Taking social networks abroad - Why MySpace and Facebook are failing in Japan - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/03/taking-social-networks-abroad-why-myspace-and-facebook-are-failing-in-japan/ <comment><USER2> Clearly it's because Mixi is written in Perl, and Japanese people love Perl!

<comment><USER3> Don't agree with the generalisation. Probably more to do with fact Mixi is a better cultural fit and captures more of the essence and behavioural traits of the people.

<comment><USER4> Clearly his post was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But then again it's hard to read someone's intentions without the <tongue-cheek></tongue-cheek> tag. Maybe it will be released once Arc has smiley support.

Edit: Japanese don't love Perl they love RUBY!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work in Tokyo, and I've noticed the only people who seem to have Facebook accounts are students who studied abroad and those who spend a lot of time socializing with foreigners.

</comment><comment><USER6> its because people are nationalistic, they think to themselves: "why should I support american greed when I can get the same experience from a native site"

<comment><USER7> Really? That's one of the last things I think about when using new services or products.

<comment><USER6> That's because you are an American, the sites you go to are usually American too. But the problem that comes with international companies is that they think that translating the site is all it takes to adapt. Which is not the case, the cultures are completely different and the sites usually fail to take that into consideration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _But the Japanese market isn't lost yet for MySpace and Facebook, despite Mixi's dominance. If millions of Americans don't mind registering to multiple social networks, why should the Japanese?_

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the trend was the opposite one? That people are getting fed up registering at 100 different networks and sticks to the few "big" ones they've already signed up for?

Ofcourse, I'm not going to pretend my behaviour is the norm, where mixi and LinkedIn are the only networks I bother with. For local friends, timezones not being an issue, phone and MSN works fine.</comment>


TikTok Rating Reduced to 1.3 - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/gn4bhu/tiktok_rating_reduced_to_13/ <comment><USER2> Wow, and the app is up 2 million reviews (26MM -> 28MM) since being posted yesterday!</comment>


Why Apple employees avoid getting in the elevator with Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/25/michael-dhuey-apple-engineer/

<comment><USER2> I'm glad they mentioned NeXT and how much of a failure it was. There's a meme developing where people treat Jobs like he lived a charm life of constant victories but that really isn't the case. When I started High School people were telling Steve Jobs jokes in Usenet. He was the fallen genius who never lived up to his potential (the Mac was all but dead at this point and Apple was licensing the OS in a desperate attempt to save it)

In that way I think the story of Steve Jobs is one of the most inspirational for people. Almost everything people associate with Jobs today are things he did after his 40th birthday. Even the Mac (OSX is really NextSTEP repackaged)

In an industry that obsesses over people in their 20s there's a lesson to be learned there.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if NeXT was really that much of a failure, considering that ultimately today we use many of it's software technologies. I used to be a NeXT programmer and am always amazed how much of it is still there today in OS X..

<comment><USER4> With this line of reasoning Xerox PARC was a completely success and every "seed" that lives today in the human history too. But business success metrics are very cynical and NeXT was a business failure.

<comment><USER5> Hm, business history of NeXT as gleaned from Wikipedia:

1985: Founded by Steve Jobs using a bunch of his own money.

1987: "[Ross Perot] invested $20 million in exchange for 16% of NeXT's stock, valuing the company at $125 million."

1989: "Canon invested US$100 million in NeXT, giving it a 16.67% stake, making NeXT worth almost $600 million." [editor's note: _on paper_ ]

1992: "The company reported sales of $140 million in 1992, encouraging Canon to invest a further $30 million to keep the company afloat."

1996: "Apple paid $429 million in cash which went to the initial investors and 1.5 million Apple shares which went to Steve Jobs."

So, please tell me where the business failure is. What I see here is a company that appears to have turned $150 million in venture funding (plus an unknown amount of Steve Jobs' cash) into a valuable operating system platform, $429 million in cash, 1.5 million shares of Apple Computer, and _complete control of Apple Computer itself_ , which as we all know proved to be an extremely valuable commodity in the hands of the former employees of NeXT.

But Wikipedia is not a balance sheet, and I suppose it's possible that this account I've pieced together leaves out something like half a billion dollars in investments by otherwise unknown and unremarked parties. Can anyone out there show me a history of NeXT that is substantially different than the one above? Because until then I must conclude that the people who think of the story of NeXT as a "business failure" don't know how to count money.

EDIT: Excellent, I found a contemporary account of the Canon investment in the NYT to spell it all out for us:

[http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/13/business/canon-to- invest-1...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/13/business/canon-to- invest-100-million-in-next-inc.html)

 _The Canon investment will dilute Mr. Jobs's ownership of Next to 50 percent. He started the company with $7 million of his own and later invested another $5 million. Next employees own 20 percent. H. Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire who invested $20 million in 1987, owns 12.5 percent, and Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University, which have invested a total of $1.3 million, have a combined stake of less than 1 percent._

Please, tell me again what a terrible, terrible failure this was.

<comment><USER6> It was a terrible failure. And I say that as a guy who loved the product so much I still have boxed copies of the NeXT OS in one closet or another.

If the company was once priced at >$600m and the company sold for $429m (plus less than $10m in Apple stock) then it was a clear loser. Canon alone could have ended up with $200m in cash with a perfectly safe investment. In venture terms, that's a failure.

It was also a failure in terms of meeting any goal set originally. Almost nobody bought the hardware. Almost nobody bought the OS. Almost nobody bought their Windows development tools, their last gasp of a product. It was a brilliant product, but as businesses goes, it was one smoking crater after another.

Moreover, that was a pity sale. Nobody else in the world would have bought NeXT. Nobody needed Jobs or the OS; Apple, uniquely, was doomed without both. Without that, NeXT would have been out of business within a few years. Those sale terms were crafted to make Jobs happy to come on board, and for no other reason.

<comment><USER5> I can't argue with this, I guess, except to say that if this counts as a terrible failure we need a bunch of new words to describe all the _much, much bigger failures_ that we've seen over the last twenty years.

After living through all these massive bubbles and frauds, I guess I have a pretty high standard for failure. "Failure to make more profit than an index fund" is not a success, I'll admit, but Canon could have done worse, oh so much worse. They didn't win, but emerging from all that risk without a total loss? Can we score it as a mulligan?

And I'll definitely push back on this whole "pity sale" concept. Just because Steve Jobs found the one and only way in the world to turn his looming total loss into a mulligan plus the seeds of future empire doesn't mean he lost. This isn't chess. Companies aren't competing on some kind of infinite, uniform ideal grid, they compete in the real world, and money is money, even if they have to call in every favor and exploit every advantage.

<comment><USER6> You can score it however you like, and I grant it wasn't a total disaster, but by the standards of high-tech investments, it was definitely a failure, albeit a gracefully executed one.

I will stand by the notion that it was a pity sale. The CEO is not a salable company asset. That Apple bought NeXT for so much as a way to make Jobs happy doesn't mean that NeXT did well; it just means that Apple really wanted Jobs. (Correctly, as it turns out.) Props to Jobs for cashing out his investors rather than just pocketing the money, though.

<comment><USER5> Apple did really want Jobs. But they also really wanted NeXT's operating system. The month before they bought NeXT, every pundit was predicting they'd buy the BeOS instead, because they all knew that Mac OS 9 wasn't going to cut it.

And now here I am, working on a system all of whose libraries have entry points prefixed with "NS".

Well, whatever. History rarely politely conforms to our categories. I suppose we could declare NeXT to be a "disaster" relative to every other company founded by Steve Jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"He was not filtered with his input. If he was in a meeting that was boring him, he would be blunt. He'd say, 'I don't need to see this, let's move on.' And we would. He didn't suffer a fool."_

Uhm, that's considered being blunt? I would call that being good at leading a meeting. Saying when information (or so detailed information) is not needed is crucial and necessary in order to keep meetings tight amd relevant.

<comment><USER8> a : abrupt in speech or manner b : being straight to the point : direct

So yeah, that's exactly what blunt means.

Don't be confused by all the people who think bluntness is automatically rude. It's not. Those people just have really tender feelings and can't handle the truth. They need to have it sugar coated.

<comment><USER7> "Blunt" has different connotations for me, rudeness seems like a part of it. Saying "I don't need to see this, let's move on." seems just honest to me, not blunt. "I'm bored by this, why do you tell me all this crap?" would be something I would be willing to call blunt.

But yeah, being honest (or blunt, if you will) is something I'm perfectly alright with. I want the people I'm working with or for to be like that. I'm not so crazy about rudeness, but if that quote is accurate Jobs wasn't rude (at least in those situations).

<comment><USER9> >"Blunt" has different connotations for me, rudeness seems like a part of it.

Rudeness or impoliteness is not part of the definition of the word in the dictionary I consulted.

<comment><USER10> Try looking up the word "connotation"

<comment><USER9> Dictionary definitions often include connotations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not only this, but I've read stories that in the early days of his return, you could get into an elevator with him and not have a job any more when you got out. If he asked you what you did and you said marketing, you were out. If you were an engineer on a misguided technical project, also out.

Jobs had respect for the engineers who had slogged over many years, squeezing all the life and functionality they could out of the classic Mac OS under the direction of misguided marketers who innovated by writing a feature list then implementing it, rather than by seeing if it was technically feasible then writing it.

He had no respect for the marketing people who came up with these bullshit feature lists and bullshit adverts and bullshit product lines and encouraged ridiculous R&D projects. (Taligent, Copland, HyperCard 3, etc.)

