=080311 <comment><USER2> But having a healthy R&D can make a huge difference to the bottom line.

An example I just recently came across while researching some retrogaming articles:

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

Sega also had a number of very important and successful R&D teams (AM1, AM2, AM3, etc.)

They're large investments no doubt, but both of these companies did, or are doing, very well because of the R&D efforts.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I once was contracted to work with a large defense system integrator who kept the R&D team I was assigned to on less than a shoe string budget. The result? Missed deadlines for months and months while the team awaited funding resulting in an incomplete system and no business at the end of it because there was nothing to show the eventual customer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this goes without saying, but product announcements are not the only indication of successful R&D. A company can also do serious R&D and gain value from any patents acquired or products they didn't ship as a result. If anything, I think it indicates where R&D beyond a certain point goes. Companies needs R&D to advance their core products, but if you're doubling R&D spending past that you're probably researching "pie in the sky" ideas that are either far away from feasibility or not directly tied to any core products you currently ship.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a silly distraction claim since they only look at raw number of things and not their quality or return.

Would you rather invest $10,000 10 years ago and get a PHP calendar app, or invest $20,000 and get Google search? Both are single products.

</comment><comment><USER5> The major assertion is that the trend predicted by a few variables will continue on. What if it's parabolic? What happens if you put in 10x the amount of investment? What if it's harmonic and there are sweet spots?

</comment><comment><USER6> It would if you could use that budget to hire twice as many genuine innovators. But those folks can be difficult to find....

<comment><USER4> Not really, we are easy to find and all over the place. It's just that typical corporate environments are threatened by the highly talented, and those that aren't are unwilling to pay the market rate. Not a problem since others are and when that's not the case such as with Google's founders, they just create their own business and run it themselves.

<comment><USER6> ...you've managed to mention most of the factors that make it difficult for the average business to identify and retain talent. The market is extraordinary competitive, given the wealth of options that capable people have these days.

If innovators were everywhere, then I could just walk over to the campus adjacent my office and hire up a storm... but I can't. And I wouldn't have it any other way.</comment></comment></comment>


CRV Quickstart Facts: Those are some long odds. - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/02/28/stats_on_charle.html <comment><USER2> I don't believe they have 1400 applicants. I think that must be a misunderstanding; that may be the number of people who'd asked for info about it.

<comment><USER3> I could easily believe it was that high- Keep in mind, the program got a good deal of publicity, not just in the areas where you'd normally expect, bug Digg, etc...

I think the model they're doing is Damn clever; Had I the money, I'd love to be doing the same thing. YCombinator is a great program, but $70-150K is a lot more to get something running, and a good way to pull the cream of the new startups to you..

The startups don't have much to lose, since it's only a loan.. And you get a guaranteed right of first refusal on some hot goods.

It's a clever product, not just a marketing angle.</comment></comment>


The reason you're still a developer in an office - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ryanchartrand/the-reason-youre-still-a-developer-in-an-office-b6e743ca180f#.5vq89w75n <comment><USER2> The reason I'm still a developer in an office is that it pays a shitload of Enterprise(TM) dollars into my bank account. I can work my guts out from 8.30 to 5, get a fuck load of code written at someone else's expense, and then down tools at 5pm and go play with my kids and watch GOT.

More money, more spare time, more motivated, less stress.

This strikes me as a fight-club-esque semi-motivational bunch of tripe. The only thing of value in the article is the following paragraph: "If you aren't finding time every day, in some way, to inspire yourself, to drive yourself to work on things from the heart that help you learn and grow in powerful way, then you're holding back."

It would have been better as a tweet.</comment>


Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Dropbox-taking-entire-building-in-Mission-Bay-12267749.php <comment><USER2> Inevitably, someone will make a comment about how Dropbox is overstaffed and could do this with ~10 employees since 'they just sync files'. To save you the trouble, consider that they also need to hire support, sales, marketing, and operations staff beyond the engineers and designers it takes to keep the product(s) running, especially as they shift into an enterprise-focused business.

<comment><USER3> I just wonder why all of them have to be in the most expensive part of the US. Tech talent might be more accessible in SF but support staff and marketing shouldn't be. Having offices in a cheaper location would not only save the company money but also be potentially nicer for employees. It would probably cut most people's commute time and increase cost-adjusted salaries.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that the part that is built on landfill & so the buildings will simply sink into the earth during the big one?

<comment><USER5> So you're saying Dropbox is going to drop...into the ocean?

<comment><USER6> No, the landfilled earth will turn into a liquid, briefly, during a big earthquake and the buildings will sink into them.

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

<comment><USER5> So it's going to sync?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm local and have a memory...unhappily this reminds me of the end of the dot com boom...

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/san-francisco-real- estate-l...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/san-francisco-real-estate- looking-like-it-did-before-dotcom-crash-in-2000-2015-11-20)

</comment><comment><USER8> Naive question, but why would large companies favor leasing instead of just outright purchasing the property? It seems that when the terms of the lease are up, the leasing company has almost unlimited leverage in the next negotiation (unless the tenant company doesn't mind relocating all of its employees).

<comment><USER9> 1) managing an office building is a lot of hassle.

