Why we built a 40TB photo server in-house instead of using S3 - <AUTHOR> http://tech.oyster.com/how-to-build-a-40tb-file-server/? <comment><USER2> "The one most valuable asset at Oyster.com is our photo collection. ... In strict accordance with KISS methodology, we opted against LTO and S3, and decided to build a big BOX."

I can only imagine how much they will be scared each time they need install updates or reboot THE BOX. They will eventually decide to build identical BOX and mirror their data on daily basis. Then they will notice that mirroring such big volumes of data is wasting tooo much system resources and start evaluating in-house distributed storage solutions, such as OpenStack Swift. Then they will notice it is way too overcomplicated and finally decide migrate their data to Amazon S3.

I'm writing it as a person who walked the same path over the last few years. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is honestly pretty scary. There are a lot of single points of failure in this solution.

1) Single Box

2) Single Location

3) Single 40TB RAID 6 Array on single RAID card with 22 Drives (assuming 24 2TB drives, 2 parity, 2 hot spare = 40TB)

4) Single bonded network link means single switch, no redundancy against switch / network device failure

Honestly this may have been cheap but your getting what your paying for: An unreliable backup solution.

Also: Norco? Really? I wouldn't be trusting anything they produce with your company's critical data. Supermicro isn't much more expensive all things considered.

<comment><USER4> Warning, the sound of a broken record coming up...

 _> An unreliable backup solution._

Nope. _RAID is not a backup solution_. It provides redundancy so the array can survive an event like a device failure (and so the data survives as a consequence) without significant downtime for repair (with zero downtime if you have hot-swap hardware) but it does not, and is not intended to, protect the data from the huge list of other things that can affect it.

RAID is redundancy for reliability purporses, not backup purposes.

<comment><USER5> >Nope. RAID is not a backup solution.

OP isn't saying RAID is a backup solution. RAID is being used as a component within the backup solution (the server).

<comment><USER4> Ah, yes. Sorry.

My knee has been playing up and jerked a little there.

RAID is certainly a valuable part of many a more substantial backup solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"The first challenge in putting together the big box was getting internal SAS connectors properly seated into the backplane adaptor sockets"_

Excuse me?

As a customer I'd feel slightly uncomfortable about my data by now. You make it sound like stuffing 24 disks into a box is rocket science to you, all the while SuperMicro and others sell plug&play chassis for up to 45 disks[1].

Also, you didn't mention it in the post, but you _do_ have at least two of these in two physically distant racks, right?

[edit: deleted snarky comment about people running windows on a fileserver]

[1] <http://www.supermicro.com/storage/>

<comment><USER7> At least for this website it isn't your data but it is their data.

They are backing up their curated photos (which seems to pretty much be the whole business as they say in the article).

It appears they are using Akamai services to server their images so hopefully their is some extra redundancy there already.

Other than that it seems like it would be a steal to use s3 as a backup system at this point because from this article it looks like they need to hire another employee to tell them why this backup solution seems a bit silly (I mean having trouble setting up the hardware).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We had something similar but smaller (~8 TB) at a place I worked, and it was a nightmare. Migrating from that to S3 was one of the best things to happen to that project.

Being a single big box, it had a bunch of single points of failure, and boy did they fail; we probably had 5-10 hours per month of downtime due to the photo server falling over (flaky RAID controller firmware, mostly).

Also, since the big box was expensive, we only had one in production. There was code for taking a newly-uploaded photo and copying it over to the photo server that only executed in production, which meant the only way to functionally test it was to ship it and hope.

We switched to S3 about a year ago with different buckets for prod, staging, and dev; the production-only code paths went away, and there hasn't been any photo-related downtime since. Definitely worth it.

<comment><USER9> This sounds like you had a really bad implementation. Proper file server of this small size would not fail for several hours per month.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely true. The RAID controller would randomly lose drives and the driver for it would randomly cause kernel panics. We tried different firmwares and different kernels and made some progress, but never really got it stable under load.

However, that's the risk you run with single points of failure. Put all your data on one big box, and any failure in your RAID hardware, RAID firmware, RAID drivers, network drivers, kernel, RAM, OS, et cetera will take down the big box and thus take down anything relying on it.

The lesson I learned wasn't to make a super-robust single system, it was to have enough redundancy to stay up when something inevitably fails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For a 24 drive server, I'd just get a heavily discounted dell or HP box. A startup should be able to pay half list, buy two, and be ahead vs. s3.

Supermicro chassis re a big improvement overdoing your own wiring. The Areca controllers, especially in raid 6, re great. For raid 5 I'd also look at 3ware.

For single gig e, you can get away with esata expanders, building something like the back blaze pod. I've done that kind of thing for personal use, and to have an onsite mirror of something, but I'd want several, in several different colo facilities, to compare with s3. The exception is if you need some kind of scratch storage, but even refilling a 40TB archive with downloadable content takes a really long time over a 1Gbps link.

I'd build a few boxes like this now, but the Thai floods pushed hard drive prices up to the point I have to wait. Hopefully fast 4-5TB drives will be $200 by summer 2012.

</comment><comment><USER11> S3 gives you multi-host, multi-region redundancy. Putting it all in one box is asking for trouble. What if the raid controller grows a bug and corrupts on write? It's happened. What if there's a fire in the building that has both your server and your back-up? Eggs, meet basket!

<comment><USER12> S3 fails too, right? Didn't they have an internal network issue this year, and go down for hours?

Anything you haven't tried, doesn't work. That's a truism in computing. I don't think Amazon tries failing-over entire data centers very often (have they ever?), so when it needed to happen, it didn't work.

Anyway, I'm thinking this guy has only to back up his photo store about once a day to (something big) and put it in his bank box, and he's good to go, at least for a photo site.

<comment><USER13> _Anything you haven't tried, doesn't work. That's a truism in computing._

(Aside) I wonder if this is more accurately stated: Anything you haven't tried recently, doesn't work. Even if you have tried it recently, that's no guarantee.

Or, to paraphrase Hofstadter's Law, the probability of something working some time after you last tried it drops surprisingly quickly, even when you take into account this rule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _In strict accordance with KISS methodology_

Buying a ton of parts, carefully assembling them, and having it be your problem when something breaks is simpler than paying Amazon to solve the problem nearly perfectly?

<comment><USER15> Better than going bankrupt.

<comment><USER16> You mean, better than going bankrupt until they go bankrupt when the single BOX goes down, right?

<comment><USER15> That single box is made of replaceable cheap parts. Only a fire can take it completely out.

<comment><USER17> My company's data center has suffered a fire at least once in the past 5 years.

<comment><USER18> That sounds like a terrible data center. If you count a server short circuit with some minor smoke as a fire I guess it's understandable. The server room should have Halon/Inergen or a similar system with smoke detectors.

Building your own solution to beat S3 is certainly viable but at this scale I doubt it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> After reading that I'm afraid they're going to have downtime because of a 'shoddy backplane connection' sometime soon. Or that it's going to fall out of its 'delicate balance' or have a 'driver conflict' soon :(

I wonder if they subconsciously undervalue their photos, or if this is just a naive 'we can do better' moment.

I'm all for building your own, but there's a good reason enterprise server hardware costs more, and there's a good reason to go for enterprise hardware when you say 'The one most valuable asset at Oyster.com is our photo collection'.

For instance a Dell or HP storage server with 24 disks would be around 18K list - and be really engineered for that as opposed to hacked together.

</comment><comment><USER20> _For starters, 40TB on S3 costs around $60,000 annually. The components to build the Box — about 1/10th of that_

I wonder why no one ever factors the cost of having a knowledgeable person handling the system into their calculations. TBH 40TB doesn't sound as much, but once you start growing you'll want someone familiar enough with the subject to take care of it (especially if it's their most valuable asset).

<comment><USER21> Amazon S3 price also takes into account having redundancy at three data centers. So you should multiply the cost by 3, just for that. Of course if you don't need the redundancy, you can build it for cheaper.

Also for some applications it really does make sense to move away from S3, and have a solution in house. For example The Broad Institute has about 6 petabytes of storage [1]. They in particular benefit from local storage, since all of their data is generated on-site. However, even at this scale, they don't build the boxes themselves [2].

[1] <http://www.genome.gov/27538886>

[2] [http://www.isilon.com/press-release/isilon-iq-powers-data- st...](http://www.isilon.com/press-release/isilon-iq-powers-data-storage-next- generation-dna-sequencing)

<comment><USER22> Also quite important to mention, use of S3 will chew up your upstream bandwidth while making backups. Also, it will affect your recovery time objectives if you ever needed to run a restore (you will NOT be getting 200MByte/sec to or from S3, unless you have some sweet network connectivity).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> the author updated with this comment:

[http://tech.oyster.com/how-to-build-a-40tb-file- server/?#com...](http://tech.oyster.com/how-to-build-a-40tb-file- server/?#comment-211)

"Didn't mean to give the impression that this is the _only_ backup, it is not. It is the "warmest" one — first line. It does not share the same physical location with the primary storage box either, but is less than 2 miles away. So we can easily have a 2 hour recovery time without throwing away those astronomical monthly service fees. (Although many technologists will always prefer paying big bucks for the comfort of being cushioned from every angle by SLAs and such — nothing wrong with that, just a different approach.)