<comment><USER12> I refer you to this example of demanding a feature with no regard for feasibility: [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium&search=round)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No wonder Steve didn't like Flash: it made the MacBook Pros run extremely hot, and instantly kicked the fans up to full throttle.

</comment><comment><USER14> Being close to any "VIP" type executive, politician, etc is often awkward.

I had the bad fortune of being in an environment where I found myself in the sights of a psychotic, two-bit political appointee from time to time. Not fun.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would have loved an elevator ride with him. The man is quite smart, and a resilient entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not a problem for me, I always take the stairs!

</comment><comment><USER17> I was really hoping this would be an article about flatulence.

<comment><USER18> Since Jobs was gone from Apple in 1985 what was his role in the Macintosh II, which didn't come out for 2 more years? Not a question that should be left to suspension of disbelief. And the iMac came out in 1998, but Steve was working on it at Apple in 1985 – in the Macintosh II building? To paraphrase Col. Kurtz: "Journalism? I don't see any journalism here."

And one more thing™, Dhuey is the one with a tin ear if he doesn't understand that fans are anathema to Jobs' aesthetic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > A little known-fact Dhuey recalls is that Jobs has hearing loss.

> "When we did the iPod we had to make sure it would be loud enough for Steve > to hear the music," says Dhuey. "We had to balance his need for volume with > a French law against things that were too loud."

Well, that explains a lot. It's a pity that Jobs needing to have music louder to be able to hear it has led to a generation of people who are getting hearing loss from having their music turned up too loudly.

<comment><USER20> Uh, no. That problem predates Apple's entry into the space by decades.

If you want to get down to the real root cause, the root problem is biological; the human ear's damage threshold is significantly lower than its pain threshold. That's not an easy problem to solve.</comment></comment>


New UK Search Engine looks promising - <AUTHOR> http://www.techmilk.com/move-over-powerset-this-new-search-engine-kicks-ass.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Speaking as an adwords advertiser here in the UK where the big G has 80%+ of the market (if you include aol) I welcome some competition

</comment><comment><USER2> Funky! :) Going to grab a beta account and test the hell out of it!</comment>


How to Setup a Middleman Blog on GitHub Pages with One Click - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zammu.in/2016/02/05/how-to-setup-a-middleman-blog-on-github-pages-with-one-click/ <comment><AUTHOR> I am the creator of Zammu and would love to hear your thoughts on this.</comment>


Transient Attributes for High-Level Understanding and Editing of Outdoor Scenes - <AUTHOR> http://transattr.cs.brown.edu/

<comment><USER2> The blog post gives a brief summary, but if you want to view a demo of the technology, or view higher-res images, skip the blog post and go to the actual paper:

[http://transattr.cs.brown.edu](http://transattr.cs.brown.edu)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Url changed to this from [http://blog.cs.brown.edu/2014/08/12/photo- editing-algorithm-...](http://blog.cs.brown.edu/2014/08/12/photo-editing- algorithm-changes-weather-seasons-automatically/).</comment></comment>


Can any of you explain how to do this particle effect? - <AUTHOR> https://www.ff.com/en/our-company/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, can any of you hackers explain to a lowly designer how to do this particle-to-photo effect on Faraday Future's new website? Or direct me towards a tutorial that could explain or be helpful in learning? Its an unbelievably awesome effect that I expect we'll see more of in the near future.

<comment><USER2> Which one are you specifically talking about?

The one where the images get transformed into dots is just taking the brightness of a pixel (either its RGB average, or its luma grayscale value) and then applying that as the depth of individual particles on a 2d grid. When you move the mouse the particle field rotates slightly, so it gives that impression of 3d.

The one with the Formula One car seems much more interesting. Depending on the "position" of the user in the page, it's decomposing a 3d mesh vertically and the decomposed vertices become dots that move away from where they should be. Could be accomplished manually by recreating the mesh on every new position, or (more likely) by a vertex shader.

Everything is helped by having an additive blending mode for the particles. It creates this effect where things just turn white and it's always a nice effect for particles.

TL;DR: WebGL and well combined tricks

<comment><AUTHOR> I assumed they were all using the same system. Thanks for this, really insightful :)</comment></comment></comment>


Dissecting the Bloodthirsty Bliss of Death Metal - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dissecting-the-bloodthirsty-bliss-of-death-metal/ <comment><USER3> As an avid death metal fan, I think that overall this article isn't wrong, but there's much more to be learned from the subjective experience of violent music. Which is to say: just ask a fan, and they'll tell you.

Using "negative" emotions to evoke a positive response is way, way older than metal. It's a technique as old as humanity itself, and is present the oldest stories we have (e.g, Homer, Gilgamesh and Beowulf.)

Storytelling and emotions are not straightforward things and the emotional response we get is not linearly tied to the subject matter.

To suggest that a metalhead must be negative and violent because they listen to Cannibal Corpse is tantamount to saying that someone must be suicidal because they enjoy a good performance of Hamlet.

<comment><USER4> >> To suggest that a metalhead must be negative and violent because they listen to Cannibal Corpse is tantamount to saying that someone must be suicidal because they enjoy a good performance of Hamlet.

You, sir, win the thread here. This comparison is both necessary and logical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had to stop reading at:

> "It's the paradox of enjoying a negative emotion that I was interested in," > says Thompson, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. > "Why are people interested in music that seems to induce a negative emotion, > when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a > negative emotion?"

I've been listening to various forms of metal (heavy metal, (technical / melodic) death metal, metalcore, deathcore, etc.) for over 20 years, and I never once (not even once) even thought to think about associating negative emotions to the music. In fact, it's the exact opposite reaction.

I listen to it because it makes me feel positive. I listen to it for the same reasons that other people listen to music types they enjoy, which I think can be left unsaid because anyone who enjoys music knows exactly that feeling.

<comment><USER6> It's still worth a read, and as well a summary article/comment written by the author ([https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324102543_On_the_en...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324102543_On_the_enjoyment_of_violence_and_aggression_in_music) , pdf available).

The study is not without its limitations (self-reporting is the major one), however it's an interesting topic: the author's main hypotheses are:

a) there's something with the way death metal/violent music fans' brain is wired that makes it react positively, whereas with non-fans it makes them react negatively.

b) people who enjoy Death Metal do it by distancing themselves from the actual lyrical content ("it's just a song") and use it as a pressure relief valve of sorts

c) people who enjoy Death Metal enjoy the feeling of being in an elite club that's set apart from the faceless conformist masses.

It's bloody hard to set up experimental protocols to find reliable data to support or go against the hypothesis, but I'm going to keep an eye on this Thomson guy, and of course I'll keep on enjoying my violent music :)

<comment><USER7> For Death Metal with intelligent lyrics you won't have to distance yourself from i recommend Chuck Schuldiners band "Death":

Individual Thought Patterns: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjLIwidBubg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjLIwidBubg)

Human: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzvtfbqJeIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzvtfbqJeIY)

Symbolic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbp60IX_jFQ&list=PL2l9mciyQ-...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbp60IX_jFQ&list=PL2l9mciyQ- YfSpXPJ4mvkpE5GCvqU9yPB)

<comment><USER8> By way of a similar recommendation, there's Atheist's work, particularly "Elements". It's an early 90s Florida-scene death metal theme album lyrically about, well, the elements and Nature... which breaks into samba on the third track:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHHkxUqqnQ4&list=PLArAJlC1y5...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHHkxUqqnQ4&list=PLArAJlC1y5594YEtkHKzXfH6QlC9GQ5jR)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> John Darnielle, on why he listens to metal: "I mean, it's music that I enjoy. I enjoy the playing, I enjoy the compositional approaches to musical expression. It's weird, nobody ever asks. 'What does listening to this type of music do for you?' about any other kind of music, but with metal there seems to be this 'justify your connection to it' vibe out there. It's a unique mode of musical expression that challenges the listener and transports me to different realms. I'd say the same of the rap I listen to, or the classical music, or the ambient music—but I guess I find a lot of different headspace to explore in metal, a lot of different moods to enjoy and ways to enjoy them."

[https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/06/19/big-ups-the- mountain-g...](https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/06/19/big-ups-the-mountain- goats-john-darnielle/)

<comment><USER10> Andrew WK on why he listens to death metal:

> This was something I'd heard in other music, but only in small spurts—the > screeching wail of James Brown, the frantic drum solo before a song's big > finale. Usually, with other bands or artists, they would build up to a > moment of intensity, like the crest of a wave, and it would hit hard, but be > short-lived, fleeting. But it became clear to me as I listened to these > death metal CDs, that this entire genre was based on extending that > explosive feeling for an entire song, an entire album, an entire career—not > just a quick crescendo or a peak that served to counter the bulk of more > subdued music. In death metal, that high mark was starting point. It used > the furthest extreme of other rock music genres as its base line, its > foundation, and pushed forward from there. It's specifically designed to > exceed excess. I was spinning in ecstasy.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gvvb34/andrew-wk-on- death...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gvvb34/andrew-wk-on-death-metal)

<comment><USER11> That sounds very spot-on to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anecdata ahead. There are different sub genres even within such niche genre as death metal. I love melodic death methal bands such as Dark Tranquility (those in the know would recognize it just by looking at my username), In Flames, and Insomnium. Their lyrics in general are not about extreme forms of aggression as article suggests, but revolves mostly around feelings of loneliness, apathy, acceptance and imminence of death, despair etc. First and foremost I listen to it because it is a very good music by talented musicians, just in their choice of genre. There is definitely an element of appeal in it in its "death" aspect though and I thought about it a lot over the years. Contrary to its general tone and lyric content melodic death metal does make me feel relaxed or energized, but generally brings positive emotions. I came to the conclusion that it is about unearthing all the fears and negative emotions that this music brings up in lyrics, acknowledging them and making peace with them instead of suppressing them.

