Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/13/some-perspective-on-the-japan-earthquake/ <comment><USER4> There is a bit of overlap here with my comments on HN the last couple of days. I've had to explain it to 100+ friends, family, customers, clients, etc, so I figured I might as well polish it and put it somewhere public.

At the risk of stating the obvious: I am not "HN's Japan Guy." There are many, many HNers in Japan. A few dozen of them make it out to the Tokyo meetups. There are many, many perspectives on this disaster -- this is just my wee little contribution from a place well removed from most of the worst scenes.

<comment><USER5> _I am not "HN's Japan Guy."_

Perhaps not, but I'd say that you're probably the best writer out of HN's Japanese Guys.

(No offense intended to other HNers from Japan -- I'd say that you're one of the best writers on HN from any location.)

<comment><USER6> I don't know about best -- most frequent commentator definitely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _English-language reporting on the matter has been so bad that my mother is worried for my safety._

I can believe it.

So, on the one hand, it often seems like HN spends way too much time absorbed with inside-baseball conversations on the design of social news. How do we keep social-media communities intelligent and informative? How do we prevent them from being constantly trolled, dominated by sugar-coated memetic fluff (e.g. "things on fire"), spammed by marketers, or deliberately hijacked by paid sockpuppets, fanatical propagandists, and well-funded PR campaigns? We go on and on about this stuff, routinely.

But on the other hand, we worry about these things because they are important, and because we still haven't done enough. Especially in the USA, our failed media infrastructure is a _very big_ problem. It creates an environment where everyone is either perpetually ignorant or perpetually afraid, or both, and it fuels random acts of sabotage and irrationality, and it serves as a constant drag on our civilization's energy. So when, as an engineer, I think about ways to advance my favorite design and engineering projects - smart civic design, renewable energy, robotic exploration of space, cheap and widespread applied genetics, popular appreciation of science, promotion of the creative arts - <USER2> always seems to come down to education and information. Here we have an example: Why, in a world where we can build a global information system like this one, must patio11, with obvious reluctance, spend so much time restating the obvious? (And, indeed, he _must_ spend this time, because the alternative is that many of our friends, and relatives, and _especially_ our parents run around like Chicken Little.)

<comment><USER8> I guess it goes without saying that this very thoughtfully composed post also implies is that it's not only the media infrastructure that is failed. But the answer is written into the post as well: be involved. Apparently everyone in Japan has a duty in times of crisis, and it's not something opted into.

I am genuinely jealous, after reading this post. In that I would love for _my_ country to have its shit together to this degree. That, also, goes without saying.

<comment><USER9> Japanese society is also ethnically homogenous (which increases trust and social capital - <USER3> [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/full)), hierarchical, and strongly favors social harmony over individual expression. I'm not convinced that a country like the U.S. could be as well prepared as Japan seems to be. I'm not saying we couldn't eventually overcome a similar scale disaster, but I think Japan is always going to have us beat in the immediate to short term aftermath.

<comment><USER8> "...strongly favors social harmony over individual expression."

I like how you put that. It describes my experience with Switzerland as well. I remember the pros and cons of being an American ex-pat there -- it could be quite rigid at times. As I get older, however, my frustration with this dichotomy appears to be growing. Individual expression can get off my lawn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "An earlier draft of this post said 'lucky.' I have since reworded because, honestly, screw luck. Luck had absolutely nothing to do with it. Decades of good engineering, planning, and following the bloody checklist are why this was a serious disaster and not a nation-ending catastrophe like it would have been in many, many other places."

This is fantastic and worth repeating. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER11> I hate to be -that- Greek, but the word typhoon in English is arguably either Greek or Arabic in origin. <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=typhoon>

May the mocking commence.

<comment><USER12> Typhon is a Greek titan, master of the winds. By some coincidence, the english derivative "Typhoon" sounds very much like the Japanese word "taifu", but it's obviously unrelated. The English (an other European languages) word definitely comes from Greek.

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

<comment><USER13> I think it is more correct to say that all the typhoon words derive from Greek (or at least a common source). Europeans borrowed a cognate local word (tufan) to describe the cyclones of the Indian Ocean and 'correcred' the spelling to the Greek roots.

[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=typhoon&searc...](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=typhoon&searchmode=none)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thank. Fucking. God.

I am getting increasingly tired of explaining these points to everyone who asks me (currently in Tokyo). A well worded piece that I can just link to, very nice to see at the moment.

<comment><USER15> No thank Fucking engineers. God did the deed - engineers countered it.

Given the few 1000s casualties against a Mag8.9 earthquake I think God lost this one

<comment><USER16> I think the thanks was for Patrick's article

<comment><USER14> Thank. Fucking. God.

...that you pointed this out. Yes, yes it was.

<comment><USER15> Sorry - I thought you meant

"thousands of people were killed - but one person survived, therefore a miracle, therefore praise god"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "Japanese does not have a word for excessive preparation."

Neither does English, as you've just demonstrated!

<comment><USER18> Yeah, this is a fairly common snowclone (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone>) that is often false, or when true transmits very little information at all: <http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3001>

Just because someone doesn't have a word for something doesn't mean they have a concept for it; they might express it in two words instead of one. Also, most of the time you hear the claim that a language doesn't have a word for something, the claim is wrong, and the language actually does have such a word, while the person in question is ignorant of the language they are talking about (I presume that patio11 is not ignorant of Japanese, but may just be making a sloppy generalization).

It's used as a way of demonstrating that some entire culture thinks or acts in some particular way, which is usually a poor approximation of reality. While there are distinct cultures that have distinct practices, cultures are generally not so homogenous as to not even have a way to express a particular concept that goes against cultural norms.

<comment><USER4> As a linguist? I agree, I don't like it, and literally _that post_ went through my head when I was re-reading prior to hitting publish. As a writer? It is zippy and communicative, more than "The nation of Japan has chosen, through its political process, to invest a large amount of its resource surplus into disaster preparedness even though some observers believe it has long-since passed the point of diminishing returns."

<comment><USER19> It's a nice line, btw is it literally true? It fits with Deming, quality and six-sigma.

I ask, because Christensen claims that Japan success a few decades ago was because all their successful firms (Toyota, Sony, etc etc) began with disruptive innovations, that needed to be improved, with sustaining innovations. Aiming at quality works really well for this.

He then says their recent hard times are because those disruptive innovations have now become good enough - but the Japanese firms are still improving on quality. He contrasts this with the US, where new disruptive firms are being created all the time (aided by employee mobility, VC/angel/YC non-debt funding, open markets, start-up infrastructure, largely unregulated competition, and strong IP for R&D).

<comment><USER20> I think the difference is that Japanese disruptive firms can engineer things like planes, ships, cars - US disruptive firms enable you to play games about birds on your cell phone.

<comment><USER19> Based on surface news, it can look that way; but honestly it sounds like you're trolling.

US was first with mass-produced cars (Ford); Japan with games (Nintendo). Both these past innovations were disruptive.

Today, the US is pioneering consumer DNA testing (eg. 23andme), portable computers (iPhone/iPad - industrial uses are appearing, it's not just games);

The suggested case is that Japan doesn't seem to be innovating disruptively (although Nintendo has been working great at some disruptive stuff: wii and a 3D handheld). Disruptive innovation is possible in cars etc, such as the smartcar, and hybrids. Note that the all-electric car, Tesla, is from the US - and it's not clear that it will succeed. That's a big part of the disruptive game.

If anything, I'm pro-Japan, but mostly I'm a fan of disruptive innovations, and I sincerely hope that Japan will find a way to become disruptive again. Maybe it's harder because they have an aging population now... yet this could be a plus, because they could lead the world in innovations to cope with that, that the rest of the world will adopt when they catch up.

Can you give examples of Japanese disruptive innovation in planes, ships, cars? (I see your account is 14 hours old, and your comment history is a mix of intelligent discussion and reddit-style quips - I urge you to favour the former on HN).

 _EDIT_ if you are interested in constructive argument here, I'll offer some of Christensen's thoughts on _disruption_ : it is lower-cost and/or targets non-consumers of an established product (e.g. as _wii_ expanded the userbase of "game-players"), but it's not good enough for high-end consumers (e.g. hard-core gamers); over time it improves and replaces the established product when it does become good enough (unless the innovation is "co-opted", as _Kinect_ is trying to do with _wii_ ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Perhaps someone can tell about about the perception of nuclear reactors in Japan after the earthquake. Is there any knee-jerk reaction calling for the demolition of all existing reactors and stopping of all plans, or do most people have the same reaction Patrick has, seeing this as somewhat of a success? Is there any hysteria about the current problems with some of the reactors?

<comment><USER4> Interest in the nuclear question is running very high. Japan historically has a complicated relationship with nuclear power, for all the obvious reasons. (Heck, _I_ got freaked out when I saw the word "hibakusha" used in print today in a context not related to WWII.)

I would characterize the tenor of reports I saw on NHK earlier as "visible concern" on the part of the anchor and "restrained professionalism" on the part of their expert guests

I've said this before, though: Japan is a big country and it's diversity is often underappreciated. There is largely not a monolithic Japanese viewpoint on this. The same goes for just about everything. (See also: the United States.)

<comment><USER22> I read what you wrote in the linked post, and your view of the situation appears to be... erm... too bright if you will.