As far as TCO goes, it cannot get any lower since we already have one or two system guys handling _all_ servers, as well as office workstations, etc.. This backup box takes up such a small fraction of their time that its almost negligible — several thousand annually at most. Same goes for power, etc — it is just one of _many_ servers.

The disks are all Enterprise Class 2TB SATA-II, several different models. We were purchasing them right after the monsoon floods in Thailand constricted supply so our choices were somewhat limited as time was a factor.

Raid6 has come a long way since it's early inception days, but is still a trade-off between raw storage capacity and processor utilization. HW RAID industry is now old enough to not have to wait for new products to mature as we used to when the technology itself was in its infancy. Old habits certainly die hard, but getting the "latest and greatest" was a conscious choice made for this specific problem, not submission to some immature fascination with "elite" new products, or however that may be.. This card has the best specs for Raid6 currently on the market — bottom line, period.

Big Kudos to all who made suggestions and participate in the discussion, keep it coming!"

</comment><comment><USER24> From my experience building storage, you're better off buying an enclosure that has expanders (e.g. Supermicro); it really simplifies cabling.

<comment><USER25> Supermicro is just such a fantastic company. Love their stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Static image storage makes the most sense todo on S3 or similar. Building your own storage, does not provide the redundancy and reliability of S3. Additionally, you have the flexibility to enable CloudFront and distribute the images via CDN if you need.

<comment><USER27> Building your own storage _can_ provide the same redundancy and reliability. You can still use a CDN as well.

<comment><USER16> Sure it can, but can building and administering your own solution compete with a TCO less than S3's $0.14/GB with a 99.99% availability?

<comment><USER27> Of course it can, given how many useful open source solutions are available nowadays.

Considering the total cost of 6000$ for a single server, you would be dropping 12k from the get-go for two servers (though you should really lease over a 12 month period if you can't afford it) and then you need to add colo costs for the machines, which can be around 300-400$ per machine in a single unit colocation environment, depending on your location. This brings us to 21600$ in the first year for two machines colocated in separate datacenters, without any sysadmin costs;

The article states S3 would cost 60,000$ per year, and this doesn't include any bandwidth costs, whereas the colocation setup would include some decent bandwidth per month. Over time, it's easy to see how a lot of money can be saved.

Also, S3 is _designed_ for 99.99% availability, but they only guarantee 99.9% through SLA, which isn't extremely spectacular. Hitting 99.9% isn't particularly hard if you have a sys admin worth his salt to set things up right, and with your own solution you can have more direct access to the file system as well as the ability to adhere to any regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A bit off-topic, but I wonder if anyone can comment on using software RAID rather than hardware RAID? I'd like to try it. I've been bitten by buggy hardware RAID controllers far too often (even high-dollar name brand gear). I know that all of the free *nix systems offer software RAID, I'm just curious how they perform.

<comment><USER3> I can't comment for industrial usage but for use at home (work and non-work use) I have the follow setup for storage:

My old desktop hardware (Intel Q6600, 8GB RAM, Asus MB, pair of gigabit links bonded)

Supermicro 4u tower case with 8x hot swap bays + the 5.25 bay filled with a 5x hot swap cage, 13 total hot swap bays.

3-Ware 9550SX RAID Controller, 4 x WB RE 320GB drives, RAID 5.

8 x 1.5TB "Green" Drives, mixture of WD and Samsung drives, RAID 6 using mdadm (linux software raid)

1 x WD Raptor (system drive)

Ubuntu with KVM for virtutalization

Originally i was in the "must have raid controller" camp which is when I bought the 3-ware controller and the RE series drives. When that array filled up I did some research and decided to just go the mdadm route and have minimal complaints so far. I use the 3-ware array still for "critical data" and back it up to S3.

Monitoring: You have to work a bit more to get proper alerting of issues from mdadm but its not hard to setup. Doesn't matter for me much, i sit in the same room as this server most of the day working so if something goes wrong i generally notice before i get the e-mail.

Performance: As mentioned I'm using Green drives, this system wasn't built with speed in mind but rather large amounts of nearline storage. Never-the- less, with some basic tweaking and making sure the array's partition alignment is correct I get around 450MB/sec read speed and ~85MB/sec write long term, I have the system setup to cache writes aggressively however as most of the data on this array isn't critical and its on a UPS, what this means is that writes under a few gigabytes usually complete at wire speed (~200MB/sec) then get flushed to the disk later. Most of the time I'm limited by network bandwidth to this system, unless I'm writing a very large amount of data all at once.

One negative is rebuild speed, here i'm very limited by the 'Green' drives I believe. It runs at about 50MB/sec so rebuilds do take awhile.

As far as CPU usage goes, I've never seen it be the limiter but haven't watched it that closely, it doesn't peg during rebuild. This machine acts as an SMB/NFS file server and a few development VMs 24/7 (database, and a couple other things) and I've never really had an issue with cpu usage.

One really nice bonus is that if something in the system fails, you can just plug the drives of your array into to almost any other linux system:

apt-get install mdadm

mdadm --assemble --scan

Poof, working array.

tl;dr

If your going after 1GB/sec transfer speeds, get a high end raid card.

If you just need some large redundant storage that can saturate a Gbit link or 2, then mdadm software RAID is just fine IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Yes S3 can get expensive, but imho this swings the pendulum too far in the other direction. Something like a riak cluster of four 2U/24-drive servers would get you the cost structure of good colo but the features/resilience/operational-flexibility of something more like s3.

<comment><USER30> Good suggestion. I posted on the Riak mailing list regarding this:

[http://lists.basho.com/pipermail/riak- users_lists.basho.com/...](http://lists.basho.com/pipermail/riak- users_lists.basho.com/2011-December/006955.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How much more expensive is a clustered software solution (e.g., Hadoop FS) than this RAID box?

<comment><USER18> That depends on how much hardware you want to spread it out on. Many companies would have to hire a hadoop guy, then again some companies would have to hire a sysadmin to to run the Oyster solution. Build your storage to fit your company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How are you dealing with bit rot? Are you periodically scrubbing the data to give the controller a chance to repair or are you waiting to get a URE during an array rebuild? Are you running end to end checksums against all your data to protect against bad firmware, bad ram, etc. What is your mean time to repair in case you lose a drive?

One more question: you saturated the network link with a sequential read/write, but is that how you actually store the data? If not, how long would it take you to be up and running on another CDN in case Akamai goes down in flames?

</comment><comment><USER33> "Having spent some extra time on research, fine-tuning, and optimizing the new server, we were glad to find that the gigabit network had became the bottleneck"

This matches my experience, RAID performance in linear IO is an order of magnitude below what the disk should allow. This guy is relieved to finally get 1 gig of useful bandwidth out of 24 disks (about 1 gig a piece). So it's no faster than a single disk.

(i know it's linear io in this case because the screenshot shows a large file copy)

</comment><comment><USER34> This seems like a half-solution - I can understand building a big box locally for day-to-day access to the images (if they indeed need that) but I didn't see any mention of an off-site backup. Even assuming no problems like file corruption, what happens if there's a fire or flood? At the least, there should be two copies of this big box, in different places.

</comment><comment><USER35> Off site backup conveniently left out of the write up?

</comment><comment><USER36> Hey everyone, don't worry, be happy! Their VP of engineering used to work at 'a startup' and prior to that, he was a 'rocket scientist' because he worked at Raytheon on missile guidance systems. Oh, and before that, he worked at the Mothership, I mean Microsoft, in the 'user experience team'. As an added bonus, if you want to work at Oyster, you get your choice of such cutting edge technologies as 'Python, PostgreSQL, Nginx, Windows, CentOS, C++ and more'!

Nothing to worry about here, I think we are in good hands.</comment>


HN Being Fair - <AUTHOR> https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=%22to+be+fair%22

<comment><USER2> To be fair, "to be fair" is a common phrase that many of us use in face-to- face conversation

<comment><AUTHOR> It is, I just find these little quirks in language fascinating.</comment></comment>


Functors, Applicatives and Monads in pictures - <AUTHOR> http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_monads_in_pictures.html <comment><USER2> This image (and ones like it) is so valuable: [http://adit.io/imgs/functors/fmap_def.png](http://adit.io/imgs/functors/fmap_def.png)

Every time you read about things even tangentially related to functional programming, you inevitably arrive at a slop of letters with arrows between them. Even just _parsing_ that is rather difficult for non-initiates, let alone trying to grasp what it's actually saying after you've parsed it. Words and arrows (the normal kind of arrows, the kind that are for pointing at things) can help a lot.</comment>


Show HN: A lightweight, framework-agnostic database migration tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adrianmacneil/dbmate <comment><USER2> Cool. Would love to hear about the drivers for building a db migration tool instead of using something like goose.

<comment><USER3> Here are the main things I wanted in a migration tool which I couldn't find anywhere else (at least not all in one tool):

* Ability to create/drop database (super helpful for test environments)

* Read database connection string from an environment variable so I don't need to specify it on the command line or have a separate configuration file.

* Automatically load .env file if it exists.

