Sir Rod Stewart reveals his epic model railway city - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-50403561 <comment><USER2> My little boy has been crazy about cars ever since he was the littlest boy.

So when he was 2 years old I made him a little city, the size of a large coffee table, using all the stuff from model railroads. Grass, roads, houses, people. I drilled holes and pushed led lights through the bottom and into the insides of the buildings. I even put little monkeys in the trees and playing on the roofs of the buildings. The only thing it _didn 't have_ was railroads or trains.

Most toys, kids play with them for a while and stop and move on to something else.

He played on that little city non stop for at least 4 years if not 5. Every morning he got up and sat down next to it and started pushing his cars around it and parking them and lining them up and making vehicle noises.

I have to admit I had a huge amount of fun choosing all the parts and designing and making that little model city.

He's older now so the table lies in a corner much loved and worn and now unused but here it is:

[https://imgur.com/a/hNOSGrq](https://imgur.com/a/hNOSGrq)

<comment><USER3> Do you remember the elaborate HBO title card that ran before their movies in the 1980s? They built an entire city, and some surrounding backroads and suburbs, in miniature to dolly the camera through before the HBO logo (itself built of wood and covered with sheet metal) spun at you -- even going so far as to place tiny model prostitutes on the street corners.

The only computer directly involved in production was used to control the sliding of two pieces of film to produce a "flare" effect late in the sequence.

<comment><USER4> CGI was expensive back then. Escape from New York (1981) had a "wireframe" city scene, which was actually a model city with fluorescent tape applied to the edges of the buildings. Cheaper than doing it with real computer graphics, and looked just as good.

<comment><USER5> >Cheaper than doing it with real computer graphics, and looked just as good.

My kids were poking fun at the rendering glitches in the titles of Star Trek: Next Gen. They explored Netflix a little further to find the original Star Trek, and agreed that it had much better CGI with their starship. No glitches at all! It never occurred to them that they were models.

<comment><USER6> Funnily enough, TNG used models as well, I don't think it was until Deep Space 9 that they actually started using CGI starships. The versions of the first two Star Treks on Netflix are the remastered versions, so they might be pointing out CGI issues that came up years after the original airing.

[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Remaster](https://memory- alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Remaster)

<comment><USER7> DS9 also used models! CGI came with Voyager, notably using Amigas with Video Toaster.

They had been extremely reluctant to use CGI up to that point, despite many efforts to persuade.

[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/CGI](https://memory- alpha.fandom.com/wiki/CGI)

<comment><USER8> Babylon 5, which (somewhat infamously) ran at roughly the same time as DS9, was much more aggressive in adopting CGI (also courtesy of Amiga and Video Toaster, I believe) for space stuff, but still used a lot of practical effects for interior shots as well. The CGI ultimately had a negative impact on the DVD and LaserDisc releases. Live action was shot for widescreen, but CGI was only rendered for 4:3 standard-def broadcast. The plan was that if they ever did a widescreen release, they'd re-render the CGI for whatever the target resolution ended up being. But when production ended the assets were lost, and they ended up having to manipulate the standard-def video into a widescreen aspect ratio. This isn't too bad for the pure CGI space stuff, but there are a few composite shots that look _awful_ on the LaserDisc and DVD releases because of it.

I guess sometimes no matter which tech you choose, it ends up being a double- edged sword in one way or another. Especially in the early '90s.

<comment><USER9> Yes, B5 was an aggressive adopter of digital technology. The driver was _costs_. Models were _expensive_ , and if they could be replaced by CGI, the cost of making the show could be dramatically reduced. B5 was being produced for the syndication market, which was a different animal than the usual networks, and doing it cheaper while retaining quality was a major goal. Short lived competitor "Space: Above and Beyond (which lasted one season) used models, with production costs over $1,000,000 per episode, and that was a major reason they only lasted a season. B5 did use Amiga and Video Toaster in the beginning, though I believe they transitioned to other equipment later. J. Michael Straczynski's partner Doug Netter had a company called Netter Digital that did the work. JMS commented that when he did pitch meetings with possible networks that would air the show, it was him and a 5 minute clip of their CGI renderings. When I saw the first episode opening, with the Vorlon craft emerging from hyperspace to dock at Babylon 5, I sat back open mouthed going "Whoa". I'm a computer guy, and had some notion of what it took to _do_ that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder where the fascination with trains and railways (that I share) comes from. Maybe from the 19th century industrialization and technological revolution when railway was one of its main symbols ("locomotion of progress")? Related to this, it was a great surprise to me when I first found out about the origin of the term 'hacker':

"3\. The Early Hackers

The beginnings of the hacker culture as we know it today can be conveniently dated to 1961, the year MIT acquired the first PDP-1. The Signals and Power committee of MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club adopted the machine as their favorite tech-toy and invented programming tools, slang, and an entire surrounding culture that is still recognizably with us today. These early years have been examined in the first part of Steven Levy's book Hackers [Levy] .

MIT's computer culture seems to have been the first to adopt the term `hacker'. The Tech Model Railroad Club's hackers became the nucleus of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the world's leading center of AI research into the early 1980s. Their influence was spread far wider after 1969, the first year of the ARPANET. "

Source: [http://catb.org/esr/writings/hacker-history/hacker- history-3...](http://catb.org/esr/writings/hacker-history/hacker- history-3.html)

<comment><USER11> My pet hypothesis is that train systems are intellectually complex, but bound in a framework of knowable rules. It seems like some people just can't resist diving deep into systems like that (credit card rewards, board games, or, of course, computer programming).

<comment><USER12> OMG I think you've just explained my wife's obsession with frequent-flyer points to me. (And she flies a lot, which is a desirable prerequisite.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This deserves a video walkthrough. The photos are indistinguishable from cityscape photographs, which speaks to the incredible level of detail. However it's hard to sense the scale.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, the whole thing looks pretty amazingly massize, but there isn't a single photograph that shows the whole thing.

I'm also really curious what the sky is painted onto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So one can view Rod Stewart's entire career as an attempt to achieve enough fame to preserve his model railway layout after his passing?

Tongue in cheek, but I do think modelers keep these questions in the back of their mind, about the worth of this thing they put thousands of hours into. You accept that you do it because you love it, whilst recognising that most don't share your passion. Hopefully it goes to a good home after you depart, but finding that home is a big ask for others. Even then, if the value is in the journey/making rather than the destination, will another "passionate" even benefit from the ownership?

<comment><USER16> From the looks of it, he's been keeping his career going all these years just to support his train hobby. ;P

<comment><USER17> Scale cinder blocks 'aint cheap.

<comment><USER18> that reminded me of a startup I read about in one of these ask:hn posts: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16429467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16429467)

they're really not cheap

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some of my earliest memories as a child was watching my dad working on a huge model railway set that he built when I was only about 3 or 4. We had an entire room of a house dedicated to his train hobby. Strangely, when we moved house, my father never recreated the same thing in any of the other places we lived. It was almost as if he completely turned his back on that passion and hobby.

I never thought about it until my 40th birthday when he presented me with some of the carriages and engines that he had saved even after we had emigrated to Australia (we had sold/burned/threw out most of our possessions for the move).

I am sure those old Fleischmann models are worth a bit nowadays as collectors items, and when he gave them to me, it made me realise how much that hobby meant to him and how much he must have missed it for all those years that he couldn't go to his room and spend time with his trains.

</comment><comment><USER20> His layout was featured in Model Railroader back in 2007:

[http://mrr.trains.com/magazine/press-releases/2007/10/rod- st...](http://mrr.trains.com/magazine/press-releases/2007/10/rod-stewart-and- model-railroads)

<comment><USER21> My pal has a decent Model Railroader archive and is digging out that issue for me to read. I'll scan the article pages and put them somewhere for others to see when it arrives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Gorgeous! I love imagining new cities. One of my projects after I am done with farming is to create a future world with future cities..not unlike Italo Cavalo's imaginary cities but in the future.

Does anyone want to share how they imagine new cities?

<comment><USER23> I have an imaginary city that I started sketching out as a kid. In my imagination it is situated in a real-world place, so a few years ago I transferred my sketch into Google My Maps and I tweak it from time to time, like a garden. Thankfully the location is still uninhabited :)

Are there any tools people like to use for this kind of urban dreamscaping? Google My Maps is pretty rudimentary but it's all I know. Games like Sim City don't fit the bill for me because there's too much other stuff going on -- I just want to sketch roads, buildings, transit lines, etc., on top of a map.

<comment><USER24> A game, heavily modded, like Cities: Skylines might do it for you. You can mod away most of the management minutae and just focus on the infrastructure, transit, and building. It's not hard to basically turn the game into a virtual model builder.

Here's some examples:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/doxh7h/50_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/doxh7h/50_ish_shades_of_concrete/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/bvxh5i/urba...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/bvxh5i/urban_junction/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/busrvi/topv...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/busrvi/topview_of_the_west_side/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/boxbp2/expr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/boxbp2/expressway/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Amazing achievement. He really nailed down the 1940s-1950s urban look. The skyline looks like an inventive pastiche of Chicago and New York. I do wonder if he included an automat.