<comment><USER13> Winter's Gate by Insomnium is probably one of the best albums I've heard in three decades. In any genre.

<comment><USER14> Winter's Gate is brilliant. I've found previous Insomnium albums to be a bit pedestrian (albeit very competent vanilla melodeath). With Winter's Gate Insomnium introduced some prog & black elements without abandoning their core melodeath sound.

IMO there were two other outstanding albums released the same year that accomplished a similar feat - Be'lakor's 'Vessals' end Wilderun's 'Sleep at the edge of the earth'. Wilderun tend to get pigeon holed as a folk metal band but I don't think that accurately reflects their sound. I would recommend both albums to anybody that enjoyed Winter's gate

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a fan, I feel like they focus too much on the lyrical content and intelligibility when the genre clearly downplays both of these aspects moreso than any other genre. Death metal vocals aren't intended to add any sort of intellectual meaning or melody. They're meant to add an additional percussive effect, to add punctuation to various song measures and refrains. And in the case of those with truly monstrous voices, to add a powerful meta-human element. Some of the best tracks out there aren't even in English for instance, and yet English audiences eat them right up.

<comment><USER15> A lot of death metal is straight up satirical. I don't think any of the members of Cannibal Corpse are advocating for the things described in their lyrics. It's just meant to be extreme sounding to the point of absurdity, which some people really enjoy. For the most part, fans like the music and the aesthetic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's not about the violence. It's about what is considered socially acceptable. I mean, violent lyrics, seriously? Have they ever listened to blues, or folk music?

 _My staff has murdered giants, my bag a long knife carries / For to cut mince pies from children's thighs, with which to feed the fairies._

\- Mad Tom of Bedlam (traditional folk song)

And of course, there are movies, and even tv, which often have imagery more violent than any metal song (and visual, not lyrical).

So what's going on here? Why is metal "violent", and the rest of this stuff is "normal"? My answer is mutual contempt. The stylistic cues of metal - both the music and the clothing - is to say "I reject social norms". Society of norms responds in kind, saying metal is worse than, say, the latest Avengers movie or the plot of a Shakespeare tragedy - that metal is "violent", and this other stuff is "normal".

</comment><comment><USER17> As a fan of technical death metal and a guitarist it is one of the few genres that has the depth and complexity to keep me interested. This is also why I enjoy music from Sibelius and other classical greats. In contrast, most pop music is so stock that I can guess the next notes in a sequence and it just becomes dull to listen to.

Also, as someone often described as stoic, metal has a enough energy to actually get me excited and feeling. When I listen to it, I get more of a response than say listening to DMB. I wonder if this is related to being an introvert, a lot of metal heads seem like they like to listen to music alone and get energized from solitude, where as a pop music fan may enjoy listening with friends.

<comment><USER18> > a lot of metal heads seem like they like to listen to music alone and get > energized from solitude, where as a pop music fan may enjoy listening with > friends

I'm not sure that this is true. Back in highschool, most of my close friends also happened to be into metal, so we listened to it together a lot. These days, fellow metal heads are so few and far between, that it is hard to find fellow enthusiasts and metal is so polarizing, that unless they are into it, they probably don't want to hear it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A lot of the people I know that listen to death or black metal are very scientific - physicists, mathematicians, etc. I've always figured people are attracted to the music for two reasons -

Firstly because they tend to be social outliers. As kids, smart and a little awkward. Much like the music. It's not for everyone and it gives you a sense identity and a group to belong to.

Secondly because it's challenging to listen to. Like, but somewhat moreso than most genres, you have to spend time figuring the music out. As my mother would say "every song sounds the same" \- except it doesn't. There's super complicated time signatures and riffs and everything else. And even if it's not (as) musically complicated, it's just not easy compared to pop tunes on the radio. It's another challenge to work out and make it accessible. And when you do, it's like understanding a world that most others don't (perhaps like coding, or maths, or science).

Anecdotally, metal crowds seem to be far more lovely and polite than most. The Cannibal Corpse show I went to a few years back was remarkably so compared to a lot of the punkrock or hiphop shows I attend...

<comment><USER20> I've never though of your second point, but I've found myself doing exactly that. There is some metal that takes multiple listens for me to appreciate, and requires concentration. Trying to do anything while listening to tech death for example, would annoy me. However, if I just sit down and listen to it, over time I appreciate it more and more.

<comment><USER19> Indeed. And much like coding (I suppose the most personal example I can use), you have to concentrate (hard!) those first few times - maybe even be in the mood to begin to understand it, and then it becomes kind of second nature. You know what's coming. That time change at 56 seconds makes you grin - <USER2> flows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like something that Marshall Mathers (Eminem) said at one point, something along the lines of people's inability to distinguish the fiction in his lyrics from the fiction of, for example, horror movies.

He'd actually said something neat, that he feels there must be something more sacred about music for people to freak out to that extent. There's something ineffably interesting about that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Every think piece on the subject of death metal waxes about the violent lyrics, but I really challenge you to decypher the lyrics in the song selected to open the article[1] without reading them in advance. If you can interpret the lyrics in this song, you're better at this than I am, and I've been listening to this type of music for over a decade.

Also, as of right now, this article sits at 41 points and 43 comments. Classic metalheads ratio'ing discussions.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNhN6lT-y5U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNhN6lT-y5U)

</comment><comment><USER21> For me it's all about the dissonance and I almost never listen to lyrics in any form of music and find it an annoyance. If there was a death or black metal musical, I wouldn't like it probably, for example. The voice to me is another instrument that is no better or worse than other instruments but unique in that voices are obviously much more varied than an instrument is.

But I think it's worth getting a survey of some sort from folks into metal seriously. We've already shown that metal fans are among the most dedicated listeners of a genre, for example, according to Spotify's stats. The Metal Maniacs BB more than a decade ago did an informal survey among the members and found that at least in that crew most metal fans are pretty darn introverted, which is a finding that most people not into the music and cliques would be surprised by. That board may be up on the Wayback machine but maybe it's be of some value to researchers.

The self-report aspects of a study are handy enough for the purpose of identifying further research if you have no clue what to investigate next at least.

<comment><USER22> I personally never liked the vocals despite an almost twenty year infatuation with extreme death metal. But I am very captivated by the music of bands like Infester, Wormed, Autopsy, Pustulated, Flourishing, Pyrrhon, Stargazer, Defeated Sanity, Miasma, Timeghoul, Pyaemia, Wicked Innocence, Malignancy, Disembowelment, Sintury, Human Remains, Orchidectomy, Gorguts, etc.

A few bands nowadays do release instrumental versions of their albums, this is one of my favorites:

[https://nuclearwarnowproductions.bandcamp.com/album/a-mergin...](https://nuclearwarnowproductions.bandcamp.com/album/a-merging- to-the-boundless-void-of-voyce)

<comment><USER21> Ah, you're definitely on the prog / technical death side of the spectrum then, which is what the article completely ignores unfortunately. All those bands are among the more technically proficient that the genre has to offer. I can only get into them to the extent I can get into someone playing a bunch of etudes and suites as a demonstration of raw ability. Granted, there's some pieces that are real tough to stay together in classical (every other Stravinsky piece comes to mind) but metal will always be like jazz in that it's all about a representative of each instrument or part rather than the raw power of many as a tour de force.

I just tune out the vocals and unless you have some really awful vocals or something seriously crazy like from the likes of Regurgitate it doesn't really register in my memory. This isn't to say that doing extreme vocals doesn't take any form of talent but trained singers in opera have been putting their vocal cords to the limits in other ways that are impressive, just more conventionally recognized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >is that long-term, persistent exposure to violent media may lead to subtle changes in one's personality, desensitizing fans to violence and reinforcing negative social attitudes.

I'm not sure I agree. I can listen to all the "violent music" I want, but can't stomach through a contemporary or even classic horror film. I was really weirded out and had to stop halfway through while watching a documentary on the Austrian guy who kept his daughter in his basement for many years.

Also, not to be a cliched metalhead, but I'm disappointed by the lack of good death metal in this article.

<comment><USER24> > >is that long-term, persistent exposure to violent media may lead to subtle > changes in one's personality, desensitizing fans to violence and reinforcing > negative social attitudes.

It's the same old stupid argument that has been becoming popular again about games recently, and frankly, it's such a huge load of bullshit.

<comment><USER25> playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you, even if it is fun. I loved games like San Andreas but couldn't really get into GTA:V because it felt too real to me.

<comment><USER26> > playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from > the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you.

People really tie "kills" in games to murder in real life way too casually. When I play a game it's about strategy, team work, and winning.

A lot like Football (Soccer). It has little to do with the terms or animations used in the game -- those are just for entertainment.

I don't play a game because of how violent it is, I play it if my friends have it and/or it has good/fun game mechanics.

<comment><USER27> Just an honest question: would you play the same game if the bullets were made of chocolate and all the gore was replaced by something else? Assuming that it would have the same engine: strategy, teamwork. etc.. I wonder if whats the attractive to gamers is how real the gore is or whether it's the engagement the game generates and the gore is just meaningless decoration.

