New Studies Warn of Cataclysmic Solar Superstorms - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-studies-warn-of-cataclysmic-solar-superstorms/ <comment><USER2> Link to the actual journal article[0] (which I don't have time to finish reading this morning), because the writing in this is a little click-baity but not too bad.

I'm curious if there is any serious analysis out there about dangers to the electric grid that exist. It's hard to wade through a google search on the topic and find a good round up of how bad things actually are.

[0] [https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019SW002250)

<comment><USER3> [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&ved=2ahUKEwiygqvq0vvkAhVWu54KHT6VBaEQFjAJegQIAhAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lloyds.com%2F~%2Fmedia%2Flloyds%2Freports%2Femerging- risk-reports%2Fsolar-storm-risk-to-the-north-american-electric- grid.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0Hg4EvoNAgqpCKI0oteQHI)

[Lloyds insurance pdf] Transformers are the fundamental problem. Once they are fried it could take years to get grid back up and running. There was US legislation proposed to mandate spares in the the event of a major solar flare, don't have time to locate right now

<comment><USER4> I remember a few years back hearing that one reason we are studying the sun is to hopefully detect such a powerful solar storm on the order of ~hours before such a solar flare hits Earth. This might give grid operators enough time to effectively shut off and disconnect those massive transformers to save them from the brunt of the damage.

<comment><USER3> '... it is a problem the same way hurricanes are a problem. One can protect oneself with advance information and proper precautions. During a hurricane watch, a homeowner can stay put … or he can seal up the house, turn off the electronics and get out of the way. Similarly, scientists at NASA and NOAA give warnings to electric companies, spacecraft operators and airline pilots before a CME comes to Earth so that these groups can take proper precautions'.. [https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/flare- impac...](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/flare-impacts.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interestingly, it sounds like most predictions for solar cycle 25 [1] are that it will likely be milder than average, like #24 is/was. Anyone who knows more about this sort of thing care to comment?

It kind of sounds like this article is just saying that a big storm could be harmful if it happens, but the headline seems to imply that a big storm is more likely in the near future.

I do wonder if modern electronics are more prone to failure from this sort of thing, though; the transistors keep getting smaller and more power-efficient, which seems like it would also mean that they require less energy to switch.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_25)

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that it's long conductors that are the problem (telegraph wires etc) that are the most under threat, just unplugging most things would protect them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, tangental question. I have read about the Earth's magnetic poles moving in the past. I have also read that the poles are likely to move or start moving again sooner rather than later. Would a large geomagnetic storm influence that? I.e. would it make the poles more likely to shift, or kick them into motion? Would it make the poles less likely to shift or hold them in place? Setting aside the disruption of a major change to the cardinal directions, would a shift of the poles be disruptive to infrastructure like the storms in the article are said to be?

<comment><USER8> The Earth's magnetic field is created from electrodynamo activity in the liquid iron core of the Earth. A solar super storm would have basically no influence on the millions of cubic kilometers of conducting and convecting iron. After the storm had passed, the magnetic field on the Earth's surface would be unchanged.

As to your last question, when the Earth's field flips direction (polarity reversal) or tries to flip but returns to the original polarity (magnetic excursion), the Earth's magnetic field drops to around 10% of the normal field strength and is no longer dipolar. This would cause many current satellites to be destroyed by the solar wind, but since drops in the field to this level takes hundreds or thousands of years, there is little to worry about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Aren't modern electrical systems much better protected against solar storms than in 1859 or 1921?

<comment><USER10> In some countries with modern grids. The grid in the United States (with the exception of most of Texas which is on its own independent grid) however is not and is quite susceptible to this sort of event. Modern hardware that can actually handle this sort of thing is simply largely lacking in the United States as it's far cheaper to repair the occasional failed piece of equipment than to redo the entire grid and the power companies are out to make profits tomorrow not to prepare for "it might happen tomorrow or in 10,000 years" types of events. Even losing a small percentage of the hardware to an event like this could result in blackouts in entire regions and rolling blackouts for quite some time until enough hardware could be replaced.

Worse, a lot of the hardware at that level (those big transformers and the like) are not really kept in surplus and are effectively manufactured to order and sourced outside of the United States. And while that's not a problem for countries that are more modernized, if you took down the grid in the United States the economic and food supply implications would be a global issue.

Similarly, if anything ever happened to GPS the logistics and agricultural industries would topple as they are so incredibly dependent on GPS now it's terrifying.

There have been attempts to modernize it and a plethora of articles exist on the subject, here is a semi-decent one Forbes ran earlier this year

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2019/07/12/modern...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2019/07/12/modernizing- americas-energy-infrastructure-must-become-a-national-priority/#1a517ca1602f)

<comment><USER11> Honestly, reading this makes me nervous - it's scary just how fragile our modern way of life is.

<comment><USER10> It really is. We've become insanely dependent on the internet, massive electrical grids and GPS.

GPS is especially interesting because the USAF didn't even want it and it almost never happened yet ever shipping company, every cargo ship, every semi, ever FedEx and UPS truck, many pieces of large farm vehicles and most of us use GPS daily. The larger farming operations even use GPS to harvest as GPS is far more accurate than a human being trying to make optimal rows and optimal rows end up in huge time & fuel savings as each acre goes by.

And take the internet... all of those delivery/freight companies use the internet to manage their shipments all across the world and to adjust routes on the fly, and most commerce is conducted via the internet either via websites or servers.

Then power. If you don't have power you don't have water pressure, you can't pump gasoline, you can't make gasoline, you can't use the internet, etc. If you even just manage to take down one region (like happened in Canada in 1989 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm) ) for even a day you have a massive disruption.

It can honestly be terrifying if you let your mind obsess about it, just how fragile our technological civilization is. More and more I want to live as simply as possible but man, it's hard, we rely so much on gadgets and SAAS and the general convenience of an electricity/GPS/internet driven society.

<comment><USER11> I'd much prefer if things were more self-contained and self-reliant rather than so deeply interconnected; I don't yearn much for simple (pre-industrial) life. But given the reality we have, it makes it extremely important to protect our civilization from shocks and reinforce the most fragile aspects of it. That's why I often speak up against revolutionary changes, for good or bad. I'm for more gradual changes, and strongly against those that risk breaking civilization, because that would be game over for everyone.

<comment><USER12> I wholeheartedly agree. Society has it's fair share of flaws (and they absolutely should be fixed!) but all of the alternatives are way worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> DHS Recovery Transformer Program

[https://www.dhs.gov/science-and- technology/rec-x](https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/rec-x)

<comment><USER13> Interesting that DHS has a term for things like this, HILF.