<comment><USER25> I used to take the train into Union Station at Chicago every day and I thought I recognized parts of the model almost right away, it really is quite well done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What a cool project. I wonder if there's been an essay or treatise on these kind of agglomerative, ever-expanding labors of love. There are points of similarity to the installation art of Jason Rhoades ([https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/jason- rhoades](https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/jason-rhoades)), or the Rodia's Watts Towers ([http://www.wattstowers.us](http://www.wattstowers.us)) among others. It's trying to capture an entire world.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't understand this:

> He told Railway Modeller he worked on the skyscrapers and other scenery > while on tour, requesting an extra room for his constructions in his hotels.

> "We would tell them in advance and they were really accommodating, taking > out the beds and providing fans to improve air circulation and ventilation," > he said.

I can understand taking parts on a tour, but maybe I'm missing something? Assuming Rod's moving from hotel to hotel frequently, how is he going to have the time to do something so massive? And, wouldn't this kind of thing be well- known?

<comment><USER28> He might not have moved hotel that frequently. [http://mrr.trains.com/magazine/press-releases/2007/10/rod- st...](http://mrr.trains.com/magazine/press-releases/2007/10/rod-stewart-and- model-railroads):

 _"For example, during a 63-show North American tour in 2007, Stewart relocated his wife Penny Lancaster, the couple 's toddler son Alistair, and seven massive traveling cases of model kits and tools to a suite of rooms in Chicago. From this central location, he flew to each night's show. After the performance, a limo would rush him back to the airport where his private jet would be waiting. After a quick flight back to Chicago and a few hours rest, Stewart would be up bright and early and busy at his model railroad workbench. Stewart said he could usually manage a few hours of steady model building each morning before setting aside his tools and spending the remainder of the day with his wife and son."_

<comment><USER29> Great article (from 2007), including the fact that was a railway worker!

Here's the website of the article that OP is referring to. [https://peco- uk.com/pages/railway-modeller](https://peco-uk.com/pages/railway-modeller)

(different magazine)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Slightly off-topic but HN-appropriate, Alan Cox of Linux kernel fame runs a model train business:

[https://www.ultima-models.co.uk/](https://www.ultima-models.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER31> The jaw-dropping model aside, the magazine cover is my favorite part. Whenever I see someone get appreciation outside of their known position of recognition - it gives my renaissance muscle a little tingle. I wonder if this is more common or less common than we think.

"...like Rod Stewart on the cover of Railway Modeler!"

Can anyone think of other examples of this?

<comment><USER32> I enjoy these too. A few off the top of my head:

James Hetfield of Metallica is a well-known beekeeper

Tony Bennett is an avid painter

Bryan Adams is an excellent photographer

Paul Newman is in the Sports Car Club of America Hall of Fame and had an extensive auto racing career

Geena Davis nearly made it to the Olympic archery team

Steve Martin is an excellent banjo player and has won a couple Grammys for it

<comment><USER33> Some off the top of my head:

Bruce Dickinson is a commercial 757 (later 747) pilot (also fenced internationally for England.)

Maynard James Keenan and Sam Neill are both (I believe) renowned winemakers.

Terry Crews is also an avid painter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> _Sir Rod Stewart donates to Market Deeping Model Railway Club_ [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england- lincolnshire-48332649](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england- lincolnshire-48332649)

Vandals damaged model railway exhibition, Rod made a donation to help restore it.

</comment><comment><USER35> That is awesome! Now I have an all new respect for this guy.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Same here! The level of investment and his work on it is staggering.

It also reminds me of a Canadian treasure (possibly NSFW/language)...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAbZi14-i6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAbZi14-i6s)

It's surprisingly prescient being a rock star with that kind of ... smokey voice...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'd love to know how he safely accesses the inner/back parts. Some other large models have gaps, and you climb up from under, but at least in the photos it was unclear where that would be in some pictures (too dense).

The detail is simply breathtaking. I particularly loved the boat/old warehouse with the rust and exposed metal.

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone interested in epic model railways/cities - i've just been to Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg which is very accessible and entertaining (i'm in no way into model railways) with tons of cute little details; well worth a visit!

<comment><USER38> An addition for anyone in the Baltimore/DC area: the Ellicott City Volunteer Fire Department has an annual model train display that they set up every year. Believe it's from right after thanksgiving through the new year. It's not enormous from a square footage view, but it is absolutely packed with detail. They even have a scavenger hunt sheet they give to kids to see if they can find stuff like all the Santas, Harry Potter miniatures in a hidden cave, etc. Well worth a visit if you're in the area!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> If not for model railroads the computing scene would look entirely different today.

</comment><comment><USER21> BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine talks to Rod about his hobby on his show[0]. They're then joined by Jools Holland who is also an enthusiast, and then after a tune Steve Lamacq and the guy from Railway Modeller, who wrote up the article mentioned, chat for a while longer about modelling.

As a modeller myself it was nice to listen to a reasonably respectful and decent length piece about the hobby.

[0]: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000b4vn](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000b4vn) (skip to 35 mins)

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder how the lighting was done. The shadows are really sharp, as if they're coming from a single source, without overlaps. This really adds to the realism of the scene.

<comment><USER4> I don't see anything moving in the photos, so it could be done using a single small light source, a tripod, and long exposures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Brings back some long forgotten nostalgia. Growing up in South Florida, where trains aren't much utilized, I was amazed as a little kid visiting Holland how much trains were used in Europe, and how big the model train scene was there. I'll always remember walking into a shop in Eindhoven that was like the most beautiful model train museum I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER42> Nice. Look for the Pennsylvania T1 Duplex in the second photo.

(For those not familiar with the term: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_locomotive#PRR_class_T1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_locomotive#PRR_class_T1))

</comment><comment><USER43> If you are interested in model trains you might like this video about the largest model railway of Russia from RT Documentary: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fNBlLWYthQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fNBlLWYthQ)

</comment><comment><USER44> Watch some videos of Luke Towan and then say that you're not enticed to start putting something together: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxhZ7uE7glY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxhZ7uE7glY)

</comment><comment><USER45> That's some beautiful job. My mother in law's friend has something resembling built that takes the whole basement and I was deeply impressed when saw it. I can only imagine what Rod's creation look like when you actually see it.

</comment><comment><USER46> I love this kinda thing and - if I had Sir Rod's bank account - would probably purchase some augmented reality goggles and bring the city alive with traffic, pedestrians and King Kong with bi-planes.

<comment><USER7> If I'm interpreting the second picture right, he may be one step ahead with traffic. It looks like each carriageway has a continuous slot, so I'm going to guess that traffic is on a very long loop, one for each direction so the traffic is constantly moving over that bridge.

Can't tell from what I can see of the city detail in the last photo if that's the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21527206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21527206) (but no comments there).

</comment><comment><USER48> I have always wondered how do they keep such sets from being covered by thick layers of dust? Is it special ventilation, or do they just clean and wipe everything every day?

</comment><comment><USER49> I showed this to my dad, who used to do model railroads. He said just the first photo looked like it cost about $10,000.

</comment><comment><USER50> After reading about the true meaning behind Boris Busses the other day:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21506443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21506443)

I'm afraid I have to ask: what's he trying to bury? Hopefully nothing more shameful than he's secretly been a Ruby-on-Rails developer for the last 10 years.

<comment><USER51> Being a rails dev for the last 10 years is shameful?

<comment><USER50> Only if you're a rockstar.

<comment><USER51> Phew! Glad I dodged that bullet, though I guess I'm more of a JavaScript dev these days

<comment><USER50> I hear that's where all the rockstars ended up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> > I enjoyed the building more than I did the running.

So true!

His layouts are incredible. I'd love to see them in person.

</comment><comment><USER53> When Rod Stewart travel he always books two rooms. One for him and the other for his trains.

</comment><comment><USER54> Sir Rod you truly are an artist!

</comment><comment><USER55> Would be great for a Godzilla disaster movie

</comment><comment><USER56> This is the type of celebrity news i can get behind. Looks fantastic!

</comment><comment><USER57> I had no idea Rod Stewart covered the Tom Waits song "Downtown Train".

I do not thank this article for informing me of this fact. It is a horrible cover. The world needs more Tom Waits and less Rod Stewart.

</comment><comment><USER58> Looks like he is a lot better at modeling than singing :)

<comment><USER58> Guess his singing has more fans than I'd think!</comment></comment>


Made in China 8-core x86 CPU arrives to market - <AUTHOR> https://www.techspot.com/news/83819-made-china-8-core-x86-cpu-arrives-market.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if it is possible to hack the microcode of such CPU to implement a different architecture?

<comment><USER3> > The VIA Nano Isaiah core design, built by Centaur, would serve as the > architecture for Zhaoxin's first CPUs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unintended consequences of blocking semiconductor sales to China.

It's the perennial question for all company CEOs:

Do we 'buy built' which is quicker, cheaper and easier, but leaves us dependent on external manufacturers?

Or, do we 'build our own' which is expensive in terms of development time and energy and wasted dead-ends, but will eventually make us independent of external manufacturers?