<comment><USER28> Consider a game like Splatoon where you shoot ink, would that be close enough to your chocolate example? If so, it is a very successful game

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I see a lot of good points here I otherwise would have made but:

1) "Death metal" is surprisingly regional. This article is very American- centric, as European death metal generally isn't not inspired by violence in the same way.

2) Almost all "good" art in human history is about sadness and death, especially poetry (which are probably the closest analog to modern lyrics).

3) Many of these bands tend to be intentionally over-the-top and not serious about their themes. They are usually very much going to for a classic B-movie goofiness vibe. (Cannibal Corpse, from the article, is definitely in this group)

<comment><USER30> > 2) Almost all "good" art in human history is about sadness and death

As they say, Great Art is concerned with the noble themes of Love and Death, whereas pulp fiction is nothing but sex and violence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This article focuses excessively on 'violent lyrics', which are only a feature of some small sub-genres in the greater landscape of modern extreme metal. While no one is going to confuse the lyrical content of most metal as being upbeat or positive, there is enormous diversity of musical styling and lyrical subjects across the genre, just like any other. Most lyrics and most extreme metal bands don't focus on subjects like the article discusses (CC in particular). Death Metal (and it's sub-genres) is today more associated with musical and vocal style rather than violent lyrical imagery.

</comment><comment><USER32> I realize I'm being counter cultural here in saying this, but these are my musings: I wonder if our society is making a mistake. Little things carve channels in our minds over time that we aren't always aware of. In good times and easy times it may be easy to ignore the violence, glorification of sex and money and "live the good times", but in our times of trouble and stress, will our thoughts turn to those things we fed our minds on a constant diet? During social upheaval, would we have the discipline to sacrifice and love when the first thing that comes to mind are violent lyrics?

The same thing probably goes for pop music; if the first thing that comes to mind when we speak of love or relationships are the lyrics from a Justin Bieber or Beyonce, or the thousands of songs about failed relationships, selfishness, and angst-- we might be missing out on some depth, feeling, and principles from earlier eras, like "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms". [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believe_Me%2C_if_All_Those_End...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believe_Me%2C_if_All_Those_Endearing_Young_Charms)]

In previous societies, music was written for other purposes like Handel saying, "My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them; I wished to make them better." If every little influence in our life, including music, helped us to educate our emotions, feelings, and thoughts, perhaps our society would feel more cohesive, less isolated, more kind, and less bellicose. Moore's song was written as consolation and a declaration of faithfulness to his wife-- and it was wildly popular-- what have we lost in the centuries?

</comment><comment><USER33> Self therapy?

From an external point of view, something like CBT or desensitization therapy for maybe claustrophobia or fear of guns looks very disturbing, but I'd like to hear an opinion on the participants.

I'm not terrified of heights but I'm very nervous of them. After I get up there and the adrenaline dump is over and I'm just doing my task, I get quite a spectacular high at having overcome my fear. So its not paradoxical to me given experience, that I could both be scared of heights yet get addicted to parachute jumping.

In a like way I could see people who are not terribly enthused about having to live in an area of urban hand of high rates of hand to hand combat and rape might find getting thru a metal song about the topic, extremely motivating and enjoyable.

Corporate mainstream stuff is highly formulaic and self similar and its no surprise it won't speak to all people, making it surprising if something like metal or a zillion other counter cultural things (alt-right, horror movies, etc) didn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think that Halloween is the perfect time of the year to try to convey the aesthetic. Do you like scary movies? Thrillers? Surreal comedy? Elements and concepts from all of these feature heavily.

Essentially, I celebrate Halloween all year round, and it's just a blast.

As a classically trained musician, I've tended to lean toward more aggressive and technical metal. The other people I know who have gravitated toward death, black, and/or power metal are by overwhelming majority trained musicians.

In a deeper way, there's also the role of catharsis, of someone else sharing your pain. Sometimes when one is in distress and hurting, it's so helpful to have someone else expressing something you can't quite convey in words.

<comment><USER21> I'm also classically trained but played some jazz and while it's anecdata I've seen far more classically trained musicians in the metal scene than jazz players. While hip hop is basically pop today, I haven't found any jazz musicians in, say, the extreme rap music scenes. But you'll find them more in experimental music in general for sure (there's rather little experimentation in extreme metal with folks like Deathspell Omega maybe being an exception). Unsure if it's more a correlation of socioeconomic factors than musical / artistic ones.

Metal is closer to a recreational drug for me than escapism / nesting with all the aesthetics of other senses like a holiday or vacation. That droning wall of sound is pretty awesome wherever it comes from. Bolt Thrower, Tsjuder, Demoncy, Emperor, etc. do it for me in ways that melodic metal of any sub genre doesn't. Similar for why Gost (not the much more popular Ghost) works for me much more than Daft Punk despite many musical similarities.

<comment><USER34> You might enjoy the experimental hip hop group Death Grips, the drummer of which has collaborated with the Dillinger Escape Plan (who is about as experimental as you can find in hardcore).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A lot of what is said in the article is true. However the condescension and limited viewpoint are jarring.

Extreme metal is much more than 'plain old' death metal bands like CC. There is black, thrash, grindcore, doom, post-metal, industrial and hybrids therof. Just like with any other music (think Leonard Cohen vs U2), there is vast difference in subtlety and sophistication of lyrics in metal. And just because the lyrics are a certain way it doesn't mean the folks who wrote them aren't smart - it is hard to ponder the meaning of life while headbanging to the blast beat of a Cannibal Corpse song!

<comment><USER36> Most music genres are kind of fractal - I usually tell non-fans that there is as much variation within metal as there is in music in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Death metal and fast aggressive music is an avenue of release for me. I listen to it when working out, and when trying to get in focus when coding under pressure. It's easily one of the most fun things I do all day.

I don't watch music videos or dwell on the lyrics (or understand them most of the time), so I don't really see much of the gory side, and also most of the bands I like do not have much of a gory persona anyways. It's all just fast, high energy, quite complex and stimulating music to me to get my heart rate up, and I love it!

Now, back to Amon Amarth... :-)

</comment><comment><USER38> A friend of mine once said: _"There is a reason why Death Metal is very popular in the Nordics and Reggae in the Carribean"_

I thought that was insightful.

PS: I really like Death Metal, Unleashed in particular

<comment><USER39> She has never been to Sweden nor Mexico has she /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I would think the positive feelings are mostly what I've heard called "Opponent Process Theory". I mean, if you subject yourself to the violence, lyrics, melody, rhythms, of death metal it is like an assault. There is usually nothing soothing about it. Your body has to defend itself. It would be analogous to marathoners and the high they experience when running long distances. #throwupthehornsfordio

</comment><comment><USER41> In an open-source crossover, I once heard Jono Bacon (sometime commenter on HN, former Canonical community guy), explain that there are two genres of music in his collection. Death Metal, and Brutal Death Metal. I believe he's been in a band of his own as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> Never got into the metal scene myself but never seen it as more than an indulgence in some form of silliness, some kind of fooling around with something that is not real but something that gets together kids who would otherwise feel lonely

</comment><comment><USER42> Melodic death metal FTW :))

</comment><comment><USER43> Maybe they'd be better off looking at black metal, especially early Norwegian stuff when members of Mayhem were killing themselves/each other.

Or maybe My Dying Bride, Mourning Beloveth etc.

The rest of it is a blast.

</comment><comment><USER44> Not all lyrics are like the ones mentioned in the article... I just like style. Makes good "wallpaper" music when you're doing something else.

</comment><comment><USER45> [http://archive.is/34G8Z](http://archive.is/34G8Z)</comment>


China Is Collecting DNA from Tens of Millions of Men and Boys - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/world/asia/China-DNA-surveillance.html <comment><USER2> China is creating a type of self imprisonment.

It is fascinating, because it is a real manifestation of the faults of mankind on a very large scale.

I can see it becoming more difficult for secular western leaders to speak up about this, because there is no concept of universal human rights without a universal government to define those rights.

</comment><comment><USER3> Preparation for a male-only ethnic bioweapon?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_bioweapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_bioweapon)</comment>


What Did Billion Dollar Companies Look Like at the Series A? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/keep-learning-keep-growing/what-did-billion-dollar-companies-look-like-at-the-series-a-e53ea8043a85#.198rwpfv4 <comment><USER2> I'd be interested more in what the looked like at first outside financing. Another interesting idea would be companies that got accepted into YC. Did they have revenue? Early customers? how far along was a prototypes? experience in the field?</comment>


Apple's iOS passcode cracking defense can be bypassed using a USB accessory - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/9/17550970/apple-ios-usb-restricted-mode-iphone-passcode-cracking-bypassed-usb-accessory <comment><USER2> Original source (also linked in the article)

[https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2018/07/this-9-device-can- defeat-...](https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2018/07/this-9-device-can-defeat-ios- usb-restricted-mode/)</comment>


A map of America's migrations using genetic data from 770K saliva samples - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/what-770000-tubes-of-saliva-reveal-about-america/ <comment><USER2> That map makes no sense. Hawaii ruled by Caribbeans? California is mostly Portuguese? No sign of Spaniards? I call it BS.

This is a really poor piece of PR for Ancestry.

</comment><comment><USER3> And people worry about Google having too much of their data?