>Various agencies have emphasized, and recent events have demonstrated, the critical nature of power transformers in the face of possible high-impact, low-frequency (HILF) events. HILF events include intentional malicious events (e.g., physical attacks, cyberattacks, coordinated attacks, electromagnetic pulse weapons, and others), natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, earthquakes, severe geomagnetic disturbances, etc.), and non-intentional or accidental events such as nuclear power plant accidents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Solar superstorms can create enhanced atmospheric isotopes of carbon 14, beryllium 10 and chlorine 39. High resolution lake sediments and ice cores can discover earlier extreme solar events. Many studies point to 774 AD as the largest know solar storm event. Perhaps additional events in 993 and 660 BC.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is an interesting read from 2012.

[https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter- grid/a-perfect-...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter- grid/a-perfect-storm-of-planetary-proportions)

He discusses how they can build in protections but the issue was the technology available in 2012 failed to kick in quickly enough. Is this still the case?

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there any early warning system that provides an API for this sort of thing? It might be cool to use this for automated shutdown of sensitive equipment and <favourite chat application> notifications.

<comment><USER17> There are some very useful/interesting apps with early warning information built in. For example, AuroraWatch: [https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/aurorawatch-uk-aurora- alerts/i...](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/aurorawatch-uk-aurora- alerts/id946141347)

Perhaps closer examination of where they source their data could yield an API or similar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it time for Elon Musk to create self driving boring machines to put the electrical grid completely underground? Mostly joking but not entirely.

<comment><USER19> Buried power lines are definitely a thing. They're common in cities where you don't want a tangle of wires overhead and in more affluent suburbs for the same reason.

They're pretty nice because you rarely lose power in bad weather, the power tends to only go out on nice days when the backhoes are active.

Long distance HV lines are always overhead though. They would require relatively expensive insulation to be run underground.

<comment><USER20> German here, almost all power lines are underground. Except the super high voltage ones :)

<comment><USER6> UK as well.

Other than the high voltage backbone links I've pretty much never seen power on an overhead.

<comment><USER21> I have to suspect they're more common than you think. I just pulled up this random lane in the middle of England and:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-1.3123044,3a,89.9y,...](https://email@example.com,-1.3123044,3a,89.9y,0.61h,113.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDbwWd3DqtV5YnKCSbJSiPw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

<comment><USER22> They look like telephone poles to me.

<comment><USER23> Then why the high-voltage warning stickers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> They tricked me with how close "cataclysmic" is to "catastrophic".

</comment><comment><USER25> What's the best way to prepare for something like this on a personal level?

</comment><comment><USER26> Welp, don't be on a flight when a solar storm happens.

<comment><USER27> We'd have at least a few hours' warning. Enough time to land, for sure.

<comment><USER28> ETOPS flights are regularly flown 3+ hours from a suitable place to land (single-engine flying time). Considering they are up to 370 minutes (about 6 hours) in some extreme cases, I can certainly see this being a problem. If you had a 3h warning at any given moment, there's a strong possibility that some jetliner somewhere in the world is over an ocean and could not land in time.

<comment><USER29> It could fly low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is this because of rising CO2 emissions?

</comment><comment><USER31> Is there a set of stocks which I should be shorting in the moments up to the next carrington event?

<comment><USER32> Might be tricky to spend the money.

<comment><USER33> What money ?

Unless you are buying gold or silver and taking possession you and everyone else has nothing.

<comment><USER34> In a civilisation collapse scenario, vodka is a far more valuable and liquid investment vehicle than gold or silver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Scientific "Teen Beat" American... This is the worst kind of click-bait sensational journalism I have seen from Scientific American. Honestly, what a pile of scary hokum.</comment>


Slides From Recent Presentations - <AUTHOR> http://css-tricks.com/slides-from-some-recent-presentations/

<comment><USER2> Wow, great resource, very valuable. Inspirational at every level : workflow and tools, tech choices, nice slides...</comment>


Ask HN: Is it just me or is the IT field becoming discriminatory? - <AUTHOR> Recently, I've been getting a lot of rejections, for job positions I know I'm qualified for, and it's beginning to make me look for a pattern and question things. I assumed having nearly 15 years of experience writing enterprise-level software, my experience would be desirable as I get more years under my belt. I'm looking for remote work so interviews are usually over the phone, and have a casual tone. When I mention that I have a wife and kids, I don't know if that's good or bad in the company's eyes. Do they only want younger devs, without other obligations, who can work 60+ hrs/week? Do they think I'm too old? I recently read this about the hiring process at Automattic: https://cate.blog/2019/05/15/addressing-hiring-gaps-through-user-research/
"To that end, as we reviewed our hiring process, we realized that the demographics of people we attract to apply are not inline with the demographics of the people we hope to hire. Whilst we have implemented a strong focus on metrics, and made certain adjustments, we've not seen the improvements we want. If this was a product, we would go to our users and ask them – so why not do the same here?
... we're looking for women and non-binary people (trans/cis/gnc) who may experience similar gender discrimination in the workplace, who have multiple years of experience in a software development role."
So, they have a lot of straight, white male developers and their product goals aren't being met, so it might be because of the skin color and sexual orientation of their employees? I was a little surprised that Automattic would be so open and proud of their discriminatory hiring practices.
Am I being too sensitive? Is the discrimination real? Or maybe it's always been this way and I didn't notice when I was younger and landing the good jobs. Sorry if this post sounds like rant, but I've been a big fan of Hacker News for a long time and enjoy reading the threads because I genuinely value everyone's input here. <comment><USER2> You seem to be approaching this from the wrong direction.

If you're really suffering from age discrimination, instead of thinking of women and minorities as the reason you're not being hired (do you really think that's the case when there are so few in tech comparatively?!), you should be thinking of them as people who are plausibly in same situation as you: suffering from a form of discrimination.

So:

(A) you should be feeling solidarity with people who have hard time getting hired, not getting upset companies are trying to be more fair in their hiring practices by encouraging broader range of people to apply.

(B) when you encounter companies that encourage women/minorities/etc. to apply, those are probably companies that are trying to hire people on merit, rather than preconceived notions. So those are exactly the places you _want_ to apply!

</comment><comment><USER3> To be fair to Automattic, that last quoted line is actually referring to a research project - not their hiring practices...

> For our initial research, we're looking for women and non-binary > people.......

But I understand your frustration. I have 20 years experience and I'm currently looking for a job (considering a recent offer, actually). Age discrimination is real IMO but there's little you can do about it (very hard to prove). Move on, find an employer with more realistic hiring practices. You don't want to work for the discriminatory companies anyway.

<comment><USER4> But the research project exists to inform future changes in their hiring practices.

It's quite likely Automattic already tries to discriminate in hiring because they mention their "strong focus on metrics" along with their amusing puzzlement that merely demanding more women and trans people be hired didn't automatically make it so. They certainly want discriminatory outcomes.