* Write migrations in pure SQL

* Use dates for migration versions

Goose supports many of these use cases, but specifically it doesn't support create/drop database, requires a separate configuration file, and appears to require hacks if your migration files do not contain only simple SQL statements separated by semicolons (i.e. stored procedures / triggers).

<comment><USER2> Thanks! The .env file is a nice touch. Can't wait to try it out.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with hostile code review? - <AUTHOR> The small startup I work for is starting to do a refactoring/version 2 of its product, as such the owner is going through the code base and marking areas for improvement.
He has marked a few parts of the code that I worked on, and one in particular has the comment "//codingstuffs: This code makes me want to cry. Try xxx coding style??"
Now, I will be the first to admit that likely my code sometimes can be a little messier, but the coding style he prefers the pyramid of doom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_doom_(programming)) and I had been taught this was not a good thing.
I'm happy to code to his particular style, but I can't help but feel hurt by the comments. Does anyone have suggestions as to how to separate themselves more from their code/work so that I can not take this as personally? <comment><USER2> Ask the owner to be a bit nicer. You can say something like:

> While we all make snide comments about our own code, it _really hurts_ when > it comes from somebody else; this is distracting me from the actual > suggestions you're giving. Could you try to be nicer with the comments you > leave during code review?

This isn't a problem with you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - I appreciate the response, I was struggling to come up with what to say, but I think you hit all the points there, especially with the fact that it distracts me from the actual suggestions on the work.</comment></comment>


Thoughts on Microsoft Joining OIN's Patent Non-Aggression Pact - <AUTHOR> https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/oct/10/microsoft-oin-exfat/ <comment><USER2> So if I understand correctly, the situation is: MS is pledging not to assert patents on "Linux", but the kernel code for exfat isn't upstreamed into the official Linux kernel code, so the pledge doesn't apply to any patents on exfat (patents which MS has already used in past lawsuits). Have I got that right?

<comment><USER3> Pretty much.

<comment><USER4> I'm confused. An entire paragraph scraped from a ZDNet article [0] states:

>>In a conversation, Erich Andersen, Microsoft's corporate vice president and chief intellectual property (IP) counsel -- that is, Microsoft top patent person -- added: We "pledge our entire patent portfolio to the Linux system. That's not just the Linux kernel, but other packages built on it."

And I note "entire patent portfolio" to the Linux system. Wouldn't that then include the exfat related patents?

[0] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-open-sources-its- ent...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-open-sources-its-entire- patent-portfolio/) (apologies for the autoplay video.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Microsoft has done patent troll shakedowns

You're not a patent troll if you invented the patents (for a 1st-party OS).

<comment><USER6> IMHO, a party that owns or invents a patent that it does not use and never intends to use in any real products and they only litigate with said patent makes it a true patent troll.

<comment><USER7> Leaving aside the desirability of software patents, the "real products" element is not a useful way to define who is a "troll." Economically, one of the functions of the patent system is that it allows specialization and division of labor. It allows you to take the results of R&D efforts and wrap it up into a property right that can be the subject of market transactions. ARM doesn't make CPUs; it sells IP that a wide variety of companies can incorporate into "real products." ARM's expertise is in CPU design. It's economically efficient to let it focus on that, instead of forcing it and every other R&D house to also master manufacturing, supply chain, etc.

(I'd also posit that this is a good thing for consumers because it is a force pushing back against vertical integration. In the long run, I think it'll turn out to be a bad thing for consumers that the market is moving from ARM supplying IP to dozens of manufacturers, to a handful of companies with like Apple and Samsung moving CPU design in-house within a vertically-integrated supply chain.)

<comment><USER8> ARM has a product though. Just because that product isn't sold directly to consumers doesn't mean that it isn't selling products.

I actually somewhat agree with Timothycquinn. Companies that make all of their money from suing people are, at the very least, suspicious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Assuming this is not an oversight and microsoft is purposefully withholding licensing their patents, why did Microsoft join the OIN?

My naive guess is either PR or to obtain a hard-to-get license grant from a competitor but I expect I'm wrong on both counts.

<comment><USER10> It's right there in the article: Only patents relating to the upstream kernel are included. The "Linux System Definition" is the baseline for the non- aggression pact.

The exfat system is not part of the Linux System Definition because it is not part of the upstream kernel, so it isn't covered by the non-aggression pact, so Microsoft did not include the exfat patents.

<comment><USER11> Could it become part of upstream kernel though now ?

<comment><USER12> That's basically what the post is asking for. (i.e. as the pledge currently stands, probably not)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> An excellent suggestion, lets see if Microsoft are prepared to actually commit

<comment><USER14> In other words, put your money where you mouth is. But I have read that they make $2 billion a year on this. So why would they give that up when people are giving them credit without actually changing something crucial like that? It's too much money.

I think it comes down to legal manipulations rather than PR. If someone can find a legal way to force Microsoft to stop the exfat stuff, maybe with some other Linux related patent litigation, then they will. But it might need to be worth $2 billion which is a pretty big ask. On the other hand other large corporations have a lot invested in Linux and certainly some of those executives must be able to see through this PR so maybe they can do something.

I wonder if there is any possibility of dropping exfat entirely over the next few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm SO surprised...

<comment><USER10> It seems you didn't bother to read the article so I'll summarize (even though it's all of 4 paragraphs, I'll shorten it down to two):

Exfat code is not included in the upstream kernel (no one has merged it yet since it is obviously a patent mine). Microsoft's lawyers only included those patents that pertained to code included in the "Linux System Definition", essentially upstream software, ergo no exfat patents were included. That is fine because it was the basis of the arrangement.

They are now asking Microsoft to merge the exfat code into the upstream kernel itself, so that it will also be governed by the patent non-agression pact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tl;Dr

Microsoft did a good thing (whatever it's motivation).

Some people want Microsoft to do more.

There is always a danger in this that Microsoft think that their MicrosoftHeartsLinux strategy isn't working and go back to what they were doing before. The 'nothing we do is ever good enough for them,' outcome.

<comment><USER5> I remember reading that something like 40% [0] of Azure servers now run Linux. It's in Microsoft's best interest to embrace Linux, and they've been doing a damn good job the last few years. It simply takes time for the momentum of a ship as large as MS to change course.

[0] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-says-40-percent- of-a...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-says-40-percent-of-all-vms- in-azure-now-are-running-linux/)</comment></comment>


HNpod #1.5 - HTML5 vs Native Apps (only 12 mins) - <AUTHOR> http://hnpod.com/episodes/html5-vs-native-apps

<comment><AUTHOR> A few people asked last week if I would write about how I got this launched so quickly - I wrote the first part about the website and distribution:

[http://www.alexmuir.com/2012/04/how-i-made-hnpod- in-10-hours...](http://www.alexmuir.com/2012/04/how-i-made-hnpod-in-10-hours- part-1-the-website/)

<comment><USER2> I would say it has more to do with mindset than technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Slight suggestion, make the mixcloud widget more prominent. It took me a while to find a way to listen.

I didn't want to download an mp3, i don't use iTunes or RSS, and i figured the mixcloud sidebar widget was an ad or something and didn't pay attention to it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone wants to guest on this week's show - talking about Google Drive - drop me an email email@example.com. We are probably recording Thursday 10am PDT.</comment>


Writing a browser that does not use the mouse - <AUTHOR> Hi.
I'm writing a browser that provides a completely mouse-free user interface. In other words, all control is done through the keyboard. Soliciting top of the head thoughts on how this could be done. We're doing this to simplify the interface.
Also looking for people who are interested in collaborating on this project.
firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> see vimfx or vimium

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/vimfx/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/vimfx/)</comment>


Dotfiles are your Digital Backpack - <AUTHOR> http://www.madewithtea.com/dotfiles-are-your-digital-backpack.html <comment><USER3> Many programs (like git) respect the environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, which allows you to set the location of your 'dotfiles' to a different directory session-wide. This means you don't need to make your entire home directory a single git repo.

My dotfiles repo ([https://github.com/fredsmith/dotfiles/](https://github.com/fredsmith/dotfiles/)) uses this to maintain a clean, readable configuration directory that doesn't mess up my homedir with a bunch of symlinks, and the only installation I have to do is: "ln -s ~/dotfiles/bashrc .bashrc"

<comment><USER4> What do you do to deal with programs (like vim) that don't respect XDG?

<comment><USER5> For my "traveling" config, I have this in my .zshrc, it'll work in .bashrc too:

      export VIMRUNTIME=$HOME/.local/vim/
      alias vim="vim -u $HOME/.local/vim/vimrc"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using rcm ([https://github.com/thoughtbot/rcm](https://github.com/thoughtbot/rcm)) for managing my dotfiles and strongly recommend it. It works by symlinking everything from your dotfiles directory to your home directory and gets out of the way. You can also do more advanced stuff like run "hook" scripts at first install or only install a subset of dotfiles using tags. Here's my rcm repo in case anyone is curious: [https://github.com/olalonde/dotfiles](https://github.com/olalonde/dotfiles)

<comment><USER7> A different solution, that's a little more embedded in the Github and Ruby world: homesick ([https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick](https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick)).

