We reduced the AWS costs of our streaming data pipeline - <AUTHOR> https://www.taloflow.ai/blog/reducing-aws-costs <comment><USER2> Hmm. This looks to me like a lot of the savings were realized by moving away from managed services into a scenario where there's more operator overhead. The AWS bill gets lower, but what about the cost of the engineering work?

<comment><USER3> False equivalence. The engineer will be doing more than just cloud work.

This comparison is the #1 flawed sales tactic the cloud companies use to convince you youre saving money

<comment><USER4> > False equivalence. The engineer will be doing more than just cloud work.

> This comparison is the #1 flawed sales tactic the cloud companies use to > convince you youre saving money

Time is of a limited quantity and time spent managing postgres backups (for example) is time not spent doing other (possibly more meaningful/impactful _to the business_) work.

<comment><USER5> what is involved in managing backups? isn't that just a cronjob?

<comment><USER6> First, you need to write the cronjob. But what goes in there? You need to decide exactly how you're going to make a backup, and the process may differ by what's being backed up. Ideally you want a quiescent snapshot, but the way you do that varies by application. What if the application is a distributed application, in which case you need to synchronize the snapshot process among all its nodes? What if it's a master-replica design, where the node that runs the cron job may vary based on the current topology?

And if you need some sort of cluster-aware lock to coordinate backups among different peers, you'll need to decide which system works for you, implement it, and maintain that as a separate system. And if that needs to be upgraded, figure out a bulletproof process for upgrading it while it's still being used as a coordinator.

Then, you need to ensure there's storage for the backup. You need to decide what kind of storage you're going to use, make sure you've got enough space, figure out how to encrypt the storage (very important in secure environments), how to protect the storage using authn/authz. And lots of environments have retention and storage lifecycle policies - you don't want to put the old backups on the expensive fast media; you want it on the cheap slow media. And some environments make you dispose of old data, so you have to figure out how to age it out but without ever losing the backups you want to keep.

Finally, you need to make sure the backups you create are valid and usable. So you'll want to build an automated regression testing procedure to ensure that every time you make a change (regardless of how minor) to the system being backed up or the backup process, that you end up with usable backups.

(Disclaimer: I work for AWS, but opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of my employer.)

<comment><USER7> You make it sound like there aren't cookbooks for many of these scenarios and that the company will have to invent these scripts and procedures by hand.

Yes it is work, but this company's whole reason for being is to save AWS spend, so I assume they have patterns they employ for their clients regularly that achieve their SLO.

<comment><USER8> There are original-definition cookbooks and yet it still costs me time to provision my own lunch vs using the managed service of my corner restaurant.

<comment><USER7> Yes, managed services are better in many cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it highly entertaining a two-year old company who was founded on the basis of helping slash cloud spending found so much waste in their own AWS spend. This is _not_ an example of dogfooding, but an example of sheer incompetency and massive technical debt.

I'd really like to start seeing a series of blog posts from companies who are running extremely lean and efficient tech environments by utilizing cloud in an intelligent manner and avoiding the expensive and unnecessary bullshit that's so prevalent today. The ones that can brag "How we run a $4M/yr SaaS on $40k/yr of AWS spend!" are far more interesting than "How we stopped incinerating millions of VC money by simply turning off shit we didn't need"

<comment><USER10> two-year old companies have limited resources. It might have been a deliberate trade off to focus on work that produces value to the customers.

Maybe the blog post would have been "How we run a $1M/yr SaaS on $40k/yr of AWS spend!" instead of $4M?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Back when AWS started, there would be articles about the work to master scalability and performance for the modern web but as things matured, we somehow ended up in a much larger heap of literature around AWS cost optimization.

<comment><USER12> In some sense this is a good problem to have. With on-prem you used to have very limited resources to start with, so cost efficiency is a baked-in requirement. With cloud providers you seem to have limitless resources and the new problem of cost optimization arises.

Admittedly there's difference between optimizing fully-controlled resources and cloud provider managed services. For one, low visibility into cloud service internals makes such optimization harder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am curious about the actual cost in $! Managing your own kafka or observability infra is expensive, you need a team to do this.

A 67% reduction doesn't say the whole truth. They have more services to manage now, which means they need more people and more time to do this.

Saving 10k from your AWS bill by hiring 2 more engineers is not cost effective.

<comment><USER3> Or course it is.

Where did we get the idea that engineers are hired to do only one thing?

This has never ever been the case in my experience.

Also Kafka being hard this manage is not the case. A simple look into many small companies and startups running their own clusters shows otherwise.

<comment><USER13> Engineers are hired to deliver and produce value. Tooling can be a part of it but if you can outsource something which is not your source of income, you have to do it. Engineering time is more valuable.

I also know many startups and small companies investing 5 people and 6 months to get an observability platform up and running while they could just get datadog or new relic for half the price... and I don't get into account outages and updates to the platform.

I remember a recent uber blog post on how they moved from build tool A to build tool B and a couple of weeks later, 3000 people where laid off. It's important to spend development time on revenue streams.

This is some nice piece of advice [https://nav.al/build-a-team-that- ships](https://nav.al/build-a-team-that-ships)

"Outsource everything that isn't core. Resist the urge to pick up that last dollar. Founders do Customer Service."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Eliminate unused EC2 instances" -27% of cost

Haha, so cleaned the internal IT / DevOps mess and call it a day and than blog post it

<comment><USER15> Eh, you're pulling a quote out of context. It's 27% reduction in EC2 use, which was only 18.5% total. So this only accounted for ~5% of total savings.

<comment><USER16> I mean if a quarter of your EC2 instances were unused, that is absolutely an internal devops / IT mess.

The whole point of AWS is to use services on demand; it's like buying 133 conference tickets for your 100 person company.

<comment><USER17> More like ordering 133 lunches every day for your 100 employees and dumping 33 in the trash.

<comment><USER18> And doing this for months. Without noticing.

Honestly this isn't ultimately engineerings fault. This is a SaaS business Someone in their company is responsible for the COGS KPI. For that person to either not notice an increase in COGS, or to not be aggressively incentivizing engineering to reduce COGS, is giant red flag.

<comment><USER19> The article did say that the motivation for doing so was because AWS credits were running out .. why prematurely optimize a free resource? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems reasonable to make some of these cost comparisons more visible.

ie If working on a new product or feature to understand upfront "this managed service is x% more then more bare bones" etc.

essentially turning an alchemy into a science

<comment><USER21> AWS offers a cost calculator for just that purpose; they offer 'easier' products if you can't be arsed to dive into AWS costs and technologies yourself.

I think a lot of people make the mistake of assuming AWS is just an easy off- the-shelf thing you can just grab, but if you use it seriously it's a full- time job and its own expertise.

Source: I've done some AWS certifications, never was able to put them into practice though. I've also worked in multiple organizations that migrated to AWS, they all had a full-time team of people managing it.

It's a full-time, specialist job and you can't just palm it off to your engineers as a background thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The initial pie chart seems to indicate that either AWS glue is significantly overpriced, or that they were doing something wrong.

<comment><USER23> As with all things AWS the more "magic" there is to it, the more expensive it is.

<comment><USER24> Huge part of why I always try to build applications as platform agnostic as possible.

If I make a .NET service or site, I know (with the tools I use) I can deploy it on any linux or windows machine without issue. I can take it anywhere that I can run any software.

Sure, may need more glue for certain scenarios, but you know that you can move as soon as a provider shows it's fangs.

<comment><USER23> Speaking from experience - not a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting idea. Does anyone do this for Azure?

</comment><comment><USER26> We went through a similar process with GCP, which was annoying since GCP was sold as being cheaper than AWS.</comment>


One Year of PostmarketOS: Mainline Calling - <AUTHOR> https://postmarketos.org/blog/2018/06/09/one-year/ <comment><USER2> This is a totally amazing project and I totally applaud their effort. Linux got it's big boost on x86 back in the 90s/2000s because the PC is an actual architecture. You're guaranteed so many standards on a BIOS or UEFI based PC.

The Fail0ver guys have a great talk about porting Linux to a PS4 and how it's an example of an x86_64 that is totally NOT a PC in any meaningful way.

Android is designed for devices where you solder random pins to random chips and hack a bunch of shit and blobs together to get it to boot. You can't install a fresh Android like you can Windows, and I think it's really held back Android as a long term, stable operating system.

Microsoft at least mandated UEFI+ARM, but their boot loaders are still locked even though their mobile platform is dead (come on Microsoft, you just bought Github. Throw as a bone and unlock your bootloaders or publish a key for them!). No mobile device uses Device Trees.

It would be great if you could take most popular old android devices and just run Linux on them, use them as a small Raspberry Pi like device. I think that's what Postmarket is doing to start with, but it looks like they're even progressing to getting phones really usable as phones in the future .. which is pretty damn exciting.

<comment><USER3> I do prefer regular Linux userlands to Android. However, with Project Treble (essentially a HAL), it's possible to produce ROMs that can be used on many devices thus replicating the experience mainline Linux gives (where the image is decoupled from particular hardware).