Most CEOs tend to choose the cheaper 'buy built' path. As did Huawei with US semiconductors. But if they are forced to take the 'build our own' path, as when Trump banned US technological sales to Huawei, the end effect will be for the US manufacturers to miss out completely on the already huge, and growing further, Chinese market for semiconductors.

(And that's not counting the future competition between the massive new Chinese semiconductor manufacturers and the US semiconductor manufacturers who previously held the monopoly. Why are people in the West seemingly blind to the fact that, all by itself, the _internal_ Chinese market is larger than the _whole_ of the Western market?)</comment>


CARDIAC simulator in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardsim.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Most folks will be unfamiliar with this, but back in the way back times Bell Labs sold or gave away a small cardboard kit to educators to help them teach computation to students. They called it "A CARDboard Illustration Aid to Computation" or CARDIAC. Described on the Wikipedia page here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_Computation) it had a wonderful manual that came with it. This is one of the nicer simulators for it.

</comment><comment><USER2> Grade 10 computer class. We spent the first half of the course cranking out programs on the CARDIAC (second half in BASIC). I had been playing with various languages without much guidance for years before this, but it wasn't until this silly little cardboard computer that the mechanics of computing became clear.

</comment><comment><USER3> The CARDIAC was my first introduction to computing. This is a cool little project, but while nostalgia may cast a warm glow, the truth is that most of my class found the CARDIAC to be mind-numbingly boring. I was thankful when we moved on to Basic and Fortran.

</comment><comment><USER4> Boy does this bring back memories. I still have my CARDIAC somewhere. I think it was my seventh or eighth grade science teacher that gave it to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Still have my Digi-Comp I in a box somewhere. Boy, did that thing make a racket. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digi- Comp_I](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digi-Comp_I)</comment>


Sinofsky on OEM and App Stores - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1274453148770295808 <comment><USER2> The experience of dealing with OEMs, the cost of testing their OS with every piece of hardware under the sun, then watching the Mac guy vs Windows/PC guy ads must have contributed to Microsoft making their own hardware. And trying to create an App Store for Windows.

Interesting that the thread did not include any mention of Microsoft's licensing terms for OEMs charging per computer, even if it wasn't shipped with Windows, which was viewed as a monopolistic practice.

<comment><USER3> > _Interesting that the thread did not include any mention of Microsoft's > licensing terms for OEMs charging per computer, even if it wasn't shipped > with Windows, which was viewed as a monopolistic practice._

Not really relevant to his point. Also it sounds like when this sorta thing was happening he was part of the Office team so not really involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great article, I do wish he put it on his blog instead of piecemealed it on twitter, but I guess you go to move to your audience.

The experience of buying a new PC is still pretty broken even for $2000+ machines.

OEMs still regularly load tons of garbage, and microsoft is also now guilty of adding craplets on to the base image of Windows.

<comment><USER4> He's collated them all in a post on Medium here: [https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/the-app-store- debate-a...](https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/the-app-store-debate-a- story-of-ecosystems-938424eeef74)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sinofsky is trying to draw an analogy between the windows oem situation and the developer, app storesituation where none exists.

He spent all this text describing how bad oems were and simply equated windows oems to iOS developers in the end, for his fair accompli. Shoddy article all around.</comment>


Show HN: npm addict – Your daily injection of npm packages - <AUTHOR> https://npmaddict.com/ <comment><USER2> Cool, could you maybe add an rss feed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here they are: [https://npmaddict.com/#/feeds](https://npmaddict.com/#/feeds)

<comment><USER2> Sweet, thanks. :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Sergey Brin Demos Google Glass At I/O - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/27/sergey-brin-demos-google-glass-at-io/ <comment><USER2> I see at least one eager early-adopter market for Google Glass: amateur pornographers who want to share their, um, personal experiences. Don't laugh -- throughout history, pornographers have been early-stage adopters of new media technologies -- e.g., see <http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v49/no1/johnson.html>

<comment><USER3> But how are they going to avoid turning off their partners wearing that?

<comment><USER4> Err... I hate to break it to you, but most pornography is done for cash. The people don't actually do it for fun, and, hope not to burst you bubble, but they are faking a lot of the time…

A little blue pill and some 'acting' is all you need,

<comment><USER5> To add to that, I'd recommend the documentary "9to5: Days in Porn" [1] to see how a (mainstream) shooting really is like (amongst other things).

1\. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1278293/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Glass looks interesting, but (presuming the price comes way down, which it surely well) I can't see it having a whole lot of traction in consumer markets. Yeah it's small and light, but it's still going to be distracting - I've worn glasses for 30 years

That said, I could really see glass taking off in occupations that require field work - for example, a surveyor or construction foreman can use them in the field and managers/architects/engineers can review pictures and video of project progress or problems that might crop up in the field. It could be attractive to certain consumer markets like cyclists, etc.

Similarly I could see Glass being adopted wholeheartedly by military, security and police personnel, especially as replacement for military helmet cams.

All my opinion of course. We certainly live in interesting times, and kudos for Google for trying to expand our horizons.

edit: BTW if the developer preview were available to non-IO attendees, I'd seriously consider getting one. Like I said, it would be extremely useful during field work.

<comment><USER7> As much as I love Google, I would bet that they lose money on this endeavor, unless they have a really long-term plan where these glasses are just a stepping stone.

I just can't imagine that many people using these.

<comment><USER8> These ones? No. These are ridiculous, (really) ugly, and pretty limited.

But make no mistake, this is absolutely the future.

<comment><USER9> "But make no mistake, this is absolutely the future."

Outside of niche uses already mentioned, I think this is a mistake to believe.

<comment><USER10> Really? Why?

Imagine these in contact form that perform the same things. But also replaces your cell phone. You now see your messages when you want and can respond just by thinking (once we can essentially read your mind, if that happens).

Anything you want could be displayed there without having to check your phone or anything else. Obviously talking to it sucks but if it ever gets to the point where you can think something then this would be killer, for anyone.

Iono, seems to clearly be where things are heading. I don't want to type things to a person everytime I want to communicate with them, what is that? I just want to seamlessly send them a message I have on my mind and get back to real life. And this is the first step and whats possible now. But im sure they expect more.

I expect and want technology to get to the point where its not even noticeable. And these are what it is doing.

<comment><USER11> I think some big money needs to go into subvocal recognition (if it isn't being heavily invested in already). Devices like these will be a lot more attractive if they can be used without speaking out aloud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was a sensational demo - the energy in the room when those jumpers walked on stage was great!

Good for Google -they are often accused of missing the human element. Not Any More.

<comment><USER13> That demo actually made me excited. It was really great work. I wished their on-stage demo could have built off of that energy.

<comment><USER14> I noticed that too. It was a sensational, unexpected, brilliant demo that made me feel wonderful things inside, mixed with reflections about the entire human race, and then it was followed by an underwhelming, slightly silly and slow presentation. It didn't fit... it didn't flow.

<comment><USER15> But on the other hand, the fact that this seemed almost entirely unscripted (the presentation) and that Sergey felt strongly enough to go public with Glass as rough as it currently is, spoke more to me about the excitement and innovation going on at Google than anything else (seriously, Nexus Q?!?). As other posters have said, augmented reality like this is the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google Glass, or any similar product, is going to have at least one killer feature... real-life DVR. Instead of having to snap tho photo at just the right time or start recording before something amazing happens, w/ Glass (hopefully!) you can "rewind" and capture what you just saw happen.

<comment><USER17> This sounds a lot like what was described in the UK miniseries "Black Mirror": in short, record your life.

<comment><USER18> If anyone hasn't watched this BBC show: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/>

I absolutely think this is the kind of show (3 episodes so far) that's aimed at the HN crowd. Completely blew me away.

<comment><USER11> Just a slight correction: Black Mirror was produced for Channel 4 (as opposed to the BBC).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's a cool stunt, but I don't quite understand why everyone is so excited about this as a tech demo - surely a head mounted camera is the least interesting use of Google Glass, and the big unknown is how it looks on the user side?

<comment><USER20> It's a shame they over-promised out of the gate. If they didn't start with that absurd concept video, revealing a life-blogging/recording peripheral with future potential would be pretty interesting.

Instead, it's a guaranteed let-down every time they demo an incremental step like this.

<comment><USER21> This.

I was disappointed there was no HUD showing GPS data or any data really. In hindsight the streaming was impressive, but I just couldn't get over that I wanted to see more from the concept video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> $1,500 for US-based Google IO attendees. Pre-order at conference only. They won't ship until early next year.

Yikes.

Edit: I know these aren't consumer devices. I'm speaking fron a developer perspective. Noticed how literally no one clapped when Sergey announced the price, unlike when the Nexus 7 price was announced?

<comment><USER23> Coming early next year, too.. they have really, really demoed this too soon.

<comment><USER24> I don't understand this sentiment. These are absolutely not consumer products. They're highly specialized hardware devices being sold to interested, motivated hackers that would like to investigate the technology.

Google clearly isn't sure about what direction to take the technology. They've espoused some vague notions about the importance of first person views and the ability to instantly capture precious moments, but that's about the extent of their push right now.