Were there not repeated cooling system failure resulting cooling pumps running on _batteries_ (that needed to be swapped every few hours)? This sounds to me less like "something working as designed" and more like scraping last fallback options. Releasing (lightly radioactive) steam to ease the pressure in a chamber they _have no view or control over_ doesn't sound that much better either. Nor does the evacuation of 140,000 people "from the area around Fukushima".

All in all, based on the quotes of Japanese authorities that sip into the Reuters' feed - they did not have a situation under full control at several points. They handled it as professional as it's possible, no doubts about it, but it could've unfolded differently.

<comment><USER23> Worst possible case right now is a meltdown in the core (which is not explosive, just hot thermally and radioactively). A meltdown is not a problem because containment vessel is still intact and it's designed to handle a meltdown. It's just expensive and a bit dangerous to clean up radioactive sludge off the bottom of the containment vessel. (The building that blew off just protected the containment vessel from weather.) The article linked by anonymous246 explains in detail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thank you, patio11. I saw this on Twitter and read half of it with my mouth hanging open. (Somewhat related: this great post by Makiko Itoh [http://makikoitoh.com/journal/memorable-tweet-japan- earthqua...](http://makikoitoh.com/journal/memorable-tweet-japan-earthquake))

I can't help but think what a disaster of this scale would look like in almost any other country but Japan. Checklists at almost every level of response is unimaginable in most countries I know (though maybe Singapore ...). If this were a 3rd world nation things would have been very, very different.

<comment><USER25> _I can't help but think what a disaster of this scale would look like in almost any other country but Japan_

Probably might look like the 2010 Haitian earthquake or the 2004 Indian ocean earthquake/tsunami

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_ocean_earthquake>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Brilliant article. I have written to the UK Guardian and Independent encouraging them to syndicate it.

<comment><USER27> Articles like this really demonstrate the value of HN as a community.

Most people would never think a relatively obscure software blog would be a source of some of the most reliable information about an event that the entire world is watching. Because we read HN (probably more often than we should), we are more informed than a sizable portion of news consumers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If I could vote this up high enough to reach the pages of the NYT, then I would. It gives so much perspective on the kinds of things other governments and societies could actually be doing right.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a great write-up, thanks Patrick. Very much agreed about the hyperbolic news coverage, my Mother called me at 3am to warn me that a giant tsunami was about to hit San Francisco (where I live). Human engineering really prevailed this time. Still, shockingly sad to see videos like this:

<http://ow.ly/4dvh0>

</comment><comment><USER30> Agreed. After living in Japan for a while, european point of view on this earthquake makes me smile.

Anyway, prayers and best wishes to Japan.

On nuclear reactors: I bet Japan will restart them soon. Give them a month, max 3. For the fcks sake, they still hunt whales. IMHO Japan is one of those countries that still don't give a damn about loud-screamos. Although they'll upgrade their plants to prevent failure like this one. Kudos to them.

<comment><USER31> Re reactors: you're kidding yourself. The reacors that shut down regularly will be restarted, sure. But those where cooling failed will NOT run in a month or 3. Those where the core melted are gone beyond salvage.

And patio11 is talking bullshit as well: the situation at Fukushiuma may not be a Apocalyptic Nightmare Scenarios _yet_ , but the systems did _not_ work "exactly as designed", the situation it's _not_ under control, and may still turn into a ANS if containment fails and the wind turns towards Tokyo (which is forecast to happen around Tuesday). Flooding the building with sea water is a desparate measure, not SOP.

<comment><USER32> Since AFAIK they were designed to withstand a 8.2 earthquake, they pretty much exceeded expectation. And we can reasonably count on the standards being upgraded significantly after this.

I like a lot the comparison of nuclear energy with airplane safety: when you look at the statistics, it's a lot safer. But when it fails, it makes the headlines.

<comment><USER31> The richter scale is pretty meaningless in that regard because it measures the total energy released by a quake, not the destructive power at a given point. To use it for a design spec, you'd have to specify the depth of the quake, the length and frequency of the shockwaves and, most importantly, the distance from the epicenter.

I'd be very interested to learn what those specs actually said. If it really was a Richter scale value, it would logically have to be at point blank, which this quake wasn't. If so, the energy that hit the reactors may well have been considerably less than what they were designed for,

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence Thank you Patrick for a very insightful and interesting piece explaining how Japan is engineered to react in situations such as these.

The checklists are absolutely fantastic. I've been a part of writing various different disaster manuals that were to be used in the event of X and none of them had checklists, I am going to have to add that in.

</comment><comment><USER33> Thank you for this and it was highly informative, but the article's tone seems a bit apathetic to me. It is still tough for me to stomach even a little engineering pride in the immediate wake of a tragedy of this magnitude. I know the policies and procedures in place worked as they should for the earthquake's immediate damage, but what about the specific preparedness for the tsunami, which will be the largest cause of causalities. It is an enormously challenging problem, but surely more could have been done.

Also: Would be better to say Great Britain and Honshu are about the same size instead that Honshu is larger (Britain is slightly larger). _Leiman Shock_ : slight spelling error in Lehman Brothers?

<comment><USER34> More can always be done. Confining your reaction to the emotional is uninformative and exactly the sort of panic that our media creates and is creating about this event.

If you can't slip smoothly from being sad about the death and destruction to analyzing the disaster response dispassionately, that's your problem.

<comment><USER33> I think a comprehensive discussion includes the large moral impact: causalities from tsunami. I believe the article was pretty apathetic to this matter, and the high-number of causalities may conflict with the premise that everything went as planned. You said more can always be done, but I would like to know what. I think it is pretty self-righteous to prioritize our media- distortion matters over this question. Perhaps I had poor choice of words, but I believe this does not entirely invalidate my point.

<comment><USER34> This post as a whole is not a comprehensive discussion of the quake. It is explicitly about the media distortion of the event. If your point is valid it remains off-topic.

Additionally, your language indicates you're still not grasping the problem we are examining. There is no "premise that everything went as planned." That is absolutely not his point at all. His point is that there is a hugely complex system that performed admirably, that emergency relief systems are a war against the unexpected.

I think it's pretty self-righteous to prioritize the decision-making that the Japanese will take care of on their over examining and controlling our own reactions, reactions based on a poor understanding of the emergency response and hysterical reporting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Good to hear you are safe Patrick! And thanks for educating us on Japan's Geography etc

</comment><comment><USER36> Anyone with a mirror please?

<comment><USER4> I'm getting hammered pretty hard (Jimmy Wales decided to retweet it), and discovered a bug in my Apache configs, but have fixed it. It should hopefully hold up.

The larger bug is, of course, using Apache when if this had been on Nginx I would be snug in my bed right now instead of getting paged. _shakes fist_

<comment><USER36> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nukes are only "safe" when built to spec like the functioning,socialist government of Japan is capable of. And then very "intelligent" blog articles try to rationalize a cancer causing, radiation inducing thing. Nuke plants that are old, not kept up to date, etc are very very dangerous. As economies ebb and flow, the demand for energy always is present, but the resources to keep a plant up to spec are not. Sustainable resources like hydro, wind, solar, geothermal and tidal are far less worrysome, on a _different_ level of dangerous, and do not require disaster contingency plans after contingency plans. Keep It Simple Stupid, nukes are not simple and they are not stupid, let us usher in an era of idiot proof nuke free earth that allows for energy independence from the empire of the nuclear grid. To the solarnet! To the hydronet! To the geonet! To the windnet! To the tidalnet!

<comment><USER38> I have to assume you are joking?

<comment><USER37> Not joking at all. The reason sustainables are not super popular is that they have high initial investment costs, and represent decentralized power. Unless you have a united force supporting them like the spanish government (Spain is one of the most sustainable countries) or the recent 10 billion dollar investment for offshore wind by South Korea, you are not really going to win the economic battle necessary to get us going sustainable. Sustainables are a form of decentralized power, so there are a lot of reasons why centralized power does not want it to exist.

<comment><USER37> Since this thread started, Japan has now 3 failed reactors, and 1 approaching meltdown. I take that back. No government, private industry, etc, no matter how organized is equipped to handle nuclear energy at the scale they currently operate at. There are nuclear projects that operate on 1/100th the scale. And this represents a decentralization of power. I'm still not interested in nuclear power. There are so many lucrative, healthy, green, sustainable alternatives.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Events Suck - <AUTHOR> http://hotspotapp.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/facebook-events-suck/

<comment><USER2> Facebook events are fine, it's the writer's FB friends that 'suck'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Lesiki. Even if your friends don't 'suck', the fact that its spammy still makes the platform far less effective. Even if your friends aren't spamming you, its very likely one of your friends does have friends who do. That person is less likely to respond to your event invites because they have either turned off notifications or it gets lost amidst the spam.</comment></comment>


Ten Things I've Learned While Dating an Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://alysonshane.com/blog/post/3976/10-things-ive-learned-while-dating-entrepreneur <comment><USER2> Can we stop pretending that entrepreneur's are a new species that need special treatment?

It's work. A job. And, in fact, from an economics perspective, small business ownership by those under 30 is at an all-time low.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree. I have worked in two "startups" (both great experiences). My father started an electrical contracting business when he was in his 20s. No one called him an entrepreneur or said he was building a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _10 Things I 've Learned While Dating Somebody Without Balance in Their Life_ would be a more appropriate title for this post.