There are already some proofs of concept:

[https://www.xda-developers.com/flash-generic-system-image- pr...](https://www.xda-developers.com/flash-generic-system-image-project- treble-device/)

<comment><AUTHOR> We would not even need the mainline kernel to decouple images from particular hardware. In postmarketOS we only have a hand full of device specific packages (ideally only one per device), and one of them is the downstream kernel for non-mainlined devices. All other binary packages can be shared between all devices of the same CPU architecture (in Alpine terms usually "armhf" or "aarch64" for mobile phones and tablets). Just like Linux distributions do it.

The big benefit of the mainline kernel is, that it is the only way to get all the (security) fixes. Greg Kroah-Hartman (Linux kernel who maintains the stable releases) wrote in Februrary:

> As proof of this, I demoed at the Kernel Recipes talk referenced above how > trivial it was to crash all of the latest flagship Android phones on the > market with a tiny userspace program. The fix for this issue was released 6 > months prior in the LTS kernel that the devices were based on, however none > of the devices had upgraded or fixed their kernels for this problem. As of > this writing (5 months later) only two devices have fixed their kernel and > are now not vulnerable to that specific bug.

Source: [http://kroah.com/log/blog/2018/02/05/linux-kernel-release- mo...](http://kroah.com/log/blog/2018/02/05/linux-kernel-release-model/)

<comment><USER4> This is the type of shit that gets me livid. It's crazy, how did we get here??? I don't think it's through malicious intent, but rather from digging in the dark so to speak and forceful proding for first to market or more simply, incompetent competitive market dynamics. The engineering teams that needed to make these devices didn't have a clear understanding of the kernels model, how it's all connected, where the edges are, how to make low cost additions. They got shoved forward to the edge, with someone shouting "deliver in 2 months or it's all over." So instead of learning how to make quality additions to the kenral, instead of building a more complete understanding, how the code was all connected, they just hacked some shit together to ship on time.

For all the good benefits of a competitive market system, the externalities such as the fracturing software systems is fustrating.

<comment><USER2> > how did we get here?

Planned obsolescence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For people curious about all the GitHub links: we are probably switching to gitlab soon. This has been in discussion since October and recent events with Microsoft tipped the scales for us. Besides the issue of trusting Microsoft or not, GitHub does not have a convenient way to backup the issues and pull request descriptions and all the comments.

<comment><USER5> There is github-backup but it doesn't do restores:

[https://github-backup.branchable.com/](https://github-backup.branchable.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> We looked into that as well, and besides missing restore functionality, the problem is that it needs to access GitHub's rate limited API to crawl through one issue after another. In gitlab there is one API call to prepare a _full_ backup, and another one to download it. At least that's what the docs say, we have not tried it out yet.

[https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/project_import_export.html](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/project_import_export.html) [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/settings/import_expo...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/settings/import_export.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> PostmarketOS is an amazing project that I wish I had the time to contribute to.

I'd love to resurrect my old Nexus 7 (2012) tablet with something more lightweight than the current monstrosity that Android has become. Right now the main thing holding me back from doing that is the lack of LVM support. Either Plasma Mobile or even SwayWM (when it gets gesture support) would be great for a lightweight open device for browsing the web and reading papers.

<comment><AUTHOR> In case you should have time at some point, there is already a proof of concept with LVM made by drebrez. It is basically working after the installation, but all the use cases that are not straight forward (such as re- installing postmarketOS, what happens to the LVM partitions then?) need to be sorted out before this can be integrated into the master branch.

[https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/issues/60](https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/issues/60)

<comment><USER6> It'll be a few weeks before I officially have time as I'm currently interning doing maths/physics research. I choose my own hours but I'm rather terrible at time management, so it's best if I avoid side projects at the moment.

That being said, there's a fair chance that I'll give installing that proof of concept a shot next time I'm stuck on a problem/procrastinating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They mention "sustainable" a lot. What is that supposed to mean in this context? If it's supposed to be a headline goal of the project, it would be good to offer a definition for it.

<comment><USER8> In this context, it usually means reducing waste and consumption by prolonging the useful life of hardware. By providing an updated user land (and, in some cases, a mainline kernel) after vendors lose interest, users aren't forced to choose between buying new hardware and software obsolescence and/or security issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> DROID 4 making the list is impressive, and there's a decent chance I may want to try it out someday with postmarketOS on it. AFAIK, it was basically the last modern phone with a keyboard slider, and I have one lying around somewhere.

<comment><USER10> The droid 4 is a great device and has quite a lot of mainline work done, The only downside is the quite complicated way to get images on it since the bootloader is locked.

<comment><USER9> I'll have to take a look at what I could do with it if I went through that hassle. Having a physical keyboard makes it pretty generally useful with Linux software in general, I'd presume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how feasible would be a mainline kernel for Openmoko Neo Freerunner...

<comment><USER10> There is some stuff for the S3C2442 SoC in the mainline kernel, I guess it's possible but there are people who way more about that in the postmarketOS Matrix/IRC channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> postmarket is so cool. I need to try again to get it running on my nexus 7. Had a problem with pmbootstrap the first time I tried

</comment><comment><USER13> Does the Nexus5 baseband have DMA?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, basically all phone modems communicate with the main processor through DMA (which the kernel translates in a network interface and a serial port for control). This is still a big security hole in these devices since the firmware on the baseband is closed.

<comment><USER13> Thanks. Closed and remotely flashable. I suppose at the board design level this could be worked around by presenting the modem with it's own DMA controller and memory mapping the interface appropriately?</comment></comment></comment>


Coding Horror: Are You An Expert? - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001226.html <comment><USER2> I've found in my experience that (many, not all) self-proclaimed "experts" do tend to grossly overestimate the capabilities and competence, and will impede those who are more capable than them for fear that they will diminish the value of their "expert" status. I feel this article is correct in stating that the appropriate way to approach a problem is from the perspective of an amateur, as amateurs typically have little fear of abiding by rules that have congealed within the minds of the "experts", and are more willing to take the chance of being wrong when success is imminent.

As they say, "an expert is someone who has made the greatest possible number of mistakes in their field."

<comment><USER3> I remember reading about a study where people who are below average at a task tended to rate themselves as competent (or better than average) for that task, while more competent people wold under-rate themselves.

There are all sorts of possible explanations (don't know enough to know you suck, pride, etc) and I don't think the study really looked at causality at all, but yes, I think the phenomenon is well known.

<comment><USER4> The study you're thinking of is probably "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self- Assessments" - it's completely fascinating and slightly worrying.

<http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf>

If you're not feeling humble about your skills after reading it, well...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _It troubles me greatly to hear that people see me as an expert or an authority, and not a fellow amateur._

Don't worry, Jeff! No one here thinks you're an expert.

<comment><USER6> Anyone can talk about software, some people can even give useful advice, but there are patterns which define a true expert:

Experts know how to find a useful solution in known time. This does not mean they can instantly come up with the best solution just that they already know a solution and how long that solution will take.

Most experts are willing to try new things up until the point where they will not get it down in time and then fall back to the known solution.

It might not seem like much but it's amazing how much talent and experience it takes to get to that point. What messes with most people is training does not create experts you need to do it without a safety net to really know. And experts don't necessarily know how to teach they can just get things done.

<comment><USER5> Why are you replying this to me? What does it have to do with my point?

<comment><USER6> I was agreeing with, and I thought I should say why I felt that way. (I also just edited the post for clarity.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _This anti-expert bias seems strangely familiar. Almost as if... The last eight years... Were a bad dream..._

He goes on to say he really has an anti- _self-proclaimed_ -expert bias. A safe target, nobody likes a smug know-it-all. But sometimes the self- proclaimed expert _is_ an expert. How do we know if we admit to being amateurs? We don't know, of course, but the odds are we should listen to people who demonstrate expertise and not dismiss them because they come off as smug or claim to have expertise.

Imagine, for a moment, Jeff was talking about Linus Torvalds. Or perhaps Paul Graham. How would you take this post?

This comes off as being worthy of the last administration: Pandering to people's prejudices and distrust of anyone who comes across as smart.

p.s. Does anybody else think this is just a continuation of his bashing people like Kent Beck and Robert Martin for daring to try to systematize agile software development with anything m,ore complex than Jeff's four rules?

</comment><comment><USER8> _It troubles me greatly to hear that people see me as an expert or an authority, and not a fellow amateur._

I can't believe this from someone who set out to create a widely-read blog.

</comment><comment><USER9> Steve McQueen's character is exactly the expert fire chief I want in my towering inferno, and Rick Rescorla ([http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810315-3,0...](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810315-3,00.html)) is exactly the expert security chief I want.

<comment><USER9> Continuation because noprocrast locked me out awhile: As pointed out in Jeff's article, McQueen's character knows what questions to ask. And per _The Unthinkable_ [ISBN 0307352897], Rescorla knew what mistakes people were likely to make. An expert can anticipate problems and raise good questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It sounds like he thinks he's an expert on what being an expert means.