2) startups are always growing or shrinking. no point putting so much significant capital unless it is an established in for a long haul at a location where talent is surplus.

3) if you indeed have that much capital, you can pretty much dictate what you want and get some tax benefits (amazon, second HQ) or work with a city build a new building suitable for your long-term needs (apple).

4) not much inventory that meets your needs in SF market because the property prices are always going up.

5) the leasing company actually has limited leverage. finding another tenant esp. the size of dropbox is not easy. you can bin pack other tenants but you lose lot of money until all new tenants move in.

<comment><USER10> " _the leasing company actually has limited leverage_ "

This can be true even at the SMB level. My employer sees only a couple of million in revenue yearly, we lease our warehouse/office space and we have more or less free reign to make any non-structural changes. If we decide to clear out a corner of the warehouse to put in more office space, we can (and we have). We just have to pay for the materials and labor. We've actually had our lease renewed on better terms over the years for being good tenants.

<comment><USER11> The ability to modify stuff structurally (which isn't really structurally but rather just the non-load bearing walls) is pretty standard in commercial leasing. Your employer isn't getting anything special.

<comment><USER12> Yes, because even a SMB has a lot of leverage compared to, say, a residential leasee. I believe that was the point.

<comment><USER3> It's more the duration of the lease. If you'd rent a house on a fixed contract for 10 years, landlords would also allow changes under the condition that they're reversed at the end.

Interestingly that's exactly the case in Germany. Home ownership there is one of the lowest in the world so that tenants stay in one place for longer. It's normal for tenants to change apartments as they like during the tenancy. Landlords don't care as long as it's in a good state at the end of the tenancy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Still one of the only providers of its kind to provide a Linux client. I wish them success in their expansion.

<comment><USER14> What competitor of dropbox has no linux client?

<comment><USER15> Google Drive

<comment><USER16> [https://github.com/vitalif/grive2](https://github.com/vitalif/grive2)

<comment><USER17> "It simply downloads all the files in your Google Drive into the current directory. After you make some changes to the local files, run grive again and it will upload your changes back to your Google Drive."

That's a far cry from

       mount ~/gDrive/

with company-level support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > File-sharing giant Dropbox has signed the biggest lease in San Francisco > history, an agreement for 736,000 square feet, the entirety of a new office > complex under construction in the southwest corner of Mission Bay. [...] The > space will represent an expansion for Dropbox, which occupies 182,000 square > feet at 333 Brannan St., a building Kilroy also owns, as well as 115,000 > square feet at 345 Brannan. Dropbox currently has about 1,500 employees and > 102 job openings in San Francisco, according to its website.

So, they currently have ~300k square feet. They are expanding to a space with 736k square feet. And they have 102 job openings posted, which they were all filled would expand their workforce by less than 10%. What exactly do they need all this new space for? Even if they have huge plans to somehow expand their filesharing business, doubling their workforce at this point seems quite optimistic.

<comment><USER19> Servers?

<comment><USER20> There's certainly cheaper places to house servers. They were probably a big cramped already, and expecting to need that space as they hire more (they aren't limited to their current job listings).

<comment><USER21> Not to say that's Dropbox's reason, but in my experience many, many large companies host servers in places that are far from being the most cost- effective option.

<comment><USER22> Bloomberg used to have (maybe they still have it) a data center at 525 Market Street, a skyscraper in the heart of the Financial District. Sometimes cost effectiveness isn't the sole option companies use, maybe it made sense for Bloomberg to have servers close to their customers.

<comment><USER23> The financial sector isn't the best counter-example. Every little bit of latency matters in HFT, so there's probably a competitive advantage to running servers there compared with the countryside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I mentioned this to someone, but Salesforce had already publicly disclosed at least 714,000 square feet in 2014 for the (now) Salesforce Tower with rumors they'd already expanded another 200k [1]. I don't think it's a particularly meaningful number either way, as what matters (if any of it does) is total square footage in the city not in a single building / lease.

[1] [https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/05/24/sal...](https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/05/24/salesforce- tower-wework-leases-crm-bxp-hines.html)

<comment><USER25> Exactly - isn't Salesforce's deal bigger?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here is the original Dropbox YC application from 2007: [https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/dropbox/](https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/dropbox/)

<comment><USER27> Is there a directory of these?

<comment><USER26> No this is the only one I am aware of. It is listed here as a sample application: [https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/](https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is tangential, and I'm not a designer so this is just one dev's opinion, but I found Dropbox's latest rebrand (dropbox.design) to be a bizarre departure for them. It was so off the wall I just assumed it was some sort of parody site until I realized it was official. I'm in no place to determine if it's "good" or "bad", but it's certainly an...interesting direction, if nothing else.

<comment><USER29> For my taste dropbox.design is borderline ugly. It is definitely not pretty. The colors look like they were picked in MS Paint.

[https://www.dropbox.com](https://www.dropbox.com) is in the same style and I find it looks very unprofessional, even if it is targeted to regular users. It looks like an art gallery? [https://www.dropbox.com/business](https://www.dropbox.com/business) on the other hand looks clean and trustworthy.