[https://www.wired.com/2015/10/familial-dna-evidence-turns- in...](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/familial-dna-evidence-turns-innocent- people-into-crime-suspects/)

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/how-private-dna- data-l...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/how-private-dna-data-led- idaho-cops-wild-goose-chase-and-linked-innocent-man-20)

<comment><USER4> And rightly so, on top on everything else google has a copy of the whole human genome and has been in this DNA business for almost 10 years.

23andme, Google Health (discontinued), Calico, Google Genomics, Baseline Study to name a few out of the long list of why google is scary.

<comment><USER3> Damn. It's worse.

It was disconcerting to learn that the Sorenson DNA data was public. Just "anonymized".

<comment><USER5> Dumb question: what are the possibilities for obtaining the same service offered by these data-hungry companies without giving up genetic privacy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That the United Stated are a scary place and that you can't trust ancestry.com and ancestryDNA. They will take your DNA samples and put it in a big database to be crunched and analyzed and used for their own marketing. May be used by current or future government for whatever nefarious purpose, or hacked and stolen or sold for profit.

<comment> saiya-jin east-german secret service stasi had this technique for up to 5 millions of their own citizens, in form of some smellable clothing sealed in jar so that trained hounds can track you.

<comment><USER6> (rant)

I'm not saying you're wrong and I agree that these companies will use the info for their personal gain.

But I do have a question for anyone watching: why are Americans so paranoid about falling under a authoritarian regime? Europeans aren't as afraid of it and every European country has at one point or another been ruled by a dictator. The US has never been yet the vast majority of comments by Americans seems to indicate a deep distrust of their own government, to the point where half the country would almost get rid of it (Republicans).

There's a very thick line between a slightly abusive and malfunctioning government and full blown dictatorship. And that line is not that easy to cross as it may seem if the country's citizens don't want it. Heck, my country, Romania, who had a very fragile democracy across the years, only succumbed to dictatorship under massive external pressure - including military pressure - from the Nazis and the Communists.

If little ol' Romania, with a very uneducated populace yet willing to fight for its democracy sort of held on for 100 years out of the 160 since its formation, surely the US would be more resilient, without half its citizens becoming paranoid?

(end-of-rant)

<comment><USER7> Maybe that vigilance is why the American Republic has been uninterrupted for over 200 years while freedom and democracy in continental Europe only still exist because the US won and imposed it.

<comment><USER8> > _freedom and democracy in continental Europe only still exist because the US > won and imposed it._

This is a ridiculous assertion. Back it up with some facts and sources.

<comment><USER7> The Second World War and the Cold War. American military inolvement in Europe is the only reason why the entire continent wasn't permanently controlled by either the Nazis or Soviets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Clicking the infographics brings me to a signup page? I'm not one to complain about marketing techniques but jeez is that a poor experience.

<comment> jay-saint Open the actual image in a new tab it is much larger and actually readable. [https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/files/2017/02/MapMigration_c.j...](https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/files/2017/02/MapMigration_c.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So many tin foil hats. Just don't give them your real details when signing up and sending the sample?

I did mine because it was a cheap way to get my DNA in a file. You can then run it against [https://promethease.com/](https://promethease.com/) or [http://dna.land](http://dna.land) or whatever other tool you like.

<comment><USER11> That might work as long as none of your relatives use the service and submit their real details.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, there is no defence against that as far as I know?

Like, even if you don't ever do it a relative will still get a close enough match to put you in the picture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Direct link to the full-size map for the lazy right-clickers:

[https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/files/2017/02/MapMigration_c.j...](https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/files/2017/02/MapMigration_c.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why is Hawaii labeled Caribbeans?

</comment><comment><USER14> They still have no clue about the northern Alaska Natives.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I intern at a Startup or a small Venture Firm? - <AUTHOR> I am planning to take next semester off and get some work experience under my belt. Now, I wanna get an opportunity to learn how startups operate, how they scale/grow, mostly wanna get some insights in the growth area. So now I am in little dilemma here, I got this internship opportunity from a small size Korean venture firm, and I am also applying to various small-size startups, and I am confused which one to go for.<p>So given i've 6 months, which one do you guys think is worth putting my time into? A startup or a venture firm. And just to be clear, both of them are small size and not very well known across globe. <comment><USER2> Honestly, Venture Capital firm.

You probably still don't know about the hierarchy that exists in the industry, but I'll just say that VCs are usually in the best position.

</comment><comment><USER3> venture firm - if you told me you wanted to learn how to program or design, I'd say startup but def sounds like this meets your needs. I notice you are at KAIST assuming you are Korean so definitely the Korean aspect will somewhat match culture wise, hopefully.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I am an international student here :-) but thanks for the advice

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Definitely venture firm.

Basically being closer to the source of money and to decision making people is a good idea.</comment>


Result of JetBrains/PyCharm Promotion - <AUTHOR> https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2016/oct/13/pycharm-promotion-results/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's great to see creative ways of supporting open source development.</comment>


Hurricane Electric 3D network map - <AUTHOR> https://he.net/3d-map/ <comment><USER2> We (rsync.net) use he.net bandwidth in three of our locations - one of which is the core he.net datacenter in Fremont (which used to be an Apple Computer manufacturing facility).

The reason I originally sought out he.net to work with was their continued operation of irc.lightning.net. The MOTD on lightning referred to their network and was written in a way that made me believe they were highly technical, clueful people - I have not been disappointed.

<comment><USER3> +1.

My interactions with HE, from customer service to sales have always been excellent.

Also, they are technical. They know networking. You can use the right words, and they will understand. It is a nice change compared to other companies.

HE may be more expansive, but they are worth every extra cent.

<comment><USER4> Even their free services have great support, I had some non-standard DNS setup that wasn't possible through their web interface and it was up and running within a few hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really enjoyed the IPv6 "certification" they did. If you have some free time and have never done any IPv6 networking I highly recommend it:

[https://ipv6.he.net/certification/](https://ipv6.he.net/certification/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It doesn't have the flash in the pan moment of sucesss like a unicorn startup but these guys will make billions some day due to all the peering agreements and interconnect (most the long haul is probably leased), especially as IPv6 takes majority prominence in the coming years.

Excellent slow burner kind of business and smart customer acquisition through low pricing and easy turn-ups.

<comment><USER7> There's nothing wrong with leasing transport. Almost all of NTT's network is leased, and pretty much everyone agrees they're a top flight network.

The thing that makes HE unique is that they only sell full ports. They don't do fractional billing or 95/5\. You pay for 10gigs on that 10gig circuit, regardless of use. This leads to networks running HE ports near max load at peak time. From HE perspective, this is great because it's super easy to plan for and scale out. You're never surprised by a customer who goes from 3 gigs to 92 gigs on that 100gig circuit.

<comment><USER6> Never said there's anything wrong with it, it just changes the capital expenditure and worth from physical to virtual (peering agreements). Companies like Century Link, AT&T, Verizon are in a slightly different category with abundant in ground infrastructure (that has extreme tax benefits in the US).

<comment><USER8> If you look at CAIDA ASRANK, very few of the top-20 ranked ASes in the world, as ranked by diversity of peering, number of BGP adjacencies, etc also own/fully control the dark fiber their inter-city router-to-router links are operating on. They leave that to specialists like Zayo.

Telia has POPs all up and down the US west coast but it's certainly not _their_ fiber connecting them together.

<comment><USER9> If you look globally, then owning fiber everywhere is impossible: there are countries where legal framework allows one or few specific operators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's amazing to see all the underwater cabling. That's remarkable.

However, what's with the gigantic holes in interior South America, Africa, Russia, and China? Is that real or an artifact of their methodology? (Presumably, the "emptiness" of interior China is due to the fact that everything is behind the Great Firewall and is hosing their metrics)

<comment><USER11> This is just HE.net's network (with an overlay of submarine cables globally), very few if any US or EU based network operators have network presences in Russia or China (perhaps with the exception of Moscow and St Petersburg).

<comment><USER8> If you look at the european POPs of major eastern european and Russian ISPs, everything in Russia that counts as a major carrier or ISP has established a presence at DE-CIX Frankfurt. The various buildings in Frankfurt that house DE-CIX switches are full of PNIs between big ISPs.

<comment><USER12> > If you look at the european POPs of major eastern european and Russian ISPs

Can confirm. (Source) When I studied in Russia, my host's father happened to be a network engineer for a big ISP in Russia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I still remember my networking professor showing us the HE backbone map and how blown away I was. This takes it to a whole new level!</comment>


Ruby lesson: Scraping a jail's website - <AUTHOR> http://ruby.bastardsbook.com/chapters/jail-logs-pcso/

<comment><USER2> If you wonder what where the hell the atrocious __doPostback, __EVENTTARGET, and (gag) __VIEWSTATE come from... the answer is .NET WebForms.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I ran into that brickwall on one of my scraping tasks. Kudos to @dancow for finding a way around it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Eww, glad I didn't have to with HTML that nasty. I actually coded something very similar to this (<http://www.reflector.com/jail-bookings>) for our website about a year ago.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://phantomjs.org/> and <http://nrabinowitz.github.com/pjscrape/> would be more fit for this.

<comment><USER6> I was just using Nokogiri and I was fiending to use some jquery selection. Thanks for the links!</comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg masks Mac webcam and microphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36596070 <comment><USER2> For the older MacBook models the microphone is nowhere near the audio jack. So it would be stupid to cover the audio jack.

And for the newer models?

</comment><comment><USER3> We are watching you !