That said I agree with what you write. I'm not sure explicit age discrimination is common though. It may appear to be happening but is often other things, nobody is actually deciding they don't want older people. Age discrimination against young people, that's common (e.g. young people not being allowed to be CEOs, like Larry Page). Not necessarily bad but common. Gender discrimination against men I've seen a bunch of times, and it's explicit. People say "we won't hire men".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Encouraging more applications from women and trans programmers doesn't mean they're turning you down because you are not those things. If they do succeed at widening their pool of applicants, that may mean more competition overall for jobs. Was it to your advantage when the applicant pool was perhaps more limited in some ways? Maybe.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" we realized that the demographics of people we attract to apply are not inline with the demographics of the people we hope to hire"_

This is the part that bothers me. They have a predetermined image of who they want to hire, based on nonfunctional qualities, like race and gender. If a company said they had too many minorities working for them and the demographic they really wanted to hire was straight, white males, it seems like people would be up in arms over that. But the inverse seems acceptable.

<comment><USER5> Maybe, but the historical reality is that in many technical fields, women and minorities have been underrepresented due to deliberately exclusionary policies. There's not really a need to say, hey we want straight white dudes to apply, there's no shortage of such applicants.

<comment><USER6> _Deliberately_ exclusionary policies? I've been around a long time. I've _never_ known of a policy, at any place I worked, that discriminated based on race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Disclaimers: I've never been the hiring manager, so I've never read the actual policies. And there may have been discrimination that was not encoded in policies. But I have never, to my knowledge, been anywhere that had a deliberately exclusionary policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel your pain. I have come up against ageism with the typical brush-off being "over qualified".

I assume that the jobs you are applying for are for "remote" roles. If they are expecting on-site workers then suggesting that you are only willing to do the work remote is likely to be a non-starter.

I fail to understand why you mention having a wife and kids. That is the sort of personal question that in must jurisdictions is no permissible. So why do you even volunteer that information?

As for young devs, working 60+ hours for low salaries -- yes, that is a very common expectation.

HNers can only share their experiences. The only real way to get answers is to actually ask the interviewers for feedback and ideally more information up front. E.g. ask how, where and when the work needs to be done; what hours are expected; what salaries range they are considering, etc. You could also tweak your CV to appear younger, more independent, less experienced, willing to do on-site work and see what aspects give you better results. Unfortunately, remote work is not always a viable option for many potential employers, especially in the enterprise area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions. I normally wouldn't talk about my personal life, but I currently have a good job and when they ask why I'm looking for a new/remote role, I tell the truth: my wife and I want to move to a small town in a remote area to be closer to family and there aren't any IT opportunities there.

<comment><USER8> Still-truthful possible answers that say the same thing without raising flags: "Cost of living where I am as increased quite rapidly, so I'm looking to relocate to a more affordable area."

"I'd like to live closer to family, and my current work situation makes that impossible."

"I'd like to move back to my hometown, but there aren't a lot of on-site opportunities there, so I'm hoping to get a remote position so that I can move back."

You get the idea. You can be vague and still truthful, so that you stay under the radar.

On a side note, it's very odd that having a wife and kids is something you now have to consider "hiding". Interesting times.

<comment><USER9> Fifteen or so years ago, it was recommended that I remove two items from my CV, my age and my marital status. It was suggested to me that both of those items would, in quite a few circumstances, put me on the automatic reject list, irrespective of what I had achieved in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >When I mention that I have a wife and kids, I don't know if that's good or bad in the company's eyes.

You have two options: either don't mention the wife and kids and take the chance of getting a job that doesn't respect what you want from your work/life balance because they didn't know, or mention you have a wife/kids and not get hired for a job you would have hated anyway.

I don't want to speak on your behalf, but I would rather get passed over for a job that was a bad fit than take a job that's going to have a negative impact on my family life.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why are you mentioning wife and kids? Why would that ever come up in a professional interview?

Also, what does remote IT work mean? Are you using IT as it's used in the midwest to encapsulate software? On the west coast, IT typically refers to networking and helpdesk type stuff. I don't see how it's even possible to do that fully remote.

EDIT: Also, I recommend treating the blog you linked the same as Infowars. The owner is an Alex Jones-level conspiracy theorist, and her blog reflects that. She doesn't even try to hide her obvious contempt for men.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think many jobs what they want is somebody cheap and that will take any orders. Experience or age isn't factored in.

Those jobs you will want to avoid in any case.

</comment><comment><USER13> Do you mean job positions you _think_ you are qualified for? You need to convince the employer that you are likely to perform well.

</comment><comment><USER14> Are you serious?</comment>


Show HN: NextUp – A better way to save and share with friends - <AUTHOR> http://www.getnextup.com <comment><AUTHOR> Product: Simple iOS app to save, share, and discuss things you enjoy (articles, movies, music, etc.) with your real friends, and escape the bullshit of traditional social media.

Hurdles (in addition to a highly competitive market): (1) We are struggling to get users to share items using our app instead of text/SMS; (2) Sharing items with non-users is not an appealing experience; (3) We need to make UI and functionality improvements.

Help: We think building an iMessage app would encourage users to connect with our platform through their regular texting habit. We'd like to get feedback from the Hacker News community on whether building this or any other feature will allow our app to be commercially viable, or if we should scrap the project.

Gratefully, Brad, Brandon, and Caleb</comment>


Google Chrome to Bar HTTP File Downloads - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/google-chrome-to-bar-http-file-downloads/152674/ <comment><USER2> As pointed out in another link/story about this- the title is bad. Its blocking http downloads on mixed content pages.

So unless you host http files on an https page you will never notice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, I just tend to not editorialize and defer to dang to correct.</comment></comment>


How Zuckerberg F$&ed Up Facebook for Your Business in 5 Simple Steps - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-zuckerberg-fed-up-facebook-your-business-5-simple-renae-bunster/ <comment><USER2> I would've probably upvoted the post if it wasn't on Linkedin.

</comment><comment><USER3> THE ALGORITHM!!!

Unfortunately, I think that algorithmic feeds are the direction every social media site will go down until the end of time. They're not profitable without it.

TL;DR social media marketing is no longer possible for small businesses</comment>


Why ZFS is not good at growing and reshaping pools, or shrinking them - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/solaris/ZFSWhyNoRealReshaping <comment><USER2> As far as I know it is a fundamental design difference between btrfs and ZFS. Btrfs has extent back references. Given a location on disk btrfs has an efficient data structure that gets from the disk location to the items using that disk location. E.g. if a sector on disk gets corrupted it has a command that lets you list all the the files using that sector. With ZFS you'd have to iterate through all files, list block locations and check if one of them is affected. Of course such an additional index comes with a performance cost for managing that index (any kind of write or delete operation plus more metadata space used). On the top of my head this is used for rebalance, quota groups, device removal, send/receive (finding reflinks) and file system shrinking.