<comment><USER30> Dear God I can't believe they've gone and done that to their consumer brand. It inspires no confidence, the visual style actually overwhelms the content on the page to the point where the product itself and its values fail to be communicated. On mobile it is particularly bad. If I didn't already have an account, the website design might be enough to keep me from creating one of I land on that front page.

<comment><USER12> > If I didn't already have an account

So do I, but now I have a reason to finally finish that nextcloud VM I've been meaning to set up for ages :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> 16.8 acres sounds like a lot! But at over half a billion dollars for the development it sounds insane - about $44 million per acre. It really drives home how space-constrained they are. Across the street from where I work there's a 64-acre vacant lot asking $325k. I wonder how many stories of office building you could cover it with for $500,000,000.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's exciting to think ahead to what that part of Mission Bay and Potrero might feel like someday when the train tracks are put in an underground tunnel (for Caltrain and high-speed rail to the Transbay Center) and I-280 is turned into a surface-level boulevard (like Octavia).

<comment><USER33> > I-280 is turned into a surface-level boulevard (like Octavia).

You meant a parking lot, didn't you ? :D

<comment><USER34> Octavia is quite nice and traffic flows through there pretty well.

<comment><USER33> I actually have to admit I am honestly not qualified to say whether the traffic on Octavia worsened after the redesign! I guess this is my subconscious tricking me there, since the redesigned Octavia, looks a lot like redesigned Chavez, which in fact has bike lanes, trees, and all, but became a parking lot !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> 736,000 square feet is pretty sizeable when you consider that SF has a building cap of 875,000 gross square feet of office space per year:

[http://sf-planning.org/office-development-annual-limitation-...](http://sf- planning.org/office-development-annual-limitation-program)

<comment><USER36> Which says more about why the real estate market in San Francisco is such a disaster.

<comment><USER37> Because people keep using valuable space for offices instead of affordable housing?

This is exactly why SF sucks to live in. You have to live there to be close to work, but you're in competition with your damn office. Talk about screwing over your employees.

<comment><USER36> That isn't how affordable housing works. You can't will it into existence.

<comment><USER37> Right, step one is to leave the bay area.

<comment><USER36> I'm doing my part. Live nowhere near it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Good for them, I gladly pay the yearly fee for their service. Haven't had as much reliability with any other cloud storage service.

<comment><USER39> i think they are shooting themselfs in the foot, a month ago after my samsung promo expired i lost my 30gb of space. the only plan they have is 1TB for 8.25eur. my whole macbook drive is 512gb, and i dont like to waste something, so paying 1tb and using only 50 feels like im paying for all those using 1tb. so i switched to hosting owncloud on my downloadbox at home, the benefit is that i can access everything downloaded thru owncloud. if this does not work out im gonna try gdrive, they have a 100gb plan.

<comment><USER40> I had the same situation, and I ended up buying the 1 TB plan. I really wish they would have an intermediate tier between 10 GB and 1 TB. I would gladly pay for 100-200 GB. I use Dropbox to back up important documents but not everything I have on my machines, so I'm still using way less than the 1 TB right now.

<comment><USER41> IMHO That is the whole point..

(speaking from webhosting experience, same deal applies)

You are paying "more" for "1TB" that you won't actually use to fund the cost of people who actually do use it..

If the price was 1/10 of the TB price for 100GB, all the physical storage would be full and they wouldn't make any money since they couldn't ride the float from the overprovisioning..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What do you think the per sq foot price is of something like this? A couple years ago I read that the average price for office space was in the high 60's. That would put this place at nearly 50 million dollars per year. Does that sound right/make sense? If so that's a pretty quick turn around for Kilroy.

<comment><USER31> It says the price for development was a bit over $500 million, so for a 10-year return, $50 million/year is about right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is just a file sync. A good one. But 1500 employees for that? This goes way beyond my imagination.

<comment><USER44> There's a ton of stuff around that though. Tens of thousands of paying customers need support. Credit card teams. Data center guys. Guys to right deployment tools. Security guys to monitor the credit card system. Hacking together a proof of concept is simple, running a big business is complicated.

<comment><USER45> Yeah, it surprises me how often even tech people don't understand the compounding complexity that comes with scale. Just consider the engineering involved in this story:

[https://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus- ama...](https://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus-amazon-cloud- empire/)

That is just a portion of their infrastructure engineering activity. They also have product engineering - frontends, backends, mobile clients, integrations, etc.

It's not just a server under some college kid's desk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> On a somewhat unrelated note: If you scroll down to the second image in the article (not counting the slider) there is an image of some people standing in a room with a table that has a few lamps above it. Can someone tell me which lamps those are? I'd like to find out if I can afford them for my living room.

([http://ww1.hdnux.com/photos/66/50/52/14322364/3/920x1240.jpg](http://ww1.hdnux.com/photos/66/50/52/14322364/3/920x1240.jpg))

<comment><USER47> Haven't seen those exact ones, but many like them. Expect a three-digit price for each cluster of four, and you can get those or similar ones from expensive lamp shops that sell primarily to architects. Those shops have pleasantly clueful consultants. If you can't find one, ask for a recommendation from an architect or perhaps an office furniture shop that sells aeron chairs and/or sit/stand desks with motors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The "business" and "personal" dropbox combo can become a real mess.