> Everyone says that they want to date someone driven" John said to me last > night "but most people can't actually date someone with drive and ambition > because they feel threatened by it."

This is a convenient way to justify one's inability to maintain healthy relationships and explain away past failed relationships, but most of the time it simply isn't true. It is entirely possible to be ambitious and driven while having interests outside of "work" and creating clear boundaries between one's professional pursuits and personal relationships. People who leave workaholics do so not because they are threatened by the workaholic's motivation to work but because they are incapable of contributing to a relationship.

</comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't really work out if this was a parody or a cry for help. If it's not the former, I think it's pretty desperately sad.

<comment><USER6> How so?

<comment><USER5> Because it sounds like the relationship she is describing is between two work colleagues (or perhaps two co-founders) - "Mostly, we talk about work" \- not a romantic relationship between adults; almost every point she makes is an attempt to justify the compromises she must make on a daily basis because of her partner's obsession with work.

There is more to life than work, and (to quote John Ruskin) there is no wealth but life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The various statements about this person's partner having horrible life balance are unfounded at best. Yes, this article could point to poor life balance, but it could just as well point to a well oriented but clearly dedicated and passionate person.

While the behaviors may not be normal, there is a line between enabling someone by sacrificing your own needs and simply accepting that everyone is different in their passions, drives and hobbies.

<comment><USER4> > The various statements about this person's partner having horrible life > balance are unfounded at best.

You know how you can tell when you have a problem with work-life balance in a relationship? When your partner writes a blog post noting:

1\. The lack of time you spend together.

2\. The work-related things you constantly talk about that he/she gets tired of.

3\. Your inability to remember things.

4\. That he/she plays second fiddle to your work.

5\. Your inability to maintain a sane schedule.

6\. His/her feelings of loneliness, annoyance and frustration.

No relationship is perfect, but the author has been with her boyfriend for only a year and all of these things are already clearly weighing on her. Right now, she's trying to justify them. But most people can only do that for so long before attempted accommodation turns to anger and resentment. When that happens, relationships end, partners cheat, etc.

<comment><USER8> > Right now, she's trying to justify them. But most people can only do that > for so long before attempted accommodation turns to anger and resentment.

Or before they meet someone new and interesting.

No, I don't mean that old and tired "she's looking for the next best thing" or "he's a stepping stone" or "she's easy prey" crap.

What I mean is that tiny, contingent moment she will/may accidentally meet someone who will peak her curiosity. Then all these attempts (and she is doing some really really heavy lifting there) fail one after the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This scenario is not limited to entrepreneurs and founders. The boyfriend described has a passion, is lucky enough to be getting paid to pursue said passion, and seems to keep it his highest priority. I currently 'know a guy' like that. He doesn't date.

I was also once a guy like that. It was only at that "me or your passion" point in the relationship that priorities were re-evaluated, and our relationship drastically improved for the both of us since. The choice doesn't have to be black and white as was presented between the quotes in the previous sentence, but the idea that it might be was enough to make me think more seriously on the matter.

If the author is happy taking a back seat to her partner's life, then so be it and good for her. The tone of the article, in my opinion, indicated otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's not just entrepreneurs - working professionals who work long hours can overdo it. Pro tip: if it's Saturday night and you can't think of anything to talk about besides work, you are boring your partner and ruining your relationship.

</comment><comment><USER11> "10 Things I Learned While Dating a Shitty Boyfriend"

</comment><comment><USER12> They aren't able to converse about anything other than work. People should be more interesting than this. If there's nothing new to talk about ever then you need to do some activity together or spend more time reading or whatnot. I don't think anyone in my life could explain what I do better than 'codes some Internet stuff and data'... because I rarely talk about work. If people want to hear about your work, they will ask you and beg to hear more. Otherwise they really don't care.

</comment><comment><USER13> _> "when you just want to spend the day vegging out eating an entire can of Pringles"_

A whole day?! Driven entrepreneurs like me can finish a can of pringles in 15 minutes.</comment>


Why do UDP packets get dropped? - <AUTHOR> http://jvns.ca/blog/2016/08/24/find-out-where-youre-dropping-packets/ <comment><USER3> I was excited when I saw the title -- UDP is the workhorse for data transfers on many projects I work on. The info, though, was very basic.

TL; DR version: packets get dropped when some buffers, at your local computer or a router between here and there get full.

I do not want to sound too critical -- the info is good for someone who never heard of UDP.

But I was hoping for more information. More substantiation on why full buffers are the main source of UDP drops (e.g., can smart throttling take some/most of the blame -- given the need to drop a packet, dropping a UDP is usually less painful than dropping TCP, etc.)? any quantitative numbers on sample network / hardware? etc.

<comment><USER4> Dropping TCP is normally preferable, I'd have thought, as it'll cause the TCP socket to back off. Dropping UDP is less likely to lead to such behaviour.

<comment><USER5> It's more because UDP is designed to be an unreliable protocol, packet losses are expected to happen and applications will have deal with it - <USER2> dropping a TCP packet _may_ cause the congestion control algorithm to back off, but you're guaranteed to waste more traffic while those TCP sessions figure out WTF happened and retransmit.

<comment><USER6> UDP isn't designed to be unreliable. It inherits the reliability of what it's built and run on, and doesn't compensate for it.

<comment><USER7> UDP should be considered in the context of IP network and TCP. In this canonical and typical context, it is designed to the unreliable alternative of TCP, as an IP transport layer protocol.

<comment><USER8> I recall reading that UDP was left as such a thin wrapper over packets so that when another protocol like TCP was found to be the wrong solution for a problem, you could easily build your own reliability and congestion protocols over the top of UDP.

Of course, I think that reference was in a book, so I can't find it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> All of these posts are fantastic. I can only presume at some point they're going to be collected and turned into an extremely good book on Unix performance and diagnostics investigation; it'd be a worthy sibling to the older great Unix books like Panic!.

The infectious tone is part of it, but I think the bigger win is just how little Evans cares about what the reader/writer is "supposed" to know. Each post goes from a standing start with almost nothing presupposed all the way into the weedy details.

Regarding this post: it's getting close to a pretty big idea. Once you grok why packets get lost† --- congestion --- you're pretty close to understanding the big idea behind TCP, and how the Internet works and figures out how fast to send things, even though we're on crappy wi-fi connections connected to even crappier DSL lines connected to OC192 backbones.

† _Fun additional reason we found when trying to build a next-gen "routed" IRC in the 90s: when routes change!_

</comment><comment><USER10> This is not an original opinion, but I love her style of writing. I can feel the pure unadulterated joy at learning these things. Sometimes I learn along with her, sometimes I am seeing an old subject through new eyes. Always, it's worth the read.

</comment><comment><USER11> Her category 'lost in transit' is perhaps the biggest cause of UDP drops. No matter how big your buffers on the send/receive side, if an intermediary carrier decides UDP is not important or a D/DoS threat to their network, bye bye packet... or in some cases of rate-limiting, see you in a while perhaps.

A few rabbit-holes to dive down:

[https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA14-017A](https://www.us- cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA14-017A)

[http://www.christian- rossow.de/articles/Amplification_DDoS.p...](http://www.christian- rossow.de/articles/Amplification_DDoS.php)

[https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-byrne-opsec-udp- advisory-00....](https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-byrne-opsec-udp- advisory-00.txt)

[https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/taps/charter/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/taps/charter/)

<comment><USER12> The app can be at fault too. Some traffic is bursty (video frames, large files, images) and some client stacks have tragically small IP buffers (as little as 128K in some OSs). Apps must be prepared to read to exhaustion without pausing to process in those situations, then process once the buffer- storm is over.

<comment><USER13> Yep, I once saw a case with syslog over UDP with thousands of servers reporting to one central logging point. All the servers ran a command at the same time, and logged a message within ms of each other. The flood of UDP messages caused completely predictable input buffer overflow.

<comment><USER14> Otherwise called the stampeding herd effect. The way to address this is to introduce a random sleep on the remote servers before the command executes to spread the load.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Large UDP datagrams are much more likely to be dropped than small ones. A short datagram will fit in a single IP packet. A maximally sized datagram may take about 40. If you have a 1% packet loss rate, then the short datagrams get lost 1% of the time, but the huge ones get lost 33% of the time ( 0.99^40 ). With a 10% packet loss you get almost 99% loss of maximally sized UDP datagrams.

The extra pain is that even though the huge datagram is lost, almost all of its data is transmitted. So you have a congested line and you are hammering it extra hard by resending the same data over and over.

Moral: unless you can guarantee low IP packet loss rates across the entire route, be very careful about large UDP packets.

Counter moral: I built a very nice VPN over TCP solution for a customer who insisted 10% packet drop on their network was fine. Completely fixed their large UDP packet based legacy system… which I had designed a decade before.

<comment><USER16> Counter-counter moral: detect Jumbo packets and use them. Except maybe still not over general Internet.

Modern OSes have a thing called black-hole detection, it is a good idea to have something similar in your protocol running on top of UDP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This applies to _ALL_ IP packets, not just UDP. The lack of buffer credits/etc on IP mean that flow control is a function of the higher levels. Your TCP packets are also getting dropped for all the same reasons, its just that TCP backs off, and retransmits, so you don't see it as anything other than a slowdown.