</comment><comment><USER4> If I still wasted money on Apple, I'd rather tape over the logo!</comment>


Ask HN: What is a problem you face at work? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys,
I'm Cory. I run http://oppsdaily.com, a daily email for software devs who want to solve the problems people face at work.
The email consists of a super brief interview about a problem you have at work, and the software you wished you had (that you would buy), that could solve the problem.
Each day I receive a handful responses from developers who want to learn more, and I connect them to the interviewee.
I really want to source some of those interviews from this amazing community.
If you are facing a problem that you'd like to share, please contact me! - firstname.lastname@example.com
I'd love to feature you in one of my interviews.
EDIT:
If you're not comfortable being featured in an email, but you would like to share in this thread for the benefit of the HN community, please do! :) <comment><USER2> Count me among those unwilling to be featured in an email, but I made this discovery very recently:

I have been dealing with a tremendous amount of anxiety for as long as I can clearly remember. After decades of a vicious cycle of procrastination and depression my ability to perform at an adequate level was entirely gone. I had this way about me that allowed me to appear very busy while accomplishing a criminally small number of tasks and never keeping any promises. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I lucked out by joining a team that was set up to enable this to continue.

After almost 10 years on the team and some treatment for the anxiety I realized that I was performing at less than 10% of my comfortable capacity. With the anxiety lessened, I could go back and trace the path it carved through my life. Regardless of performing in a way that should have had me fired years ago I still managed to be, by far, the most productive, well- informed, and pragmatic member of the team. I spoke with my manager and confirmed that he believed all of this and that, amazingly, he was actively moderating the amount of work sent my way because he was convinced I was overworked.

I had a sudden crisis because this meant that, as an entire team, we had trained ourselves to ignore how poor of a job we have been doing. If my 10% of capacity is that good then the entire team was underwater. Thankfully, my manager didn't try and deny it when I brought it to his attention. He also didn't notice it going on, but once I said the words it was like the clouds parted.

I predict some staffing and management style changes coming pretty soon. I'll call that a happy ending or at least a hopeful future!

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thank you for sharing this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Prepackaged and well documented IT setups for small business. We've things like "LegalZoom" which are contracts designed by lawyers that have instructions for adapting them to your needs. A site that keeps a set of IT "best practices" for different types of businesses, restaurant, nail salon, bookshop, coffee shop, etc. Want to provide your customers with free internet but don't want to be a source of spam, do <this>. Want to keep a backup of your critical data on tarsnap do <this>. Need to buy equipment for <x>, here is an annual review of the best equipment for that, and why.

Every business needs IT but not every business knows someone who can do it for them and they don't have a way to hire someone part time.

Pair this service with a set of vetted 'sysadmins' who will work part time to put these systems into a business and update them if needed. Uber for IT help :-)

<comment><USER4> I Like your idea a lot especially your last paragraph.

I don't think providing these information alone is a viable business model. But it could be used as a "lead generater" to support another business model. Basically it would be Content Marketing strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finding the famous "Aha moment".

You probably heard the story on how facebook realized that once someone adds at least 7 friends, then they reach this "Aha moment", and from that point on, they're converted to longer-term users. And how afterwards Facebook optimized their onboarding experience to help new users find and add more friends...

That's the problem I'm facing with our startup. We have tons of data. We track events, conversions, page views, bounces, you name it. But we're still not sure what's our "Aha moment". A tool or service that would ingest our analytics (or do its own) and find a strong causal relationship between actions and conversions would be really amazing (ideally, without requiring a $gazilion+ enterprise license)

<comment><USER6> A data scientist with experience in causal inference shouldn't cost you more than $150,000 a year.

<comment><USER7> A better use of that would be to hire a consultant for a couple weeks a year to tweak (or determine, at first) your models. We did this at a market research company I worked at, an oldschool stats guy would come in once a year for a review and tune-up.

<comment><USER6> Good point. No reason to bring someone in-house before you even know what your needs are.

<comment><USER7> Moreover, the things they would work on may not really change often enough for an in-house person to _ever_ be worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am so busy fighting fires and doing maintenance, that I don't have time to innovate. There are a few reasons for this: regulatory burden (healthcare), and the complexity of systems, especially integration between complex systems created by different vendors.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good one! Every time I post an interview in the healthcare field, I have a ton of people write in saying they'd never attempt to fix the problem because of HIPAA or some other regulation.

The folks who can make these regulations easier to work around, or who have the patience to slog through it have an incredible opportunity before them.

<comment><USER8> Here's the thing with HIPAA, the entire healthcare system in the USA treats HIPAA as if it were a truck-load of nitroglycerin. They totally go over-board on its interpretation, and they're super conservative if they think they're going to have a conflict with it. We tip-toe around these regulations and in the end patients are paying for it.

<comment><USER9> If the patients are paying, you don't have to. So it makes sense, business wise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sitting in a cubicle with intense fluorescent light above and cut off from natural light all day feels like it's killing me. And, I can't get an ergonomic set up easily. I need a doctor note. I just want a fucking comfortable chair to sit in 40 hours/week.

Otherwise, I like my job.

<comment><USER11> I always thought that was weird in the US - that some people work in offices without any natural light. In my country that's unheard of.

<comment><USER12> assuming you're in Europe, where they have laws which mandate a certain amount of natural light. No such thing in the US. Our workplaces, the unique campuses of Google et al aside, are far behind. I've worked in places that felt like dungeons and no workers made a peep about it. Actually, my own high school was modeled after a prison - no windows at all in the entire building (seriously). Here, even in NYC, I'm not aware of any office towers that have end-of-trip facilities for cycle commuters (just finding a place to park or store the bike is a luxury). Our work culture is awful... please don't point to Google or Apple's campuses either, they are anomalies. Go look at what kind of environment the average American works in. I've also never been offered ergonomics checks or advice by company staff, let alone equipment (bring it myself). OSHA (occupational safety) is basically a joke in this country, so nobody really fears it or thinks about occupational safety, _especially_ in white collar office settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Extremely long sales cycles. In the order of 2-3 years. We write software for the cultural sector. Most of the sector relies on government funding of some sort, and we're often required to take part in tenders. Lots of annoying paperwork. Very slow and very opaque decision making. Tracking sales leads is hard like this. Making money is harder still. This problem worsens the year before and after an election.

Wearing another hat, I have the same problem in fintech. Slow decision making, long lead times and government meddling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic answer! I wonder if there is software that could potentially improve some aspect of this cycle.

<comment><USER13> It would be nice if the various governments (local, provincial, communal, federal ,..) would use a common platform/approach for their tenders and paperwork.

Edit: it would also be nice if there were a single source for new potential assignments. Currently we have to keep an eye on various (non-RSS..) websites, paper publications and bulletins. It's a pain. Especially because there's no way to filter/search paper announcements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The owners of the company not listening to the technical people and buying crap software then asking us to make it work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel your pain! :|

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The main problem I face is people, and software ain't gonna fix that. Software is the easy part.

<comment><USER16> Nah, just write the necessary software to replace the people!

<comment><USER17> Or better, replace your job!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are a bunch of projects we want to complete. Doing so requires me to inform a couple of other teams so that they can solve more fundamental problems so that we can finish our projects. Sometimes things change and I have to find and notify the right people, and tell them that there are now more of the fundamental problems or that there are now different ones.

I keep track of this dependency graph manually, and sometimes I make a mistake. Something that would prevent me from making a mistake and that would make managing this easier would be cool.

Mentally, it's a directed graph and you sort of flood-fill out of the node where the change is occurring. Just knowing which other things are affected would be enough.

Of course, if there's already something useful for this already, do let me know. This sort of sounds like something I should be able to do with project management tools but I haven't figured out how to do it yet.

</comment><comment><USER19> Our team's boss, who is the CEO, tries to do too many things, so the management of our team ends up being delegated back to us through "360 peer reviews" and vague directives which, when we do them, aren't necessarily what the boss wanted.

If you can quantify how good our contributions to the company are, that would be great. Also if you could clarify our boss's instructions/wishes.

<comment><USER20> Tell your CEO boss to read this [http://firstround.com/review/give-away-your- legos-and-other-...](http://firstround.com/review/give-away-your-legos-and- other-commandments-for-scaling-startups/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am looking for a "Daily Operations Management Software". Let me explain.

Problem I am facing:

We have a lot tasks that need to be done on a daily, biweekly, monthly or whatever Basis. For example: checking new profile images, curating user data, checking error messages, etc.

My current solution

I setup cronjobs manually that send reminder emails to certain employees in my company, that remind them to do this Task. I also have an Excel sheet with a list of all these tasks all. In an irregular basis I control if these tasks are done properly.

Proposed Software solution

I can create a task with a description and assign it to a user / email. I can also assign how often this task needs to be done and wich superviser should be informed, if the task got forgotten and how often the supervisor should control the results. The assigned user gets reminded about this task and has to check whether or not he completed it or whether something went wrong.

<comment><USER21> We use Slack's "/remind" functionality for recurring reminders. For us having your proposed software as a slack bot would be awesome

<comment><USER5> Or trello card repeater[0]? (haven't used it, but figured trello might have something and was able to find it)

[0] [http://blog.trello.com/trello-card- repeater](http://blog.trello.com/trello-card-repeater)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is an example of one I received a while back, but haven't included in the daily email because I was afraid it was a bit too niche.

"I work in sports photography.

A problem I face is that I spend a lot of time grouping and sorting players in uniform.

The software I want would read the jersey numbers and tag the image with the players shown in the picture. Then it would allow manual tagging for those with jersey numbers not visible.