</comment><comment><USER11> in my organization, anyone who advertises their own credentials, especially a PhD, had better be very very good or that person will be ridiculed mercilessly.</comment>


A Sound Argument Against Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://mises.org/daily/4432

<comment><USER2> It is better to let the big telcos attempt to subvert the neutrality of the internet than it is to give the FCC a blank check to do the same in the future.</comment>


Revealed: none of Britain's $1bn tech firms openly support Brexit - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/16/revealed-none-of-britain-tech-unicorns-openly-support-brexit <comment><USER2> That maybe true, but its clear this issue is way more complex as 300 ceo's do back the brexit. [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-15/uk-establishment- st...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-15/uk-establishment-stunned- over-300-ceos-back-brexit-business-not-government-creates-w)

<comment><USER3> For some context, there are currently 3,433,780 active companies incorporated in the UK.

Aside from my belief that on the whole (not everything!) the EU is a positive force, I have no faith that the current crop of cheerleaders for Brexit have the average Briton's best interest at heart.

I don't trust Jonson, Farage, Gove or Duncan Smith in the slightest.

<comment> UVB-76 A huge number of those companies will be dormant, wholly owned subsidiaries, or one-man-band operations (e.g. contractors with limited companies)

Of course it's a moot point because companies don't have citizens' best interests in mind. They want cheap labor, big markets, lobbying power, and regulations that raise barriers to entry for their industries.

On all of those counts, the EU is fantastic for big business, but not necessarily for ordinary citizens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> UVB-76 The interests of corporate bodies and their owners differ significantly from those of ordinary citizens.</comment>


Ask HN: Termsheet for Start Fund - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know where I can get the termsheet offered to the ycombinator companies by SV Angels and Yuri Milner?  Thanks. <comment><USER2> I don't think the actual term sheet has been released publicly but heres a summary of the terms: [http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2011/01/31/what- are-the-...](http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2011/01/31/what-are-the- terms-of-yuri-milnersv-angels-start-fund-150k-investment-into-y-combinator- companies/)</comment>


Build your own Twitch using MPEG-DASH and HLS live streaming - <AUTHOR> https://www.bitcodin.com/blog/2015/11/mpeg-dash-and-hls-live-streaming-with-bitcodin/ <comment><USER2> Related, where do I begin to learn about live streaming/broadcasting from end- to-end?

I'm experimenting with an Apple TV project and I'd like to know (a) what has to take place to get from video camera or iOS device to an HLS stream? (b) What open source tools (if any) are available to help do this? (c) what storage/server requirements are there?

TIA

<comment><USER3> I can provide you with my contact info if you'd like, and answer any questions you may have. At my last job, I built out the VoD/live streaming infrastructure for the internet presence of a major US broadcaster.

Its pretty straightforward, just a bit of a schlep time wise depending on the scale and capabilities you're targeting.

<comment><USER4> * What do you say are the biggest challenges?

* What's the oddest problem you have had to solve while building/operating this?

<comment><USER3> Surprisingly enough:

* Politics within the organization

* Interfacing with legacy broadcast/video library systems (f __* you Grass Valley, and your abomination of a video asset management system)

Serving video online is fairly straightforward, although it wasn't always. We've come a long way from RTMP and progressive HTTP downloads. With HLS, MPEG-DASH, etc, you're still moving the same bits, but you have a much better end user experience.

Netflix has original renditions for all of its content in S3, which they convert into multiple renditions based on bitrate and other video metadata, and their player then intelligently switches based on available bandwidth. Its (mostly) that easy, unless you're the White House or SpaceX streaming to millions of people at once. That's still a bit tricky, and you usually call Akamai, Limelight, or Encoding.com to solve that.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd create a small startup team (no more than 10-15 people) to create a platform that lets you white label so anyone could build their own Netflix with their own content (or licensed content) and iterate ruthlessly. Don't partner on storage or CDN, just create modules that let you plug n play based on the rates you can get (API libraries all the way down). Setup a partnership department to hook customers up with hardware vendors (Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, those folks). Keep in the front of your mind that tech is commodity but relationships are what's going to put you in tens of millions of homes.

I left because no one realized how quickly other parties in the space (Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Google, etc) were innovating. We'd spend _months_ in the weeds, with little momentum on key features. In 5-10 years, broadcast is completely dead, its airspace auctioned off to cellular providers. This does not get through to traditional broadcast folks.

<comment><USER5> Nice insights!

Interesting fact on your approach: at bitmovin we do exactly that, we've our bitcodin.com encoding service and our bitdash players (www.dash-player.com), which can plug into any cloud storage, CDN, wtc., we've quite a lot interfaces and tutorials for that. We see us as kind of Stripe for video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't say this is my own Twitch, more like paying for someone else's Twitch that you can host on your own page.

</comment><comment><USER5> It also enables adaptive streaming in HTML5 without Flash, as used by Netflix or YouTube already

<comment><USER7> Looking on their site it looks like the player requires flash.

<comment><USER8> This example is HTML5:

[http://www.dash-player.com/](http://www.dash-player.com/)

<comment><USER9> I was looking into similar projects recently. The one you linked certainly seems to be the best option right now, however it's worth noting that there is also the DASH IF (Industry Forum) reference player[1], and JW Player[2] also offers support for a HTML5 DASH player.

I believe support for HTML5 media extensions was added to Firefox 42, and has been around in other browsers for a while.

1\. [http://dashif.org/reference/players/javascript/](http://dashif.org/reference/players/javascript/)

2\. [http://www.jwplayer.com/innovation/roadmap/mpeg- dash/](http://www.jwplayer.com/innovation/roadmap/mpeg-dash/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been really interested in doing something like this. I want to improve my home streaming setup, trying to work in multiple web cameras and game perspectives, while co-broadcasting to Youtube and Twitch.

I've tried a few things, right now I have my dedicated home server acting as a RTMP relay for my webcam to stream into my 2nd PC where my girlfriend is playing games / streaming, but the latency is unbearable and my video is 5-10s behind what I'm saying.

Was hoping this could be a solution, but it doesn't look like it. I don't like the pricing model, and the video player STILL requires flash.

</comment><comment><USER10> Please do not add allow domain "*" into your crossdomain.xml EVER unless on a CDN domain (a domain specifically for hosting a CDN) or serving static files. This breaks SOP.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why does bitdash require Flash? I tried to use it (Firefox 38 on Linux) but it says:

"No supported technology was detected, i.e. neither Flash nor the MediaSource Extension was found and no HLS manifest was given or HLS is also not supported. Please download the Flash Player from [http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/](http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/) or try another browser."

<comment><USER5> Firefox was lacking behind in supporting the HTML5 Media Source Extensions, it's in since Firefox 42. Everything beyond this still needs Flash for HLS or MPEG DASH playback

<comment><USER12> Here is tracking bug for Firefox Media Source Extensions API [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I did something similar to this a few months ago using nginx, rtmp, and vlc in hopes of making an HTML5 only streaming service.

In the end, I found out that using a VM for transcoding is not a great idea. Having a > 3 minute lag time between input and output was... difficult to work with.

I'm not willing to pay for Amazon's transcoding service because of uh, student wages, so I scrapped that project.

Fun weekend project at the very least.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd love to see someone play around with getting GLC + Twitch and/or Youtube Live working together. Or making streaming video in real time from a programming language (maybe openFrameworks can do this?) ...

<comment><USER5> Maybe the API clients are helpfull for this?[https://developer.bitcodin.com/doc/api- clients](https://developer.bitcodin.com/doc/api-clients)

<comment><USER14> Yeah that's all about transcoding and making pipelines and such... I guess I'm talking about the actual creation of full motion video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would bitcodin be handling the takedown requests?

<comment><USER5> What do you mean in particular?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> what's the deal with multicast?

<comment><USER5> We don't see multicast any more, in OTT streaming formats such as DASH or HLS use cheap and scalable HTTP infrastructure and HTTP caches, which can be seen as application layer multicast

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hey, I'm the founder of Streamup, a live entertainment platform w/ 22MM MAU. We're encountering a lot of similar challenges, so we're looking for bright engineers to collaborate with. Tweet me @kyledmichelson and let's talk.

<comment><USER5> Cool! Drop me a line at email@example.com</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Name one SaaS product that you hate, but pay for - <AUTHOR> Name one SaaS product that you hate, but you/ your company pay for <comment><USER2> Lastpass. Seems buggy to me, and fiddly to use.

<comment><USER3> Switching to 1Password is pretty easy. I was feared moving because messing with passwords is scary but it was totally worth it. It's a much better experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slack. It is just so slow but everyone is now used to it that if you use something else people actually complain.

</comment><comment><USER5> FreshBooks. I don't hate FreshBooks per se, but I hate that after they updated their interface and API, the new version only works with Stripe. I have to pay to stay on the old interface so that I can use it with PayPal.

</comment><comment><USER6> Asana because it's just slow as hell and can easily eat upto 2GB memory whenever it's running.

<comment><USER7> 2GB in the browser? I know the initial load is slow but the websockets are usually pretty quick for me. I'm not sure how many teams/projects you have but that seems like a lot of data!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Workday

</comment><comment><USER9> Huddle

</comment><comment><USER10> upwork

<comment><USER11> Wow talk about a shitty web app. I spend a lot of money on contractors through upwork but the website is so terrible.

Feels like they used bottom barrel developers off their own site.</comment></comment>


Civilization's golden era is teetering on collapse, yet we ignore meltdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=2eeece50-285f-4c4b-bb37-2d053d04d4e8 <comment><USER2> "The economic depression that struck Europe in the fourteenth century was followed ultimately by economic and technological recovery. But the depression we have moved into will have no end. We can anticipate centuries of decline and exhaustion."

\- Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine, 1975

<comment><USER3> I've been reading "Beating the Street," by Peter Lynch. At many points in the book he notes how various experts were predicting the next depression throughout the 70s and 80s.</comment></comment>


NO Radio broadcasters snub 'end of FM' DAB radio changeover - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/11/commercial_radio_dissidents_snub_digital_frogmarch/ <comment><USER2> DAB just doesn't work in my house, full stop. The walls are too thick. So if this happens, I'll stop listening to the radio.</comment>


Show HN: Customize your pic to express solidarity w country of your choice - <AUTHOR> https://customizemypic.com <comment><AUTHOR> Would love to get feedback. It also has a link to github where I posted all the source code, in case anyone's interested.</comment>


The Pursuit of the Ideal [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9983.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> For the curious minds trying to figure out what's right in this world: you would be doing yourself a great injustice by not reading this.

About the author: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin)</comment>


Things we learnt trying and failing to build an e-commerce platform - <AUTHOR> http://writing.makeshift.io/pieces/things-we-learnt-trying-and-failing-to-build-an-e-commerce-platform-for-selling-digital-goods <comment><USER2> Great post, I kinder learnt some similar lessons with a part time project I was working on. Similar concept, get people in Africa to sell stuff online. You wouldn't believe the payment processing issues I encountered and trying to cater for users to sell "anything".</comment>


Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing - <AUTHOR> http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25495315

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry, ignore this submission, forgot I was on the mobile site and as such this is a duplicate.

<comment><USER2> You can delete it.</comment></comment>


3 data center predictions for 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://sdtimes.com/it-ops/3-data-center-predictions-2018/ <comment><USER2> Good point about how essential AI will be for data centers.</comment>


Ask HN: Review our webapp - Apollo - <AUTHOR>

Link: www.useapollo.com
Hi there,
We are a small Ruby on Rails shop, based in Shropshire(UK), and we've been using Apollo to collaborate with our clients on designs for sites. Based on some feedback, we've released it for general use.
We intend for the core functionality to remain free, and we'd appreciate any feedback on features the community might find useful. This isn't aimed at the high end graphic design company market, it's just something that's simple to use for quick feedback from a team or client. If there's any reason why you wouldn't use it, or any suggestions about how we can improve it, please let us know.
Thanks for reading! :) Joe Pym 27 Stars <comment><USER2> You should work on your copy on the main page. It isn't clear exactly what the app does. You discuss what it _is_ (a way to get comments from another group), but I had trouble trying to picture exactly how it works. As near I can tell, I work on a doc (image, whatever), then can share it with other people who can comment on it, within a protected area of a site. That isn't too clear from the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! :). It's very much appreciated. And yes, that is how it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You solved my problem there. Just make sure it can be used to clients intuitively and you're on.

<comment><AUTHOR> We currently use it with our clients, and we haven't had any problems with it.

From the client side, when you invite someone, they get sent a link with a url in, that automatically logs them into the image, and it's one click image commenting in exactly the same manner as the designers side. They also get emailed when new notes get added by you, with a link in each email so they can go to the proof.

If we have any issues with clients, we'll be the first ones looking to update the UI...without the clients, it's pretty much a useless tool after all.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can we add an option to open links in new window? - <AUTHOR>

Can we add an option to open links in new window? <comment><USER2> In Firefox clicking a link with your middle mouse button will open the link in a new tab (or window, depending on your about:config setting).

IE 8 opens a new tab on middle mouse click.

A new tab is not identical to a new window, but does mean you don't lose your place on the HN page just because you clicked a link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, middle mouse button is awesome

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> To open in a new window, hold shift when you click the link. To open in a new tab, hold control when you click the link. You're in control of where links open and websites don't need to do anything to give you that control.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason I asked here because I don't want to do an extra step to open the news in new tab or window :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can you add an option to add Hacker News to my Internet Explorer favorites? Also, can you add an option to make Hacker News my Internet Explorer home page?

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like a job for Greasemonkey/user scripts to me.</comment>


Hardware Performance Monitoring for the Rest of Us (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01593009/document <comment><AUTHOR> I was searching for information on hardware performance counters, and came across this PDF. Its written with a decent bit of humor, but it also covers a lot of information about the lowest-of-low level programming.

If you ever hit the absolute need to write as efficiently as possible, it becomes important to start to count the precise number of cache-hits / cache misses, and other such hardware events in your program. This PDF is a survey of what modern CPUs can offer with respect to hardware counters.

</comment><comment><USER2> I hadn't seen this before (thanks) and haven't been through it, but it's doubtless up to INRIA's usual standards. However, I think "absolute need" is underselling the importance. Cache performance can account for factors of several in computational work if you get affinity wrong, and relevant counters are usually in the default initial set for profiling. It's just that what's available is highly hardware-dependent, and finding out what some counters -- especially SIMD ones -- really measure can be a challenge :-(.</comment>


Firefox Extension used to test for SQL Injection vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sql-inject-me/

<comment><USER2> This could be very useful! One to watch</comment>


Creating a Ruby DSL - <AUTHOR> https://www.leighhalliday.com/creating-ruby-dsl <comment><USER2> No, this is not how you write DSLs. It's still general purpose Ruby, only with API specific to some task. I understand you would like to feel better because you've designed a _language_ , but you haven't, it's just an API.</comment>


Resigning from AWS on Ethical Grounds with Tim Bray - <AUTHOR> https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/resigning-from-aws-on-ethical-grounds-with-tim-bray/ <comment><USER2> "Huh, I thought he resigned via Chime."</comment>


Show HN: I brought GitHub to the Apple Watch: Why? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for feedback on the beta of my new app called WatchGit which brings GitHub to your Apple Watch. You can get the beta from Apple TestFlight(https://testflight.apple.com/join/ipzDjzSy). You can create issues, comment, add and remove labels, assign and more.
https://watchgit.com/
Hard-press the watch screen in the app to create an issue directly in the support repo. Bugs, enhancement requests etc. are all welcome.
WHY?
If you don't always have your phone with you, for example when out running or walking, and you have a brilliant idea for a new feature you can simple raise your wrist and use Siri to create an issue in a repository from your cellular Apple Watch.
You can also easily triage issues, assign issues, like issues, etc. without pulling out your phone.
If you always have your phone to hand then it isn't for you, but if you like to leave it behind sometimes then it may be something to try out. <comment><USER2> Even if you have your phone with you, it can be a lot more convenient to use the watch. Sounds like a neat idea but I've abandoned Github in favour of self-hosted Gitea - I'd definitely be interested in a Gitea version. :)

(I'll probably install this for the work repo, though, and see how it goes.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Not heard of Gitea, will check it out.

Organizations have to approve third-party apps, so depending on your org it may or may not work - you should at least be able to browse public repos.

<comment><USER2> I've just added it to my personal work repo - that's where I do all my experiments that need to store the off-the-cuff ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, let me know if you have any suggestions ([https://github.com/DamianMehers/WatchGitSupport/issues](https://github.com/DamianMehers/WatchGitSupport/issues)) - if there is interest I may add pull requests, although TBH I'm not sure how useful they would be on such a small screen - will need to experiment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Your job is to live - <AUTHOR> http://bycomet.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/your-job-is-to-live/

<comment><USER2> This idea is all well and good—if you can afford it. His list of things to do ("sleep well, eat hearty, exercise like crazy, work hard, and chill out") is decidedly awesome if you can afford it; however, we live in a world where the vast majority of people are doing their best to just _survive_. In a way, they are following his admonition: they are doing their best to live. His definition, however, isn't very close to what it is for a large percentage of the globe.</comment>


Experts often end up where they started as beginners - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/01/25/coming-full-circle/

<comment><USER3> Beginning artists just draw stuff without thinking about it.

In art school, they get taught how to do what we call "construction" - how to think of things as three-dimensional objects rendered onto a flat plane. Their process becomes full of boxes and cylinders and perspective guides.

Grizzled pros just draw stuff without thinking. Because they've done the construction so damn much it happens beneath the level of consciousness. I only need to construct every now and then, for tough, rare angles. Someday I won't have to do that any more either.

I'm not really sure I'd call it "the same place". It looks like it from the outside, but I'd describe it as more like a full turn around a spiral staircase.

</comment><comment><USER4> I studied the martial arts (Cha Yon Ryu = "natural way") for many years. Our instructor quoted T.S. Eliot to us:

"And the end of all our exploring - Will be to arrive where we started - <USER2> know the place for the first time."

<comment><USER5> That's interesting, because last night I just watched the "Fog of War", the documentary about Robert McNamara, and he makes that exact quote. Apparently this idea applies to war as well. When I read this article I was surprised by the coincidence.

BTW I strongly recommend that film -- it was fascinating in so many ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> To me, this is mostly about the way we learn as beginners.

You start as a beginner by reading books, watching experts, taking a class. Even if you start by jumping in and figuring it out, you still get the notion of how you should do it from somewhere. Because there is too much theory to understand at first (be it music, computing or math), you accept dogmas, or theorems or theories and work with them.