</comment><comment><USER18> If so many packets get lost in buffer overflows, can you somehow make the system wait for the buffer to empty?

If sending a packet syncronously, the system call would just hang until the buffers have drained enough.

How would you do it while receiving? Does the outside network just bang bits through the cable like a radio station? Then you'd have no choice but to save everything as fast as it comes in, lest you loose packets. Or is there, deep down on the lowest levels of the stack, actually some kind of request/response going on, even for UDP? For example at the level of Ethernet frames, or even individual bits? Like "here are some bytes. got them? - yes. - here are some more. got them? - (waiiiiting....) yes." Then you could just let the next router in the system wait while you drain your input buffer.

Even if there is no request/response going on, you could still view your incoming as the next routers outgoing. Configure the router to wait with sending until your client has drained the router's output buffer enough. (That would require the router to know how much data you can take.)

<comment><USER19> > can you somehow make the system wait for the buffer to empty? If sending a > packet syncronously, the system call would just hang until the buffers have > drained enough.

It sounds like you're trying to make UDP lossless. Use TCP instead.

What if I'm running VOIP? Or a real-time video game? I don't want to wait for the dropped datagram to be received before processing the next one. It's too late! It should have been received already. Skip it and use the next one.

> Does the outside network just bang bits through the cable like a radio > station?

Basically, yes. Ethernet has no flow control. IP has no flow control. UDP has no flow control. TCP does.

> is there, deep down on the lowest levels of the stack, actually some kind of > request/response going on, even for UDP?

No. Ethernet, as commonly deployed, has no need for this, but CSMA/CD is the retransmit part of the specification in case you are using coax tap or a hub. Each Ethernet frame also has a Frame Check Sequence, and the receiving node will discard the frame if it doesn't match up. It's not up to Ethernet to retransmit. Use TCP for that instead.

<comment><USER20> > Ethernet has no flow control.

Except it does: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_flow_control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_flow_control)

Whether people use it or not is another matter!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What we found when working with UDP (multicast) at a previous gig (its been a while).

The messages can be up to around 64KB. I say "around" because if different OS's based on experiment did different things (this caused us much confusion). I think HPUX would drop them silently on send if they got to 62. at 64 it would return an error. Keep them below 60 to be safe.

Multicast means the router has to be set up correctly. When they muck with the network and add a hop, make sure your TTL (time to live) is set correctly on send. One of our OSs had a strange default to this.

I liked the all or nothing receive nature of UDP messages. Never a waiting and reading for the rest of the data like with TCP. You have no idea if the message got to where it was sent, sometimes you don't need that. Very low overhead too.

Multicast was the selling point for us. Send and everyone attached to the group gets the message. You can subscribe to the groups and see all the messages which makes debugging easier.

</comment><comment><USER22> UDP is just a thin wrapper on an IP packet that adds port and checksum. This in turn is just a thin wrapper on whatever underlying network packets you use.

So UDP packets are as reliable as TCP packets in principle. TCP just hides the unreliability with flow control and retransmits.

<comment><USER23> There is also UDT as a reliable UDP-based alternative to TCP. Some day I'd like to hear from someone who used it whether it's worth it and when it makes sense.

<comment><USER24> Also, if you use Chrome, you're probably already using QUIC. Go to chrome://net-internals/#quic to see for yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Buffers is the putative reason. We'd be tempted to suggest bigger buffers would help. But that contributes to the famous buffer-bloat problem that tanked the internet some years back.

The practical solution is to meter traffic (don't send faster than they can be processed on the receive end or faster than the tightest congestion bottleneck enroute). At the same time process as quickly as possible on the receive side - don't let a single buffer sit in the IP stack longer than absolutely necessary. E.g. receive on one higher priority thread and queue to a processing thread.

<comment><USER25>
       E.g. receive on one higher priority thread and queue to a processing thread.

Doing that you've only created another buffer. But it's worse, because your buffering thread has a higher priority than the processing thread, you've moderated the back pressure, effectively signaling to the sender that you can handle more packets than you actually can.

Yes, the solution to buffer bloat is to only keep buffers at the ends, but whether that's in the kernel or in your application shouldn't matter in most of cases, if any at all. Better to just let the kernel handle it and not recreate the wheel.

Tweak the kernel send/receive buffers if you want. The defaults on Linux are usually too aggressive, but I don't see any need to do much more than that.

<comment><USER12> UDP has no back pressure, that's the point here.

And as observed elsewhere in this thread, some OSs have tragically small buffers (128K). Its absolutely vital to keep those buffers from filling in ambitious apps.

I wrote audio/video/screenshare communications code for years. In the bursty situation I described, the whole point is to offload the ip stack buffer into the app buffer at high speed.

<comment><USER25> Ah, right. But with the caveat that there's not any other control flow. Most UDP-based protocols support either some kind of flow control (e.g. RTP/RTCP) or retransmit (e.g. DNS), and that was my frame of mind. To stop buffer bloat it's important for people to stop implementing hacks that make a peer look more responsive than it actually is. It would be a shame if people got the idea that UDP necessarily meant that lessons of buffer bloat don't apply.

I've also written streaming media services for many years. RTP/RTCP, for example, supports adaptive rate limiting, though few implement it. The RTCP sender and receiver reports signal packet loss and jitter so that the sender can, e.g., dynamically decrease the bitrate. If implemented properly, buffering too many RTP packets can hurt the responsiveness of the dynamic adaptation, which can quickly lead to poorer quality. (Modern codecs help to mitigate this issue, but largely because the creators have spent a lot of time putting more adaptation features into the codecs and the low-level bitstream knowing that software higher up the stack is doing it wrong.)

For DNS, because Linux has a default 65KB (or greater!) buffer on UDP sockets, it's trivial to get huge packet loss when doing bulk asynchronous DNS queries. The application will quickly fill the deep UDP buffer; with the deep buffer the kernel will keep the ethernet NIC frame buffer packed, with the result that you'll see a ton of collisions on the ethernet segment and dropped UDP packets once the responses start rolling in. That results in a substantial fraction of the DNS queries have to retransmit, and because the retransmit intervals are so long, that means a bulk query operation that could have finished in a few seconds or less could take upwards of a minute as the stragglers slowly finish or timeout. Without the deep UDP pipelines, the ethernet segment would be less likely to hit capacity, would see fewer dropped packets, and so the aggregate time for the bulk query operation would be several times less.

Reducing the UDP output buffer is substantially easier than implementing heuristics or gating for ramping up the number of outstanding DNS queries. The latter, if well written, might be more performant, but just doing the former would alleviate most of the problem, allowing you to move on to more important tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The the root cause is always buffers? That's it? Nothing ever gets lost for some other reason, maybe some sort of collision?

<comment><USER27> There aren't a lot of true bus topologies out there any more for collisions to occur on. And Wi-Fi retransmits.

<comment><USER28> Just to be clear, you mean Wi-Fi retransmits in the case of a collision a-la Ethernet, right? Was talking to someone a while ago who was under the impression that a TCP packet that didn't get ack'd within a certain window might be retransmitted by a Wi-Fi router that was closer to the destination. I was pretty certain it was wrong, but since you said, "Wi-Fi retransmits", just checking that's not what you meant.

<comment><USER27> Yeah he's wrong, routers don't buffer for downstream reasons in any context I've seen.

That being said, Wi-Fi retransmits on more than just collisions. Under the hood, Wi-Fi actually has it's own acknowledgement protocol beneath the Ethernet layer. The idea is that with electrical bus protocols like Thicknet, each tap has a pretty good view of the whole bus. For wireless you might see your own frames just fine, but the destination might not. So you need to retransmit not just when you see collisions, but when the destination hasn't explicitly acknowledged your packets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > So if you have a network card that's too slow or something, it's possible > that it will not be able to send the packets as fast as you put them in! So > you will drop packets. I have no idea how common this is.

This is extremely uncommon on 1Gbps NICs but is much more common on 10Gbps+ NICs. Also this type of dropping can happen on both RX and TX.

EDIT:

Also the author missed a set of buffers. The RX/TX rings on the NIC! These store packets on the NIC before they are moved to RAM (for RX) or sent on the wire (for TX). You can see them and configure their size using ethtool on Linux.

       $ ethtool -g ens6
       Ring parameters for ens6:
       Pre-set maximums:
       RX:		4096
       RX Mini:	0
       RX Jumbo:	0
       TX:		4096
       Current hardware settings:
       RX:		512
       RX Mini:	0
       RX Jumbo:	0
       TX:		512

<comment><USER30> "This is extremely uncommon on 1Gbps NICs but is much more common on 10Gbps+ NICs. Also this type of dropping can happen on both RX and TX."

Is this backwards, or does the faster NIC really drop more packets? That seems like it would be unfortunate.

<comment><USER29> Not at "low speeds" but at line rate it requires a lot more CPU power to process all of those packets which often leads to drops. These drops specifically are called RX ring/fifo overflows/overruns and happen when the NIC enqueues more then rx_ring_size packets before the OS initiates a DMA of incoming packets from the NIC to RAM.

I suppose if you point a 10Gbps UDP stream at 1Gbps NIC there will be drops but these drops will happen at the switch not at the interface which is a different type of dropping.