Syncing quite often fails for small files too. I hope they will be able to pay some attention to these things in their nice new building.

<comment><USER49> _> The "business" and "personal" dropbox combo can become a real mess._

I had a personal Dropbox account, that I upgraded to a business one (because I wanted certain of my devices to only have access to a subset of my files, for instance when traveling). Except that breaks auto photo uploading from mobile, so I reverted back to personal. Everything seems to have reverted, except the auto photo uploading tab, which now is stuck on telling me that I need to connect a personal account.

Keep in mind that this is one of only 4 tabs in their mobile app, so you think it'd get pretty thorough debugging. It blows my mind how so many companies can blow tons of money on useless signaling things (like the recent redesign) while neglecting to test very basic functionality of their product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It baffles me why software companies spend so much money on leasing prime real estate in one of the most expensive markets, v.s. pursuing a more remote workforce strategy.

<comment><USER51> From my experience, the "creators"(developers, marketers, writers etc) in a company tend to favor remote work, while the "money men"(VCs and salespeople) tend to favor office space. Remote work only stands a chance if it's introduced in the early stages of a company when the creators have more power than the money men. In the latter stages of a company, the money men wrestle control of the company and going remote becomes less and less of a possibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> In a year though it downsizes to 125k square feet and they have to upgrade to pro to access all the offices.

<comment><USER53> As dogfooding, when the office is more than 90% full, all employees will receive daily popups like this one: [https://twitter.com/bobdegol/status/774627424801787904](https://twitter.com/bobdegol/status/774627424801787904)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Here's the gallery of renderings... Not exactly an architectural masterpiece.

[http://theexchangesf.com/gallery/](http://theexchangesf.com/gallery/)

<comment><USER55> My wife worked in an iconic and eye catching office building designed by a big name architect. She said it was by far the worst office building she has ever worked in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Obligatory link to the "show hn" that kicked things off. I'd quote some of the comments, if I wouldn't feel bad about singling someone out. It's come a long way :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

</comment><comment><USER57> I would love to work in San Francisco - if I could afford to live there. Working for Dropbox sounds like a dream job for a guy like me, yet merely thinking about the commute to such an office, given an engineering salary capacity, makes me feel just right where I am (tip it's not even in the US)

</comment><comment><USER58> Hopeful, eh?

</comment><comment><USER14> Welp I am selling all of my stocks. Apparently we have 365 days til the next doc bomb

</comment><comment><USER59> This just in: NSA opens new offices in Mission Bay! ;) ;)

(Dang, I was just joking, but then, "NSA document indicates that it is planning to add Dropbox as a PRISM provider": [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech- giants...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa- data) )</comment>


Tesla shareholder wants to remove Elon Musk from chairman position - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/27/tesla-shareholder-wants-to-remove-elon-musk-from-chairman-position/ <comment><USER2> 12 shares?! I assume that is as low as it sounds.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't be suprised if somebody from techcrunch owned those 12 shares just so they can write this clickbaity article</comment></comment>


Et Tu, Google? Android Apps Can Also Secretly Copy Photos - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/android-photos/

<comment><USER2> While I think the permissions model on android can and should be improved, isn't it weird that this stuff is being put on Apple and Google's shoulders?

 _Every_ single application you have on your laptop or desktop could find and steal your pictures as well, but we would call this malware.

But when it happens on phones, who make it much harder to do than on desktops, then the majority of blame goes to the phonemaker. I find that odd, but at the same time more likely to encourage a solution I suppose.

The consensus opinion seems to be that app makers are all ethically retarded and will just take whatever they can get their virtual hands on. Seems like a good attitude to have from a security perspective but that normally also comes with contempt or at least distain for the thieves.

Now we have a situation where the distain is towards Google and Apple for allowing this to be possible and the app makers couldn't possibly be expected not to steal personal data from their users.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to see Android implement a filesystem sandbox (chroot?). For one thing, it'd clean up my ridiculously cluttered SD card.</comment>


Why I Dumped Heroku for Ninefold - <AUTHOR> https://thecoderfactory.com/posts/why-i-dumped-heroku-for-ninefold <comment><USER2> This doesn't really tell me all that much - what features does the author use on Heroku? What features were available on Ninefold? What had to be changed before deploying to Ninefold? How does the hardware/environment differ?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, and how is free or $34.50 for 2 dynos vs $44 a draw?

<comment><USER4> Most importantly, why are Ninefold's monthly packages _more_ expensive (assuming a 30-day month) than were you to use their hourly rate in their calculator?

<comment><USER5> The monthly packages include an assumed package with disk for the VMs, disk for DB, and IP addresses. The hourly rate is raw VM pricing solely.

<comment><USER4> Alright, so it's outbound traffic + app storage that you pay for. (After all, you can set the DB disk size in the calculator)

It's still a bit confusing though, (IMHO), given that the discrepancy between hourly & monthly rates grows bigger the bigger your package is. It starts off from ~0.2 USD and goes up to ~400 USD if you max everything out and there's no detailed description of what additions are contained in the monthly package.