Eventually you gain enough confidence to reconsider what you have been taught. When you do come full circle, I think it's mostly because you understand why something is taught the way it is, not necessarily because you were instinctively doing it right at first.

<comment><USER7> I think the process of becoming an expert at something has a lot to do with building your own model for how it works -- producing your own set of assumptions. This certainly can take the form of eventually returning to the assumptions you were initially taught, but that middle stage of questioning and disassembling can just as easily lead to different assumptions altogether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very true for me. Computers were a tool to build programs. Then I spent time researching programming languages and making frameworks (in summary: building abstractions). Now I'm back to building non-abstract things again. I wonder if it's going to repeat itself or if it'll stay this way.

<comment><USER9> I remember years ago having a senior developer say to me "don't use software patterns they will only make things complicated, you'll regret it in the long run." I scoffed at him, sat down with my books and learned al sorts of things.

After say 5 years I understand what he was saying to me know. Patterns are patterns, they implement themselves when you need them. All you need to know is how not to do it badly. You shouldn't be trying to implement patterns if you don't need them.

I know its a high horse position, because you need to go through a phase of using them to understand why they aren't a miracle cure. o I find the the growth/education of a programmer some what similar to the articles notion.

For reference any younger dev out there that looks at the work senior devs and thinks to themselves "why are they senior? there work is obviously rubbish", you'll probably end up that senior dev one day.

In my experience most senior devs have been like you... perfectionists, aborbsed with the latest greatest etc... and you learn over time all that really matters is delivering on time, code management, and getting burnt by the latest and greatest really sucks.

So you slowly stop writing over engineered code. That often means doing things a basic way, so people in the team aren't left behind that don't understand, understanding your code isn't that critical... whats critical is finishing on time, that optimisation is the last thing you do because it takes to long and you really don't know if what you are writing deserves so much attention (i.e. if it takes off revisit the code, if a choke point starts appearing then optimise). Basically don't waste time on problems which don't exist, don't create stress for yourself/team/management by over engineering solutions.

Next time you wonder why a senior dev seems to be hopeless ask them why they choose to deliver a solution like a beginner and maybe you'll learn something invaluable ;)

<comment><USER10> _Patterns are patterns, they implement themselves when you need them._

That has been my understanding. I consider that the only practical reason to review design patterns is so you can communicate the style of code to another.

After a while as you program you look through the code and see the needed meaning, shaping the code to conform to the meaning better.

<comment><USER9> Yep I know exactly what you mean. What I find kind of interesting is I would feel nervous having myself from 5 years ago in my team today.

That guy was pretty damned sharp, worked long hours, researched implemented push boundaries, and delivered some stuff I'm still proud of. But he had something to prove, he put meaning into things that didn't want or need meaning. Over engineered everything.

But a calmer/mature more strategic me says I don't need mavericks on business automation software. I'd be watching me like a hawk, because I made mistakes, big ones from time to time (my favourite was a system failure costing €50,000 in lost revenue... all my fault, I was literally told to clear my desk and was marched out the door).

You need those mavericks to push boundaries, its fun to be one, but boy its disconcerting when you have one in your team and all you need t do is deliver is a CRUD application.

<comment><USER11> _I made mistakes, big ones from time to time (my favourite was a system failure costing €50,000 in lost revenue... all my fault, I was literally told to clear my desk and was marched out the door)._

I wish we shared more of these tales of mistakes. It seems to me that the current software development environment involves an attitude of shame over mistakes or simple ignorance, to the point that it becomes a political battle simply to get a developer to admit fault. The only place I know that discusses mistakes would be something like the Daily WTF, where snark and condescension are the name of the game (not that I don't enjoy reading it...).

<comment><USER9> I definitely agree. That particular incident destroyed my confidence for a short while. If it was for a chain of events mainly already having another position lined up it could of had significant impact on my long term confidence.

I become a fan of agile for that reason. I found agile created "chummier" teams. I don't think it made for better project delivery, but I did find having a morning meeting made risks apparent and made people more confident to raise issues before they snow balled, and people didn't blame each other the same way. Discussion/communication is basically everything to successful delivery in my books.

I picked up a neat pseudo meeting trick I use every day now (even in big water fall projects). I go for coffee down the road. It takes like 15 minutes and the benefit well outweighs the negative.

The benefits being a casual discussion abut whats going on where people say things they probably wouldn't normally. Its best to weight till after everyone has done there morning emails, so maybe 30-60 minutes in then the gossip gets going. The amount of spite I have heard spewed about clients/vendors/colleagues you wouldn't hear otherwise is astounding. Its the casualness of the walk and cafe that lets people vent. But you have to get out of the office, you have to get away fro the structure, and away from people that may over hear the criticisms.

Also its not about a team meeting, people won't come and blurt out whats really on there mind if they think its going to get recorded and itemised. Remembering if they have read/replied to there emails before you head out. Then thats mainly whats going to be no there mind, they will bring up the problems because they are at forefront of there thinking. Its all about keeping things casual.

On the other days when things are running smoothly you get to know them more on a personal level, talk about there kids, cats, skiing, what ever. Just casual gossip and of course its team bonding. When you get to know people a little better it makes interacting with them easier, raises issues/problems etc.. isn't going to be such an assault on someone. Even just the effort of inviting someone that doesn't drink coffee goes along way.

Can't recommend it enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Luke: Obi-Wan? Why didn't you tell me? You told me Vader betrayed and murdered my father.

Obi-Wan: Your father was seduced by the dark side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view.

Luke: "A certain point of view"?

Obi-Wan: Luke, you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

\--

Perspective is infinite -- only the omniscient see its entirety. But we often believe that our perspective is the way things are. The whole truth.

Humility is the key to not being limited by what we think we know. "We can't learn to see until we realize we are blind." -- Alan Kay.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of one of my favorite philosophies on learning, the four stages of competence:

Unconscious incompetence -> Conscious incompetence -> Conscious competence -> Unconscious competence

 _<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence> _

</comment><comment><USER14> Note one of the comments to the article at the bottom quotes Kurt Vonnegut:

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." <http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/3786>

</comment><comment><USER15> In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

</comment><comment><USER16> I liked the quote on music. Sheet music is good, but as any video can tell you, you can't just _play_ it and expect it to sound good...

"Beginning musicians play by ear, to the extent that they can play at all. Then they learn to read music. Eventually, maybe years later, they realize that music really is about what you hear and not what you see."

<comment><USER17> I did not like that quote. For the first part: Beginners absolutely do not play be ear unless he by playing by ear means: Make instrument produce note. Continue by trial and error until complete string of notes resembles desired tune. There is a difference between "doodling" on your instrument and playing by ear. The last part: "they realize that music really is about what you hear and not what you see" is just fluff. And sheet music can just be _played_ and sound good, this is dependent on the skill level of who is playing it. It is like saying code can only be well written after it has been refactored.

<comment><USER7> Howdy, professional musician here. I both agree and disagree with you, but I definitely disagree with the OP. "Playing by ear" is a way of learning new music, and it is a skill. Beginners do use the trial and error method you describe, and as you get better at it, you can rely more on your knowledge of what an interval sounds like, getting closer to what you hear on the first try.

Reading music is also a way of learning a piece, and for complex music (i.e., most classical music) it is the most effective way of learning music quickly, even if you're the most advanced player in the world.

I would contend, however, that "they realize that music really is about what you hear and not what you see" is not just fluff. Intermediate to advanced players are frequently very tied to the page. They tend to think in notes and barlines, which is a reflection of intermediate level training that usually focuses on rendering literally what is on the page. One of the big advancements that musicians tend to make at conservatory is to learn how to think in audible units -- phrases and gestures -- rather than the visual units they see on the page. So yes, expert musicians do rely on their ear in a way that they usually do not at intermediate level. However, it also has nothing to do with the way untrained beginners use their ear, as a way of learning music.

EDIT: A more useful analogy for musicians would be to look at how they approach the physical aspects of playing. In the beginning, a string player is taught to move the bow by moving their arm back and forth. Once they get the hang of this, they spend a decade or so dissecting the fine details of that movement: fingers, wrist, elbow, shoulder. Making the bow change directions becomes a complex dance of many choreographed movements. Eventually, though, it all becomes second nature. When an expert thinks of moving their arm back and forth, it is a shorthand for all the things they've internalized about how to use the bow.

This is similar to the martial arts idea of learning technique and then forgetting it. It is most emphatically not, however, coming around to realize that your original conception of how to play was more right than what you were doing as a journeyman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is simplicity on the other side of complexity. Not sure who said that, but that is another way I've heard this idea expressed.

<comment><USER19> "First there is a mountain. Then there is no mountain. Then there is." Not just a Donovan lyric, it is also part of Buddhist and Taoist literature going back more than 2500 years. (I assumed, after reading the Tao Te Ching, that the concept for the lyric had been lifted from there, but later found out it came from Qingyuan Weixin through D.T. Suzuki.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've also noticed this. I don't know if there's a name for this tendency, but I've called it the "spiral staircase" of knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER21> How do three anecdotes strung together justify the 'often' in the title?