I think it's really cool that they're interested in getting devices into developers' hands to help them figure out where to take the technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I somehow can't understand the positioning of the device. Is the satisfaction of urge for 'sharing wonderful moments of your life' really how Google sees the Glass are going to be used? No augmented reality demos, no business/production/field applications, not even an x-files-like process documentation or hot-news-like POVs? All this emphasis on the 'sharing' aspect feels really weak for the product with such a vast number of applications. Or maybe it's just the result of the Glass being in a very alpha stage right now.

<comment><USER26> I suspect two reasons for that.

Firstly, Google is on a social binge. They push G+ with everything they have and that demo was probably partly designed to contribute to the subliminal image of G+ being "the future". Also noteworthy in that regard the casual placement of competing products (apple) in an "also-ran" fashion.

Secondly, Google is probably fully aware that they don't need to promote the glasses to industry and military. These sectors will adopt the technology without a blink anyway and are probably already in touch. There's little need to address them in a public keynote, those battles are fought in dim conference rooms.

Instead Google seems to be using their earliest opportunity here to gauge and tease the inevitable yet still completely unknown consumer potential - basically exercising their first-mover advantage.

Then again, if you were to draw conclusions from their terrible choreography and execution of the keynote (you know, the 2 hours before and after the parachute jump), it might just as well all be completely random and I'm merely reading way too much into it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> They could change form factors for wider acceptance. A form factor that looks like hipster glasses with lenses that dynamically darken would do very well.

For some different and older crowds, building these into visors and caps would be good for tourism applications.

Add an app that can do limited communications -- like yes/no/maybe/Google- that-please using 1-3 taps on your cellphone, or give a human assistant the ability text and ask questions and pop up a dynamic menu, and this would be very useful to businesspeople and diplomats.

<comment><USER28> > A form factor that looks like hipster glasses with lenses that dynamically > darken would do very well.

My startup is making exactly this. We're taking pre-orders for $189 that ship in December, with a form factor of hipster glasses, wifi link to stream through your smartphone, and electric sunglass lenses!

<http://indiegogo.com/socialvideoglasses>

<comment><USER28> Really, a downvote? I could see that if my comment were not germane, but I'm replying directly to parent with relevant info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> From a strategic point of view I think that one of the main goals with Google Glass is to map and store information about areas that cant be reached easily via car, plane or other transportation method. I am pretty sure that as soon as we see Google Glass in the public Google will have software that can combine photos and videos with GPS-data so that we get Google Street View even in areas such as the himalayas, forests and other areas where a person can reach but no vehicle with advanced photo equipment. It is a big crowdsourcing experiment.

<comment><USER30> wow, can you imagine walking around your house and having a 3D model built out of it? That would be so cool.

<comment><USER29> Another cool thing would be to actually look at routes on runkeeper for instance before heading out to get a grip of vegetation and climbing distance etc.

<comment><USER31> Or while going for a run on a favorite route, to actually see a shadow of your recent best time just a little way ahead of you. Now that's motivation..

<comment><USER29> I am starting to see some really good use cases here, that was an awesome idea. I think there are so much you can do to increase motivation when it comes to fitness with stuff like that, audio cues, real life achievements etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is why I love google. They back engineering efforts wonderfully. Glass does look like a good wearable computing device.

<comment><USER33> Right now, the product screams alpha build.

But given 3+ hardware generations, it'd be useful to have a HUD with customized real-time data. Probably information overload for most people, but wearing googles beats checking a phone in your pocket for convenience.

<comment><USER34> Lots of people currently wear glasses to help them see. Regardless of whether you have good optical vision, why not wear glasses to help you see the internet?

Miniaturize this into a standard and stylish eyeglass format, integrate it seamlessly with the glass (or empty frames for those with good vision), sell it in a dozen different styles and designs, and it will fly.

That's surely where they're going with it. And it will be awesome and entirely socially acceptable.

This is the kind of thing you can see saying in the future, "Man, remember when we had to carry around those big phones with hard displays in our pockets? Crazy." They're moving forward on what could possibly be the next cell phone, and if they do it right (read: good human interface) then they might lead the market.

It's cooler than people are giving it credit for, I think.

<comment><USER35> I've had to wear glasses since I was a kid.

Can't say I like the idea of glass in general. I'm going to be getting PRK surgery this year to finally ditch the glasses, hopefully this isn't a new fad of wearable devices. I know some family members that have been in the air force aren't huge fans of hud type technology as its too distracting.

Who knows maybe i'll be proven wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Sorry for the cross post... Glass was the "one more thing..." moment for sure; heard that there was a long line to purchase them for $1500 per -- any comments from any new HN owners?

Met with GOOG employees today who were testing newer versions, better resolution & new comms. I wasn't allowed to wear it but it looks bulkier than I imagined.

The odd thing is, during a meeting with an employee who was wearing Glass, it was hard to figure out where to focus my eyes on their face -- it was like talking to someone with a lazy eye. Made me especially self-conscious: felt like I was being rude, and my rude act was being filmed using the Glass!

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm not that interested in live sharing personally, but I definitely think that there are several ways I would find it useful to be able to easily record what I see and hear unobtrusively (note I really _don't_ mean secretly here).

The biggest thing I was hoping to see out of Google Glass though was the possibilities for augmented reality. Things like being able to easily ID a painting that you see or even better to be able to look at a game board and see a projection of the best next move.

I haven't seen any details on Google I/O other than the text of this article, so I'm wondering if any of that stuff was touched on.

</comment><comment><USER38> Am I the only one that thinks this is pretty lame?

<comment><USER39> No. I just don't see the point, unless it is "get overloaded to the max". And some additional space for google ads?

<comment><USER40> Why would they bother selling ads on a device that they just got money for giving to you?

<comment><USER41> More money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Here is the link to today's actual demo and not the one from a few days ago [https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VCp34EElAEA#t=5761s)

* Looks like the link was made private

<comment><USER43> Youtube says:

:-/ This video is private. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER42> Well thats crummy, it was a link that was posted in the comments on TechCrunch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Neat, perhaps silly, demo. I'm ready for my gargoyle rig now.

<comment><USER45> They probably wanted to demonstrate that if Glass will not interfere with extreme sports, trivial tasks as "walking on a street" will be smooth..

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Can somebody else from Europe confirm, that by their law Google Glasses are illegal? Here, in Latvia, we have a law, which forbids selling, buying or using (even transfering) certain objects, which are listed as "goods and services of strategic importance". And Google Glasses fall under one list item.

Most notably, the part which, I believe, applies to Google Glasses is as follows (bad translation, done by me):

Wired or wireless video and television cameras (with exception of mobile phones and computer cameras), which are masked as other objects, or their dimensions are smaller than 40 x 40 x 40 mm, or their diameter is smaller than 25 mm, or they are fitted with a pinhole lens.

List of devices: [http://www.likumi.lv/doc.php?id=163892&from=off](http://www.likumi.lv/doc.php?id=163892&from=off)

</comment><comment><USER47> For a moment I couldnt tell if that was Sergey Brin at Google I/O or Tony Stark at the Stark Expo.

<comment><USER48> Billionaire? Nerd? Building secret lair? Googlers have decided he's Batman.

[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-25/tech/30319310...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-25/tech/30319310_1_sergey- brin-google-office-google-employees)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Theory: Brin demoed Google Glasses @ I/O this year to pre-empt a patent claim from Apple that _they_ invented iGlasses.

</comment><comment><USER50> Did anybody else notice that one of the divers was wearing an outfit sponsored by GoPro? Cheeky bastard...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the actual hangout: [https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts/ZAnS9UMS...](https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts/ZAnS9UMSP5e)

<comment><USER51> That's actually a pre-recorded (and cut) video of a similar jump, possibly a training/testing run -- not the one performed live at I/O.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Noob question, where can I find the recorded version of that demo?

<comment><USER53> The skydiving demo is here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh-liQDE3cM>

<comment><USER51> That's different from the one they did live, though, which was IMO more impressive.

<comment><USER53> OK that should be this one? <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7TB8b2t3QE>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Although it looks really cool in demos like this, I personally wouldn't care that much about the video sharing, but I still think Glass is one of the coolest products Google has ever worked on.

There's just so many uses for it, and many of those things a phone can't really do well. I think the killer app for me would really be "subtitles" while talking to somebody in a foreign language.

Guess a lot of people would only use the contacts-version though ;)

</comment><comment><USER55> Interesting. If people are going to be wearing glasses all day to have access to all sorts of data, then they may as well have prescription lenses on those glasses if they are nearsighted. This could potentially destroy the market for LASIK.

<comment><USER56> Or on the contrary, if those doesn't work with prescription glasses, this could boost the LASIK market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> One thing I'm hoping for with Glass: the ability to connect to a bike computer and show speed, heart rate, cadence, etc. in a HUD. Would be awesome compared to having to look down at the handlebars all the time.

</comment><comment><USER58> Was looking forward to an augmented reality demo. I thought the idea was that info was projected on the "glass". It would be cool to build a hack for a heads up display with some custom telemetry.

<comment><USER59> I don't think total augmented reality is the goal with these devices. Besides, I sense that truly useful augmented reality is still so far off; to the point where the AI needed would totally negate the need for AR beyond some one trick pony act that's amusing for about 30 seconds.