Also, on the more detailed pricing page their "recent prices" are broken and only show if you switch to Asia + then back to the US. Furthermore, do you need to pay for the server's forced minimum storage requirements (e.g. 20 GB * 0.16 USD per ? - I'm assuming monthly here) or do you only have to pay for your additional requirements?

EDIT: also, the suggested packages on the more detailed overview page list a 512mb RAM / 1 vCPU instance which is no longer available at all - (isn't that what heroku offers for free)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the first time I've heard of Ninefold. I checked out the service just now.

The first thing I looked for was support for multiple environments (e.g., staging and production). I searched ninefold.com for "staging" using Google, and there weren't any relevant results:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=staging+site:ninefold.com](https://www.google.com/search?q=staging+site:ninefold.com)

Here's an example of the type of information I was looking for:

[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/multiple- environments](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/multiple-environments)

The second thing I looked for was support for zero-downtime deployments. I searched ninefold.com for "zero downtime deployments" using Google, and there weren't any relevant results:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=zero+downtime+deployments+si...](https://www.google.com/search?q=zero+downtime+deployments+site:ninefold.com)

Here's an example of the type of information I was looking for:

[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/labs- preboot](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/labs-preboot)

After not finding the above two features, I stopped looking for other features that interest me.

<comment><USER7> Hey subsection1h, I'm Ryan from Ninefold. We're working on getting our docs in place around multiple environments. Our setup is different from Heroku and they do a great job of describing why you'd want more than one environment, so I think our article will be much different, but I'd like to make sure it's informative.

Is there any specific information you'd like to see in there?

Also, we use Phusion Passenger to manage our deploys and we do implement pre- start: [http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache...](http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#PassengerPreStart)

We're working on a new feature to further reduce the chance of diminished performance during deploys. There will be information about it in our docs and on our blog as soon as we release it.

Thanks, Ryan Clark Lead Rails Support Engineer | Ninefold.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Over $100 million invested in our own hardware means big scale, better performance and a lower price per delighted user. "

This coderfactory article is actually a good advertisement for Ninefold in my opinion. I hope they charged them plenty, considering the fact that Ninefold is apparently rich. And if I were a Rails dev, I would probably check it out, if I didn't know about Digital Ocean or bash/Ubuntu stuff.

But $100 freaking million in hardware? ??

<comment><USER9> Disclaimer: I'm a Ninefold employee.

I can see how that claim could sound pretty ludicrous. A startup coming from nothing isn't going to get $100 Million to spend on hardware.

We're backed by a publicly listed Australian company: Macquarie Telecom. We've built upon their investment in datacenters and fiber connections between them as well as racks, servers, switches, routers, power etc.

We thought it was important to call out that we're not a fly-by-night operation, hosted in an office cupboard. We (and our backers) have ploughed serious capital and we're serious about what we're doing. I understand that we may not have explained very well how that investment works.

All that said, we have the advantage that most platform providers don't: capital invested in hardware which means that we don't have to rely on another provider (such as AWS) for compute resources.

<comment><USER8> OK, so I think you should say that on the site. How much of that $100 million investment can Ninefold actually access today in order to spin up servers? The way you phrased it is not truthful, and makes it sound like you built a bunch of mainly unused custom datacenters full of racks and are just waiting with your fingers crossed for the hoardes of Heroku defectors to come and load up the servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i've tried heroku a few times, always found it kinda painful to learn and felt helpless when things go wrong..

not sure if its because i'm used to building own servers (which might be inefficient)

maybe heroku is better for people with less sys admin skills? or it might just be way better now (i haven't tried in over a year).

now i use rackspace/ec2/linode for rails.</comment>


Cloud Drive Sidesteps Legal Obstacle to Ubiquitous MP3s - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/amazon-introduces-a-digital-music-locker/?ref=business

<comment><USER2> Ah, finally, a way to legally upload a ton of pirated songs and share login credentials so that hundreds of people can download them without hitting up torrents and thus placing 90% of the cost onto amazon.

<comment><USER3> Amazon will monitor and shut down such usage as against their T&Cs, not because it's "piracy" per se, but because it would cost them more money to deliver the audio than they'd be making from mp3 and storage sales.

You can of course already do exactly what you propose with various other services, though again many would shut you down if half the internet tried to access them for equally pragmatic reasons. Small darknets based on social networks are wholly possible though via nearly anything that can transfer files e.g. gmail, google docs, dropbox, IM, samba, apache, swapping USB drives, etc.</comment></comment>


Google Wallet Hack Raises Concerns Over Mobile Payment Security - <AUTHOR> http://www.esecurityplanet.com/mobile-security/google-wallet-hack-raises-concerns-over-mobile-payment-security.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Particularly for the more recent exploit, the word "hack" seems a little generous.</comment>


Petition to make unlocking phones legal again passes 100,000 signatures - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/21/petition-to-make-unlocking-phones-legal-again-passes-100000-signatures-white-house-is-required-to-respond/ <comment><USER2> Hey everyone, I started this petition. Very glad we made it to 100k, and excited to see how the White House responds.

I'm well aware that the WH may not take any real action though. Please sign up at <http://fixthedmca.org> if you care about this issue and want to continue helping the move to fix this issue permanently.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I hate to be that guy, but the 'petition to end all petitions' comes to mind. Particularly the bits about 'politically safe non-answers' and 'channeling public activism into a cul-de-sac'.