<comment><USER22> There's an assumption that those anecdotes would trigger memory of your own experience, and that you'd come to a similar conclusion (or assumption) as the author.

I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This link seems to be littered already throughout HN comments, but this article really reminded me of it: <http://www.willamette.edu/~fruehr/haskell/evolution.html>

The remark on Dirac delta functions resonated with me, although I feel as if I have actually go through several cycles of enlightenment and ignorance. Actually, I get this feeling for most topics in analysis in general.

</comment><comment><USER24> Relevant: [http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_Programmer....](http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_Programmer.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> This seems to relate quite closely with the Hype Cycle: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle>

<comment><USER25> No idea why I'm being downvoted. I'm not saying this is hype. Look at the chart on that page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Illustrated: <http://www.wastedtalent.ca/comic/simplifyd>

</comment><comment><USER27> Another example for your list, John: Born atheist, indoctrinated into the church, learned more about it, reverted to atheist.

<comment><USER28> What a coincidence. Mine is the other way around: born in a liberal Christian family, went away, and now I'm back with more appreciation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In any hierarchy, an individual will rise to his or her own level of incompetence, then remain there. [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Peter_Princip...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Peter_Principle)

<comment><USER30> The connection between the "Peter Principle" and this article isn't obvious to me. Can you say what you mean?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good books on economic history? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I liked deVries' The First Modern Economy - the first volume is great. It's not a pop-econ book, but rather a good hard look at the Dutch economy circa 1500s. A Concise Economic History of The World is also not a bad book, if a bit dry.

There are too some other cliometric books that I really liked but can't for the life of me recall it. There was another that was along the lines of Money and Market of All Times or something or like that, which I recommend for a quick skim through (not really worth a deep read - I'd treat it as the others already mentioned in this thread)

</comment><comment><USER3> The Worldly Philosophers is my favorite. It will take you through economic history as told by its great philosophers and break down the differences between the schools of thought. It has been my trusted guide on economic theory for the last 15 years.

Here's a link on Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Worldly-Philosophers- Economic-Thin...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Worldly-Philosophers-Economic- Thinkers/dp/068486214X)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll be watching this thread with interest myself, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed reading (and it's pretty short) is Dr. Strangelove's Game by Paul Strathern [1]. It is not particularly well known according to sites I frequent, and I think it's unfortunate.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1193827.Dr_Strangelove_s...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1193827.Dr_Strangelove_s_Game)

</comment><comment><USER5> Not sure how far back you want to go back but Debt: The First 5000 Years is a real tour de force of understanding how monetary relations were organised over a large number of different cultures and different times.. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years)

</comment><comment><USER6> Charles Kindelberger's "Manias, Panics & Crashes." Should be mandatory reading in HS. Starts with Minsky's theory of how economic bubbles occur and progress, then applies the theory beginning with the Tulip mania among the Dutch through to the modern era.

</comment><comment><USER7> I liked the Ascent of Money.</comment>


Ask HN: What professional certifications do you have - <AUTHOR>

I'll start... none, so far I've had a stressful career, I'd like to think that my work speaks for it self.<p>Having a Network+, Linux+, PMP, or anything else is great to show that you keep up with things, but are they really looked highly upon when it comes to getting actual work done ? <comment><USER2> MCTS: Active Directory 2008, Configuring

That's it, and it's completely unrelated to my job. I run Linux :). Why did I get it then? It was free from MS, required less than 6 hours of studying, and my boss paid me and my co-worker to go take the test.

I'm of the opinion that most certifications that aren't lab based aren't worth it. The only time it may be worth your time is for consulting or for an HR screen pass.

My current employer doesn't even like paying for certifications. They'll put you through all of the required training up until the point where you could get your cert (i.e. they care about the knowledge), but they won't pay for the actual certification unless you have a pretty good reason for doing so.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have PMP. I occasionally see employers ask for PMP or Prince2 Certfication on a job spec.

I don't think it makes you a good project manager, but it can be a way of weeding out people that are entirely clueless about project management.

It can also help if an organisation has standardised on a project management approach, so everyone uses the same names for Project Initiations, Business Requirements etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> "are they really looked highly upon when it comes to getting actual work done "

Certificates are neither necessary nor sufficient to be able to get a good job in my opinion and experience. Like you said, work speaks for itself. Certification on your Resume/CV might get you the interview call. But when it comes to hiring someone,what really matters is "can you get shit done and can you work with a team".

</comment><comment><USER5> Certs are good in that they provide a reason to learn things you might otherwise overlook or not use on a day to day basis. In that sense I look highly on them. However, many other people I work with have absolute contempt for any sort of technical skill, so no cert is going to impress them.</comment>


Government accused of 'full-frontal attack' on whistleblowers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/12/uk-government-accused-full-frontal-attack-prison-whistleblowers-media-journalists <comment> open-source-ux I'm from the UK. The reason the British government can propose such outrageous laws is because a) we don't have a functioning opposition party capable of challenging or scrutinising the Government. The Labour party is completely spineless and ineffectual; and b) that lack of opposition has emboldened the Government to push through some of the most invasive surveillance laws in the Western World. The British Prime Minster, Theresa May, has a nasty authoritarian streak - she had it when she was Home Secretary responsible for domestic security, and she has it now with even more zeal as the Prime Minister.

If you picture in your minds eye the most dysfunctional, deceitful, lunatic- filled version of politics you could possibly imagine, you still won't come close to the giant sinkhole that is British politics right now. Utterly depressing.

<comment><USER2> The Labour party was, until pretty recently, overrun with exactly the same kinds of authoritarians (e.g. Yvette Cooper) and they're sabotaging the current leadership in a bid to get back power.

<comment><USER3> Honestly I hope they succeed, and from the ashes, we get a Labour/centre-left party with some actual integrity and credibility, because this current one has none and wouldn't get back into power anyway. Corbyn seems okay, but he seems to be stuck in the difficult position of leading a party of delusional Blairite idiots who think the people want the Labour party to go more to the right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear."_ \-- Bertrand Russell

</comment><comment><USER5> This is one of the atrocities involving civil and human rights abuses by government that has nothing to do with neither Trump nor Clinton. However, the media, even in the UK, is more concerned with Trump than the abuses of government, which are what really threatens human liberty and welfare.

<comment><USER6> Each president that expands the president's power manages to forget that he gives those powers to the next person. Which is how Trump now has quite the surveillance apparatus.

<comment><USER5> Presidents may not hold anywhere near as much power as we believe. Eisenhower seemed to be very concerned in his warning of this when he was leaving office half a century ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY)

<comment><USER7> We got a dramatic demonstration of this in action, when the CIA performed a media hatchet job on Trump shortly after his election victory (the intelligence agencies are notorious for doing things like this, it happened numerous times during the Bush Administration). Which then prompted him to make the CIA his first stop after the inauguration, to show his belly and let them know he wasn't a threat to them. It's pretty clear where the power rests in the US.

<comment><USER8> Assuming this is true, who exactly would have the power? The director of the CIA?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just watched zero days, a great documentary about stuxnet. It is important to realize-- and this seems to be the films thesis, that secrecy is extremely damaging. It took 20-30 years for bioweapons, nuclear weapons, and chemical weapons treaties to be enacted and this process hasn't been started with cyber.

Attacking whistleblowers is damaging because it is postponing inevitable discussions that need to happen and interfering with discourse nations need to have within themselves and with other counter-parties.

<comment><USER10> > "It is important to realize-- and this seems to be the films thesis, that > secrecy is extremely damaging."

Wow, I guess we watched the same documentary, but I didn't pull that message from that movie at all.

Just seemed like kind of a two front warning to me:

1\. Those type of cyber operations are extremely difficult to pull off effectively. Stuxnet did little to damper Iran's progress.

2\. Those type of operations are extremely difficult to control. Stuxnet got into the wild, even though its original targets were airgapped networks and industrial machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Note that this is the UK government

<comment><USER12> Any government on this path is a tyrannic old dinosaur in need of reform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The title here is inaccurate (at time of posting: Government accused of 'full- frontal attack' on whistleblowers)

This is a proposal from the Law Commission, an independent body that advises the Government, and might or might not be taken up as a policy position. The title in the article makes the distinction clear.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just... wow. And people question the need for civil liberties organizations, or in the U.S. strong defenders of the bill of rights.

Donating to the ACLU, EFF and NRA is something most of us should be doing.

<comment><USER15> One of those organizations isn't like the others.

<comment><USER14> I don't agree with everything the NRA or it's members support... there isn't an alternative organization that is working to protect second amendment rights that I'm aware of. The ACLU specifically takes a back seat on the issue and points to the NRA.

Frankly, the NRA has plenty of money behind it.. but I feel that it's important to protect civil liberties spelled out by the constitution and implied under the 10th amendment.

<comment><USER16> > there isn't an alternative organization that is working to protect second > amendment rights that I'm aware of

There are a few others: Gun Owners of America (GOA), Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), etc., but perhaps the biggest and most effective (though not nearly as large as the NRA) is the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) - who effects most of the change they desire through lawsuit.