<comment><USER8> I use the Bash version, homeshick. Works great. [https://github.com/andsens/homeshick](https://github.com/andsens/homeshick)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even better: place your dotfiles in a public repo on GitHub with an open license, so that everybody can learn from it and contribute improvements/fixes. I've seen immense value from this approach.

<comment><USER10> > everybody can … contribute improvements/fixes.

I've never worked with a public GitHub repository, so I probably just don't understand; but how do you prevent disaster when allowing other people to modify your configuration? Setting aside malicious modifications, no-one else knows your set-up like you do, and it seems like it would be easy inadvertently to get yourself into a non-recoverable state.

<comment><USER11> Just because you're posting the code publicly doesn't mean anyone can change your copy willy-nilly. There's a pull request process to go through, something that requires positive consent to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An other idea: use GNU stow to put your dotfiles in the right places instead of having .git in your $HOME.

<comment><USER13> I have a seperate folder with the git checkout, then use symlinks to connect the actual dotfile locations. I think the author may have alluded to the same thing:

> I can quickly clone the git repository and fire up my bootstrap script to > wire all the symlinks, aliases and scripts

Though personally I don't use symlinks for my scripts (only my dotfiles) - <USER2> my scripts I simply add my git checkout to my $PATH

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Like others, I wrote a tool to manage "layers" of configuration and personalization files ([https://github.com/dcreemer/wsup](https://github.com/dcreemer/wsup)). "wsup" lets me compose various work configurations, personal dotfiles ([https://github.com/dcreemer/dotfiles](https://github.com/dcreemer/dotfiles)), dot-emacs files ([https://github.com/dcreemer/dotemacs](https://github.com/dcreemer/dotemacs)) and others from multiple git repositories. The project was born from my need to manage multiple changing personal and work environments. Now I can go from zero to full environment with a couple of commands.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nowadays I simply rsync my dotfiles to wherever I need them. I have multiple trees in a repository, one for secure boxes, one for client boxes, one for boxes with an xserver, etc. This gives me the most flexibility, and I can install everything I need if I simply have ssh access. If I don't, I can create a zip file of the trees I want.

<comment><USER16> I like unison since it's bidirectional.

<comment><USER15> That proved too complex over time for me, because of heterogenous systems. Unison is just too pedantic about matching versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's a collection of dotfiles up on GitHub: [https://dotfiles.github.io/](https://dotfiles.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I wrote a bare bones "store-and-fetch" [dotfile tool][1] that's been working well for me, mainly because it's easy to set up on a new device and it delegates a lot of functionality to GitHub. It's more or less equivalent to the "Git repo in home" approach, it just streamlines the `git commit`, `git push`, `git pull` workflow.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9989185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9989185)

</comment><comment><USER19> The situation can be a bit shakier with GUI programs. I like it when they offer an explicit way to export & import configuration (Since what's findable on disk just by searching is not always reliably portable IME). E.g. for Terminal.app on OS X, which I have configured fairly extensively, I manually export a .plist file and put that in my git repo for safe keeping.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been going a step further than this. Not only revision controlling my dotfiles but also using Ansible to automate the process of installing all the apps I want, getting the environment in order, etc. Emacs and Mercurial have both changed my programming life and I think Ansible is a new addition to that group.

</comment><comment><USER21> The linked article is bizarre[1], but brings up an important topic. It seems like most people are using this as a platform to plug/suggest their favorite way to manage dotfiles so I will follow suit. I m a big fan of vcsh and mr:

[https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh](https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh)

[https://github.com/joeyh/myrepos](https://github.com/joeyh/myrepos)

[1]: You could deck me out with a Klein Tools bag full of their wares and I would still have no business being in front of your breaker panel. A craftsman is so much more than his collection of physical things. Is SEO the answer to: What the connection is between the craftsman and the streamlined factory link? Or why every tenth word needed to be emphasized?

<comment><USER22> A craftsman is absolutely more than their tools, but on the other hand, they can't do their craft without their tools. Also, having their tools laid out efficiently greatly improves their ability to do work efficiently.

An interesting example of this is provided by Adam Savage - look up anything he's written or said about "first order availability", and about his toolboxes he created and maintained while working at ILM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just wanted to say, i manage my dotfiles with GNU Stow ([https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/)) and a private git repository. Works great!

</comment><comment><USER24> If anyone has resources or is willing to share his knowledge of OS X System Daemons and Agents - spotting and unloading the unnecessary ones is the main aspect of my dotfiles[1], but resources are often elusive, outdated or plain inaccurate guesswork, the whole process usually takes a lot of reading binary metadata and sometimes plain trial & error (and consequent occassional frustration).

But then I managed to saved around 2 GB of Ram just by unloading Daemons.

If anyone is interested to chip in, thankful for any link or suggestion:

[1] [https://github.com/stullig/dotfiles](https://github.com/stullig/dotfiles)

</comment><comment><USER25> I put my dotfiles on github and have a vagrant file that download the dotfile to my new vagrant box instance.

Everytime I start a new instance of vagrant it just download the dot file from github.

It's a pretty neat combo.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wrote my own solution[0] in emacs-lisp. If you have a recent version of emacs you can use it to run scripts via `emacs --script myscript.el`.

It's simple, it just installs some packages and copy dotfiles where they have to be but I had fun working on it.

[0] [https://github.com/dgellow/home- bootstrapping](https://github.com/dgellow/home-bootstrapping)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/webpro/awesome- dotfiles](https://github.com/webpro/awesome-dotfiles)</comment>


Sitting for Hours May Raise Type 2 Diabetes Risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20160202/sitting-for-hours-may-raise-your-type-2-diabetes-risk <comment><AUTHOR> This affects techies and founders more than we realize!

Understand your risks in less than a minute -- 1 in 3 Americans have pre- diabetes:

Text: 1-415-917-4663 Facebook: m.me/diagnoserai Telegram t.me/diagnoserbot

More information here: [https://doihaveprediabetes.org/](https://doihaveprediabetes.org/)

Look forward to your feedback on how we can improve the chatbot!</comment>


How many gallons of gasoline would it take to charge an iPhone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.exxonmobilperspectives.com/2011/12/14/how-many-gallons-of-gasoline-would-it-take-to-charge-an-iphone/

<comment><USER2> "I bet they're going to talk about the total amount of energy in a gallon of gas, without mentioning anything about how that's translated to electrity, and how much of the energy is lost in the process"

 _click_

"Yup."

<comment><USER3> Well how much energy is lost? 50%? 80%? Assuming it is 50%, then the answer would be you could charge the iPhone for 10 years instead of 20 years. Still interesting.

<comment><USER2> Overwhelmingly most of it. Most generators run on diesel and not gasoline, and I gave up trying to figure gallons per KwH after a few minutes of googling. But you're talking about converting heat to mechanical energy with a ton of lossage, and then mechanical to electricity with a ton more lossage.

The original article isn't interesting. You may as well say that your mouse has enough energy to recharge your iphone for 10 years, provided we found a way to convert the mass into energy.

<comment><USER3> But the way to turn fuel into energy already exists, even if it is inefficient. OK, you could also burn my mouse, but it would probably be even less efficient...

I still think it makes a strong point for telecommuting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Key takeaway: Vehicles powered by petroleum fuels are incredibly power consuming. Driving a car a single hour on a highway consumes as much energy as an iPhone does in about 46 years.

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+hour+*+100km%2Fh+%2F+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+hour+*+100km%2Fh+%2F+27+mpg+*+20+years%2Fgallon)

<comment><USER5> _All_ vehicles are incredibly power consuming (compared to iPods) and there are basic limits to improving this. If you want a vehicle that is large enough to hold a human and can push air out of the way at 60 mph, it's going to take a lot of energy. Driving habits, aerodynamics, and size can change this usage by a factor of order unity, but they can't do it by orders of magnitude. Thus, alternative energy sources _must_ approach the energy density of petroleum if they are to be competitive.

<comment><USER6> > If you want a vehicle that is large enough to hold a human and can push air > out of the way at 60 mph

But do we really need to go 60 mph? Vehicles seem to be optimized for less- common use cases (e.g. 5 people in the car traveling 60 mph) instead of their more common uses (e.g. one person commuting at 30-40 mph). I, for one, would like to see smaller vehicles - NOT SmartCars and the like but an actual rethinking of the car that would be optimized for the single person commute.

<comment><USER7> I suppose this depends on where you live, but going above 60mph is normal usage for me. In fact, a minimum speed limit of 45mph on freeways is fairly common (unless you can't due to traffic, of course).

<comment><USER8> On the other hand, I've never been able to drive above 45 mph on my normal commute, I'm only able to do so when I go on holidays.

Some cities are just not planned for cars (European cities like Vienna for example, where you cannot enter the downtown, or some South American cities like Montevideo).

I used to have a Maruti car and it was plenty for 99% of the time, and I'd buy a low-range electric/hydrogen/whatever car if it was cheap and offered me a better mileage equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They neglected to mention that even modern internal combustion engines can only capture about 18%-20% of that energy.[1]

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#Ener...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#Energy_efficiency)

<comment><USER10> Oil power stations are around 33% efficient[1]. Electric drives have up to 80% efficiency[2].