<comment><USER58> I was thinking of something fairly easy and specific. I happen to be married to a Dentist. When she is working she has her hands full and is already wearing protective eye wear.

A cool use case is to display patient specific display on an unobtrusive heads up display mounted to the glasses rather than turning her head to look back at the monitor to see the patient's chart. I am sure this technology is possible right now but google glasses would presumably dramatically lower the price and availability.

So, this isn't pie in the sky AR but something more specific and approachable in the near term (and great for developer hacking).

<comment><USER60> I agree. As a musician, I'm looking forward to some sort of heads-up display that I can use to show chord charts. The same sort of system you describe here should work, I would think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This would be great for people who get lost a lot , if you phone someone and ask for directions it sucks trying to describe exactly where you are. Here you could just jack into someone and guide them.

Also be interesting to see the impact on crime if these get smaller over time. You basically have a world where you have no idea whether each person you pass is recording and streaming online.

</comment><comment><USER62> Video of the demo here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxmbbtuRszA>

</comment><comment><USER63> I think Glass is not a consumer device,there will be market for it in future but only among makers/publishers.I do not see people wearing it out on street look at other wearable devices watch,cell phone they are non intrusive and utility devices.

</comment><comment><USER64> How many years until it's quite common for athletes to be wearing these during live events?

</comment><comment><USER65> Does anyone have any idea on how's the HUD actual imaging capability? Eg.: what kind of resolution/image would fit on it, how much one would have to squint to focus, where on the field of view it sits, etc?

</comment><comment><USER66> This is very cool tech wise.

But I dont know if people would actually wear this at a party.

<comment><USER67> Some people wear Bluetooth earpieces every waking moment.

<comment><USER68> Nobody invites those people to parties though.

Seriously, the bluetooth earpiece quickly became a universal symbol for pompous idiot. Much like the Segway is a well understood symbol of doofy nerd- dom. I will be very surprised if Google Glass wearers don't fall into one or both of those categories real fast. Until wearable computing gets MUCH more seamless, I think there will be social pressure on people who use it.

<comment><USER67> You could argue that's just because those things never hit critical mass. People checking their palm pilot calendar was doofey. People checking their smart phone calendar is normal.

<comment><USER27> The devil is in the details. Styluses were too slow as input, and the device was separate from the main comms device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> My only thought seeing this was "SF has an incredible 3G/4G coverage".

</comment><comment><USER70> I have no "clever" comments on this.

This is just one of the most amazing thing I've seen in my life. Maybe the people who watched the first guys land on the moon felt the same way? This is the future.

</comment><comment><USER71> Am I the only one who fails to see the innovation in that?

</comment><comment><USER72> I always wonder how the projected screen feels. Someone said, it's like a floating transparent screen. Someone said it can only display simple information.

</comment><comment><USER73> I love it when companies get creative like this. What a fantastic way to preview a product and demonstrate the value of it!

</comment><comment><USER74> google glass reminds me of the segway . . . really cool futuristic idea that just doesn't fit with the way life is lived.

<comment><USER75> Having a friend constantly walking around me with that thing that may or may not be filming and recording me would make me want to avoid him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Pretty cool keynote. Apple-like coolness and wow moments but Googlefied. RIP Steve -- master of the keynote.

<comment><USER77> Makes me wonder, Steve Jobs never needed to have someone jump out of a plane to get people excited about a product.

I was far more impressed with the Nexus 7 and Jelly Bean than any of the rest of the demos.

<comment><USER78> Doesn't that mean Google also didn't need to have someone jump out of a plane to get you excited about a product? It was just a bonus.

<comment><USER77> You must be confusing me with someone who hates Google or Google products in general.

I didn't say Google couldn't impress me, I just happen to believe that really exciting products don't need showy fanfares like that and when someone compared that "spectacle" with a Steve Jobs keynote, I pointed out the obvious contrast.

For all his other flaws, Steve Jobs put the product front and center.

<comment><USER78> What I mean is, you said these two things back to back:

"Steve Jobs never needed to have someone jump out of a plane to get people excited about a product"

"I was far more impressed with the Nexus 7 and Jelly Bean than any of the rest of the demos."

Doesn't the second sentence mean you're excited about a Google product? A product that they didn't demo by having someone jump out of a plane with? Isn't that a direct contradiction to what you're saying about Google with first sentence?

<comment><USER77> I wasn't saying that Google can only impress by firing people out of airplanes, I'm saying that if their products are good, that's enough, they can stand on their own, and people can be excited by the products themselves.

Let me map it out:

Steve Jobs, professional product demo, no parachutes or BMX bike acrobatics == Good

Nexus 7 and Jelly Bean, professional product demo, no parachutes or BMX bike acrobatics == Good

Google Glasses, no real product demo, several parachutists, pathetic BMX stunts, lame high-five at end == Sad

<comment><USER78> Okay, I thought you were making no distinction between your #2 and #3.

But eh, I thought it was kind of cool. The jumping out of planes part didn't help sell the product to me, it was just fun to watch. Brin was so genuinely excited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Are there any specs for these specs?

</comment><comment><USER80> Not a single Google Maps Direction joke was made...

</comment><comment><USER81> Google Glass feels like the next bluetooth headset, regulated to specialized use.

</comment><comment><USER82> I understand Google Glass involves the hardware, and all the technologies that make it available.

But before getting all hyped, in this demo, this just looks like a camera mounted on a frame, and a stream on a g+ hangout.

Show me the software, an SDK, and the real HUD.

</comment><comment><USER83> Very weird demo. Felt like the boss pet toy that he wanted to show the world. Interrupting others in a improvised way to show people jumping out of a plane made me feel like the complete opposite of steve job's classy and user- oriented demos... Definitely wouldn't like to work at google on other projects.

</comment><comment><USER84> Google Glass! first thing that came to my mind: <https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18071353/Google%20Glass.png></comment>


Show HN: Scale is an API for human tasks - <AUTHOR> http://scaleapi.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! We're really excited to share Scale with all of you. Our goal is to make it really easy for startups to integrate human tasks and BPO into their companies. Give us a try (your first 10 requests are free)! And contact us if you think you might have a use case we don't cover yet.

<comment><USER2> So how is this different from mturk?

<comment><USER3> Mturk requesters must be in the US. Or have a US billing address. This doesn't appear to have such a restriction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I'm skimming too fast, but what tasks are possible? If anything is possible, how do I determine the level of detail required in my request?

<comment><AUTHOR> For now we support categorization, transcription, and phone calls (which are each pretty broad categories and can be used for a wide variety of tasks). You can see our docs here: [http://docs.scaleapi.com/](http://docs.scaleapi.com/)

We're intentionally releasing endpoint by endpoint in a way that we can ensure our members can perform the tasks efficiently while also providing a ton of flexibility to the developer. Our end goal, of course, is to allow developers to do basically anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does it work with pricing being $0.50/request but requests can take wildly different amounts of time? e.g. making a phone call

<comment><AUTHOR> One of our goals is to be able to provide flat, predictable pricing to developers so it's extremely easy for them to integrate.

For now, the $.50 flat pricing has been working well, because most phone calls are pretty limited in length/scope. If we notice a larger variance in the time of our phone calls, though, we might slightly change the pricing scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love the concept. How about web snooping? Like "verify whether or not this person worked at this job on this date"?

<comment><AUTHOR> That seems feasible as long as you give very explicit instructions to the person performing the task. I'm not sure if I could do that without instructions!</comment></comment>


AWS Network Load Balancer - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-network-load-balancer-effortless-scaling-to-millions-of-requests-per-second/ <comment><USER2> If you're curious to see NLB in action, here's a live demo: [http://nlb-34dc3b430638dc3e.elb.us- west-2.amazonaws.com/](http://nlb-34dc3b430638dc3e.elb.us- west-2.amazonaws.com/) , it took about 5 minutes in the console to set it up and no changes on the targets/backends.

Massive disclaimer: I work on NLB.

<comment><USER3> Are there any plans to add UDP support?

<comment><USER4> This would be great to have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the concept, because not being able to handle TCP traffic was one shortcoming of the new ALB.

But that pricing model:

        Bandwidth – 1 GB per LCU.
        New Connections – 800 per LCU.
        Active Connections – 100,000 per LCU.

Would be nice to have it added to the simple monthly calculator: [https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html](https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html) but I had to read the FAQ to find out what those were: [https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/faqs/](https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/faqs/)

<comment><USER6> It looks like the deep linking to the LCU page doesn't work (you have to click the tab for Network Load Balancer), so here's what an LCU is from that page:

\---

An LCU is a new metric for determining how you pay for a Network Load Balancer. An LCU defines the maximum resource consumed in any one of the dimensions (new connections/flows, active connections/flows, and bandwidth) the Network Load Balancer processes your traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems to remarkably decrease latency (380ms -> 109ms). Running some tests:

        # ab -n 400 http://nlb-34dc3b430638dc3e.elb.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/
        Time per request: 108.779 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)

        # ab -n 400 <public server via ELB>
        381.933

        # ab -n 400 <public server via ALB>
        380.632

        # (for reference) ab -n 400 https://www.google.com/
        190.536

        # (for reference) ab -n 400 https://sandbox-api.uber.com/health/
        107.680

If you're wiling to terminate SSL, this looks like it could be a solid improvement.