For a similar trade off compare hard links on Windows vs. ext4 and co. on Linux. On Linux there is no command to list all hard links to a file while Windows (NTFS) has one (FindFirstFileName etc.). This is why creating hard links on Windows is much slower and there is a limit of 1024 hard links to a file. To find all hard links to a file on Linux one would need to iterate over all files and check if they have the same inode number, however.

<comment><USER3> > With ZFS you'd have to iterate through all files, list block locations and > check if one of them is affected.

I mean... you just described a scrub. I'd gladly sit through a scrub if it meant that I could grow a raidz vdev.

I'm suspecting there's some other hurdle.

<comment><USER4> Raidz expansion is currently a project under development in openzfs.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF8V7Tc9G28](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF8V7Tc9G28)

[https://youtu.be/Njt82e_3qVo](https://youtu.be/Njt82e_3qVo)

<comment><USER5> Also, the work-in-progress (alpha quality) preview code:

[https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/8853](https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/8853)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing I like about btrfs is offline deduplication. So whenever you want you can search for duplications and then tell the filesystem about what you find. This avoids many of the performance and ram impacts of ZFS deduplication.

<comment><USER7> Are you really saving that much space doing that on a block level rather than a file level?

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure what you're comparing to. Both filesystems do deduplication at a block level. But Btrfs can do reflink copies and ZFS can't. And Btrfs can do after-the-fact deduplication and ZFS can't.

<comment><USER9> He's saying scan for files that are the same and hard-link them. Both filesystems can do this after-the-fact.

Of course this only works if the data is read-only.

<comment><USER8> > Both filesystems can do this after-the-fact.

It won't reclaim any space on ZFS if you're using snapshots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> RAID-Z expansion is in the works...

[http://open-zfs.org/w/images/6/68/RAIDZ_Expansion_v2.pdf](http://open- zfs.org/w/images/6/68/RAIDZ_Expansion_v2.pdf)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njt82e_3qVo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njt82e_3qVo)

<comment><USER11> That was announced about 2 years ago.

<comment><USER12> There's ongoing work on this PR:

[https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/8853](https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/8853)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even before ZFS I wanted there to exist a RAID array where you could just swap out a disk to increase capacity.

I wanted it in part for me, but I also wanted it for all the people in my life who were doing a terrible job of taking care of their important data.

"Don't worry," I wanted to tell them. "Get one of these, slap some drives in it. When you need some more space, buy a new drive, take the smallest one out and put the new one in."

Some of the early PR for ZFS was unclear on whether that was possible, but I was excited. This was by far the closest we'd gotten. Later it was a feature we'd have soon. I waited to adopt. Apple was going to support it, here we come. Apple was _not_ going to support it. Okay, NAS could still happen. Sun craters and I lose track, but check in every so often, and still nothing.

In the grand scheme of things, it is not the biggest tech disappointment I've suffered. But it feels like it should be in the top ten, even if it's #10.

<comment><USER14> Windows Storage Spaces and Drobo both have the "grow proportionally onto bigger or differently sized disks" feature

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't that a bit of rewriting the history? Originally the roadmap was that these kinds of features would be added based on the mythical block pointer rewrite. Eventually BPR and thus all features requiring it were put on ice.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I think Sun/Oracle recognized that there was a subset of their user base that would greatly benefit from BPR and all the associated features that come from it, but that it wasn't their core customers, so it wasn't included in the initial implementation (in my experience, most enterprise customers would rather replace an entire array that was full than expand or reshape it.)

Had Sun remained the powerhouse it was, the BPR would probably probably have eventually gotten done, but with the smaller resources devoted to ZFS development now vs in the Sun days, it's gotten kicked way down the priority list.

<comment><USER17> Enterprise users are most often using enterprise servers with fancy built in disk enclosures, and they're likely to fill those up with disks. Expanding the storage by replacing with higher capacity disks makes sense; expanding by using more disks isn't as likely. And changing the configuration to have fewer disks is also less likely; you paid for all those slots, so they're going to be filled.

<comment><USER18> > _Expanding the storage by replacing with higher capacity disks makes sense_

That is an insanely time consuming operation that also increases the risk of data loss as you have less redundancy during the expansion.

An enterprise ought to just migrate the entire pool/content to somewhere else and redo it completely.

Expanding by replacing with higher capacity drives just feels like a hack and afterthought that only hobbyists would actually make use of.

<comment><USER15> > as you have less redundancy during the expansion.

If the old device is not faulty then the replace operation will keep both old and new in the array until it is complete.

> An enterprise ought to just migrate the entire pool/content to somewhere > else and redo it completely.

That's also an option with send/receive, but that involves downtime. Drive replacements can be done on a live system. Server grade hardware generally supports hotplug.

<comment><USER13> If you left one bay empty, that is.

Which you probably should.

<comment><USER15> you can run the replace to some form of external drive and then swap the physical drive once the replace is done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The indirection that exists in Btrfs is the internal virtual address space and block groups. Metadata and data extents are referenced in virtual addresses, bytes. That address is translated by the chunk (block group) tree into two things: a physical device, and location on that device. Conceptually it's not altogether different from ext4 on LVM, and hence the old critique that Btrfs is a layering violation. But these things are integrated on Btrfs, and the chunk is what makes so many things flexible, as well as a PITA when it comes to ENOSPC (mostly solved these days).

</comment><comment><USER20> > One fundamental reason is that ZFS is philosophically and practically > opposed to rewriting existing data on disk; ...

That's not quite the issue.

The issue is that PHYSICAL and HASH block addresses are stored together, intermingled, which means that the PHYSICAL addresses get hashed into the copy-on-write tree, which means any block can't be relocated (i.e., have its physical address(es) changed) without rewriting the path to the block containing a pointer to it as well.

I.e., ZFS is not content-addressed storage. In CAS the hash of a block _is_ its pointer, and the physical addresses are stored separately (not intermingled with hashed data) and _not_ hashed into the tree.

IF instead ZFS had used ONLY the hash value as the blkptr_t, and then had stored the physical addresses at the end of metadata blocks and then NOT hashed the physical addresses into the tree, THEN relocating would be a lot easier. Not trivial, mind you, just easier. Not trivial because of snapshots and dedup: you can find a singular pointer to any data block in the absence of snapshots and dedup, and rewrite the physical address stored nearby, but you can't easily find duplicate pointers, so to relocate blocks in CAS w/ snapshots and dedup you have to leave behind forwardings, or have a database of relocations (which is costly).