Given those rough figures, even when powered by oil stations battery-powered cars can theoretically be more efficient at using oil than a car with an ICE.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_power_plant#Heat_into_mecha...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_power_plant#Heat_into_mechanical_energy)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Energy_efficiency>

<comment><USER11> You also need to account for the transmission line efficiency[1], the charger efficiency (typically 90-95%), and battery efficiency[2] (80-90%).

If we assume the transmission lines are 98% efficient, the charger is 95% efficient and the battery is 90% efficient, the motor controller is 95% efficient, and the motor is 95% efficient (drive efficiency of 90% instead of 80% of the parent quote)...

0.33 * 0.98 * 0.95 * 0.90 * 0.95 * 0.95 = 25% efficient, with efficiency numbers somewhere between "best case" and "optimistic". ICE in an _efficient car_ is competitive with that. A hybrid will beat that.

[0] How Stuff Works estimate: [http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel- efficiency/alternative-fu...](http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel- efficiency/alternative-fuels/fuel-cell4.htm)

[1] Nobody knows for sure what the transmission line (including step-up and step-down transformers) is in actual practice. Note the Wikipedia article says "efficiency" several times, but never pins an estimate onto it: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well if we're going to consult the contrived statistics department, why not go for broke?

If you want to get _really_ thorough about extracting _all_ of the energy in a gallon of gasoline, you could power a US household for 7.5 million years.

</comment><comment><USER13> Since they don't really follow through on the original question: the article implies it will take ~137 micro gallons to charge an iphone. The size of the fuel would be slightly inferior to an M&M [1].

[1] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+%2F+20+%2F+365+gallon...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+%2F+20+%2F+365+gallons)

</comment><comment><USER14> Petroleum is really frickin' energy-dense (leaving aside the fact that unless you're heating something only a small fraction can be turned into useful work).

A mid-range home EV charger peaks out at about 20kW.

By contrast, the energy flux of a gas pump is around 20MW.

<comment><USER15> A mid-range home EV charger (like the GE WattStation), is spec'ed for 30A at 240V, which is 7.2kW, not 20kW.

You might be confused because a typical battery in an EV is around 20+kW _h_ , which is why it takes a few hours for the wall charger to charge it!

For comparison, a 20kW load would draw 83A at 240V. A smallish pole mounted utility transformer may supply 20kW.

Of course, none of it detracts from your point that petroleum is very energy dense :)

<comment><USER14> Good point. Most homes around here are wired with 200A, 240V power, so a 20kW charger would eat up about half of that.

So a 7.2kW charger is about 2500 times slower than a fast gas pump.

Even slow gas pump (say 10MW), used with a conventional engine (say 20% efficient), compared with a state-of-the-art fast charger (say 200kW) would still be ten times as fast in a miles-per-hour contest.

EVs make up for this somewhat by being able to charge anywhere that has a decent supply of electricity for hours at a time, but it still shows you what they're up against.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > And energy density is one of the key factors behind the reliability

Density can actually be per-mass or per-volume. Per mass hydrogen is pretty attractive.

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

Now we just need an efficient, safe and clean way to turn gasoline into electricity and problem solved ;-) right ?

<comment><USER17> > Per mass hydrogen is pretty attractive.

A bucket of gasoline contains more hydrogen than a bucket of liquid hydrogen, and you can actually keep the gasoline in the bucket.

Hydrogen is awesome as an energy source if you look at the combustion formula and the per-mass energy density. In all other aspects it's a horrible, horrible, horrible fuel. :-)

<comment><USER16> I understand that. Not saying we should use it. Only highlighting that for some domains a different type of energy density can be used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Gas has an incredible amount of energy density. You can do a fun calculation as follows:

If you believe this calculator, it takes 2419kJ to go 20km while cycling. (<http://www.tribology-abc.com/calculators/cycling.htm>)

A gallon of gas contains about 114,000BTU (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent>). Note that the Exxon diagram is 'per fillup' not per gallon.

So... [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281%2F%28%282419kJ%2F2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281%2F%28%282419kJ%2F20km%29%2F%28114000BTU+in+kJ%29%29%29) yields 617MPG while biking.

It's approximate, but good to know that biking is roughly an order of magnitude more efficient than cars.

<comment><USER19> Yes, bicycles are quite efficient. Not only compared to cars, but interestingly also to animals. While a normal human is quite bad at converting food into motion, the system bicycle+human is comparable to some of the most efficient animals. Now, if they had bicycles as well...

[Source: Dad, hobby-bicyclist/mechanic]

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Calculating the energy density of gasoline versus battery is misleading unless you also include the engine, fuel system, radiator, battery, etc. Sure my truck can hold 120pounds of gasoline but the energy density includes an 800 lb "gasoline to transmission" adapter.

Once cars have "iPhone" batteries, gasoline cars will go away. A Nissan Leaf is rated for 3x the energy efficiency of a comparable car. I doubt people will mind giving up gasoline fumes and filling stations. (33khw in gallon of gasoline versus 3.5khw/mile in a Leaf.)

I can pedal a bike at 200W for an hour. Isn't this enough to charge 80 iPhones? How is this a useful comparison?

</comment><comment><USER21> Iphones run on oil too (and coal, gas, nuclear energy, and various renewable fuels). It's just that giant synchronous generators are more efficient than a million internal combustion engines, so they burn the oil at a central location and pipe it to you over wires in the form of electricity.

It's like asking "how much gas does it take to run the LCD screen on my car stereo?", comparing it to how much electricity a mansion uses and concluding that gas is the old fuddy duddy stick in the mud holding back progress.

<comment><USER22> How many times more efficient is a gas power plant than the average use of a car?

<comment><USER21> Wikipedia says: "Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%."

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

Wikipedia again: "Typical thermal efficiency for electrical generators in the industry is around 33% for coal and oil-fired plants, and up to 50% for combined-cycle gas-fired plants."

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

<comment><USER21> That neglects to mention the inefficiency in distributing gasoline via gas- powered vehicles to hundreds of millions of drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's odd, they neglect to mention the true cost of gasoline; both in subsidies used to keep it cheap at the pump, as well as the environmental cost associated with cleaning up their profit-generating mess.

ETA: Point out an oil company's dishonesty, get downvoted. Only on HN.

<comment><USER24> US pump prices are low because you don't tax it like other countries, that's not a subsidy.

Environmental cost? I'll grant you that accidents involving rigs and shipping are spectacular and locally devastating when they happen, but what about the pros of a cheap and relatively easy fuel, it has saved millions of lives.

To give some balance what about farming? Farming has devastated the environment on a global scale. It's subsidised to the teeth too...

"Profit generating mess" is hyperbole, but you can have it since I went for whataboutery.

<comment><USER23> It would be a fair trade, but your whataboutery didn't include the true subsidies (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies>) as well as the much larger environmental cost: CO2 production from burning fossil fuels. It's going to cost a lot to clean that up, and I sincerely doubt that ExxonMobil or their brethren are going to foot that bill.

<comment><USER24> I read the wikipedia link, it seemed inconclusive. Fossil fuel subsides are less than that of renewables (unless I am reading the article wrong) and that's a 1-1 comparison, fossil fuel must utterly dwarf renewable in terms of revenue.

I'm not saying that big (or small) oil is innocent by any means, personally I believe the problem lies with the political side of it, but certainly I don't think the basics of oil extraction and delivery deserve the rep they currently have.

And on farming, how much carbon do you think farmers released into the atmosphere burning the trees and scrubs that stood in the way of the farmland? Not to mention the damage done to the hydrosphere?

You might like this by the way, if you haven't already read it: <http://harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915>

<comment><USER23> The fact that fossil fuels get _any_ subsidy is obnoxious. They're the entrenched necessary evil that needs to be made obsolete. So of course alternative fuels are subsidized, and should be until they displace fossil fuels.

Farming is most certainly a problem, and I fully understand and agree with the Harper's article -- but it is a straw man in this discussion. I merely pointed out that an article authored by an oil company neglected to include the true cost of their product vs. competitors. And, unless the true cost is realized (most likely in the form of taxes on carbon emissions), fossil fuels will remain the most viable source of energy. It doesn't mean I/we have to accept it, there is a better way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My god, that website has the most amazingly civil and constructive comments I've ever seen on a blog post. I wonder if they're moderated, or just getting traffic from a very narrow section of people who write well.

</comment><comment><USER26> I guessed 5 ml; but I was off by an order of magnitude, it's more like 0.5 ml.

</comment><comment><USER27> We don't mine batteries from the ground.

Misleading industry puff piece. The question isn't how much _would it_ take but rather how much _does_ it take.

Petrochemical / coal, fossil fuels in general are _already_ generating our power at increasing cost in terms of the raw materials, processing (more difficult processing of oil sands, frakking, etc.)

Give me modern nuclear combined with alternatives like increasingly cheap solar.

Of course, at this moment the US government is mulling tariffs on chinese solar panels since they are too cheap. Evidently the free market is awesome except when it results in cheap products that threaten an established industry.

<comment><USER24> "We don't mine batteries from the ground"

Er...

<comment><USER27> Maybe rephrase your question to be clearer, but I'm assuming you mean mining the chemical components of batteries. Not what I was referring to.