:-/

<comment><USER4> I can recommend this article:

<http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/31/we-the-people/>

It argues that the reason for petitions to exist is the possibility to open a dialog to the people who are concerned about certain topics (because the petition website gets your email adress), and that in the time of fractioning news consumption it is a useful way to keep communicating, whatever that means.

edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland?

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm just cynical (okay, I'm _probably_ just cynical), but that looks like a slightly more positive spin on essentially the same idea: a whole lot of 'communicating' and no action.

> edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland?

Probably because it's about politics, and according to popular myth, DC was built on a swamp.

<comment><USER5> First step to action is communication. Politicians aren't mind readers, they need to communicate with their constituents to understand their wants.

Whether or not a petition is an effective means of communication I'm not qualified to answer, but it seems like a better option than doing nothing at all.

<comment><USER3> In response to both you and dragonwriter, those are all totally fair points. My thought is this might be a case of poorly-managed expectations.

Specifically, people generally think of petitions as things where, given n signatures, some kind of action is _going_ to be taken (as in 'the right to petition government for redress of grievances'). In that context, it's easy to forget that the most you can 'win' is a response. Hence, 'victory' feels hollow, which can take more energy away from a movement than not having had a petition to rally around in the first place.

Hope that makes sense. I'm not arguing against the system itself, but I think it's overplaying its hand by calling itself a petition system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fast forward to next week:

"The White House announces a new threshold of 500,000 signatures before it will respond to online petitions."

I was initially enthusiastic about these online petitions, but it doesn't seem like any of them have had an effect.

<comment><USER7> What kind of effect were you expecting? The president promises to do whatever you want as long as you get N "signatures" on a weakly authenticated website? Even if you got those N people to all show up in person at the White House door, wrapping policy around the desires of a vocal minority is not a valid or just way to structure a government.

They promised to respond, which is about all they can promise. And this gives them a reasonable metric for how many voters care about an issue, which is a good thing. And they can probably even infer some demographic data from the results, which is another good thing.

Basically this is a tool to better inform policy decisions, and the evidence is that it's "working". If you were expecting more then I think your hopes were a little unfounded.

<comment><USER8> > _Basically this is a tool to better inform policy decisions_

No, it is _actually_ a safety valve. If the public gets a little too agitated about anything they can go sign a petition to let of some steam. This petition site furthers couch-potato politics; it enables people to 'do their bit' without actually moving their ass. It neutralizes those who are naturally prone to apathy already.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough. Let's just agree to disagree on that. Your explanation is a bit too far on the "been reading a bit too much dystopian pulp" side of the spectrum.

To argue that the practice of policy is cynical and easily corrupted is a truism. To say that the white house _deliberately_ threw up a petition system to actively "neutralize" inconvenient opinions is just ridiculous, sorry. The white house staff are people just like you and I, and they care about many of the same things you do and truly want to do the right thing in the face of many competing interests. Don't turn them into Orwellian villains, it's not helpful.

<comment><USER8> The less dystopic version of my interpretation is that the site is just a way of keeping people happy, rather than "neutralized". Does that seem so implausible to you?

> _The white house staff are people just like you and I_

See, that realization is what enables me to believe they would make a petition site just to keep people happy. It is something rather frequently seen in the "real world" from "normal people" (see: suggestion boxes in the breakroom at work), and is exactly the sort of thing I could see myself doing. Hell, I _have_ done it. Have someone that is mad at you? Let them vent for a while until they calm down, _then_ tell them why they are wrong.

This sort of tactic isn't unique bizarre super-villian behavior. It is standard bullshit.

If the intent were completely pure, _merely_ to educate, they wouldn't have people perform a meaningless action before they got their cookie. You don't get that far in politics by being clueless about how to gauge public interest in a topic without resorting to an online tally of interest. That is simply inconceivable.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, lets just go back to the days of hitting the streets with those paper petitions, and gathering signatures at bus stops and Phish concerts! Why get the internet involved in politics at all?

<comment><USER10> Because anonymous forums on the internet have proven for a decade sane discourse goes out the window due to the Internet Fuckwad Theorem. It is an entirely different dynamic to be in someones face and have to fear consequences beyond words from your behavior, and honestly, that is what almost any protest in history was for - to try to shake the boots of those who are gifted with power.

An internet petition is just a number and a paragraph that people clicked a thumbs up on. Nobody would ever care unless those people actually started voting differently, and by differently, that means something other than just going across the isle and shaking hands with their neighbor politician in the other camp.

It is the same reason you don't argue with businesses with petition letters, you argue with them with their bottom line. If you are in a state of demanding something, the other party has a power and influence you don't, and you need some pull in the relationship or else you will be walked all over.

<comment><USER9> After rereading your contribution, I realize you were agreeing. therefore, I had become for a moment the "Internet Fuckwad" you warned me of. Sorry. Dis acknowledge previous post. ... I've been drinking...

<comment><USER11> You have been one your entire time on Hacker News. Please contribute, not argue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We need to stop calling these "Petition to <thing>". These are not petitions for things to happen. This is not a petition to make phone unlocking legal again, it's a petition for the Whitehouse to write a response.