> (In the grand tradition of computer science we can sort of solve this > problem with a layer of indirection, where the top layer stays immutable but > the bottom layer mutates. This is awkward and doesn't entirely satisfy > either side, and is in fact how ZFS's relatively new pool shrinking works.)

Yes, and proper CAS also has a layer of indirection, and some awkwardness around snapshots and dedup (see above). For mirror drive evacuation there's nothing to do. For shrinking operations you only need to relocate blocks whose physical addresses are beyond the end of the new device (but you'll need a fair bit of swing storage for the interim relocation or to use as forwardings until you've found and fixed all pointers to any one relocated block).

I've said this many times in the past, and always someone complains that not hashing the physical addresses is unsafe, as if the hash of the contents is not safe but hash of contents and physical address could somehow be so much safer (it can't be much safer, if at all). And again, see CAS.

</comment><comment><USER21> bcachefs is looking promising to me. I hope that it doesn't unlearn any of the lessons we've learned over the years from ZFS, which is itself excellent in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER22> I might be misguided here (please correct me), but I feel like ZFS and hardware RAID had their place pre-SSD, and now they don't make much sense.

If you want an array of disks with a mutable configuration, I think the right choice is mdadm and LVM. They're reliable, relatively easy to use, let you move disks between machines, don't rely on hardware RAID, and support all file systems.

If you need something faster and more optimized like ZFS or btrfs, you're probably better off spending on SSDs anyway.

Tell me why I'm wrong, HN :)

<comment><USER23> I think most people use ZFS for data integrity, not performance.

I make backups regularly (manually, because I want them to be offline), but I'd rather not have to use them if one of my drives die. Unless I literally just finished making the backup, I'm going to lose some amount of work.

My mirrored ZFS pool means that (A) a drive can die and I won't lose _any_ data, no matter how recent, and (B) I'm confident none of the data on either drive is corrupted, because ZFS checks it regularly (every time it's accessed, and during weekly scrubs).

<comment><USER24> Exactly. Anyway, my home server is having 6Tb redundant storage (3xToshiba 3Tb) and 10Tb Hitachi drive, non redundant. What would the cost of SSDs be? Over $1000 not to mention the controlle 4 SATA port vs 19+ port controller is a huge difference in price.

I do use SSDs, where I need speed - L2ARC ;), far better use than buying 19Tb of SSDs, not to mention the price.

Anyway, I do use ZFS on laptop for linux root. Reason? Snapshots. Kvm + ZFS, perfect match. /.zfs/snapshots? Fabulous.

<comment><USER25> There is this fun backup tool, that have yet to set up.

[https://www.znapzend.org/](https://www.znapzend.org/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet - <AUTHOR> http://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html

<comment><USER2> 121,000 feet = 36.88 km

From Wikipedia: The Kármán line lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 mi) above the Earth's sea level, and is commonly used to define the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space.

That's not space. Though it's an amazing feat nonetheless.

<comment><USER3> I was waiting for the camera to stop picking up sound the whole time. It got really squeaky and full of static towards the peak but it never seemed to happen.

<comment><USER4> Sound vibrations will still be picked up in a vacuum in this case. Vibrations through the rocket body will be transmitted to the camera body (direct contact) which will then be transmitted to the microphone (again, direct contact). According to Wikipedia[1], 90% of the Earth's atmosphere, by mass, is at an altitude of 52,000 ft or lower.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Pressure_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Pressure_and_thickness)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you look at the cut open V2 rocket in the Imperial War museum in London you can see about 1/3 of the innards is the control system; gyro's, inertial guidance etc. Today you can buy that on a chips from digi-key, farnell, sparkfun or wherever for say $50 or even just root your smartphone and use it as the control system. It always surprises me that there is very little precision rocketry or ROV proliferation amongst the countries and political/religious movements with extreme agendas out there.

<comment><USER6> For the cut, you can take a look here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Esquema_de_la_V-2.jpg> and the corresponding Wikipedia article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2>

Technologically impressive, but a weapon...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sending your own widget up and having it bring back snapshots of other continents and a round Earth, only seconds later. What an amazing feeling it must be. Makes me wanna go dig up my old mechanics book. Can someone give a ballpark figure of how much it would cost to build something like this and how long it took them?

<comment><USER8> You could cheaply reach the same altitude using a helium balloon. 121,000 ft is only 37km. Plenty of home grown helium balloons have reached that height (and higher).

My project reached 32km: <http://blog.jgc.org/2011/04/gaga-1-flight.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "As the GPS devices on Qu8k failed to log readings above 100,000 feet, the attempt is likely disqualified."

would love to know what happened

<comment><USER10> Went higher than the GPS satellites could see?

<comment><USER11> No, but there are limits on how high commercial GPS receivers will work to prevent them from being used to guide ballistic missiles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can't they confirm that the altitude met the contest minimum based on how much earth curvature there is in the photos?

<comment><USER8> They would have to compensate for artificial curvature introduced by the cameras they are using. If you look at the images you can clearly see that effect.

<comment><USER12> They should be able to do that. No?

<comment><USER13> Yes camera calibration is a well known problem. You have some nice straight lines from the launch pad structure you should be able to do it with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't have anywhere near the smarts to pull something like this off (maybe one day, one day), but I'm always so excited when people try these and they work.

Awesome job

<comment><USER8> Build something else. Whatever it is that you build you end up with that awesome "I built that" feeling. Last night I hacked to 0230 on turning a set of 50 GE Color Effects Christmas lights into a 7x7 color display. No one around me really understands why this was worth staying up half the night for, but when I finally got control of the serial bus protocol for programming the lights and saw my display work under my control it was awesome.

What they looked like before I started hacking them: <http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11630618>

Short video of the first full glitch free run of the lights under my control: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9SOI9EnjTg>

<comment><USER15> That looks great. Will you be posting any info about how you did this?

<comment><USER8> Yes, I will. When I've got it doing something useful I will post a full blog post with details and also with the source code etc.

Some more pictures to give you the idea:

1\. All the LEDs removed from the cable and stuck into a specially drilled piece of thin plywood: <http://yfrog.com/hwy2snj>

2\. Reverse of the plywood showing the bulb with all the cables cut. Had to cut, strip and solder all 288 cables back in place: <http://yfrog.com/j2xp8gsj>

3\. Little shot of the rewiring on the back. The colored pieces are tiny bits of heatshrink that I put in place to insulate everything: <http://yfrog.com/nzh3ngdj>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Related; Copenhagen Suborbitals - homegrown opensource _manned_ rocket: <http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/> \- Peter Madsen (one of the two guys building this thing) also built a submarine..