I'm talking about the fundamental difference between a battery of any variety (chemical, flywheel, etc.) and petrochemical energy _sources_.

The article compares energy density of gasoline and other energy sources with "electric". It's a poor comparison. These are different categories. One is an energy source which is also a storage medium (single use), the other is a pure storage medium.

<comment><USER28> Actually, lithium is a very depletable resource just like oil and coal are. Not in the sense that we use it up for energy, but in the sense that if you want to run all cars on lithium batteries there simply isn't enough easily mine-able lithium in the world. In this sense it is valid to say that we mine batteries. The same story goes for most solar panels.

Comparing the energy density of gasoline with the energy density of a charged battery is obviously also valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow. Let's try to convince people why it's alright for us to use a fuel we know to destroy the environment in countless ways and imply that it's someone else's job to advance alternative, less harmful alternatives to gasoline.

I think using gasoline is fine for now. I'm not a hard line environmentalist or anything. At the same time I don't get how these companies can justify this kind of propaganda. Yes, it is their duty to their investors to make as much money as possible but it's no secret that one day we won't have enough oil to go around. I don't get it, logic dictates that you'd sell gasoline for the time being but at the same time you'd be pumping huge amounts of money into research and development of alternative technologies. The oil company that brings the best alternative to market first has the most to gain in the long term. Articles like this are so blatantly disingenuous and short sighted it makes me want to puke.

</comment><comment><USER30> Energy density of the batteries has been steadily increasing. There's no reason to believe that it will hit a way, so this argument is misleading in that it assumes the density will be constant.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a facepalm on so many levels:

\- oil company predicts oil will still be used in (a lot of) years

\- oil company realizes that a) there is an incredible amount of energy in oil and b) the most efficient machines available use only small percentages of that energy

Dumping the remaining energy as heat in a climate-change world. Great!

<comment><USER5> > Dumping the remaining energy as heat in a climate-change world. Great!

Obviously, the contribution to global temperature increases due to the literal heat dissipation of engines is extremely, extremely negligible. Petroleum can cause changes to global temperatures through the release of carbon, which changes the Earth's insulation, but no through actual heat.</comment></comment>


How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200415-how-to-make-pizza-like-a-neapolitan-master <comment><USER2> Pizza was made popular by Italian immigrants in New York. The article's pizza was never widespread in Italy. Pizza is the definitive Italian-American food, not Italian.

In my opinion, "Neapolitan" pizza is not particularly good. They just throw blobs of stuff randomly onto the crust. You might as well eat all the components separately. I think I t's only popular as a status symbol.

<comment><USER3> The origin isn't really relevant (although looking it up now, Napoli claims tomato pizza dating back to the 1800s).

Napoletan is its own dish as well, I don't think it makes sense to compare it to American styles. It's also important enough to modern Napoletan culture to be UNESCO recognized. I think it might also be a protected designation at this point?

To counter your opinion, I think a good Napoletan is fantastic. The chewy texture and the quality of ingredients (especially if you eat it at a nice place in Napoli, where the mozzarella di bufala tends to be much fresher) are fantastic.

<comment><USER2> I agree that the crust is good. It needs to have that chewy glutenous quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I spent a lot of time perfecting my pizza skills.

The most important single step in the whole process is what they call "autolysing", nowadays, so people will take it seriously. It really just means that after most of the flour is wet, you set it aside for 45 minutes before working it.

Do it, and the sky's the limit, even with extremely ordinary flour. Don't, and nothing will save your pizza short of serving it to philistines.

Once I had to make 40 mini-pizzas with Pillsbury white flour, cheddar cheese, and Wesson oil on the bottom of a skillet perched on an upturned soup pot under a broiler, down in Waipio Valley, in Hawaii. It turned out _fantastic_. The dough was very, very wet: I scooped it for each pizza with a ladle.</comment>


Web Credits Spec - <AUTHOR> https://www.w3.org/community/webpayments/wiki/Web_Credits <comment><USER2> > The aim of this spec is not to exceed 2 pages

Then this spec will never be anywhere close to complete.

Money isn't just a piece of information that can pass from one place to another. "encryption, workflow, trust and aggregation systems" are not just things you can handwave away.

Who is willing to process transactions like these? Why is encryption and signing not part of the standard?

What happens if I post a credit that is not my own, or with the same @id but differing contents? How much data is exposed by GET /wallet, and will it be a privacy concern?

It's just not helpful.

<comment><USER3> The point of specifications is to standardize certain parts of a system where it interfaces with other systems using the same spec. This looks like it is supposed to pass information from a user interface to a payment system. Specifying the entire system would defeat the point of the specification.

<comment><USER2> > certain parts of a system

Implying there is a greater system to speak of. Or even that one has been contemplated.

This doesn't fit into any sort of existing payment processing system, nor do the identity systems this is supposed to rest on top of exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At the top of the article, expounding simplicity and independence of implementation:

 _So you could take html without taking http_

In the specification:

 _The Credit structure specified is RDF. Turtle and JSON-LD SHOULD be supported._

Is a complete contradiction of that principle.

Also, what is the point of this spec? To be a very basic way to overcomplicate the easy bit? Why?!?

</comment><comment><USER5> First off, this is a community group "specification," which is to say, it's part of a W3C process that's supposed to be easier for lay community members to be involved--and easier for people who have no clue about implementation issues to hijack the process [1]. So I decided to do some digging to see how involved actual browser vendors were in the process...

The backstory seems to involve a very, very acrimonious community split. See [http://manu.sporny.org/2016/browser-api-incubation- antipatte...](http://manu.sporny.org/2016/browser-api-incubation-antipattern/) (it's a biased view, and I haven't researched alternative viewpoints).

As far as I can untangle, the community group here decided they wanted to dictate to browser vendors what they should implement, complete with philosophical viewpoints. The working group that actually has traction with browser vendors and is likely to implement doesn't appear to be paying too much attention to this, and the community group seems unwilling to engage with the browser vendors meaningfully.

In short, this is unlikely to go anywhere.

[1] It should be noted that regular WGs are also amenable to this capture (e.g., the XHTML work that ended up with all the browser vendors quitting).

</comment><comment><USER6> There's also the W3C Web Payments Interest Group [1] and the defunct Micropayments Interest Group [2].

Micropayments for web content is notoriously hard.

Some existing players are:

* Flattr - [https://flattr.com/about](https://flattr.com/about)

* ChangeTip - [https://www.changetip.com/](https://www.changetip.com/) (acqui-hired by AirBnB)

* Patreon - [https://www.patreon.com/](https://www.patreon.com/)

[1] [https://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/](https://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/)

[2] [https://www.w3.org/ECommerce/](https://www.w3.org/ECommerce/)

</comment><comment><USER7> This leaves too many open questions as it currently stands. There's far too much hand waving about how an actual implementation of this may look (e.g. support for different currencies, verifying, consolidation, etc).

There's no specific reason this cannot work, but we won't know until it is much more fleshed out.

<comment><USER8> All of the elements you believe are hand-waving are addressed - this is just a wallet specification, not a (crypto)currency specification.

> Web Credits are currency agnostic. Currencies such as time banks, bitcoin, > virtual items and karma are supported.

<comment><USER6> In other words, this spec is on the easy part of micropayments. The hard part is undefined.

<comment><USER9> Just like most specs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me or does JSON-LD's use of urls as keys feel very XML/SOAP-Y?

<comment><USER11> More RDFey. You can elide them away by using a Context.

For example: { "@context": "[http://schema.org/"](http://schema.org/"), "@id": "#bigbang", "@type": "Event", "name": "The Big Bang" }

is equivalent to { "@id": "#bigbang", "@type": "[http://schema.org/Event"](http://schema.org/Event"), "[http://schema.org/name"](http://schema.org/name"): "The Big Bang" }

This makes things extensible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's notable that bitcoin is the default payment method.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like this is being drafted not "a draft".</comment>


Show HN: What-The-Lunch – A site to help groups decide on where to eat - <AUTHOR> https://whatthelunch.org

<comment><USER2> Hey, not a bad idea but it really is too complicated at the moment.

Yes, I know to you its super super simple and clear and obvious. Most people who go to the site though will only spend a few seconds trying to figure it out - I spent a few minutes and still gave up.

I'm saying this because I started working on something similar and kept having to cut out functionality because people were getting confused. What I have now it this: [http://klavado.com](http://klavado.com) but people still find it a bit confusing - I will be trying to simplify it even more.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you like to see in hosted DNS? (Free account for feedback) - <AUTHOR>

<EDIT>  FREE 1 year pro account for all HN'ers who offer suggestions ;-)  </EDIT>
I have written a web app to manage authoritative DNS, something along the lines of Zonedit or the DNS editors you get with Slicehost / Linode.
My question is, what would you like to see in a hosted DNS service?
Some things I have thought of so far:
- name servers hosted entirely in disparate jurisdictions, eg: Sweden, Iceland.
- Recaptcha authentication (This is your DNS we're talking about here).
- Optional SMS authentication for DNS changes.
- Clone a domain (so, everything is a template)
- Shortcuts for adding onerous configurations (looking at you "gmail for domains")
What would make YOU want to use my DNS service?
Is there anything that would be a deal breaker if I didn't offer it?
thanks <comment><USER2> (Caveat: my dns is hosted by my registrar; I am currently happy with them and not looking to switch.)