<comment><USER8> I've seen a similar improvement using the EnableProxyProtocol policy, which required a bit of code:

        Time per request:       88.400 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)

versus public server via the regular HTTP proxy:

        Time per request:       415.859 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)

For reference:

        $ ab -n 400 https://www.google.com/
        Time per request:       168.438 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Static IP, source IP, and zonality are game changing.

Unfortunately, it lacks a very significant existing feature of ELB: SSL/TLS termination. It's very convient to manage the certs in AWS without having to deploy them to dedicated EC2 instances.

<comment><USER10> It won't ever be possible to do this as the NLB runs a few network layers below where TLS runs

<comment><USER9> Does it? It has HTTPS health checks.

<comment><USER10> I expect the health-checking happens independently of the routing. The routing will just act upon a list of routes which is modified independently by the health check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This was discussed a couple of times recently, but answers seemed contradictory. ELB requires pre-warming if you expect sudden high load. But do ALB and NLB?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15085863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15085863)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14052079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14052079)

<comment><USER2> Each NLB starts out with several gigabits of capacity per availability zone, and it scales horizontally from there (theoretically to Terabits). That's more capacity than many of the busiest web-sites and web-services in the world need.

If you expect an instantaneous load of more than about 5Gbit/sec, in those situations we work directly with customers via AWS Support. We really try to understand the load, make sure that the right mechanisms are in place. At that scale, our internal DDOS mitigation systems also come into play. (It's not a constraint of NLB).

The load test in the blog post was done with an NLB, and was done with no pre- provisioning or pre-warming and allowed us to get to 3M RPS and 30Gbit/sec, which is when we exhausted the capacity of our test backends.

ALBs start out with less capacity, and are constrained more by requests than bandwidth. I don't have a precise number because it depends on how many rules you have configured and which TLS ciphers are negotiated by your clients, but the numbers are high enough that customers routinely use ALBs to handle real- world spiky workloads, including supporting Super Bowl ads and flash sales.

Each ALB can scale into the tens of gigabits/sec before needing to shard. ALB also has a neat trick up its sleeve: if you add backends, we scale up, even if there's no traffic. We assume the backends are there to handle expected load. So in that case it has "more" capacity than the backends behind it. That goes a long way to avoiding some of the scaling issues that impacted ELB early in its history.

If you have a workload that you're worried about, feel free to reach out to me and we'll be happy to work with you. colm _AT_ amazon.com.

<comment><USER12> > _[upgrading ELB], in those situations we work directly with customers via > AWS Support._

This is painful, though. I don't know about Sep 2017, but in 2016 upscaling your ELB involved answering a block of 21 or so questions in a list only given to you after you engage with support, which had some pretty esoteric items on it. It was decidedly un-AWS-ey.

<comment><USER2> It was definitely un-AWS-ey, and there's an almost visceral pain response on our faces when we don't have a self-service API for something. This is improving all of the time and I think is already much better, with some big specific improvements ... I'll do my best to share what I can here.

First things first, with NLB our experience is that pre-warming is never necessary. Each NLB starts out with a huge volume of capacity, beyond the needs of even the largest systems we support, and each NLB can theoretically scale to terabits of traffic.

Our first big improvement for ALB was that the basic scalability and performance of ALB is at a point that in all but a very small number of cases (think of some of the busiest services in the world), customers don't need to do anything. This is the pay-off from a lot of hard work focused on low-level performance.

Our second big improvement, for both ALB and Classic ELBs, was a mix of more generous capacity buffers, and pro-active and responsive scaling systems. Together, these mean that we can race ahead of our customers load requirements.

Another item that's helped is that for the truly big scaling cases, which is DDOS preparedness, we now have the AWS Shield service to manage that process in consultation with the customer. That's useful if your needs are more nuanced and custom than the DDOS protection that is included with ELB by default. This gets into things such as how your application is configured to handle the load.

With all of these improvements, ALB does not require pre-warming for the vast majority of real-world workloads. However, after years of pre-warming as a thing, we have customers who have incorporated it into their operational workflows, or who rely on it for extra peace of mind. We do want to continue to support that for our customers.

<comment><USER12> That's all great news to hear. Thanks for the informative response :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How does failover across zones work?

The blog post says there's one static ip per zone. I suppose www.mydomain should have multiple A records each pointing to an elastic ip in a zone. What happens when one zone entirely fails? Does it need a DNS change at this point? Or does the NLB have a different IP with which it can do BGP failover?

<comment><USER14> AWS provides you with a number of DNS records for each NLB:

\- One record per zone (which maps to the EIP for that zone) \- A top-level record that includes all active zones (these are all zones you have registered targets in, IIRC)

The latter record is health checked, so if an AZ goes down, it'll stop advertising it automatically (there will be latency of course, so you'll have some clients connecting to a dead IP, but if we're talking unplanned AZ failure, that's sort of expected).

That said, this does mean you probably shouldn't advertise the IPs directly if you can avoid it, yes.

(disclaimer: we evaluated NLB during their beta, so some of this information might be slightly outdated / inaccurate)

<comment><USER13> Won't DNS failover be painfully slow? Some clients ignore small TTL values. I've seen DNS updates taking several hours to propagate.

I thought one of the advantages of multiple zones is that zonal failover can happen with "zero" downtime (this seems to be the case with Amazon RDS).

<comment><USER2> The default answer includes multiple A records, so if clients can't reach one of the IPs, they try another. There's no need for anything to propagate for that to kick in, it's just ordinary client retry behavior.

We do also withdraw an IP from DNS if it fails; when we measure it, we see that over 99% of clients and resolvers do honor TTLs and the change is effected very quickly. We've been using this same process for www.amazon.com for a long time.

Contrast to an alternative like BGP anycast, where it can take minutes for an update to propagate as BGP peers share it with each other in sequence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have just finished setting up a new front-end for a few services (we are just about to start migrating production systems to it).

I was aiming to use static IPs (for client firewall rules), and simplify networking configuration, so what I ended up with is an auto-scaling group of HAProxy systems that run a script every couple of minutes to assign themselves an elastic IP from a provided list. Route 53 is configured with health checks to only return the IP(s) that are working.

The HAProxy instances also continuously read their target auto-scaling groups to update backend config, and do ssl terminating, also running the Let's Encrypt client. Most services are routed by host name, but a couple older ones are path-based and there are some 301 redirects.

I think NLB could replace the elastic IP and route53 part of this setup, but I'd still need to do SSL, routing, and backends. It's too bad, because my setup is one that could be used nearly anywhere that has more than one public- facing service, but there's not much built-in to help - I had to write quite a few scripts to get everything I needed.

<comment><USER16> Have you tried/evaluated traefik? It sounds like it could do nearly everything you just mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome! I have the perfect project for this haha. Does it still work with ECS integration?

<comment><USER18> Yes it does ( target group integration )

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> No chance that I'll jump into another new load balancer product from Amazon any time soon. ALB has significant deficiencies that AWS don't warn you about, and you only find then at tens of thousands of RPS.

Still waiting on that fix, AWS.

<comment><USER20> If they won't warn us, could you please warn us? \- Fellow ALB user.

<comment><USER19> Sure. Whenever a "config change" (Note: this includes adding or removing targets to a target group, EG Autoscaling) happens on an ALB, the ALB drops all active connections, and re-establishes them at once, at high load, this obviously causes significant load spikes on any underlying service.

You can see this happening by looking at the "Active Connection Count" graphs from your ALB, and adding or removing an instance from an ASG.

At 30+GBPS and over 20kRPS, removing one instance can cause absolute chaos.

<comment><USER2> Wow that sounds awful - but thankfully this isn't typical. I'm going to go digging for a case-id/issue and see what's going on myself (please e-mail the case if you have one). Re-configurations are routine and graceful.

From your description it may be that you have long lived connections that build up over time, at a rate that targets can easily handle, but that the re- connect spikes associated with a target failure/withdrawal are too intense. This is a challenge I've seen with web sockets: imagine building up 100,000 mostly-idle web sockets slowly over time, even a modest pair of backends can handle this. But then a backend fails, and 50,000 connections come storming in at once!

Another scenario is adding an "idle" target to a busy workload, but it not being able to handle the increased rate of new connections it will get. Software that relies on caching (including things like internal object caches) often can handle a slow ramp-up, but not a sudden rush.

We're currently experimenting with algorithms that allow customers to more slowly ramp-up the incoming rate of connections in these kinds of scenarios.

Anyway, those are guesses, so I may be wrong about your case, but hopefully the information is still useful to others reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is perfect. Need something like this to load balance A records for dynamic domains off apex. We can most likely use the static IP address perfectly for this.

Also did I read it wrong or this is actually cheaper than ALB?

Awesome! Can't wait to dig in more!