I would pay for this software."

<comment> ng-user This sure sounds like an interesting problem. With the likes of AI, Google's Cloud Vision[0] and hopefully many more this sort of thing can definitely become a reality in the near future.

[0] - [https://cloud.google.com/vision/](https://cloud.google.com/vision/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know right? I really loved this one, but was afraid the market wasn't large enough. Maybe I'll send it out anyways.

I've had several interviews with folks who are edit/sort a large amount of photos, and there are a lot of needs in that space. A really flexible image categorizer would help a lot of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Way too many emails, emails from:

* Every spammy SAAS service we're integrated with.

* Background job server failures

* Airbreak and New Relic emails

* Emails spam from email@example.com

* Jira, Stash, Confluence emails

The list goes on and on...

Labels and filters can only do so much, and eventually you end up over- filtering and end up in the same problem you tried to solve - you never see the important stuff.

</comment><comment><USER23> Frankly video conferencing that doesn't suck would be huge.

<comment><USER24> Yes! It feels like I try a new video conferencing system every week, never to see any improvement. I currently pay something like £20 per month for WebEx because it's _marginally_ better than Skype (particularly with more than three people, at which point in my experience Skype becomes unusable).

I tried a new one last week (for an introductory call with a new client) - Zoom.us - and it was absolutely agonising: I had to install some junky software on my Mac only to end up with a laggy video connection with appalling sound quality. In the end I made an international phone call to the guy and we both breathed a sigh of relief because we could actually relax and have a conversation.

This is not how things should be in 2017.

<comment><USER25> Apple is the worst offender by being the only major vendor not to support WebRTC natively (and I guess that's why Zoom.us went with their own non-native solution).

I know people prefer Macs, but they're enabling this behavior by Apple :( (although they do seem to be working on this - [https://sixcolors.com/link/2017/01/safari-to-gain-real- time-...](https://sixcolors.com/link/2017/01/safari-to-gain-real-time- communication-features/) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These banal questions under the guise of "Ask HN" are getting out of hand.

</comment><comment><USER26> There is never enough clean teaspoons to stir hot drinks.

<comment><USER13> Put the milk in your cup before adding your hot beverage.

<comment><USER27> Unless it's tea. The only thing crazier than that is putting jam on your scone before the cream. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> We should have this monthly, like the jobs postings. Think of it as startup founding postings

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to post this monthly! Do you think first of the month is the right time for that, or one month from now?

<comment><USER28> It would prolly mack on the jobs board if you actually posted it first of the month.

You should prolly ask dang and see if he's cool with it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm a junior developer that is highly praised for my ability to deal with people and think big picture. I get good feedback on my coding, but that's not where I shine. In the last few months I've been in more and more meetings with people way more experienced than me. It's great for growth in the company, but cuts into my development time. I feel that's it's weakening me as a developer and will cause problems if I try to move companies.

<comment><USER30> yea. the fact that people include you in meetings with more important people prevents you from career progression. studying minutiae of whatever pet project you want to nurse is probably way more important.

<comment><USER31> Cutting through wayn3's (unproductive) sarcasm, he has a point. The typical programmer is going to be better served by the network of contacts he/she develops over time than the code they develop. The people you are sitting at the table with may get promoted, leave the company etc., and can open the door to opportunity down the road.

<comment><USER32> The flip side is that the value of a network of senior people at your current employer is largely tied to your current employer. Senior people move around much less frequently than junior people (that's often how they got to be senior in the first place...), and when they do move, they frequently end up doing something fairly similar to what they were doing before (otherwise they'd lose their seniority). So your network will easily get you a job working on the stuff _they_ find interesting - but if you want to work on the stuff _you_ find interesting, your current employer better be pretty well- aligned with what you want to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Reddit ads don't have a conversion tracking solution. Especially when you're running multiple campaigns for the same ad - there's no way to see which campaign a conversion came from.

So basically I'd like a fancier Reddit ad-buying tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooh, this sounds like a good one for the email list. Actually several of the posted ones have been really good. Maybe I'll link to this thread.

Would love to chat more if you're interested!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is a pretty clever idea to solicit ideas for software. Has it been effective?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet! But I'm refreshing my inbox like crazy :)

<comment><USER34> Do you have a sales and marketing structure in place? I don't have trouble with ideas, I have trouble grinding out what is necessary to get eyes on product.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sales, I just ask that people pay me if I'm able to connect them with the person behind the problem. Essentially its a "Pay what you want" Model. Inevitably I'll have to move away from that model though.

In terms of marketing, I just kind of share what I'm up to on a regular basis and people seem interested. Also the email kind of markets itself to a degree. Friends tell friends, etc.

I do feel there could be value in software that keeps your marketing on schedule, and also helps to structure what you write about. It took me a while to figure out the structure of my weekly post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude Was the Nugget controversy a setup? ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13652612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13652612) )

<comment><USER35> I've talked with cdiamon way before his happened and it definitely wasn't.

<comment> the-dude Thanks. The whole episode seemed so bizarre to me I was wondering what I was missing. This was the only idea I was able to synthesize.

Like, follow-up post: "He, we created a huge controversy which drove amazing traffic to our products. Now we are joining hands and are doing great!".

But apparently it is Occam's razor and just a giant PR disaster for Nugget.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The company I work for uses weather data provided by one of the many API providers. We switched providers three times now and still customers often complain that locally the data is wrong. We're not even using forecasts, just the current weather.

I am now looking into building something new. However I would be glad about suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER37> The main problem I face at work is email spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! Care to elaborate?

I remember at one of my first jobs, one of my duties was to manually train our spam filter...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sales. Specifically, sales as a service. Different months have different sales volumes needs. This month, for instance, our in-house sales team has closed 40% fewer deals than the trend line. It would be great to elastically extend the output of our sales teams on months like this AWS-style.

<comment><USER39> It's really hard to pace sales due to costs involved. But we ( [https://Marketjoy.com](https://Marketjoy.com) )try to solve this problem by controlling the lead flow for our customers.

Edit: I hope this is not too salesy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The questionable competence of our product team coupled with sales selling things we don't have.

We are a smallish startup, but we seem to have a lot of senior people whose value is unclear.

<comment><USER41> The competence of my product team is not questionable, it is straight up zero.

I've been struggling with the useless product people: the head of product who should have been fired long ago but apparently he's got his ways with the CEO. And the product analyst cannot even write proper english in his self- proclaimed "user stories". All this causes engineering and QA having to double their effort. Additionally we have lost engineering talent at some point because of this terrible product person, who at some point was tasked as the head of engineers as well.

Many people in the past have told management to their faces that these people suck. They're still there. And in the meantime, other competent and productive people _have_ been fired instead. It makes me furious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Being paid by the hour

</comment><comment><USER42> Slack.

</comment><comment><USER43> Politics...

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting... Office politics, or politics politics?

<comment><USER44> Office politics.

Here's an idea: a Machiavellian social network software that could help us find like-minded individuals inside our orgs so that we could build alliances and drive initiatives. Uses ML/AI to detect threats or plots targeted at us. Obviously, it would have to be a private social graph - you wouldn't want the marks finding out about your plans. Monthly billing by # of plots/subterfuges in progress.

Might also make for a hilarious game.

<comment><USER45> Sounds close to what happened at halfbrick [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Work.

</comment><comment><USER47> Dumbassery</comment>


The customer doesn't care who's fault it is - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1058-the-customer-doesnt-care-whos-fault-it-is <comment><USER2> This is a somewhat obstinate and perhaps nonconsequential point, but as a public service announcement, could anyone who reads this please do their best to assure the title of their story is grammatical and spell-checked? If the 37signals article has the title right, then it's not hard to do a quick check or just copy and paste the title. It would help prevent the Digg/reddit sort of "degeneration," as while proper spelling and grammar may seem like a somewhat arbitrary and objectively unimportant matter, it does indicate if not intelligence, at least greater care for one's communications. When you post on Hacker News, it's like talking to hundreds of people at once. Perhaps it is a moot analogy, but would you give a speech to several hundred people without checking the pronunciation of new words? It's embarrassing for both you and the community.

Kind thanks!

EDIT: I now see the URL of the 37signals post betrays the fact the original title did in fact contain "who's". Of course it is not your fault then, but as I said, it would still show greater care if one checked something like that before posting.

</comment><comment><USER3> In a similar vein:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html>

(point 4)

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty soon these guys will discover the Americas.

</comment><comment><USER5> "reduced the incidence of dropped reservations in two years to less than 1 percent from as high as 20 percent"

To which I say, "Why weren't you doing that in the first place?"

So in today's "Ready, Fire, Aim" world, we give kudos for fixing what never would have been broken if proper planning had been used.

The Travelocity example sounds like a case of outsourcing our responsibility until something goes wrong (and it will), then fixing it. Instead of saying "congratulations", maybe we should say "shame on you".</comment>


Inventory Management with Jira - <AUTHOR> https://carstenwolfram.de/inventory-management-with-jira/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, i've put together exactly this at a startup I just joined.

Based it off Atlassian's own article (which also goes into hardware): [https://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/03/jira-asset-management- ov...](https://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/03/jira-asset-management-overview/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Inventory management software seems like a great startup idea. Are there any good companies doing web-based inventory management software?

<comment><USER4> I think the market structure is just too difficult to penetrate, with not enough profit, for a few reasons.