Recaptcha would protect my account how? If you mean I have to pass a recaptcha in addition to providing my username+password when I log in, then (a) I don't see that this adds much security; and (b) the presence of the captcha would put me off using your service.

I like the idea of sms authentication for making dns changes.

Does where name servers are make any difference? Surely what matters is where your company is based? (If you have a good answer to this, you should put it in your faq.)

Something I'd like to see as an option on this sort of technical webapp, is that as an ALTERNATIVE to the webapp I can ssh in and use a curses app to change settings, using a private key to authenticate myself, and disable use of the webapp for managing my account. (You might implement this using a suitably restricted curses-based web browser, that's not the point. The point is that I don't need to manage yet another password for a service I will not login to frequently.)

Not being able to register domains would be a minus point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all of that!

The recaptcha on login would only be presented after 3 failed login attempts, much like what happens at googles authentication. It protects your account from brute force.

Nameserver location: I was thinking of, eg: ns1.nameserver.ch in switzerland, ns2.nameserver.co.uk in the UK, etc etc... basically to make it harder for a single jurisdiction to take down your site without a good reason.

That idea came from the "poker-site takedown thread" at the weekend.

SSH interface ... that's brilliant! Although if your goal is to not manage another password, what if I offered OAuth w/ gmail / facebook?

Regarding registering domains. I think you're right.

Thanks once again for the feedback. (Feel free to pass your free year on to a friend when I launch :-)

<comment><USER2> Recaptcha after failed logins --- yes, that makes sense.

Nameserver locations. If you are based in (e.g.) Belgium, with nameservers in Switzerland, the UK and France, then my .com is at risk from the US (can order the registry to kill my domain) and Belgian (can (potentially) order you to kill my domain) police / justice systems. In addition, the Swiss, British and French can each block a substantial proportion of my visitors. On the other hand, if you were based in the US and all your nameservers were in the US, then my .com would only be at risk from the US police/judiciary.

Similarly, my .co.uk is surely safest when hosted by a UK company on nameservers located only in the UK.

I didn't read most of the poker site takedown thread, so maybe there is a good counter-argument there. But as a random web developer, that's my concern.

(There are other reasons for spreading nameservers around though --- as a customer I wouldn't worry about the increased legal attack surface unless I had concerns about specific countries.)

Logging in via Facebook/Gmail/Twitter/etc. I wouldn't use Gmail because when Gmail goes down and prevents me from logging in, there's not much point asking for a password reset e-mail to be sent to my Gmail account.

I'm not sure how safe it is to rely on my Facebook or Twitter credentials for something like dns hosting. I login to HN and StackOverflow using OpenID, and I use OpenID for commenting on blogs sometimes as well, and although I'd be upset if my OpenID got compromised and I got locked out of these accounts, I'd be much much more upset if my domain names were suddenly being used to sell Viagra as well.

Meanwhile, if my ssh private key gets compromised, it's overwhelmingly likely that my Twitter+Facebook+Gmail passwords get compromised as well, because a machine I access the net from will have been compromised. The reverse is not true.

I think on balance for this sort of website I prefer using (and writing down somewhere) yet another password over entrusting my dns security to Facebook/Twitter. I'd prefer a properly maintained public key ssh interface to either. I do appreciate that it's another interface that needs maintaining though; I don't know what Javascript support text mode browsers have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bulk change of records (change all instances of IP address x.x.x.x to y.y.y.y)

Import/export zone files (useful for migrating to/from the service)

Low cost :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that.

What would you consider as "low cost"?

<comment><USER3> I think amazon have set a pretty competitive benchmark with Route 53. ($1 per zone per month plus $0.50 per million queries)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: US startups 5-30 employees, do they hire people without a work permit? - <AUTHOR>

I'm talking about really serious candidates that are very favorable over others with experience in your specific startup market, experienced in the technology, founded a startup before, raised money. Do such startups put effort to do so or they always hire ones with work permits.<p>Do they hire such candidates remotely? (do you need to have a Visa to be hired remotely if you're not from the US?) <comment><USER2> You do not need a visa to be hired as a contractor by a US-based company.

What does it mean 'put effort to do so'? To do what? Hire people with permits or try to get them one?

Hiring people without a work permit can lead to very severe penalties for the business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your answer. To try to get them a permit of course not the illegal thing. I mean startups mostly want to hire and scale fast and the usual visa takes around 6 months. I'd like to hear examples of what happens in those cases. Are startups willing to hire by contract for half a year then after the visa get the employee etc, examples of such cases. Would like to know if it's possible for me to get to a startup at such a stage without being an american.</comment></comment>


What Does It Mean to Be Poor in Germany? - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/tomorrow/a-1093371.html <comment><USER2> I read the german version of this article a few days ago and paired with my own experience (I was born and raised in Germany and lived there until the age of 25) I came to the conclusion that: a.) being poor in Germany is much much better than being poor in most other countries (incl. the United states, where I reside now) and b.) When you are poor in Germany you can drastically improve your cash flow by not living in one of the expensive cities. Living out in the country in a small village will enable you to stretch your welfare checks compared to living in Munich, where most things and most people around you are much more.

I also think Germany has a unique opportunity here to tackle the problem of social mobility and could improve the way they deploy the welfare budget. For example supporting a young family with many children before they face sliding into "poor status", due to one parent staying home to take care of the family. The article did a great job highlighting three interesting situations and their challenges/opportunities.

<comment><USER3> This may be a very American perspective, but I utterly fail at any sympathy towards the parents that had two kids and were doing fine, then decided to have two more and are whining that someone else didn't step up to pay for them. I mean, it's not as if babies being up all night is a predictable part of having a baby or anything. The mother whines that kids shouldn't be like a mercedes, where you decide beforehand if you can afford it. But that's exactly what kids are like. And if only there where some way (algebra) to know that per-capita income would shrink with each child! Hell, you may even think the country should pay for unlimited kids, but they couldn't be bothered to check before having the 3rd and 4th child if Germany does or not. They are irresponsible parents.

<comment><USER4> Studies show that the rate of single motherhood increases dramatically with rises in welfare. It's no surprise to anyone whose eyes are open that people are generally rational, and act to further their own interests.

It's morally abhorrent that it's accepted practice that people vote for politicians that promise them money taxed from others. Social democracy is simply authoritarianism.

<comment><USER5> Do these studies show what proportion of those single mothers would otherwise be forced to endure some kind of abusive environment if welfare didn't enable them to get out?

<comment><USER4> The studies show that women are far more likely to give birth while unmarried when there are higher levels of welfare available, so this is not measuring the incidence of women who already have children in a marriage and then get a divorce.

Given abortion, adoption and not getting pregnant in the first place are possibilities which a person has some control over, I don't think you can argue that all of those single mothers would otherwise be giving birth to children in abusive relationships if not for welfare.

Furthermore, welfare is funded through abusive tax laws, which throw those who refuse to hand over a share of the currency they receive in private trade in prison, where they are kept in small enclosures, and often suffer mental illness and are subjected to physical and sexual abuse. There is nothing compassionate about authoritarian income redistribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> we are living in a world where if you are unlucky to have money or a proper job, people will see you as a lazy, cheap, dirty human.

I guess, maybe universal salaries, and free school, medicine will make our societies engage in what is important in life. Be happy, engage with your families and friends.

When I was young, I remember clear, days when I was starving, and so my parents trying and fighting to provide some food. Now, I life my first 30 years of life, and realize that nothing change. We are working for money and dreams that are fake.

In Berlin, capital, you see more people that are searching for food, empty bottles, and are in hartz and people look at them as dead animals. In Berlin, there are east european poor people, that sleep on the bridges, on parks. What they are doing? Ask for money.

Been poor in Germany, I guess is better than in Bulgaria or Romania, but been poor in any country, also ignorant make us damn idiots.

<comment><USER7> _I guess, maybe universal salaries, and free school, medicine will make our societies engage in what is important in life. Be happy, engage with your families and friends._

From what I have seen, this will also result in hordes of people with tons of free time who have useless degrees who haven't been properly trained to think and aren't armed with basic knowledge about how the world actually works. They will then proceed to engage in social media to manipulate their democratic governments to their advantage and to the detriment of their society's future well being.

This has already been happening, but the amount and degree of free time such people have will be increased dramatically, as will their impact on the political system.

<comment><USER8> As opposed to what? Employers and business lobby groups presently manipulate society and democratic governments for their own ends, to the detriment of their society's future well being.

Besides which, "useless degrees" seems to be used in this context to mean "Anything I feel doesn't have employment prospects." Those things are not the same as each other.

<comment><USER7> _" useless degrees" seems to be used in this context to mean_

Means degrees that don't indicate you learned how to think and how the world actually works. My distinction isn't by discipline. My distinction is by the intellectual ability of the individual holding it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Try being poor in Greece: no chance for a proper job( people with Ph.D. and degrees work in cafe shops),no welfare, no proper healthcare( public hospitals are overcrowded and with no stuff) etc. I think more advanced eu countries are poor-friendly and really help people with bad luck get to their feet.