<comment><USER22> Yes, NLB is priced the same as ALB hourly but 25% cheaper on bandwidth (LCUs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't understand the pricing model. 800 new connections per hour, for $0.006? Isn't that extremely expensive? 80,000 connections for $0.60 in an hour is $432 per month for not a whole lot of traffic.

edit: Okay, it's 800 new connections per second, per the ELB pricing page, under "LCU details". The cost for 80k connections in an hour is effectively constrained by the bandwidth, eg if there's very low bandwidth it's $0.006/hour or $4.32/month.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was just wondering if this is something purely developed inside amazon or is it backed by an ADC like NetScaler or F5. does anyone know any detail ? I'm assuming that classic load balancer is some third-party or old framework and this is something amazon developed internally.

<comment><USER25> I would assume that it's something developed internally at Amazon. Networking inside of AWS isn't standard fare and I doubt something like NetScaler or F5 products would be able to be used. Generally speaking, they aren't using TCP/IP behind the curtain, to move packets between nodes. AWS has even created their own routing hardware/software because no other company could do what they need at the scale that they need. See this video for more information: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St3SE4LWhKo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St3SE4LWhKo)

<comment><USER26> AWS & Amazon uses a LOT of routers from one of these vendors. Although, they would probably try and avoid baking it into a public-facing product like this.

<comment><USER27> Not necessarily: [https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-web-services-secret- wea...](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-web-services-secret-weapon- custom-made-hardware-network/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's not showing up in GovCloud. This stuff always takes longer for that.

</comment><comment><USER18> When is http2 coming to ELB ... :/ It should be their #1 priority.

<comment><USER2> ELB's Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports HTTP/2 termination. More in the original launch announcement: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws- application-load-ba...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-application- load-balancer/) and [https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/details/#details](https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/details/#details)

<comment><USER18> http2 termination is not very useful, most people want ELB -> backend instances.

<comment><USER29> in case anyone is confused about this sub-thread: """ Application Load Balancers provide native support for HTTP/2 with HTTPS listeners. You can send up to 128 requests in parallel using one HTTP/2 connection. The load balancer converts these to individual HTTP/1.1 requests and distributes them across the healthy targets in the target group using the round robin routing algorithm. Because HTTP/2 uses front-end connections more efficiently, you might notice fewer connections between clients and the load balancer. Note that you can't use the server-push feature of HTTP/2\. """ ( [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/appli...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/load- balancer-listeners.html#listener-configuration) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Feature request : Please allow weighted load balancing i.e. ability to distribute traffic in a user specified ratio (weights) to different sized instances.

<comment><USER31> Better: distribute to the instance with the lowest % CPU by default, ala the Google Cloud NLB.

<comment><USER2> This is what ELB Classic did for a long time - but we're experimenting with new algorithms. The problem with this approach is that it's not cache friendly.

When you bring in a new server to a busy workload, it gets all of the new connections. That can put a lot of pressure on that host - and if the application relies on caching, which most do in some form, it can really make performance terrible and even trigger cascading failures.

Another problem is that if a single host is broken or misconfigured, throwing 500 errors, it is often also the fastest and lowest CPU box, because that isn't very expensive. It can suck in and blackhole all of the traffic.

Based on how these issues work out at scale, we've moved beyond simple load based load balancing (I know that sounds counter-intuitive) and into algorithms that try to achieve a better balance for a wider range of scenarios.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I was so excited before I realized this wouldn't terminate http(s) traffic. An IP anycast based load balancer ALB would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder what they wrote it in. I'd guess C++, Java or Erlang, or a combination of those.

<comment><USER34> Chances are it's IPVS[1], maybe with some patching.

Why would one reinvent the wheel when Linux already lets you do that.

In that case it would be C since it's implemented in the Linux kernel.

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

<comment><USER34> I should have read the blog instead of skimming before responding.

This appears as Layer 4 load balancing, IPVS is more of Layer 3.

So the person who was voted down by mentioning HAProxy might not be too far off. It could be implemented through HAProxy + TPROXY enabled in the kernel[1]. Then just make sure that default gateway configured on targets routes back to the load balancer or it is the load balancer.

[1] [https://www.loadbalancer.org/blog/configure-haproxy-with- tpr...](https://www.loadbalancer.org/blog/configure-haproxy-with-tproxy- kernel-for-full-transparent-proxy/)

<comment><USER35> >"This appears as Layer 4 load balancing, IPVS is more of Layer 3."

No, IPVS is L4 load balancing. L3 load balancing would be a routing protocol plus ECMP.

<comment><USER34> Ah my bad, even the wiki link I posted said it is layer 4. I guess both solutions could be utilized then, perhaps it was IPVS then since it would be more performant than HAProxy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This will motivate me to get everything into VPCs, which I should have done a while ago.

</comment><comment><USER37> so would a websocket-based application be better off using NLB?

<comment><USER38> Better off depends on what your workload goals are. If you want path or host name based routing, Application load balancer may be a better fit as it natively supports WebSockets. If your goal is long lived sessions (weeks and months, not minutes and hours), Network load balancer is probably a better fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does it support ipv6?

</comment><comment><USER40> any idea if you can use this behind API gateway if it is not itself public?

<comment><USER41> yes of course. The NLB is public and API GW sits on the edge locations

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> nice. Especially the ip thing.</comment>


What Do We Really Know About Osama bin Laden's Death? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-about-osama-bin-ladens-death.html <comment> o0-0o This site looks horrible on android Firefox and only loads the first few paragraphs. What a bad trip.</comment>


Ask HN: Trying to Find a Post - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! I created this account because I'm trying to find a post from a few days ago in regards to a programming language like Haskell. I think it had some sort of functional programming aspect to it. I was searching it through the search bar and couldn't find it after going 15 pages deep and checking comments too. <comment><USER2> Were you thinking about Idris 2? ([https://www.idris- lang.org/idris-2-version-010-released.html](https://www.idris- lang.org/idris-2-version-010-released.html))

You should use the algolia HN search, btw ([https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com))

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I did you algolia HN search, but couldn't find it.

Sadly, this is not the language I'm looking for, but thank you for sharing it

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Roughly what day, and what search terms have you tried? Can you remember any unusual words? How long was the thread?

Was it this one?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22851823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22851823)

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to say it was only 4-5 days ago max. I just remember the post had over 100 upvotes and there was a medium amount of discussion about it. I believe the author of the language was in the comments section, but I could be mistaken.

Sadly, it was not this language, but thank you for the link

<comment><USER3> If it had over 100 votes and was in the last few days you might find it by scanning through here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/best](https://news.ycombinator.com/best)

You can also look at the front page from a specific day here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-04-08](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-04-08)

Through that I found this item:

Clojure: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22797858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22797858)

And this:

IO: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22796409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22796409)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! I was able to find it by looking at the front page for a specific day.

The language is called Pointless: [https://ptls.dev/](https://ptls.dev/). It appears to be a scripting language with functional programming ideologies.

<comment><USER3> Cool ... pleased I could help.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why your PHP App Needs a Circuit Breaker - <AUTHOR> http://devzone.zend.com/article/4434-Why-your-PHP-App-NEEDS-a-Circuit-Breaker

<comment><USER2> summary: predictable failure is better than unpredictable failure. engineer accordingly.</comment>


Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/10/groupon-raises-like-a-billion-dollars/ <comment><USER2> Ok, so I'll ask the question. If they're making so much money, why do they need to raise a billion dollars?

"Because they can" might be the answer..

<comment><USER3> Land rush. There may only be room for one coupon site in the minds of people and if groupon doesn't get to a nation first, they will lose it forever[1]. This will require marketing expenditures.

e.g. Facebook lost Russia.

[1] in internet time.

<comment><USER4> [Groupon Employee Speaking]

Bingo. It's hard to put into words how fast the business is moving. One of the things mentioned in the press release is investing in technology. We have trouble keeping up with the traffic we have, and we're expecting [redacted]00% growth over the next year.

We're in the middle of two big projects now: 1) rearchitecting to handle the aforementioned growth 2) hiring 100 developers or more by September.

That kind of stuff costs money - #1 involves a couple dozen developers for 3-6 months, and #2 means ~doubling the size of the dev team.

(shameless plug: Groupon is an awesome place to be a dev - highly appreciated, crucial to the company, exciting new projects, etc. Email firstname.lastname@example.com or go to <http://groupon.com/jobs> . Chicago or Palo Alto.)

<comment><USER5> _hiring 100 developers or more by September_

11 new devs per month? So no development this year, only training?

 _shameless plug: Groupon is an awesome place to be a dev [...] crucial to the company_

Honestly, I'd be very wary of this statement in combination with the above.

<comment><USER4> We're not lowering the bar on who we hire. Process + skill = lots gets done. I was up and running my first day and released code my first week. Work and requirements are decomposed and estimated as a team so when it's time to code it flows quickly and everybody is on the same page.

The only change to our hiring expectations is to open up to great developers that don't already have Ruby/Rails skills. Aside from that, we are working on the big hiring push as a creative engineering problem. I'm on the team doing the push and we've been given lots of freedom, resources (both time and money), and responsibility. And there are many. Ore initiatives that promise the same opportunity.

<comment><USER5> I'll call bullshit, even though that will score me downvotes.