<comment><USER30> Gotcha, so it's the NIC dropping the packets, but really it's because the host machine fails to process them in time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Somewhat off-topic, but what always wondered me is that why we don't have something like BitTorrent-IP or FlashGet-IP, where you you can split stream into independent [stream-like] segments and wait for them separately, retaining sequential structure. I.e. TCP with separate channels. This would solve many problems with 'site stuck in load-progress' when some item near </head> failed to arrive and now entire <body> canot be rendered because we wait for that retransmission.

I know HTTP2(?) and/or SCTP moved in this direction, but seems no luck.

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting fact, there's an ARP buffer in the Linux kernel, which holds outbound packets waiting for ARP resolution, which holds 3 packets (not configurable last time I checked).

<comment><USER33> No. Linux uses the socket buffer to buffer packets while ARP is in progress. (The only sane thing to do imo). I believe the "buffers 3 packets" was how it was done it the early 2.0 kernels.

Windows[1], BSDs[2], OSX[3] only buffers 1 packet per socket while it's ARPing

        [1] Empirical testing.
        [2] https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man4/arp.4.html
        [3] http://www.unix.com/man-page/FreeBSD/4/arp/ and similar for other BSDs

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "when a few dropped packets here and there don't mean the end of the Universe. Sample applications: tftp (trivial file transfer protocol, a little brother to FTP), dhcpcd (a DHCP client), multiplayer games, streaming audio, video conferencing, etc."

[http://beej.us/guide/bgnet/output/html/singlepage/bgnet.html...](http://beej.us/guide/bgnet/output/html/singlepage/bgnet.html#twotypes)

</comment><comment><USER35> I used to write processing software for stock exchange data feeds such as OPRA ([https://www.opradata.com/](https://www.opradata.com/)), they were UDP only at the time.

Of course packets could be lost so there actually was a paper based form you could fill in and re-request the missed data packet by fax (no-one ever did that, though).

I think by now they implemented a TCP/IP connection to request re- transmissions these days.

</comment><comment><USER36> The guy also misses the point that packets can be dropped because of integrity check failures: if the packet has been altered in some way (cosmic ray, WiFi interfering with microwaves or whatever), then the checksum fails and the packet is dropped.

Actually, the causes of packet dropping are (AFAIK) exactly the same as in TCP. But in TCP, dropped packets are sent again.

One exception though: in UDP, delayed packets won't be waited for long before being dropped.

<comment><USER37> The ways in which packets are accidentally lost is the same between TCP and UDP, but if you have 150Mbps total coming in from four different ports and you need to route that data over a single 100Mbps port, then the router needs to choose which packets to drop. I bet that TCP packets take priority over UDP in many routers.

<comment><USER35> > "I bet that TCP packets take priority over UDP in many routers."

Unless you prioritize them differently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The article doesn't even skim the surface on the underlying reasons why packets get dropped. First, unless you're using some snazzy QoS the router doesn't care if the packet is UDP, so why is he even talking about UDP in the first place? Does he not realize that TCP and others are just as likely to get dropped, TCP just automatically resends.

</comment><comment><USER39> (I wish authors would date articles.)

<comment><AUTHOR> URL has the date of 2016 08 24 ...

<comment><USER39> That's funny, I'd even viewed the source looking for a date, and totally missed the url!

Not so sure that urls should be any more than a uniqid - should they have semantic meaning? Discuss... No don't.

Ta.

<comment><USER19> <time datetime="2016-08-24T18:53:10-04:00" pubdate="" data- updated="true"></time></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why can't we trust what we see? - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8617945.stm

<comment><USER2> So researchers in Great Brittan discover that eye witness accounts are nearly worthless? I guess it's time to put cameras all over the country then, oh wait.</comment>


The unsung development miracles of our time: Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria   - <AUTHOR> http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2010/11/the-unsung-development-miracles-of-our-time.html

<comment><USER2> These countries demonstrate "a willingness to depart from the conventional wisdom of the day and experiment with their own remedies." Sounds like a startup mentality in a diplomatic setting. It's interesting to note as well the author's observation on the lack of democratic progress in these countries. I think the reason that the tone of the article is that of surprise is that these countries think and act differently from Western counterparts. It is hard to imagine progress can impact others who don't follow the same principles as yourself.

<comment><USER3> I am wondering if by "wisdom of the day" he means the standard IMF and World Bank policy + loan packets for developing countries, that often lead to an increase of GDP but a decrease or stagnation of social indices.

As for "democratization" , it seems somehow there is the unspoken assumption that a country has to go through it and it should the first on the list. It usually comes along with liberalization of the markets to the outside products and companies.

My guess is that most people in developing countries would rather quickly opt for access to healthcare, education, jobs, low crime rate, and peace, even if it means losing democracy.

<comment><USER4> Democracy is actually not that important. At least for smallish countries, I'd say. Singapore, Hong Kong, and, say, early Britain did fine without democracy.

The rule of law and proper markets strike me as much more important. They do often go hand in hand with democracy, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting:

"Only Tunisia among the three is a high growth country, underlining one of the report's main findings that economic growth and human development often diverge significantly, even over as long a time frame as 40 years."

<comment><USER6> Morocco's emigration to Europe and foreign companies establishing there might be two factors to take in consideration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> tunisia is shit, it's a tough dictatorship where free expression means prison, torture and repression, and if you dare to publish that online it gets censored. that's our case since august 2000 and needless to say youtube, dailymotion and all video sharing sites for that matter are blocked while facebook is filtered and the net lives on DPI. <USER7>
</comment><comment><USER8> The best book I've read about development is "Bad samaritans". Damn interesting, indeed, and flies in the face of conventional wisdom, like these countries apparently do.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why did the author put scare-quotes around `facts'?

</comment><comment><USER9> "What is somewhat puzzling, as Rodriguez and Samman also note, is that these countries have not made nearly as much progress in democratization."

You can read more on this phenomena in Fareed Zakaria's excellent book, "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad"

<comment><USER10> I never thought it possible, but I think it's actually cogent to quote Jackie Chan in an HN thread!

"I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we are not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

In alot of ways, there are some cultures to which democratization is simply incompatible, like those with 1.5 billion people. Even here in the US, we're finding that our rights to move freely must be tempered by TSA searches, PATRIOT act and other impingements in the name of security, so why is it so surprising that countries can increase their quality of life and economic standing while still holding onto "antiquated" notions of freedom? What if that is actually the end-run for civilization and it's actually the US that is behind the political ideology curve? We seem to be moving inexorably toward China-like "freedom with caveats" direction, and the electorate actually seems to prefer it (if this past mid-term election can be deemed any indication).

<comment><USER11> If you total the number of people living in Western democracies, you get more than 1.3 billion, the current population of China. You can prove this easily, if you count India as a Western democracy, or harder, if you don't (US + South America (except for Venezuela) + Mexico + Western Europe).

>there are some cultures to which democratization is simply incompatible

There's no evidence _at all_ to believe that democracy wouldn't work in China, as it's never been tried. On the other hand, if you look at the downfall of the Soviet Union, Russia's experiment with democracy has been quite a success, even if it's not so perfect a freedom as we're party to in the US. It's certainly not Stalinist and the very existence of organized resistance movements in Russia, something that would have been entirely unheard-of thirty years ago, is a sign that they've made huge strides in the right direction, and their global standing seems to have benefited.

>Even here in the US, we're finding that our rights to move freely must be tempered by TSA searches, PATRIOT act and other impingements in the name of security

If by "security" you mean "security theatre", then sure. The vast majority of academics disagree with the new restrictions, and most people I know think they're absurd.

>What if that is actually the end-run for civilization and it's actually the US that is behind the political ideology curve?

Let's all hope not! I cannot understand this argument, as there seems to be no substance to it. There's a weight of literature on the value of freedom (e.g. John Locke, Voltaire), and little inquiry in this regard.

>We seem to be moving inexorably toward China-like "freedom with caveats" direction, and the electorate actually seems to prefer it

I have no idea how you could come to this conclusion. The vast majority of tea party anxiety over Obama was that he was restricting freedom _too much_. The main issue of the protesters was that their freedom was threatened, at least in their perception, and whether the candidates they chose are actually working to improve freedom is not quite so relevant as the reasons they chose such candidates.

Quite the contrary, just two weeks ago the US state of California came closer to legalizing marijuana than has any other entity for the past thirty years. A general movement toward restricted freedom, indeed. We're seeing such major gains such as legalized abortion and gay marriage even in highly religious regions such as South America and, aparently, Tunisia, and many countries with a long history of human rights violations, e.g. Bangladesh, Vietnam, Nicaragua, have improved markedly in recent years -- the current state of affairs is close to the freeest many such countries have ever seen. You don't hear about all the good things happening in the world in the news as much, but they're happening. The doctrine that freedom of speech is an inalienable human right may have been implemented in the US some 234 years ago, but it only became international law 60 years ago. Progress, indeed.

<comment><USER10> "Let's all hope not! I cannot understand this argument, as there seems to be no substance to it. There's a weight of literature on the value of freedom (e.g. John Locke, Voltaire), and little inquiry in this regard."