Furthermore, these petitions aren't going to be seen by lawmakers, as someone in the below comment says. Strictly speaking, the President is part of the executive branch, not the legislative branch, so in _any_ event, no "lawmaker" will be seeing these petitions at all.

<comment><USER13> oh I am pretty many of the lawmakers have interns or the likes whose job it is to watch certain sites for trends and such.

<comment><USER12> I sure hope so, but I just wanted to be clear that it's not part of the workflow for one of these things to pass in front of any elected member of congress.

I have this fear that people will think signing these petitions is "enough" (or "anything" really) and won't do more to push their particular issue. This _literally_ does nothing but solicit a response from the White House, and 99% of the time (likely 100% but I don't know that for sure), the response could have been written by anyone familiar with the White House's already-public stance on the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am glad this thing is happening. Unlike most other petitions that require changing law through Congress, this rests on a single individual. DMCA exemption can be made, and in case of phone unlocking have been made, by the Librarian at Library of Congress. He is appointed by the President and works at the behest of the Congress. The decision to allow the exemption to DMCA is completely up to him, and could be potentially influenced by such a petition.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's funny how you have to petition to have lawmakers pay attention to an issue, when by definition, those people are there to represent the interest of the majority in the first place.

<comment><USER16> If all 100k people chipped in a $100, it would have more effect than this petition. We live in a time where it takes money to get elected.

<comment><USER17> That's why I think financing campaigns should only be done by individuals and with a cap of $100 each to "equalize" the money vote, just like you equalize the regular vote, by giving a person the same vote everyone gets. But the way the system works now, the "money vote" seems to be much more powerful than the real vote, and because certain individuals or corporations can put as much money as they want on that vote, that ends up skewing the election and the way the politician will fight for certain bills, greatly.

So put a cap on how much you can donate, and ban corporations from donating. Only individuals should be able to donate. I don't care that they think they need $100 million to get elected, and with this they'd only get $10 million. The point is their competitors will only get by with that much, too, but in a much fairer system, where the voices of many more people have to be listened to, instead of just the voices of a few.

<comment><USER18> I think the logic behind corporate financing/lobbying is that if you allow individuals to contribute money separately, there is no reason why organized groups should not band together, analyze the election, choose a candidate and pay $100 for every one of their members to that candidate's campaign. This organized machine is going to always trump a bunch of individuals haphazardly contributing money.

<comment><USER19> Organizations should not be able to donate to campaigns or political action committees. Unions, superpacs, all of it.

If an organization wants to petition its members to donate to a campaign or political action committee, go for it. But it cannot coerce, it cannot apply punitive measures to members that do not donate, and it cannot be a religious institution that receives tax-exempt status.

<comment><USER20> Why does it matter here if the tax-exempt organization is religious or not? Pretty much every tax-exempt organization is going to have an agenda---if it didn't, it probably wouldn't exist. Why are religion-based agendas less tolerable here?

<comment><USER19> Religious organizations have the bonus of being able to coerce not only through threat of firing and social ostracization, but also through the threat of eternal damnation.

Tax-exempt religious organizations such as churches can (but often don't) have their tax-exempt status revoked for urging their congregation to vote for specific political candidates already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is something that I like in Brazillian laws, in Brazil carriers are supposed to always provide "portability", this mean that you can keep your phone numbers when you change your carrier.

The "portability" laws, also say that the carriers themselves have to unlock your phones if you want to change carrier.

This ensures that a carrier cannot make you locked to them by using phone lock or number lock. It is highly interesting. Maybe facilitated by the fact that all carriers here use GSM (people think that CDMA is shit, and like the fact that GSM chips are harder to clone than CDMA phones).

<comment><USER22> In the US, we also get to port our numbers to new carriers. It's been this way for a while.

Do Brazilian carriers offer contract-subsidized phones? Many carriers here will unlock your phone once your contract is complete. See AT&T's unlock details at [1]

[1] <https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/client/en_US/>

<comment><USER21> Yes, a lot actually, in fact carriers here are infamous for offering phones even for free depending on the contract, resulting into one carrier once making a ad, saying that their bonuses for long term costumers were cash, because "paying" with phones was silly.

But the law says that if the costumer want to end his contract, then he will pay his fines or whatever, but the carrier must unlock the phone.

Also you see "unlocking stores" frequently on metro stations for example, it is perfectly legal, and encouraged by the government, to incentive some free market between carriers (here we have 4 big GSM carriers, some people even own prepaid GSM chips of all of them).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Would be great to have this: collect 1,000,000 votes for petition and it goes to Senate for mandatory voting.

Otherwise it's impossible to penetrate the wall between government and people via "your vote, we write response, maybe" - type of approach.

<comment><USER24> That's not a bad idea. In fact many states have implemented this already. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiatives_and_referendums_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiatives_and_referendums_in_the_United_States#Initiatives)

<comment><USER25> Majority rules is just another tyranny.

<comment><USER24> It really has nothing to do with majorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What exactly do these petitioners expect? A) there are far more important things to do, IMHO, then spending time wrestling telco companies over this, and B) the White House has to do zilch but respond.