There is an enormous amount of vendor lock-in present in most solutions out there. Through hardware only compatible with one system, hardware that is claimed to be only compatible with one system (you won't be believed that a barcode reader will work with another system), and hardware that is simply outdated. The hardware is the most expensive part to change. The current software may or may not make migration of data easy.

The software needs to be able to mold itself to many different business processes/workflows. The business processes may be inefficient or irrelevant, but if you want approval from management you need to say you can do X,Y,Z. Also it should interact with every system they have in place.

Management/owner buy-in is difficult. Just convincing lower level employees that something is great is not enough if their boss points out something doesn't have the word "cloud" 1000 times in their marketing literature (I've experienced this).

The space tends to be dominated with solutions that are provided by combination software/consulting companies. Charge little for the software, and a lot for actual implementation by the hour. Or companies that rely on affiliates/resellers and enterprise sales reps who work for commission.

Or how infrequent necessary technical competence is simply not present at many companies. When present, sometimes it's suffocated by management, other times they're too busy with other fires and fear a new project on their plate.

I could go on.

<comment><USER3> Wow @TheCowboy. Your reply is literally one of the most thoughtful and detailed replies I've ever gotten on HN. You absolutely nailed everything why the inventory management market is tough.

If you had time, I'd love to shoot a startup idea I've been playing with and have you give feedback. I feel like you'd punch the right holes into it.

<comment><USER4> Sure, I don't mind.

I also don't want to be shooting down people's ideas. There is a legitimate business to make money somewhere in the inventory management area, I just don't think it's ripe for a startup in the ycombinator sense of the term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would you recommend using Jira solely for this use case?

<comment><USER6> If you use hosted JIRA and don't have many users it could cost as little as $5-$25 per month. That's probably cheaper than a lot of the non-F/OSS alternatives.

If you are having problems with your device tracking now, I would recommend it if that's the only thing you use it for assuming you don't have downstream systems that need data in some specific format JIRA can't be bent to.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. The company I consult for has no inventory tracking at all.</comment></comment></comment>


HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus vs. Gen10 Hardware Overview - <AUTHOR> https://www.servethehome.com/hpe-proliant-microserver-gen10-plus-v-gen10-hardware-overview/ <comment><USER2> I don't like:

* Pentium G5420 has 54W TDP. That's a lot. It'll be noisy under load. I'd prefer something like Celeron G4932E with 27W. I don't need performance, I need quiet operation and ECC support.

* iLO enablement kit is $100 and need physical delivery. No more $5 ebay key. That's a shame for home consumer.

Also I was not able to find a price. Hoping for the best. Buying Gen8 for $300 with cheap iLO key was a great purchase.

CPU seems to be not soldered, so may be it'll be possible to downgrade.

<comment><USER3> TDP is such a meaningless stat to criticize. People still caring about TDP is a huge pet peeve of mine. The TDP is a nearly entirely fictional number your modern CPU will never operate at.

Especially in a home server, the CPU will be maxed out 0.001% of its life, if that. The only stat that matters is idle power, which it will be at for the majority of its life.

<comment><USER4> I'm happy to show you quite a few servers which run almost at their TDP for 7/24/365.

Yes, it's not very applicable to home scenarios but spike loads create a lot of noise at home when a CPU has high TDP.

<comment><USER3> Surely it's clear we're talking about home and small business servers?

<comment><USER4> For sure but what about home servers which do transcoding for example?

They will run at their TDP for some time and, create considerable noise and heat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been thinking about getting a microserver. I already have a Synology NAS but I'd like something a bit more powerful to host Nextclound and a couple apps.

The Gen8 Microservers seemed neat, but they are getting old and rarer on eBay. Gen10 seems like a step back performance and feature wise.

With ILO not available (or a $100 upgrade), what is the benefit for a home / small business / enthusiast user of a Microserver vs. a custom built system? I could probably build a Ryzen based PC with a better performance / price ratio, just minus the ILO, and it's probably going to be quieter. Any optinions on this?

<comment><USER6> The Microserver line is aimed at corporations who want to send out a local office server that they will maintain remotely; the local office might not have a rack or any other infrastructure besides a router-switch combo. Size is important. HP custom builds the case and the motherboard: repair is expected to take the form of swapping the whole box, possibly sliding the disks in and out.

If you don't care about size, you can do much better for cheaper, and be able to replace everything with standard parts if you have problems in the future.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't iLO be even more important if the server is meant to be deployed at a site with no technical staff?

<comment><USER8> iLO is available with an optional kit, though honestly you'd be better off getting the ML30 if you were buying HPE gear for a remote location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm disappointed that HPE picked Intel over AMD EPYC Embedded 3000 series for this micro server line.

<comment><USER10> Same here. After Intel's decision to not release microcode updates for the Intel processors I was using (earlier core i7 models) - rendering them useless - I'm never buying Intel again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This absolutely needs a way to add an SSD for OS and fast storage, so the 4 3.5" slots can be used for a ZFS stripped mirror (Raid10-like).

<comment><USER12> You should be able to stick an M.2 adapter card in the PCIe riser

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07SQZBSCN](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07SQZBSCN)

<comment><USER13> Linux will get that, but will the firmware? If not you still need a SATA or USB DOM to put your /boot on. Annoying.

<comment><USER14> Unless you stick Clover EFI bootloader on a USB/SD card to allow booting from the SSD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's sad that we'll be losing the dvd bay. Using an additional sad drive for as boot disk in there and all the four drives for storage was ideal.

<comment><USER16> "That optical bay was often used with an extra SSD. While the Gen10 had an extra fifth internal SATA port and a Molex power connector which could be used to add an extra SSD, the Gen10 plus does not have these features. We already gave the feedback to HPE's product team and I think we have a solution that we will show in the full review we will publish for the MicroServer Gen10+."

Hopefully there's still a way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sad to see no option for having both nvme drive and 10GbE at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why do server hardware need to look cool? Do ppl buy hardware based on the looks!? So many metal cases with razer sharp corners to cut yourself on, making it weight a ton. And screws. And more compartments, like a Russian doll. Making it cost a ton. All you need is a wireframe made in wood or plastic, a bare board, and a fan.

<comment><USER19> > All you need is a wireframe made in wood or plastic

Wood burns, plastic melts. When you have a bunch of racks full of a bunch of servers undrler heavy load, managing the environmental temperature of the datacenter is very important.

<comment><USER18> When you get melting/burning temperatures you are already screwed, and burning metal is far more dangerous, try turning some metal wool on fire.

<comment><USER19> Speaking from experience, it is much, much, much more feasible to reach the burning point of wood or the melting point of plastic in a datacenter than the melting point of the metals used in server construction.

One of the jobs of the case is to contain a fire if it starts. A plastic case wouldn't do this, and a wood case would actively be hazardous.

<comment><USER18> Do you have a story? I've never experience more then 120°C in electronic equipment as it's usually the safety limit where it would shut itself off. Although in theory the silicon would still be fine at 300° where wood starts to burn.

<comment><USER19> Two situations come to mind:

1) Several appliance machines were in a cabinet with water-cooling doors attached. The doors restrict the airflow from the front of the cabinet to the back to the point where there isn't sufficient airflow to cart away the heat from the CPUs. The engineer responsible for those particular systems played show-and-tell with the melted plastic pins that formerly held the motherboard in-place for a month after the machines crashed.

2) An 8-year old rackmount machine had a power supply fail spectacularly and light the entire server on fire. Fire suppression was triggered in response. Several other adjacent machines were damaged but the fire stayed relatively contained to the one cabinet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most interesting comparison for me will be the price. The Gen10 is so inexpensive that it's competing in the same price range as a four-bay Synology unit. But I imagine this won't be.

</comment><comment><USER21> Get the Z series workstations from HP instead. They are much better options for home.

<comment><USER22> They all seem to be much more GPU-focused? i.e. completely different product segment? And mostly (with a couple of exceptions) significantly larger than something named "MicroServer".

<comment><USER21> They are perfect for data crunching as well as GPU related purposes.

For IO: My 8 year old one lets me saturate SATA at 500megabyte per second. With SAS which it also supports it's supposedly 3000megabyte per second, bit I have never tried it.

For memory: ECC

For processing: Dual Xeon CPU config

For storage: Nice storage pods.

For admin: Out of band ILO like functionality, although I've never tried it

For home: SILENCE! My machine measures at 32db

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can you stick any hard drives you want in there, or do they have to be HP drives?

<comment><USER24> At least up until Gen8 you could use any drive; the bays came in standard dimensions and took my Western Digital drives without a problem. I don't see why that should have changed in the meantime.

<comment><USER25> Wasn't there something about fans blowing at 100% with non-HPE drives due to their firmware?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Since it is now an intel, does it come with an integrated backdoor like the other "server-grade" hardware?

<comment><USER27> Why the downvotes? It's a legitimate question: ME/AMT can be neutralized or disabled.

Bios can be replaced with coreboot.

Some buyers and some vendors actually care about security.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h It's x86, so if you count ME/PSP as a back door, then the answer is almost universally going to be yes. It would be like commenting on the new release of Ubuntu and asking if it was still using a Bourne-like shell by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love the new form factor, and getting away from low performances AMD socks is welcome. I'd love to see some benchmarks with the Xeon ones.</comment>


Robert Howsare's Drawing Apparatus - <AUTHOR> http://kottke.org/12/03/robert-howsares-drawing-apparatus

<comment><AUTHOR> High five for HTML5 canvas tool to generate this drawing with tweakable parameters!</comment>