I mean, if we continually capitulate to those parties and politicians who support anti-democracy, anti-freedom ideas and laws, why wouldn't there be substance to the argument? Where on earth do you see republicans loosening any laws except tax-based ones? Is that really all there is to freedom? Freedom to spend money the way you see fit? Why do we have to twist ourselves into ideological pretzels about freedom when all it takes is "low taxes = true freedom"? Our speech and actions get limited, our freedom of movement is impinged by naked scanners and crotch invasions. I mean, the theory is sound, I agree (Lock, Voltaire, hell go back to Seneca the Younger while we're reminiscing), but the reality doesn't. Not here in the US, not in Europe, not anywhere. It really is a matter of "the system would work great if it weren't for the users". In our case, the user is the electorate.

"The vast majority of tea party anxiety over Obama was that he was restricting freedom too much."

How, exactly? If anything, he's loosened the reins and widened the locus of control through more open governance. It's the tea party that propose, among other disparate things, placing homeless people in prison barracks, not knowing where in the constitution declared the separation of church and state, and wanting to bring back bartering chickens and other goods for medical care. They are all, of course, almost bombastically fervent about a strong military, and support the wars.

The only freedom they were afraid of was freedom from paying high taxes, and I think to a person _no one_ really wants to pay really high taxes. Ask even bleeding hearts like me and I'll say "yeah, I don't really want to pay really high taxes". But, that seriously seems to be the only platform upon which the Tea Party hung their "freedom" watch; else why weren't they gathering in DC against the PATRIOT act and Guantanamo Bay?

<comment><USER11> >They are all, of course, almost bombastically fervent about a strong military, and support the wars.

You know, this is so entirely wrong that it discredits the whole paragraph. You clearly know nothing about the Tea Party movement, or even that it was started in support of Ron Paul, the most anti-war politician there is.

>I mean, if we continually capitulate to those parties and politicians who support anti-democracy, anti-freedom ideas and laws, why wouldn't there be substance to the argument?

Who's capitulating? There are more democracies in the world today than ever before. _Ever_.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Donating 8 hours design time to any project - <AUTHOR>

I have a free day tomorrow that I would like to donate to any project. What I can do for you in 8 hours?
- Look at how your content is structured and figure out the best way to communicate your idea - Working on the user experience and the mechanics of the idea - Take a look at you branding (fonts, colours, logo etc) - Make broader recommendations that might make the idea more compelling
Realistically I will be able to get one (maybe two) key pages designed. Once it's done I will deliver a PSD with all the design assets you need. If you are serious about making the UX of your idea better and are willing to implement some changes drop the URL in the comments or email me at firstname.lastname@example.com
Why am I doing this? Because I am also trying to get a startup rolling myself and have learned much from other people willing to donate their time. I also love design and figuring out design problems is always an interesting challenge. I will pick one project and get cracking tomorrow (Australian time). You can check out some of my previous work here: http://www.jasonstrachan.com <comment><USER3> People here keep on telling me that my website (<http://www.tarsnap.com/>) is horrible. I'm not convinced that it's really as bad as they say, and given my intended audience (unix geeks who appreciate a lynx-accessible website) I don't want to lose the minimalism; but if someone can improve the site without losing said minimalism I'd be very interested to see the results.

<comment><USER4> Your website actually has a decent design. It's easy to read with big enough font size, line-height and padding and basically it has no glaring annoyances that plague badly designed websites.

I say even more minimalism could do well in regard to the color scheme, and probably the flow of reading on the home page could be improved as well (e.g "Start Using Tarsnap now!" could be placed right underneath "Tarsnap pricing").

Other than that, buttons linking to quick download and registration should do well, too.

<comment><USER5> your website is fine, unless you are targeting non-SysAdmins. Are you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be ashamed to accept your offer without any payment in return, but I'd be most happy if someone that knows design would have a look at ww.com.

So go and spend your 'free' time on something else, but if you feel like doing a freelance job let me know.

What a fantastic thing to do by the way, really classy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OK looks like we are done here. So tomorrow when I wake up I will be working on... _drum roll_ ... Simple Invoices :)

Well done Mr Kelly, I will be emailing you with the details in a little.

</comment><comment><USER7> hey jason

an open source application that i work on needs some serious UX love - <USER2> app and website

Simple Invoices \- website: <http://simpleinvoices.org> \- app: <http://simpleinvoices.org/demo>

your time and any improvements you could make/recommend would be greatly appreciated by our users

note: am in melbourne, australia - so timezone is all good

Cheers

Justin

</comment><comment><USER8> 8hours could make a world of difference on FilmBet.com

I sent you an email.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone else? I'll pick a project in the next few hours...

</comment><comment><USER9> I would love some assistance, but I don't think this is the type I need. What I really need is some hook that will help get me mentally engaged and drawn into learning to make a simulation. I don't really know where to start and my attempts in that direction so far have not born fruit.

Good luck. I hope this goes very well for both you and whomever you gift your services to.</comment>


Club P., an anonymous discussion board - <AUTHOR> https://sometimesright.com/2020/08/03/club-p/ <comment><USER2> Built your own forum? If not, no forum providers allow certain rules to be broken. Be careful.</comment>


Regexp to validate email addresses according to the RFC 822 grammar - <AUTHOR> http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html <comment><USER2> My project [https://github.com/dhoerl/EmailAddressFinder](https://github.com/dhoerl/EmailAddressFinder) constructs a rfc5322 compliant regex by building up small verifiable pieces. You can option comments up to an arbitrary depth. There is a test suite from another interested party that this regex succeeds 100%.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's another rfc822 regex that's credited to Jeffrey Friedl from his _" Mastering Regular Expressions"_ book.

[https://metacpan.org/release/Email- Valid/source/lib/Email/Va...](https://metacpan.org/release/Email- Valid/source/lib/Email/Valid.pm#L399)

</comment><comment><USER4> Contrary to what the title implies the content mentions it's not actually RFC 822 compliant and while it is certainly an impressive regex to behold RFC 822 was already long obsoleted when this was published.</comment>


Ask HN: Are browser notifications user-hostile? - <AUTHOR> Allow me to apologize for my leading questions in advance, but I am looking for arguments for and against the title topic.<p>What percentage of the time do you accept notification requests? How often was it on purpose? How often do you deny them? Does this feature feel like it is abused? <comment><USER2> I deny them 100% of the time (with one forthcoming exception). It's always spammy or click-bait sites that ask permission for push notifications, for no other reason than to push their content even more.

The only time I enabled them was when using the browser-based versions of Hipchat (and then Slack), as receiving notifications about incoming messages was actually useful to me.

<comment><USER3> Citi bank (India) asks all the time, so does almost every Google web app. Some other offenders are ones like movie/event booking site like BookMyShow. But BMS are such shady spammers that I had to create specific filters to receive only booking confirmation in my mailbox. I had created <my email id>+email@example.com and the next day my spam label count was in triple digit. ICICI Bank does, HSBC India does and I would like to add that these two are excellent spammers too. I suspect HSVC India's "unsubscribe" link results in an response "LOL" internally, or it just points to a static content that just shows "Successfully unsubscribed".

Anyway, the only time I need notification is when I am chatting with tech/customer support and I move to other tabs/windows in between.

I guess pretty much all the sites are inching towards being spammy and click- bait now, at least the ones of major companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main problem is that the request to allow notifications pops up the first time you visit a site, at a time when you have no idea yet how much you like and trust the site. This leads me to always permanently deny them (because the second and third time I visit the site, I am still unlikely to know them well enough, so the popups would just be annoying). Then, after that, the notifications have been permanently denied, and you don't get a chance to re- enable them anymore.

So sites should never ask to enable notifications by default, but instead have an easy-to-find-but-not-too-obnoxious button on the homepage to later enable them. (I don't even know if this is technically possible at the moment.) I would still do this for <1% of sites, but at least the functionality would be useful and usable. A Javascript pop-up div in a corner might be acceptable when you visit the site for the 5th time or so.

</comment><comment><USER5> I allow for chat webapps and GCalendar, and deny for everything else, even email. I don't trust any other site not to abuse them, and even if I did, there isn't anything else that would warrant an immediate interruption.

Now, if you're looking for arguments whether or not you should implement them for a user-facing webapp based on a sampling of HN readers' behavior, my guess is we're not really all that representative. If you think any of your users might find them useful, go ahead and implement them.

One caveat, though: most (all?) random websites that want to give me notifications do so by just brazenly requesting permission from the browser. I would prefer if there was a link/button on the website itself that I could use to opt-in (which would trigger the permissions dialog). It just feels sketchy when random websites request notification access (or location access, for that matter), without first presenting me a case for why they want it.

<comment><USER6> For me it's a natural extension of my antiphishing/antiscam/antiadvertising responses. If a web site pops up a thing demanding access to a resource (credentials/credulity/attention) the response is automatically no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Notifications can be useful for web apps. A good rule of thumb is to only ask for permission when the user interacts with your app. For example, I ask for permission when the user clicks a button with the text "Enable Push Notifications" on the user settings screen. Then I let the user choose what kind of notifications they'd like to receive - typically CRUD actions for entities that the user cares about.

<comment><USER8> > A good rule of thumb is to only ask for permission when the user interacts > with your app. For example, I ask for permission when the user clicks a > button with the text "Enable Push Notifications" on the user settings > screen.

This is absolutely the right way to do it. A little unobtrusive in-page suggestion to enable notifications is not a problem; I've enabled them for Slack via such a notification, for instance. But I'm _never_ going to grant a site notification permission if it pops up the browser permission dialog without interaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another point for 100% deny. Not just because of annoyance, but also in order not to have stuff running in the background when my browser is not open.