The two largest gun rights cases of our era (to date) are DC v Heller and Chicago v McDonald. Both of those cases were the result of a suit initiated by the Second Amendment Foundation. They're also better about keeping themselves single-issue than the NRA, which is good for me personally because outside of gun rights and safety, I disagree with the NRA on very little.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for pointing the others out... will look into SAF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When you roll in the whole 'handing over of social media passwords' thing (currently suggested in the US, but if mass adopted no doubt followed elsewhere) all this becomes even more scary. Dare to criticise a government? Don't even think about travelling there. Criticise your own government - expect that to be shared back.

Who's going to want to challenge anything any government says? No one that wants an easy life. Frightening.

</comment><comment><USER12> Gee, should I be asking "why" instead?

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't think I've ever seen "full-frontal" modify anything other than "nudity" (possibly implicitly).

<comment><USER5> Keeping the stereotype of software engineers in mind, I think it's funny that posts attempting to be funny are down-voted.

<comment><USER19> Time and place.

<comment><USER20> Slashdot manages a balance of it. Why can't HN do the same?

That's essentially one of the reasons I don't post a whole lot here. The 'community guidelines' are a real trainwreck to anyone who has experience running a community. I ran BBSes, half of these 'guidelines' were proven unworkable decades ago.

But then again, engineers are rarely known for hindsight or historical perspective.

<comment><USER19> _Slashdot manages a balance of it. Why can 't HN do the same?_

While there may be similarities and overlap, Slashdot and HN are different communities and have different expectations and community standards. I don't think it's a matter of HN not managing the balance Slashdot has: it's more that HN's sense of where that balance should be is different. I'm sure there are plenty of members who frequent both sites, just as you do, and are aware and accepting of the differences.

<comment><USER20> Nobody bothers visiting Slashdot any more, just like nobody bothers with Soylent News. Note that any venerable name on either of those sites essentially doesn't post there any longer. Any accounts you see are either die-hard try-hards or bots/spammers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What I would like to see more in this conversation (on HN) is the potentially harmful effects of whistleblowing. It's nice that Snowden/das Spiegel/guardian were meticulous in making sure people weren't endangered by the leaks, but we can't count on it in general.

State secrets are often nefarious. However, they are often well-meaning (nuclear weapons schematics, etc). It is highly non trivial to ascertain the long-term impact of intelligence leaks upon the state.

<comment><USER22> Maybe you're unclear on exactly what a whistleblower means. Definition (by google): "a person who informs on a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity."

So by definition, you can only whistleblow if the government (or company) is doing ILLEGAL (and often IMMORAL) things. So you may not find many people on HN who are too interested in arguing about the downsides of whisteblowing; it'd almost be like asking what the upsides of spousal abuse are.

<comment><USER23> The trouble is that in most of the recent prominent government "whistleblowing" cases (Snowden, Manning, the other one I forget) there's a great deal of disagreement on the legality of what has been exposed. The issue is that an individual sets himself up as judge and jury on the subject of complicated legal matters which he might not fully understand.

I will say that both Snowden and Manning went well into the territory of leaking stuff that wasn't illegal in addition to stuff that was at least debatable.

<comment><USER24> "an individual sets himself up as judge and jury on the subject of complicated legal matters"

Legal channels were shown to be utterly ineffective in these matters, accomplishing nothing but drawing retribution against the would-be whistleblower: [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/12/15/nsa-inspector- wh...](http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/12/15/nsa-inspector-who- criticized-snowden-not-using-official-channels-found-guilty)

And how many judges were consulted on wether the spying was legal, let alone got to rule on it? How carefully chosen were they? And how legitimate are such secret trials? You accuse whistleblowers of playing judge and jury for merely revealing what the government is -doing-.

Finally, the entire appeal to 'legal matters' is misguided - whistleblowing is done when someone feels something is -morally- wrong, regardless of what the law, written by the government and interpreted in secret, says.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Scala Tutorial for Java Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://docs.scala-lang.org/tutorials/scala-for-java-programmers.html <comment><USER2> I just got interested in scala because of this:

<http://spark-project.org/>

Has anybody tried spark out? What did you think? I'm kind of afraid of using it for production because it is so new.

<comment><USER3> Really a bad name: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_%28programming_language%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_%28programming_language%29)

<comment><USER4> There's also a Spark Java web framework, too. Common name.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it important to put your name and face to your open source project? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN, about a month ago, I launched an open source project [1]. So far, the traction has been pretty good (398 stars on Github so far).
One interesting thing that has happened is that three different people have asked to know who actually made the project. Now, I have almost no personal web presence (no Twitter, no portfolio Github, no personal website, etc). I am generally just a recluse in real life and and the web. I also don't have any previous experience maintaining open source projects to actually answer my own question.
Therefore, I would really appreciate some discussion around this issue, hopefully from people with experience.
[1] https://github.com/halfmoonui/halfmoon <comment><USER2> Not really, but some persona (i.e. nick + avatar picture not connected to your "real" identity) might help.

It's also a presentation thing, i.e. your website prompts "follow us on Twitter!", which poses the question who "us" is - a company? a professional team? - cases where one would expect information.

<comment><AUTHOR> That actually makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A real one is definitely not needed. Actually being anonymous can bring positive attention of its own too - see "why the lucky stiff".</comment>


Where is Silicon Valley? - A Rare Useful Post From Valleywag - <AUTHOR> http://www.valleywag.com/tech/dumb-questions/where-is-silicon-valley-260714.php <comment><USER2> ...and not a single Palo Alto or Menlo Park location on that map.</comment>


Ask HN: Good Aeron knock-off/alternative? - <AUTHOR> I've been meaning to make an investment in a low-end Aeron (do they exist?) or an Aeron knock-off. . .I've been through 2 chairs in the past 2 years and it is seriously interfering w/ my work. I'll actually even go to my school's computer lab for extended periods of time if I have a lot of work to do since their chairs are so comfortable to sit in while working.
I know it's not just me and I'm not trying to act as if I'm a special case, but the biggest problem I see w/ office chairs is they don't support a proper posture while sitting at a computer. For instance, I often find myself slouching or trying to reconfigure my arm-chair height so I can jump from the keyboard to the mouse w/o much effort.
Again not to sound like a special case, but I have extremely long legs (high-waist line, like a woman...) and short torso, I don't know if this physical feature is affecting my posture in normal office chairs, but Aeron seems to effect my posture enough that it makes a huge difference. <comment><USER3> If you have tried the Aeron and it is working for you then my advice is... buy an Aeron. Why are you trying to save nickels and dimes on a problem that is interfering with your work? You will spend more time searching and auditioning an alternative chair -- which will end up costing plenty, itself -- than the money you save will be worth.

My Aeron is nearly ten years old. A new Aeron costs $850 up front from Amazon; that works out to about $7 a month. It beats pain.

Recently my chair broke (the hydraulic unit sort of exploded). Fortunately Aerons have a _twelve year_ warranty, so in about an hour a tech is scheduled to visit my home office and fix it, for free.

If you really cannot stomach spending money for a new Aeron buy a used Aeron. (But you might want to call and make sure that the sweet, sweet warranty will transfer! ;) Then, if you decide later that another chair is better, you can sell the Aeron used and not lose much money in the bargain.

<comment><USER4> If anything, the chair is worth it because of the warranty - imagine buying a 100$ POS chair every year and compare it with the cost of an Aeron over 12 years (at least twelve, but it's likely to last more).

However, the 12-year warranty is only for structural parts. If I recall correctly, the mesh had only a 5-year warranty.

<comment><USER5> This chair discussion and zed shaw's recent RSI discussion led me to looking at buying a new chair since my current one is giving me problems. I've settled on the Mirra, since I prefer it to an Aeron and I've found some reasonable deals for various colors of lightly used Mirra chairs on sites like ebay, craigslist, etc.

I'm sure a lot of others here looking to buy a chair are thinking of going the same route I am. Be aware that there is one _major_ caveat emptor to buying a secondhand chair: Herman Miller's 12 year warranty _only_ applies to the original purchaser that obtained the product from HM or an authorized reseller. Humanscale, Steelcase, Knoll, HON, and pretty much every other major task chair manufacturer has a similar warranty, and none of them will let you transfer the warranty AFAIK. Experiences with obtaining warranty service for secondhand Aerons and other chairs seems to vary, but please factor in the possibility that you may not be able to obtain service into the long-term cost of buying a used chair. If a trivial-over-12-years cost difference will give you peace of mind, go for it. Research a reseller before you buy anything from them. And so on.

If you weren't aware of this already, well, you can use it now to negotiate a lower price ;)

(Speaking of warranties, Costco sells some Herman Miller chairs as a legitimate authorized reseller. You can get the HM warranty and Costco's legendary return policy together that way, should anything with your chair go horribly wrong.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _low-end Aeron (do they exist?)_

Some of my coworkers saw an ad on Craigslist for a recording studio that was going out of business. They were selling everything, from mixing boards and microphones to computers and Aeron chairs. They got genuine Aeron chairs for about $250 each. Try looking on Craigslist or in the Pennysaver for going out of business type sales.

<comment><USER7> Same here. I bought two Aerons for just a couple hundred a piece from a guy who got them from an office that went out of business. He had like 10 he was selling. I'd imagine this scenario isn't that uncommon and should be easy to find on CL or something similar.