Edit: June launch attempt [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K7YZpvs513U) [http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/contentgfx/Rocket-2011_...](http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/contentgfx/Rocket-2011_550.jpg) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_suborbitals>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm impressed with the machining on this. It looks like he made it at home in his own shop. It looks very solidly welded and bolted together. As an ID student that's the most amazing part for me, the thing had to have been _really_ solid to not just fall apart under that much speed. Edit: Although I was disappointed by the lettering coming off the side of the shaft and covering the camera lens. Something that would be hard to predict :P

</comment><comment><USER17> If GPS failed before 100,000 ft (and it looks like any commercial GPS would), what about the altitude charts on the project's homepage?[0] How were they generated? Can that data-gathering method qualify it for the Carmack challenge?

0: <http://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html>

<comment><USER18> As to how they were generated, the charts are labelled. The first shows raw acceleration data, plus the first and second integrals of that data. The second shows data from a _simulation_, which was tweaked after the flight to approximate more closely data that they do have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am not sure if anybody would know here but do we need to take permission from FAA for doing this kind of stuff?

</comment><comment><USER20> Watch the video! It's one of the coolest things I've seen in awhile.

</comment><comment><USER21> One of the most awesomest things I've seen in a while.

</comment><comment><USER22> Pretty impressive, but that ain't space.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. It's in the stratosphere and might be called 'near space', but it's not above the Karman line.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I read that as "dude sends epic homegrown into space." I pictured an enormous plant in a hydroponics research facility, with growth unfettered by gravity...

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks like they were at the Black Rock Playa. Hope they take all their moop with them, since the Burning Man people just got done cleaning it up...</comment>


Show HN: Current Input – detect input type and fix sticky hover on mobile bug - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rafrex/current-input <comment><USER2> nice docs!</comment>


Computation and State Machines (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/state-machine.pdf <comment><USER4> Is TLA+ is the culmination of Leslie Lamport's approach to describing state machines?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p54W-XOIEF8&list=PLWAv2Etpa7...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p54W-XOIEF8&list=PLWAv2Etpa7AOAwkreYImYt0gIpOdWQevD)

<comment><USER5> Well, he's worked on it for ~25 years...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For HNers who use citation tools, a relevant RIS item for this may be as follows (sorry, had to edit to try to get it to format reasonably)

        TY  - <USER2>
        TI  - Computation and State Machines
        AU  - Lamport, Leslie
        AB  - I have long thought that computer science is about concepts, not languages. On a visit to the University of Lugano in 2006, the question arose of what that implied about how computer science should be taught. This is a first, tentative attempt at an answer.
        DA  - 2008/04//
        PY  - <USER3>
        UR  - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/computation-state-machines/
        ER  -

</comment><comment><USER7> Didn't get it. State machines are the very first basics of any degree in computer science. You learn that such models are the basis for any computation. You also learn that no one uses such formalizations in practice because they are way too complex.

<comment><USER8> Maybe that's the problem. They teach you the core concept, then you graduate believing that it's just a concept to know and hard to use, because you think that programming with state machines forces you to think in small state transitions and you can't abstract.

<comment><USER5> Lamport doesn't talk about programming with state machines. He talks about coming up with a mathematical model of computation that can be both simple and with wide applicability (applies to both sequential, interactive and concurrent programs).

In such a model, state transitions can be as small or as large as you choose (e.g. sorting an array could be a single state change or multiple ones, depending on your chosen level of abstraction). Lamport's Temporal Logic of Actions (which forms the core, or at least the most interesting part of TLA+) has the very mathematical notion of abstraction as a first-class construct, i.e., A => B _iff_ B is an abstraction of A (where => is the logical implication operator, which in TLA also means "refines" or "implements", i.e., the converse of abstraction).</comment></comment></comment>


Calling the Oregon Lottery's Bluff After Poker Machine Dealt a Strange Hand - <AUTHOR> http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-24178-man_vs_machine.html <comment><USER2> Really bad article. Goes to great lengths to glamorize that Curzi person, yet does not provide some of the most crucial information on the subject. For example - does oregon law require that the machines have certain winning percentage? And secondly did the state of oregon make a representation to gamblers that this machine had certain winning percentage?

And finding documents marked "confidential" that say the machine has a certain winning percentage means nothing. You cannot say that a confidential document that was unknown to gamblers before Cruzi obtained it from a public records request mislead anyone. If people do not know about a document there is no way it can mislead them.

Since the article is quiet on the two questions listed above it seems very likely that their answer is "no". In that case that Cruzi person, as glamorous as the article makes him, probably has no case. If the machine is not required by law or by previous advertisement to give out a certain percentage, I do not see how the fact that the advice it gives results in a lesser percentage than other possible advice is at all relevant.

<comment><USER3> From the article: 'The lottery's rules require "a close approximation of the odds of winning some prize for each game" and say those odds "must be displayed on a Video Lottery game terminal screen."'

Curzi discovered that the odds displayed were not correct and the commission knew about it.

<comment><USER2> That is also very puzzling. It gives the above quote but it does not say whether these odds were actually displayed on the screen of this particular game, and it does not say which odds were displayed (the ones with using autohold or the ones without).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really disturbing. For all of the sleaziness of Vegas, any time I've asked a dealer or pit boss about the house advantage in a particular game, or the correct play for a particular hand, they've told me cheerfully and correctly. They sell strategy cards in all of the gift shops -- and you can have them on the table with you while you are playing. There's no need for them to lie -- they already have the advantage, all they need to do is get you to play long enough to let the odds do their thing.

<comment><USER5> Except that in the case of live poker, they're getting theirs via the rake.

I assume you're talking about blackjack: unless there is a CSM at the table or an absurd 6:5 blackjack payout (you shouldn't be there in either event, period) you can absolutely play to your advantage.

<comment><USER6> Well, the basic strategy for Blackjack is still slightly in favour of the house

But yeah, you might track cards (good luck doing that with 10 decks though)

<comment><USER7> Most blackjack card counting strategies are no more difficult with a higher number of decks. Instead of counting actual 'cards', one instead keeps a running total of points based on the cards that come out.

In fact a higher number of decks can improve one's advantage when counting because when the count turns in your favor it can happen with more of the deck left to come (so a longer period of advantageous play)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting)

<comment><USER8> This is incorrect, the larger the number of decks, as a general rule, the smaller the advantage of card counting becomes.

<comment><USER5> If you're counting in a (rare) two-deck game with a full table, time between shuffles is so low that it isn't worth it from a hand/hour standpoint.

<comment><USER8> That's nonsensical. The EV of an hour would depend far more on the table limit than any other factor. If I could find a table that would let me vary the bet from $1 to $10,000 a hand on a two deck game they could have Parkinson's patients with oven mitts on shuffling with chopsticks for all I care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The practices of the Oregon lottery seem wrong to me. Government should be in the business of helping people and providing uncorrupted resources and facts, not marketing dreams and hope to people while taking their money hand over fist. John Oliver just did a good segment about this too [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK- netuhHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA)

<comment><USER10> Many States deflect criticisms of for profit lotteries by advertising that some of the proceeds go toward schools and other 'public' goods.