Hell, I'm actually tuning down in-app notifications as well, especially on chats. I've learned that notifications are distracting, and 99% of time not worth the cost of interruption. I had to get over my FOMO for that, but it's been worth it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I accept them 0% of the time. Always on purpose. 100%. Yes I've never once seen a "allow notifications because _some actual benefit_ ". It's always just forced pop up with no elaboration of why I might actually care to give this permission. It's usually also pops up the first time I visit a site. Why on earth do I want to sign up for the "new blog post" notifications before I even know if I like this blog. It actually immediately discredits your site in my opinion.

I can imagine a responsible implementation Like others are explaining here but have never seen it in the wild myself.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have never accepted a notifications request ever. Now, because of this thread, I've learned how to disable the feature entirely in Firefox (set dom.webnotifications.enabled to false).

</comment><comment><USER12> Whatever the setting is for "don't you EVER pop a browser-originated notification. Don't even ASK." in macOS, I have that turned on.

<comment><USER13> I so wish I knew what that setting was. Guess I could've googled it in the time I've written this reply.

<comment><USER12> _sigh_ You're going to exploit my alpha geek to make me go look and prove I know how to do it, aren't you? :-)

System Preferences/Notifications/Safari. There's a None option. Then Safari/Preferences/Notifications/Uncheck "Allow websites to ask for permission..." IIRC, I've not seen any mention of notifications in Safari since.

<comment><USER13> Just toggled off the "allow websites to ask for permission..." setting in Safari/Preferences/Websites/Notifications. Thanks! Lazy web for the win!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've purposely enabled them for my works slack, and they have been extremely convenient there.

I have intentionally denied them on every other website that asked, not many have asked.

I'm glad they exist. Currently they don't seem to be widely abused. If they become widely abused a "default to silently deny" policy would handle any user-hostility.

<comment><USER4> It's interesting: even though indeed there are not so many sites that ask for them, I still find it an intrusion every time. I suppose it's a kind of conditioning because of all the spamming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google Calendar is the only one I've ever allowed, or would allow.

It's beyond user-hostile, it's a pretty strong signal of a low-quality site at this point.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have never accepted one. If I wanted to read something regularly, I'd bookmark it and revisit it. Or subscribe to the RSS feed if I wanted to keep up to date.

To me, it's just as annoying as apps with notifications, or websites with pop ups about newsletters. All of these things are generally just things trying to add more noise into my life.

I value my quiet. Are you offering more value than my quiet?

</comment><comment><USER17> Pretty much. I only accept them for about 4 sites in total. Anything else, I can't imagine any reason I would accept notifications from them. As far as I'm concerned, "if you want me to see your content in a timely fashion, publish an RSS feed and if I like your site I'll subscribe". This intrusive browser notification stuff is lame.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've never accepted a notification request for any site. The only sites it might be useful for to me, I already use a SSB (aka Mailplane) that's built for that site, so no need.

In the same vein, I absolutely hate the "requests your current location" notifications too. There's basically only one or two sites I've allowed it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised at all the absolutes here. I agree with people on blogs and news sites and things like that. Notifications are an awful thing. I immediately think less of ablog if it tries to get me to enable them.

However, for web apps like calendars and project management and chat they are indispensable. I'm not going to go and check (polling style) my project management software 80 times a day. Which means that if one of my team needs my eye on something the notification makes sue it gets looked at much sooner.

My notification popup from Google Calendar has saved my ass many times because it alerted me to an appointment I forgot I had.

My personal UI pattern that I like is to put a notification option in the settings area and only turn it on (show the prompt to turn it on) when they specifically ask.

</comment><comment><USER19> I allow them for a very small and selective number of sites that I mostly trust. For me this is a pretty high bar. I have three sites whitelisted right now.

Conditions to be whitelisted:

1) I have been using your site for years.

2) Your site has timely important information in my specific field of interest.

3) Your site doesn't engage in monetization practices that lead to a poor user experience (ads that pop over or otherwise interrupt the articles, self- playing audio, self-resizing ads, begging for account creation, etc.)

4) Of all the existing sites on this topic, yours needs to be the best one (proven with many years track record).

Has your site been around for many years?

99.99% of the time I would deny them and consider even the request to be a rude annoyance. If your site is not in the top 1% of long-established quality sites, you shouldn't even request the permission imho.

</comment><comment><USER20> 100% of the time, with a single exception yesterday for an Apple support chat window I had open among a bunch of other ones on a laptop without an external screen. There are a few exceptions where thry're worthwhile but it needs to be part of a focused experience.

</comment><comment><USER21> They are useful IMHO, but I only allow 1 or 2.

Maybe one for emails and one for my chess games. All the rest denied.

</comment><comment><USER22> I disable all notifications in all programs, browsers and also those generated by the OS.

The whole idea of notifications is that I want to be interrupted from whatever I'm doing to learn the information in a timely manner. This is pretty much never true.

<comment><USER23> Same here. Especially with screen-sharing or pair work. Receiving some NSFW language IM notifications from chaty coworker is absolutely embarrasing. Just simple dot indicator on a tray icon is enough to remind me to check later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> 0%, no exceptions.

Any website that asks for them gets immediately flagged as an entitled piece of s--t.

</comment><comment><USER25> I deny them all, I also turn off most notifications from programs on my PC and on my phone. My email clients, direct messages on HipChat and some facebook notifications on my phone (and phone calls and SMS) are the only notifications I want. I like to be in charge of when to consume information, instead of being force feed information.

So except HipChat at work I get less than 10 notifications a day in total on all platforms. Most can be looked at when I notice them, and closed right away. Still keep them on for the 1 in 10 that I want to read.

</comment><comment><USER26> I allow a couple, namely Google Calendar and Remember the Milk (which I use for work, sort of). I don't mind being asked if I'd like to enable them - if I don't want something to notify me I just hit "no". I get that some people would find that annoying though, especially if you're more of a prolific reader than I.

</comment><comment><USER27> I accept them for a few messaging apps, where they're truly useful enough that it balances out the inconvenience of saying no to the many sites that have no business asking.

I think browsers would do well to let users whitelist some sites and pretend to all others that the capability isn't available.

</comment><comment><USER28> I always deny them. I have only ever seen clickbait sites use them, and I do not trust them to not abuse the system.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've never actually seen one, I deny all of them, because I've never thought to myself, that they could possibly be useful.

To me, They are an annoyance. I become suspicious of any site wanting me to accept them.

I would disable this feature globally if I could (or cared enough to figure out how.)

</comment><comment><USER30> People invented pop-up blockers for a reason, browser notifications are only used by intrusive spammy web-sites, similar to old pop-ups that wants to sell you Viagra or claiming you are the 1 millionth user. I only allow work related ones, like Gitlab or Slack.

</comment><comment><USER31> Never accepted on, blocked this in browser settings, I've only seen it abused. It's roughly at the same level of irritation as follow up spam, asking the browser to set the page visited as your home page and spam asking for read confirmation.

</comment><comment><USER32> Deny them all because they tend to be obtrusive and when I did allow a select few, they were frequently of little value or importance. Since denying them all I get more done and am not subjected to frequent interruptions.

</comment><comment><USER33> The only ones I allow are from my irc client (Glowing Bear) and Slack. I really don't like the current UI, I wish it was less intrusive, like the "allow popups" UI in browsers.

</comment><comment><USER34> I like it that Nextcloud and protonmail have them. Other than that I find them extremely annoying. Its like a twitter friend request just to send you adds, I have never accepted any of them.

</comment><comment><USER35> There is only one that I've ever accepted. It's from Remote Messages jailbreak app that let's send and receive SMSs & iMessages from your PC on the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER36> I allow them for Slack and Gmail. That's it.

If you have a news/entertainment/social media site that ask for notifications, I immediately see your site as spammy.

</comment><comment><USER37> They are good for game sites like lichess

Wait until these websites start implementing service workers which don't require the webpage in question to be open

</comment><comment><USER38> Always deny except for Slack.

I don't even enable notifications for most apps on my desktop or on my phone. There are enough distractions in modern life already.

</comment><comment><USER39> I deny them 100% time. Almost all websites seem to ask them nowadays. However, very few websites seem to ask once I have denied it permanently.

</comment><comment><USER40> I have disabled the feature completely in Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER41> Another data point for 100% denial here, my gf authorized one for the local newspaper (she's also an avid newsletter subscriber)

</comment><comment><USER42> I accept them if I knew exactly what it was used for (chat, calendar, conference) but the random ones around the net are 100% deny.

</comment><comment><USER43> Yes! Don't even ask unless you're WhatsApp web. Actually the browser should auto-deny all requests.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think it's a great feature but I should be the one asking for notifications not them.

</comment><comment><USER45> I deny notification requests 100% of the time.</comment>


Hypervisor Live Migration Intel/AMD incompatibilities - <AUTHOR> http://dearcloud.com/?p=115

<comment><USER2> I'm not really certain what they're referring to. The VM itself should be completely portable between VMMs. The VMMs, however, are completely system/processor dependent.