 _We're not lowering the bar on who we hire._

Good luck hiring 100 top guys in 8 Months.

 _Work and requirements are decomposed and estimated as a team so when it's time to code it flows quickly and everybody is on the same page._

That's so detached from reality, sometimes I wonder if there's some parallel universe where phrases like that make any sense.

What these hiring frenzies really do is they transform any company from being (possibly) productive straight into eBay-mode. They're also usually a surefire indicator that the last person with a clue (alt: the last person who gave a shit) has just left the company.

<comment><USER4> Feel free to follow up with me on that in October. I'll definitely write a retrospective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ever feel like we're floating in a bubble?

<comment><USER7> I know! All these huge valuations for companies that are posting revenues of hundreds of millions and growing like crazy! Wait...

<comment> wh-uws I wish I had more upvotes for this comment. Its crazy to me how many people want to cry bubble 2.0 when all of these companies _are turning good profits_.

The dotcom bubble was all about people throwing a bunch of money at companies that had no clear or proven plan of success

<comment><USER8> > Its crazy to me how many people want to cry bubble 2.0 when all of these > companies are turning good profits.

Most of them aren't turning good profits, relative to the valuations they have been receiving.

The recent valuations for businesses like Facebook would take lifetimes to repay the cost of shares based on their profits today. The valuations only make any sense if you assume that these companies are going to experience very rapid growth rates in the near future.

A lot of us who are thinking "bubble" just don't buy the hype about that growth. Social networking sites have come and gone. Search engines have come and gone. Technology platforms have come and gone. So far, I see no reason to believe that the likes of Facebook or Zynga or Groupon will be immune to disruptive competition _and_ find new markets or business models sufficient to sustain dramatic growth for several years, which is what it would take as a minimum to make the valuations realistic.

> The dotcom bubble was all about people throwing a bunch of money at > companies that had no clear or proven plan of success

And what is different here? Amazon has a market cap around $80B and a very high P/E by most standards at 75ish, but it has a solid business model (actually, more than one these days) and a strong brand that has stood the test of time for more than 15 years now. Next to that, does $50B for a social network that reportedly makes only ~$100M per year seem like a good investment? They've had 7 years to monetize their system and they've got 500M users; how long should we wait for the astronomical profits, exactly?

Another example: for $5.5B, you could supposedly buy Zynga according to a recent evaluation. Or, you could buy about 10% of Tesco (the UK food store juggernaut).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the press release: 'In the last year, Groupon has been called "the fastest growing company ever" by Forbes Magazine and "America's best website" by one of Groupon's television commercials.'

Are they saying that tongue in cheek? I am asking seriously... I haven't had enough experience with them to know. My wife is the one who uses it...

<comment><USER10> The second is cheeky, the first is correct. If their revenues are what they are widely accepted to be, they have beaten Compaq's record as the fastest company to $1 billion in revenues (and done it profitably -- I could easily build a $1 billion company quicker by selling $100 bills for $50).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess the price Google was offering wasn't astronomical after all. Good for groupon either way.

<comment><USER12> I agree. Good for Groupon. Although just because (2) groups of people make the same mistake doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake. Of course we won't know until they either sink or swim and with this war chest it could be a while before we know anything.</comment></comment>


BPF based live debugging for Go/C++/Rust in prod with no code changes - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pixielabs.ai/blog/ebpf-function-tracing/post/ <comment><USER2> Relevant discussion a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24434031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24434031)

This is an great example of how application probes with eBPF can be used in solving production issues.

</comment><comment><USER3> dTrace did this a decade earlier. And has much wider support. And is safe.

BPF is an island.</comment>


Early Stage Startup Founders Should Reconsider Attending SXSW This Year - <AUTHOR> http://refer.ly/why-i-m-not-attending-sxsw-this-year/c/fe11402e869411e2bfbf22000a1db8fa

<comment> yo-mf Completely disagree with OP. While SXSW did not "make" Twitter, it certainly helped get things rolling. To say that Twitter was well on its way with tons of traction is a gross overstatement. What SXSW did was provide a logical testbed for Twitter in an environment that made sense. If anything, SXSW was the first large scale event that helped legitimize Twitter.

What I would agree with is that every startup needs to assess whether SXSW makes sense to attend. Several founders I am close to attended and each come back with at least a few tangible takeaways. Some met and secured investors for their seed rounds, others clicked with potential future hires/co-founders, and then some left with solid biz dev deals that moved the traction needle.

As with any event, you make of it what you put in. If you just go to drink, eat, and party, then chances are you are wasting the opportunity. If however you maximize the networking by setting some objectives, showing something tangible, staying sober, and meeting as many people as you can, then maybe you can have a positive and worthwhile experience that more than covers the cash expense and lost productivity.

<comment><USER2> I am curious to know how would one network at sxsw? Last year I was there, it was so hard to meet potential hires/investors. Is there a guide to network at large events like sxsw?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Repost of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5334554></comment>


Open source and the challenge of making money - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/bits/2014/07/23/open-source-and-the-challenge-of-making-money/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=technology&_r=0&

<comment><USER2> They misunderstand something fundamentally: Free Software is not about making money, it is about freedom.

Making money with freedom did never work. But making this world a better place works with freedom.

<comment><USER3> This means free software cannot every be sustainable (other than if it had corporate backing of some kind). Making money (or more correctly, rewarding those who create value) needs to happen, otherwise, the machinery that lead to the creation of the software will eventually wear away. After all, bills needs paying.

<comment><USER2> Then Art is not sustainable either, because very few artists earn a lot of money with their works. The masterpieces of Art were seldom a financial success. The oldest known art is about 37000 years old. That is much older than money and a proof of great sustainability.</comment></comment></comment>


Words have no inherent meaning - <AUTHOR> https://blogofjake.com/ <comment><USER2> I think that statement is just wrong. They might have little inherent meaning. But, if I tell you to draw a tree, your not going to draw a person or even a bush.</comment>


Most of Apple's iPhone suppliers have no connection to China - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/688331/most-of-apples-iphone-suppliers-have-no-connection-to-china/ <comment><USER2> Since China is adding no equity to the phone (read as chips, screens, optics) and they just assemble them, it appears that China may be a "paper dragon" in that their industry can easily move off shore or be replaced by robots

I also want to include that I am presuming many companies are doing likewise in China as well.</comment>


Tell HN: Synergy looking for an Angel - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11gPEGbVzfPQolFgkPWyD2cy99aSCZmC-hXWuMvgvHL4/preview?sle=true&slide=id.p

<comment><USER2> This is a terrible pitch deck, for an unrealistic plan. Their projections (slide 8, [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11gPEGbVzfPQolFgkPWyD...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11gPEGbVzfPQolFgkPWyD2cy99aSCZmC- hXWuMvgvHL4/preview?sle=true&slide=id.gc70cf13b5_3_41)) look like they were just copied from a Google image search for "startup growth graph" \- they have absolutely no indication that they're based on reality whatsoever.

Nick Bolton seems to be fixated on this idea that Synergy, despite all indications to the contrary, needs to be a startup, and he's been making increasingly doomed decisions to that effect for years (hiring additional employees, moving to the high-rent Bay Area, etc).

What Synergy needs to do is swallow their pride, find a company like Google (or Microsoft, who are increasingly supporting open source, especially when it lends legitimacy to the Windows platform) who would be interested in funding an open-source project with no return-on-investment beyond the fact that their employees use it, and ask for a job there subsidizing it, the way successful open source projects like Linux have grown.</comment>


Why neovim is better than vim (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://geoff.greer.fm/2015/01/15/why-neovim-is-better-than-vim/ <comment><USER3> It should be mentioned that the author has very strong conflict of interest.

Also, isn't the appeal of vim that it's universal rather than that it's beautifully coded? I don't have the expertise to care about weird indentation in source code personally but I like that the text editor I have on my daily- use machine is probably also accessible on a 80's-era server on the other side of the world...

<comment><USER4> Vim being universal is pretty meh. Try using vanilla vim, you'd hate it after using non-vanilla for a while. It is like a whole different world.

At that point why not just use sublime or w/e.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have changed over to neovim for most of my editing, but the one thing I have found is that it seems much slower to start up. Pretty sure this is a bug they'll fix soon, and other than that it's really pretty great. I don't actually use the Terminal window feature, but there are a few things about it that I like: 1)Decent python2 and 3 support (yes both at the same time) 2)Getting the * and + registers to actually work seems less annoying than in regular vim (ymmv at least I don't have to rebuild neovim from source to get these). (check out :he quoteplus and :he quotestar if you don't know - <USER2> are awesome)

</comment><comment><USER6> Author claims that vanilla vim would never support async linters, but that's changed now: [https://github.com/w0rp/ale](https://github.com/w0rp/ale)

<comment><USER7> Would it exist in vim without neovim. The landscape has changed, but part of that is due to neovim's existence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have used Neovim exclusively for a few years now and I can't say I need to switch back. It is Vim now.

<comment><USER9> how do you integrate neovim clipboard with system one? I use KDE/X11 although I do not think that should be relevant.

<comment><USER10> I just pipe lines to xsel. Not elegant, but works.</comment></comment></comment>