It is well known that lotteries pray upon the poor and uneducated, ironic really.

Instead of monopolizing gambling, or giving sweet-heart deals to those close to the government, or trying to outlaw it completely so we can see tragedies like cops shooting people over playing fantasy sports, the state should get out of the way, maybe provide counseling and treatment, and _gasp_ let people do what they want with their property.

It's always about power, and ensuring most people don't have any.

<comment><USER11> Humans have weaknesses that can be abused. This is clearly the case in gambling. The government must protect in some areas. For example with financial advice, there are countless cases of people giving inappropriate financial advice to the elderly, even getting them to sign away their property while dying in hospitals. Sure it easy to say 'and gasp let people do what they want with their property'. But what about this scenario? Would you be OK if that was your relatives being manipulated on their deathbed to give money to a previous stranger cause it is what they want to do with their property at that moment in their life. Or, back to gambling, is it fair on the children of the father/mother who gamble away their pay check each month leaving the family destitute?

Above is more extreme but real examples to clarify a point. In my mind saying people can do what they want with their property is overly simplistic and assumes a more perfect world than the reality.

<comment><USER12> >Or, back to gambling, is it fair on the children of the father/mother who gamble away their pay check each month leaving the family destitute?

However bad it might be to prey on people by trying to trick them into gambling, it's a trillion times better than just taking their money (the other way of raising revenues).

<comment><USER13> why?

<comment><USER12> Because in one case you can opt out.

<comment><USER14> Gambling addicts can't opt-out very easily, and it causes them to pay tax rates frequently higher than 100% of their incomes.

<comment><USER12> It's easier for addicts to opt out of gambling than me to opt out of taxation, and you can be treated for addiction but not taxation.

<comment><USER15> Don't know why you're being downvoted, you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is anyone else horrified by that demographics chart? The "income" pie chart has a line that splits it almost perfectly in half, yet one side contains 61% and the other 39%. The 24% piece is clearly way over 1/4, and the 25% way under. Are they drawing these by hand?

<comment><USER17> Nice catch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The conclusion that a lower payout means more money for the lottery and less for the players is wrong. If a player receives a lower payout than expected either through bad luck or cheating on the part of the video machine they are more likely to stop playing. There is an online gambling company here in the UK who strive to maintain a 95% payout across all their games because it is deemed the most profitable long term strategy. The chances are that a higher payout for video poker will result in higher earnings for the lottery company which means there is a possibility that the auto hold behaviour is as a result of lazy programming rather than deliberate maliciousness.

<comment><USER19> What if they claimed and displayed 95% payout, but actually only paid out 92%? Don't you think that would be more profitable? Because that is basically what they're claiming is happening here. Do you think enough people will keep track of their winnings for long enough to catch the discrepancy?

<comment><USER18> That's hard to say. In the case in the article, the machine is obviously mis- leading players by suggesting a less than optimal strategy. At the same time, if the manufacturer of the machine wanted to lower the payout without indicating anything to the player, they could simply adjust the probabilities of the cards as they are dealt (I assume that is how most video poker machines work anyway). I don't believe that individual players will have any idea whether or not they are receiving the advertised payout, they can only respond the the outcome of the game. Gambling companies do often advertise high payouts but I suspect this is only attracts new players while the real odds affect how long the players continue to play.

<comment><USER19> _if the manufacturer of the machine wanted to lower the payout without indicating anything to the player, they could simply adjust the probabilities of the cards as they are dealt_

Having a different payout than the advertised one is definitely illegal in the US. What Oregon seems to have done is to find a neat loophole to get around that law.

 _(I assume that is how most video poker machines work anyway)_

At least based on how I understand the law, you cannot tinker with the randomness of how the cards are dealt. The only thing you can use to alter payout percentages is alter the actual payout amounts for different events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> tl;dr: Oregon poker machines advise players to make moves that favour the house, and couple those with an autoplay feature that accepts house recommendations - recommendations that are inherently unfair to the player. At least, this is what the lawsuit alleges....

<comment><USER21> You don't have to qualify that with "At least, this is what the lawsuit alleges".

The lottery is not disputing they make recommendations that are not optimal for the player. The question is are they obligated to give the best advice?

<comment><USER22> I think no. Video games traditionally give tips - these are designed to help out players who aren't sure what to do. They are not designed to be the best possible move.

If the game autoplayed the best possible moves, what would be the point of learning poker? Where would skill come into the mix?

This lawsuit seems frivolous to me. I would never expect a game to give me the most optimal hint - only a hint for how to get closer to winning.

<comment><USER23> The guy's in software but then he acts dumbstruck that the machine wouldn't tell him the optimal move? Wouldn't you be happy if there was at least some player skill involved which would contribute over time help you lose less.

<comment><USER4> That's not usually the social contract in gambling. The house usually goes out of its way to make sure you know the technically correct play (i.e. the one that 9 out of 10 experienced players would make). These are meant to be games of chance, not games of skill. At least at the level that you would never draw to an inside straight, if given the option not to -- that's just dumb. As others have mentioned, there are times you might turn in a winning hand in hopes of drawing a royal flush, since so much of the return is in the jackpot -- that's less clear-cut, and I wouldn't expect a video poker machine to make the jackpot-seeking recommendation, since it's not how you would play in a 5-card draw table game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My understanding is that state lotteries were initially justified as means of putting criminal numbers rackets out of business. People were going to play one way or the other, so give them an honest game and stop funding hoodlums. That makes sense.

But there is no justification for state lotteries as revenue raising streams, nor for behavior maximizing those revenues. They shouldn't advertise and shouldn't be creating new games to increase their take. These are just taxes on mathematical illiteracy and risk factors for people with gambling problems.

Of course, the revenues are more important to the politicians than the general interest, so here we are.

</comment><comment><USER25> I avoid most video machines, but an anecdote from some time I spend in Helsinki in the early 2000s while working for a company there.

Gambling, in a sense, appeared to be legal in Finland. In Helsinki there was one Vegas style casino (similar odds, $10 minimum -- memory serving me right); but many bars had 21 tables. The trip in the "bars" was a tie was not a push, but went to the house.

Given I was a loner in a country known for it's lack of gregariousness (a stereotype, I had friend's there, but many focused on family and those outside the city didn't come in during the week), playing the odds was an interesting gambit.

Giving up the natural odds in a tie is a push for 21 was a hard one to digest. However, I offset some of it by always taking the #1 position. Not ideal overall, but a help.