I love petitions, but people getting angry over e.g. repeatedly not legalizing marijuana after 0.03% of americans signed something I find confusing and frustrating.

It's almost as if people are easier to ignore if they solely protest through these petitions....

<comment><USER27> This was a recent change by made by the copyright office, to revoke "phone unlocking" as an exception to the DMCA. The copyright office is under the President, IIRC, so the White House has the ability to directly affect this.

The other route is to just codify the exception into law, but pushing a law through about this takes time.

<comment><USER28> It's the Library of Congress, and they didn't revoke the exception so much as they failed to renew it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What about a petition to prevent lawmakers from creating legislation that turns regular people into criminals. One simple legislation to rule them all. The GOML (Get off my lawn) law.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm interested in the White House's response, but anticipate the issue basically being blown off.

<comment><USER31> People have it in their heads that a successful petition is supposed to mean there will be change but that was never promised.

I've always felt petitions were used by lawmakers to help filter noise. If you set a threshold for the amount of support any cause needs before you'll address it (preventing you from having to listen to each person individually) the petition system seems only logical. If the lawmakers now see that 100,000+ people are against their decisions they promised to make a response but have no obligation to change anything.

This is where people's voting power is supposed to matter. If the representatives are always ignoring the issues that are deemed important by petition/protest groups then why should the be expected to get re-election?

Its sort of a shit deal where we're hoping the channels they provide will show some benefit or marshal of change but I haven't seen that happen yet. I'm not American so I'm somewhat distanced from everything but it has always seemed like these petitions were just another campaign tool and never intended to be taken seriously by gov't.

<comment><USER32> Filter noise? You mean like concerns of citizens instead of concerns of lobbyists?

A Kickstarter might be more useful than a petition in getting the attention of the US government.

<comment><USER33> Concerns of how many citizens? 10? 1000? Out of how many millions?

<comment><USER10> I have absolutely no idea how you any cause would get even 10% of Americans to actually get up off their couches and away from the tv long enough to make their voice heard on anything.

I mean, the closest thing is recent history, the Occupy movement, was still only a few tens of thousands at most.

<comment><USER32> I wish I thought you were being grumpy and cynical instead of accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Welp, got halfway down the page before the pessimist, defeatist "It's just a petition, you're wasting your time" responses started.

Better than usual, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER35> I would rather see locking phones become illegal. Locked devices only serve to keep people stuck with a provider.

</comment><comment><USER36> This petition asks the President to interfere with the implementation of law, and to politicize the decisions of the Librarian of Congress, a non-partisan post.

While the President may use his office to champion new laws, he cannot make them himself, or overturn them.

</comment><comment><USER37> OK, something I don't understand. What's to stop someone from opening a store that sells unlocked phones?

Is it because of the lack of carrier discount? If that's the case, people have already voted with their money on what they value more.

<comment><USER38> "people have already voted with their money on what they value more"

1\. We do not vote with money in America. Poor people get as much of a vote as rich people in this country.

2\. By making jailbreaking illegal, the government is giving carriers a _special legal status_ that makes it harder for anyone else to compete. If you want a market-based solution to life's problems, you cannot have the government swoop in and give special privilege to certain players.

<comment><USER39> Your point number 1 is a little naive. Money and interest groups drive policy. While the poor may have just as much vote in an election, the power to change policy generally is focused on the interest groups that most support that politician. So while people may not "vote with money" policy is very much money driven.

<comment><USER38> Sure, that is how it works _in practice_ , but nothing in the constitution of this country says, "Money buys laws!" We are generally unhappy with the idea that wealthy corporations have hijacked our legal system, because most Americans believe their vote matters just as much as every other person's vote (or at least every other person in their district).

<comment><USER40> > Sure, that is how it works in practice

Which is all that matters. How it should work in theory, matters very little.

> If you want a market-based solution to life's problems

Big "if", for many things, many don't want the depth of their wallet to determine their access to necessary services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> What if I told you...

Obama doesn't give a shit?

</comment><comment><USER42> A mere fact that there's a White House petition for something that in other countries is an indefeasible right - use your phone with any carrier you please - greatly saddens me. I find it astonishing how the Land of the Free can tolerate such treatment.

<comment><USER43> There's a reason you had to capitalize it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> When someone is not paying the full price of a phone, how can they expect to do anything with the phone? People don't actually own them.

<comment><USER45> > People don't actually own them.

I think you need to read up on property law or show me what law I'm ignorant of that says you don't actually own the phone.

<comment><USER10> The contract you sign with the carrier says you don't own the phone until after the contract period expires. Same reason you can't just make copies of a cd of any band you like and hand them out to your friends, in the eyes of the law you may own a plastic disc but the information stored on it isn't yours to own, it is yours to borrow and use in a restricted set of circumstances the rights holder approves of.

<comment><USER45> > The contract you sign with the carrier says you don't own the phone until > after the contract period expires

You mean like when you sign a mortgage to buy a new home? Only it isn't true. You own your house even if you default which is why you can rip all of the copper and sell it for money before they foreclose on your home.

The contract with the carrier definitely doesn't say they own your phone. It makes no sense for them to say that since they have you for early termination fees.</comment></comment></comment></comment>