Also, search nearby cities/regions. I had to drive an hour or so for mine, but it was worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previously on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=585693>

Ergohuman is the closest I can find to the Aeron, but I haven't tried one yet. They're also pretty close to Aeron in price, around $600:

<http://ergohuman.com/index.html>

Realspace Pro 9000 is close too:

[http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/690690/Realspace- PRO-9...](http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/690690/Realspace- PRO-9000-Series-60percent-Recycled/)

A Slate article looking for the 'best desk chair':

<http://www.slate.com/id/2131646/>

Some others worth looking at:

Herman Miller Ecua XR:

[http://www.costco.com/Browse/ProductGroup.aspx?Prodid=113004...](http://www.costco.com/Browse/ProductGroup.aspx?Prodid=11300477&whse=BC&topnav=)

Humanscale Liberty:

<http://www.thehumansolution.com/liberty.html>

Hayworth Zody:

[http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/review-haworth-zody- cha...](http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/review-haworth-zody- chair-20080326/)

Realspace BT2:

[http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/392830/Realspace- BT2-B...](http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/392830/Realspace-BT2-Big-And- Tall-High/) (I randomly found this one in Office Depot recently, and liked how it felt so much I bookmarked its page. I'm not Big & Tall, just average, but this chair's posture & lumbar support felt great)

Here's a fake Aeron:

[http://www.coolchairz.com/solid-metal-mesh-chair-- metallic-t...](http://www.coolchairz.com/solid-metal-mesh-chair--metallic- trim-amp-frame.html)

Lots more at <http://www.ergodepot.com/>

Even a TED Talk on sitting:

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/niels_diffrient_rethinks_...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/niels_diffrient_rethinks_the_way_we_sit_at_work.html)

<comment><USER9> I have the Zody chair and I have to say it's pretty fantastic. I was going to buy an Aeron, but even with the size C chair, the lip of the seat dug into my thighs. The Zody on the other hand has an adjustable seat pan so I can move it out so the edge is under my knees.

The adjustable arm rests are also pretty cool and nearly worth the price of admission by themselves. They adjust up/down, forward/backward, left/right and rotate around the vertical axis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am obese [1]. When I sit in one of those cheapy ($150 or so) office chairs from the office stores, I find that the gas cylinders last about 6 months before my fat a@@ squeezes the gas out of them. Since they're cheap imports, the only way to get a replacement gas cylinder is to buy a new chair. So I was spending $250-350/year on office chairs at home.

I've had my Aeron for 4 years now. No new cylinders. So the $800 I spent more than paid for itself. If I had stayed using office chairs, I'd have spent more than $1k on them.

Notes:

1 - Getting run over by a car, and being unable to be as physically active as I used to be didn't help.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not exactly what you're asking, but I took a chance on replacing my chair entirely with an inflatable exercise ball, and I'm quite happy with the result. It took a week or so to get used to, but my balance has somewhat improved and my lowe back actually seems a little stronger. I'm also putting the money I saved on a chair into buying an adjustable height desk so I can stand & work when I get tired of bouncing on said ball.

<comment><AUTHOR> What kind of desks are you looking into?

<comment><USER11> Thinking of getting a GeekDesk. You can buy just the frame, then find your own desk top piece (and a hollow-core door from home depot will work just fine)

<comment><USER12> I think this winter I'm going to build my own version of the GeekDesk. I'll put it on instructables.com or whatever and document it. I'd start today, but I have too many other house projects to do while it is still warm out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One that was recommended to me on here before (and I ended up buying - <USER2> HN!) was the Markus from Ikea - <http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/20103101>

It's a lovely chair for working in, very comfortable and with a decent head / neck support.

<comment><USER14> How long have you had yours? I have a chair from Ikea that was great for about 1.5 years then deteriorated rather quickly.

<comment><USER15> I have a love hate relationship with Ikea. The rule I've worked out is "buy nothing with moving parts" which would rule out office chairs.

<comment><USER12> I'm down to 4 out of 6 of these that haven't broken from regular use within the first year: <http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70033870>

Luckily, I live in the same town as Herman Miller and find good stuff at garage sales every now and then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> After having issues multiple times with my back as a result of the way I sit (and the amount of time I sit) for work, my opinion is work standing up as much as possible.

That or get one of the exercise balls to sit on when you must sit, it forces correct posture.

</comment><comment><USER17> Whatever you do, I wouldn't buy the Realspace Pro/Quantum from Office Depot. They may have since fixed the design, but for my current version:

The design for attaching the seatback to the base is poor - all that is holding it up is two metal plates attached to eachother at (about) a 60 degree angle with 2 screws. There is a "slot" one goes into but it is just plastic. Due to this the screws holding up the back have a tendency to snap in half.

Both of my screws broke after 1 month, causing me to go crashing onto the floor. They had a "recall" and distributed a repair kit with new screws but one new screw has already snapped for me. To really fix this chair they would have to do much more than distribute a new pair of screws. Hopefully they have in newer chairs, but I wouldn't risk $250 on it.

This may have to do with weight and height - I'm 6'4 and 190 lbs, so I would place much more stress on the screws than someone shorter. I still wouldn't risk it though.

See: <http://www.quantumchair.com/recall/cpsc.html>

</comment><comment><USER18> Imho, Aeron chairs are overrated, because they lack good neck and head support.

I use a Vitra Headline. Most comfortable task chair in the world. I can code on it for days without feeling that my head is getting heavy and I need to sleep. It's so much relaxing fun I regularly have to drag myself away from the monitor at 3am to go to bed. Truly a revolution.

</comment><comment><USER19> While not necessarily cheaper, the Haworth Zody chairs are an option (I _love_ mine), as are several Steelcase chairs (e.g. the Leap). You might have better luck if you watch craigslist for all three, but remember that the fit of the actual chair is probably as important as the general design.

</comment><comment><USER14> >I'll actually even go to my school's computer lab for extended periods of time if I have a lot of work to do since their chairs are so comfortable to sit in while working.

So what kind of chairs do they have? School labs aren't known for having Aerons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I was actually going to stop by later today and see for myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I own an Aeron, and I used to have a Mirra at work. If I had my money back, I'd go for the Mirra instead. It's still in the luxury price range, but a bit cheaper, and to me it felt better. I used to spend more time sitting in the 'proper' position in the Mirra, while in the Aeron I'll often slouch, cross legs, and otherwise change posture. Maybe I never managed to adjust the Aeron just right. Mirra is less configurable, but it just worked for me, so I count that as a plus.

Even cheaper chairs are a significant investment, so I suggest just try sitting on as many as you can, and don't buy one that you couldn't try.

</comment><comment><USER21> Get a Celle. I find them more comfortable that Aerons and way cheaper. <http://www.hermanmiller.com/Products/Celle-Chairs>

</comment><comment><USER22> I picked mine up used on craigslist for about $400.(If you are willing to wait for it you can get it cheaper) It has so far lasted longer than a "cheaper" staples chair that goes for 100-200 bucks and has no degradation in utility. I love it and I am kicking my self in the ass for not buying it sooner.

BTW... the price that they list on craigslist is usually an ideal price that they would like to get. You should be able to knock off 50-100 bucks off the price by haggling in person and be willing to walk away from a deal.

</comment><comment><USER23> Another option is the Swopper chair. [http://www.amazon.com/A-801-Black- Swopper-Chair/dp/B00079EH3...](http://www.amazon.com/A-801-Black-Swopper- Chair/dp/B00079EH3U)

It looks like a barstool and feels a bit like a high-tech, firm, adjustable exercise ball. Easily my favorite office chair and vastly better, in my opinion, than Aerons.

</comment><comment><USER24> I can't recommend the Steelcase Leap enough. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I found the Aeron chairs to be somewhat uncomfortable. The Steelcase Leap, on the otherhand... I've had it for a year and couldn't imagine working without one.

I found mine for $100 on Craiglist, so maybe try there.

<comment><USER25> Second the steelcase leap. It has a nice "recline mode" which I make copious use of. Make sure you get the version 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _I'll actually even go to my school's computer lab for extended periods of time if I have a lot of work to do since their chairs are so comfortable to sit in while working._

So what chairs do they have? Probably not Aerons? If those work fine for you, why not buy just that.

</comment><comment><USER27> The Quantum Mesh Chair from Office Depot is pretty nice, and about $300 new.

Double-check the seat height, though. I'm 5'11" and at the highest setting it's almost too low. I'm not entirely sure if they come in different sizes or if its one-size-fits-all.

</comment><comment><USER28> We use these at our office:

[http://www.sitonit.net/home/product- overview.asp?product=foc...](http://www.sitonit.net/home/product- overview.asp?product=focus)

They are not as good as aerons but they are significantly cheaper, around $250.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've seen a bunch of Aeron chairs on Craigslist (Baltimore) for around $450. I suggest just subscribing to the Aeron search results and waiting until you see one at your price point.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have had an Aeron chair almost since it came out. The same one have been traveling with me across continents for 12 years or so.

Don't get the nock off get the real thing.

</comment><comment><USER31> I got an Aeron on craigslist for $150. Shit luck, but it does happen. The seller wanted a white one to match his office redesign :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Have you tried a stand-desk?</comment>