In the end, after 6 months there, tabulating pure gambling stakes, I ended up a net positive by about 15%.

On my return to the US, my first trip was with friends to Vegas. My skewed methodology of playing, assume no tie, for 21, permeated my game for the first few hours. It resulted in unhappy players, but saw a slight uptick in my own earnings.

I wish I had the time and energy to more fully document this period, but playing games that expect one skew and then coming into another that expects something else, at least for me for awhile was a benefit.

</comment><comment><USER26> I see a lot of comments here about suboptimal play. These are missing an important point.

The machine is not playing poker. The machine is presenting a game that superficially resembles poker, to achieve a slot machine payout rate of 90%.

As a slot machine, it is a game of chance, not skill. If the actual payout of a machine advertised as 90% is 85%, that is fraudulently advertised odds, period.

So the lottery posts a notice on the machine that user interactivity may reduce the odds of winning. Relying on that information, everyone just hitting the "play" button like a robot--treating this particular type of slot machine like a regular, non-interactive slot machine--should realize the posted odds.

They did not. The owner of the machine was aware of this. The Lottery made false statements to its customers, harming them by its deception and profiting in the process. That's fraud.

It is true that the Auto-Hold function does not need to recommend the optimal Draw Poker play. _IT MUST RECOMMEND THE PLAY THAT ACHIEVES THE ADVERTISED SLOT MACHINE PAYOUT_.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you found this article interesting, check out the book Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, by Natasha Dow Schüll.

It's an incredibly interesting book about building addictive gameplay, the industry that does it, and the people that use it.

</comment><comment><USER28> OPTIMAL strategy for video poker is hard. (assuming standard 9/6 JoB paytable)

For example, what do you hold with

(1) AH QH TH JD 3H

vs

(2) AH QH TH 9D 3H

On (1), you hold the 4-flush.

On (2), you go for the 3 card royal. (Reason: Discarding the jack makes it slightly less likely to draw the straight, tipping the otherwise close decision to favor the 4-flush.)

In the article, the machine was advising plays anyone with basic competence would never make.

<comment><USER29> Optimal strategy for a given hand isn't that hard to calculate, either. There are 32 choices of how to hold. 5 of them have 46 possible outcomes, 10 have 2070 possible outcomes, and the remaining can be looked up in a table with less than 13.5k entries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is completely unacceptable, but the State will probably get away with it.

If the study he found showed the machines paid out _more_ than it should (but still positive to the State) you bet there would be audits of the machine.

</comment><comment><USER31> Don't even understand how this is an article, they flat out have a disclaimer: > Auto-hold strategies vary by game, based on the particular features of a game and do not necessarily result in theoretical payouts

On smart phone games auto is often not the best strategy, just the easiest (Summoner's War with 30 million downloads, I'm looking at you).

Sounds like the guy was just ignorant and thought auto was something it was specifically declaimed not to be. If it was labeled "Best" I might feel something for him.

<comment><USER32> ... Or the guy was just like so many average humans and assumed that the machine was doing something more than randomly picking cards to hold. If the machine said it was auto-picking the worst cards, we'd all be mad. If the machine said it was randomly picking the cards, we'd all be surprised: why even do that? Who does it help? Therefore, from an implicatures pov, the only reason for the machine to pick cards (or "suggest" cards) is to recommend a good hand. Since the computer can often pick the best hand, why would we not assume that it's doing so, to give us mere humans "a fighting chance", so to speak? Why should we assume that it's not picking the computably best cards to hold, other than our belief that the machine "cheats"? And that's what the article examines.

I don't think it's ignorance on our gambler's part; I think it's the standard "Black Hat UI" issue mentioned on HN so often: We assume that sw does somethign to maximize utility for the user, based on the design or experience, when it's instead doing something to maximize profit for some other entity.

Yes, it's a gambling machine; we all understand that it's designed to take our money. But offering a feature as part of the experience that appears to help when it doesn't (or to a lesser degree than would be expected via presentation), would be deemed misleading by any reasonable person, small print and disclaimers aside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm waiting for "quick pick" lotto draws to be reviled as not actually random but the machine picks numbers least likely to win because they recently won.

<comment><USER34> :) Lotto draws are independent so you have an equal chance of winning with any numbers.

<comment><USER35> You'd like to think they're independent and fair, but thats kind of the whole point of the article.

To quote the state director in the article "I don't think we've ever represented that the auto-hold gives you the optimal result," he says. "The idea was that it gives you a good result."

You'll get a perfectly good result if the lotto balls are loaded. Might not be optimal, might not be random, but it'll be a good result, as in not some random negative integer or a float or wrong number of balls.

<comment><USER34> I agree with you that lottery _might_ make lotto draws unfair. For example, they see in advance which combination of numbers is NOT played and somehow they cheat and draw exactely that numbers. Lottery can do that for several weeks in a row, thus making the prize pool bigger and bigger and atmosphere between players hotter and hotter. As a side bonus, lottery can use fresh cash (from stakes) for several weeks at 0% interest rate.

But, can they really do it? Manipulating lotto balls and drum (mechanical devices really) is much harder than manipulating software behind some video poker game. I don't say it's impossible, but harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The Oregon commission is clearly in the wrong but I'm not sure determining the losses is very straightforward. I'm guessing the lower payouts mostly result in more time spent at the machines with nearly the same losses.

</comment><comment><USER34> I was developing online gambling games for 6 years and I'm totally on Justin Curzi's side here. Oh, and if anyone's interested in how those games are made feel free to AMA.</comment>


Ask HN: Axing features in a prototype product? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently working on a startup I've founded, trying to get my project out the door. When I initially conceived of the product, it was extremely simple, and then I quickly added plans for a whole bunch of features which I thought would be huge and amazing. Now that I'm trying to implement, and get it out the door, I've got a twofold incentive to boot some of them, first, they're pushing forward my launch, and second I'm not sure some of them are all that compelling to being with. Nonetheless, I'm very anxious about launching with a minimal version of the product, or abandoning what felt like a "grand plan".
Has anyone ever been in a similar situation? Is it just a case of telling your inner perfectionist to chill? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Drop the features. You'll never have an easier time doing so than right now. Once you have users, getting rid of any feature (even dumb ones) will infuriate someone. We've only managed to excise one major feature (a poorly thought out one that people migrating from a competing product wanted so that things acted the same in one regard; basically, we borrowed a feature from a competing product to make a few users comfortable, but found that it confused everybody else) in several years of development, and even that one is still merely hidden and can be re-enabled. Once users have added something to their workflow, you cannot change it without blowback.

So, don't add things you aren't sure about.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a first release, pick only the features that constitute the core idea of your product, but make sure the core is tested and working.

"Get the tree, then hang some ornaments"

</comment><comment><USER4> Release early, release often.</comment>