MSRs and the like should not pose an issue for the VM as the VMM should present Intel or AMD compatible via the CPUID instruction. If the OS supports AMD processors natively then it should support the AMD CPUID. Similarly, if the OS supports Intel it should support Intel CPUID.

Edit: OK, I missed the part about Live Migration. I never really saw this as an issue because I never considered using Live Migration in a mixed-processor environment. Generally, I wouldn't recommend it (I highly doubt that AMD and Intel are suddenly going to become identical).</comment>


OS X 10.9.4 Update Broken? - <AUTHOR>

A bit of a rant: the OSX 10.9.4 update is supposed to fix a bug where the computer would not re-connect to Wifi after sleep. In the 3 years of owning my mac I have never had this issue. Since updating yesterday, the exact problem the update was supposed to fix has been happening consistently when my mac wakes.<p>Yes, I've tried restarting. Curious if anyone else is having this issue? <comment><USER2> I'm on a retina macbook pro, the latest 13" 256gb. During the first weeks I bought it, it connected from sleep with no issues. I'm almost a month in and is guaranteed to break if I put my mac to sleep now. I have to turn off and on my WiFi for it to work.

I'm also on 10.9.4

<comment><USER3> I think there have been some serious 10.9 wifi issues, just anecdotal from my 10.9 experience too. I've always been impressed in the past with my Macs' ability to wake up and get on Wifi in just a second or two at the extreme, but since 10.9, I've had all sorts of weird connection issues.I went so far even as to wonder if a device in my home was shorting and putting out stray EM radiation as I've actually had and fixed that problem with a friend's lamp before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did NOT have this problem until I updated to 10.9.4, now I do have this problem, you're not alone. 11" Air, mid-2014 (about a month old)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to hear I'm not crazy - mine is an MBA too, but an older model (mid 2011).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It totally fixed my issue.

Even my half-sized SD card on the size is mounted on wake. (Whereas before, I would have to take it out and put it back in again)

Before the update, it was pretty annoying and felt like someone really dropped the ball in competence.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not completely fixed. My guess is that only certain Airport Express cards are affected, as I have some machines that fail to reconnect and others that are fine.

</comment><comment><USER7> FWIW: I had the same issue on three machines. What worked for me was to unhide the network, i.e. broadcast the SSID.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment - my network's SSID is already being broadcast though.</comment></comment>


The Gender Gap in Startups: Numbers on Women in IT & Life Sciences - <AUTHOR> http://founderresearch.blogspot.com/2008/12/gender-gap-in-startups-part-1-women-in.html <comment><AUTHOR> Part 2 is more recent analysis on compensation differences: [http://founderresearch.blogspot.com/2009/02/gender-gap-in- st...](http://founderresearch.blogspot.com/2009/02/gender-gap-in-startups- part-2.html)</comment>


AIM – Aeronautical Information Manual - <AUTHOR> https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aim_html/index.html <comment><USER2> The FAA publications are pretty great!

PHAK is easy to read, though long: [https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...](https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/phak/)

Thanks for the reminder to get back to studying.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've noticed there seem to be a number of pilots on HN. Anyone know of any hn- like (high quality) communities for pilots or students out there?

<comment><USER4> [https://aviation.stackexchange.com/](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/)

<comment><USER5> lots of people on r/flying as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's like the K&R of flying. Except it comes out every few years, which kind of makes it way better.

</comment><comment><USER6> For anyone who hasn't seen it I also recommend JO 7110, it's the document that governs all of the behavior of Air Traffic Control. I know many pilots who had no idea they could see exactly how decisions were made on the other side of the radio: [https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/7110.65Y_Bas...](https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/7110.65Y_Basic_w_Chg_1_1-30-20.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Before 9/11 we could easily tour an ATC facility with a group of pilots - tower, center, tracon - under Project Raincheck. Not sure if they've started that back up again or not, but it was definitely eye opening.

Edit: Just read the section under "Line Up And Wait" and lol'ed to myself when I saw this:

"Do not authorize an aircraft to LUAW if an aircraft has been cleared to land, touch−and−go,stop−and–go, option, or unrestricted low approach on the same runway."

I'm pretty sure SFO lines up aircraft on the 28's and simultaneously clears someone before the San Mateo bridge to land, while waiting for a landing aircraft to clear the runway.

<comment><USER6> They absolutely can clear someone to land while traffic is still taking off on the runway. Generally they will have the landing traffic go around if they can't get the taking off traffic off fast enough. I believe somewhere they can also land traffic with traffic still on the runway if they have three thousand feet of clearance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Signs & markings is one of the most enjoyable parts - also practical if you're looking out airplane windows in airports frequently! [https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aim_html...](https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aim_html/chap2_section_3.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Canadian version for those that are interested as well: [https://www.tc.gc.ca/ca- publications/AIM_2020-1_E.pdf](https://www.tc.gc.ca/ca- publications/AIM_2020-1_E.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a bit out of date as far as some regulations go, but I am a big fan of Rod Machado's Private Pilot Handbook. Really simple but rich explanations of most of the concepts in a digestible way.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tangential curiousity: Does anyone here have or use the .aero TLD?

<comment><USER11> Developer.aero is hosted by SITA, which also uses SITA.aero

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a flight instructor, I refer to the AIM frequently. It is a good reference. The Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge + the Airplane Flying Handbook are what I use to teach brand new students.

<comment><USER10> You're shadowbanned. I had to vouch for your comments here for them to appear. It is most likely due to the profanity in your username. I highly suggest creating a new account with a more family-friendly username.

<comment><USER12> actually, his username is the preferred FAA designation for CFIs who slow roll their students to get more hours since they are just trying to run up their 1,500 hours for an ATP.

just kidding, 3/4 of the CFIs I worked with are wonderful. One was a little bit of a foxtrot foxtrot though (unrelated reasons).

<comment><USER13> hah, this is true

I only instruct part-time, I'm a full-time software engineer, so I'm in it for the love of flying

<comment><USER12> One of my best CFIs is a Director of Hardware at a startup in the Bay, so that's music to my ears.

I have an IPC coming up, if he can't make it, and you're a CFII, and in the Bay Area, I might want to look you up. Anyway to find you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The name AIM is already in use by, and widely associated with AOL instant messenger [1].

1: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_(software)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_\(software\))

<comment><USER15> The FAA has issued the _Aeronautical Information Manual_ under that title since 1995, and as the _Airman's Information Manual_ from 1967 or earlier, decades before Quantum Computer Services (AOL's predecessor) was founded.

I don't know when ASA first published a book with "FAR/AIM" on the cover in large letters, but I suspect that this, too—a private reprinting of the AIM and selected Federal Aviation Regulations of interest to pilots—predates all things AOL.</comment></comment>


Show HN: HackerBuddy.com - <AUTHOR>

I built HackerBuddy.com with the idea of helping the Hacker News community get one-on-one help with fellow hackers that know their stuff. It matches up people that are good at a particular skill (Ruby on Rails, Python, beta-testing, general startup advice etc) with people that need that specialist help. All it does is swap your email address so that hackers can give fellow hackers one-on-one advice.<p>I built the site as a way to learn Ruby on Rails, I'm still a bit green when it comes to coding so there's a very good chance that the server will fall over. Any feedback you guys have would be really appreciated - and you can get in touch at dave [at] hackerbuddy.com. I hope you find it useful. <comment><USER2> Great idea. A couple feedback items:

\- The icons on user pages which stand for areas of expertise aren't really helpful since you have to hover over them to see what most of them mean (example: a coffee cup means General Advice and a person icon means Usability). At the least, these should have titles above/below them.

\- I'd like the hardcoded areas of expertise removed in favor of an autocomplete freeform box, much like Stack Overflow's tags box. For example, I'd like to put that I'm a Drupal expert and I'd like to look for node.js help, but neither of those are options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much - those are really good suggestions, I really appreciate it - I'll work on them both for v2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love the concept for this, finding friendly hackers to help you on your hack project is massively useful

</comment><comment><USER4> You should also add Flash/Actionscript to the skill list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll add that in the next update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love the idea ... very cool! I need to sharpen my skills before I sign up though ...

<comment><AUTHOR> You can sign up and ask for help to sharpen your skills :) - you wont be listed to help anyone until you click 'help a fellow hacker'

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://hackerbuddy.com>

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting and it will very helpful, now I am ready to contact person who will help me, I already get him email.</comment>


Lovd by Less - Open source social network based on RoR - <AUTHOR> http://www.lovdbyless.com/ I'm not related to these guys, but seems to be a great opensource effort based on RoR. <comment><USER2> Well this may make much Ning less attractive for programmers who want to throw up a social network (which, I think, is not always stupid).

How can Marc Andresen compete?

</comment><comment><USER3> some of the required plugins for this are not really open source. They are under a license Lovd By Less made up that says you can only use them with this project.

<comment><USER4> yeah that license really is BS regarding plugins. I saw them present at barcamp miami. exciting project nonetheless ++ for being open source.</comment></comment>


What is it really like to visit Silicon valley? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.idrsolutions.com/2012/10/what-is-it-really-like-to-visit-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> As a small town southern boy who moved to the "big city" (Charleston, South Carolina), I'm actually interested in seeing photo series like this. Maybe one day my city will be up to that level.

<comment><USER3> He missed the traffic, the crime, the crowding, the incredibly high prices, and the filth. I hope your city never attains those.</comment></comment>