<comment><USER10> Why are those PhDs working in cafes, rather than working in their field in the UK, like many other Greeks?

<comment><USER9> Because (imho): -You need some starting money to live outside your country(beeing nearly poor can't get you an airplane ticket ) -Not everyone is prepared to live in another country -They really DONT want to live in another country just because previous govs did a shitty job. -living abroad is not everyone's heart(and mood)

<comment><USER10> The first point is valid, but many people in Greece could borrow that starting money from family.

Points 2, 3 and 4 are essentially the same: "don't want to live outside Greece". I can understand that it's hard to decide to leave your home country for better economic prospects, but many many people make this same decision every year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As it has already been noted by others: those 3 examples are atypical for Germany. The authors could've asked the more typical poors about their backstory (the white trash, immigrants, street kids, drunks and junkies). I can only assume they wanted to portrait poors to which "middle class"-people could relate.

Which at least for me touches interesting points:

1) I think that Germans do not relate to their typical poors - at least not as much they'd like to think they do. To me this is connected to the welfare system: It effectively does anything to prevent middle-class people from a hard landing while doing up to nothing for the poorest to being able to compete for better places on the social ladder.

This makes sense from a political game theory standpoint: The vast majority of Germans aren't poor, at most they feel struggling. How can a democracy prevent its own sovereign (the majority of voters) from polluting the countries institutions for their own interests?

2) This "welfare focus" comes at the price of low social mobility: A welfare system aimed at the majority of people is generating huge costs, which the poorest also have to compensate for (ie harder to find employment, even harder to self-employ).

3) This "focus" is also reflected by the political debates about welfare reform: It's usually dominated by the concern for a soft landing rather than upward mobility. The massive welfare reforms of Chancellor Schröder in the late 1990 were thus mostly criticized by those groups fearing to become poor, rather than by people advocating for the poor or the poors themselves. In fact, for the majority of long-time jobless those reforms netted them more cash and a simpler way to get it.

PS:

4) Being poor within a society is always bad, no matter how high the average standard of living is. It's kind of sad to see those 3 example's compassion- worthiness degraded just because they are "poor in Germany". (In fact: If I was young I'd rather be poor in a country with a lower standard of living if it hat a higher social mobility.)

<comment><USER12> What is "white trash" in Germany? In USA it refers to rural people who wealthy urban people hate for looking poor.

<comment><USER13> Pretty much the same thing, but not really confined to rural regions, but also public housing in bigger cities.

I would say the typical signifiers would be the same with low education level, teenage parents forced into a situation where the have to work low-end jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Original Version:

[http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/armut-in- deutschla...](http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/armut-in-deutschland- was-heisst-schon-arm-a-1088823.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Please don't post this sort of rant here. If you have a substantive point to make, you're welcome to make it thoughtfully, but not to just vent rage. It lowers the signal/noise ratio and invariably takes threads in a poorer direction.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11793276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11793276) and marked it off-topic.

Edit: ok, since so many of you protested, I must have gotten this one wrong. I've put that comment ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11793372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11793372)) back where it was, and marked this comment (mine) off-topic instead.

<comment><USER16> Your characterization of the comment as a rage-filled vent/rant is patently unfair and incredibly inappropriate. Is there some way to report a moderator? I definitely think any administrative powers you have should be revoked if this is how you respond to a valid thought that you clearly don't agree with.

<comment><AUTHOR> It mentions in the Guidelines ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)) that sending email to email@example.com is the best way to raise questions about moderation. If you send polite email, you'll probably get a polite response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From the article:

 _But at the beginning of the 1990s, his life came crashing down around him. One of his main customers stopped paying. He fought for years to get the unpaid money and restructured his debt to get seed capital for his new business plan. He fought desperately -- and ultimately in vain. In 1997, he was forced to capitulate. By that point, he had already been unable to work for two years and was on welfare. He lost his family home in a foreclosure and his pension and retirement insurance plan was seized. His landlord evicted him. Manfred Huber was ruined._

How does bankruptcy law work in Germany? This kind of catastrophe is what BK law is supposed to prevent.

<comment><USER18> Personal bankruptcy didn't exist in Europe in the '90s (AFAIK it's still not in the law in many EU countries).

Limited liability companies have the option of bankruptcy (by definition), but as a business owner it will leave a black mark on your credit rating in most countries... And typically in a small business, the bank required that company loans were guaranteed by the business owner or close family anyway, so a bankruptcy didn't really solve anything.

<comment><USER19> To be precise, the personal bankruptcy law in Germany came into effect in 1999.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That was an oddly confusing segment about Huber. In the third to last paragraph of the long story are we (finally) told that "He's chronically ill", though I suppose one is supposed to decode his health issues from the earlier "By that point, he had already been unable to work for two years and was on welfare." What are the opportunities for independent IT contractors, as he apparently was, in Germany today? Isn't there strong demand for IT skills in Germany, for a salary that pays above welfare?

<comment><USER21> Maybe today, but not 20 years ago. Remember that Germany was in a deep economic recession in the 90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Even more eye-opening are these articles from Linh Dinh, mainly dealing with American poverty: [http://www.unz.com/author/linh- dinh/](http://www.unz.com/author/linh-dinh/)

The latest is on an ex-programmer who has fallen into heroin addiction and poverty. I suspect there are a lot more stories like this than you would expect from reading articles on Hacker News.

<comment><USER23> And yet, if I point out that passive voice isn't really a thing that should be used to describe heroin addiction, _I 'm_ the bad guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Today, someone else is picking up the tab. For one day, he's once again part > of the beer garden and its culture. He even saved two euros that had been > planned for groceries. As he departs, he pulls the two-euro coin out of his > bag and places it on the plate in front of the bathroom attendant. She > warmly thanks him. Huber smiles.

He plans to kill himself if he gets to the point where he has no good looking shirt, but he gives away two euros to the bathroom attendant?

You can get a nice shirt for 40 euro. Why does he give away his money if he is in dire need? It seems reckless.

</comment><comment><USER25> From my workplace (in Germany) I can see the trash containers of a supermarket. And from time to time I see a senior citizen getting some food there.

</comment><comment><USER26> Being an IT Engineer and paying enormous German social taxes Huber shoud have earned a decent pension of about 70% of his salary.

Where am I wrong?

</comment><comment><USER27> A welfare state, is a system defined and dictated by a huge monolithic institution(a government). The welfare such institution provides, is not without prices. You surrender many aspects of freedom, and the ability of proper risk management. The hatred among different classes and political groups grows more intense, there are less and less probabilities they would collaborate. Each group has a feeling of being robbed by the opposing groups.

<comment><USER28> Institutions such as governments are no fun to deal with, and I'm sure that's especially true if you are dependent on them to survive. What would you suggest as an alternative?

<comment><USER27> I'm no expert in giving solutions on situations this complex. There could be various ways of doing autonomous communities. People should be able to organize and manage communities based off their ideologies, instead of obeying to a general enforcement. There's a larger chance, that autonomous communities may have more economic and innovative ways of solving conflicts and doing collaboration/cooperation between each other or within their own hierarchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> all three interveiwed were poor _and german_. What is it like to be poor and "not german", say, poor and a turkish immigrant? Or a child of turkish immigrants?

</comment><comment><USER30> Its funny that refugees get more money than German pensioners.

<comment> mh-cx Getting downvoted should make you think. Maybe you suffer from a very common illness that you can find very often nowadays in Germany: pointing fingers at refugees and (ab)using them as scapegoats for whatever some think is wrong with this country. Usually truth is the first victim in such cases.

<comment><USER31> I think he (m/f) expected to get a lot of downvotes and thus created a separate account just for this.

Refugees are given housing under terms not accessable to regular citizens and thus may be (in some cases) getting a total "deal" at higher cost than a regular citizen.

But what is the alternative to this? Collecting refugees in big camps worsening social problems and problems with lack of integration.

<comment><USER32> Refugees get housing not accessible to regular citizens like a bed in a tent, gymnasium or another large building you need to share with a huge number of people in which you don't have any private space.

Regular citizens will get their rent payed for by the government and subsidized housing, if they require welfare.

You've got to be mental or completely incompetent at identifying and comprehending trustworthy news sources to believe refugees are somehow better of than citizens or even immigrants.

<comment><USER33> refugees were given decent housing in germany before. now they are housed collectively in pretty inhumane conditions

<comment><USER32> They were and the newer arrivals will of course given proper housing. They're still not in any way better off financially than German citizens though. That's just right wing propaganda.

<comment><USER33> spot on

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Another thinkfluencing-piece about why it is nice to live in white countries without explaining why it is nice to live in white countries (hint: it's the people).

</comment><comment><USER35> One more reason to support [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world)</comment>


Tech Startups Are Targets of Ransom Cyberattacks - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/tech-start-ups-are-targets-of-ransom-cyberattacks/

<comment><USER2> A great way to push policies and technologies towards a more regulated Internet.

I might have my tinfoil hat on here but without any doubt we need to make away with all the centralization because that's what is the problem, really.

Aggressive push towards distributed services - think bittorrent/sync and bitcoin/blockchain technology as the solution to distributed network attacks.

Challenge accepted?

<comment><USER3> The hard problem there is the business model, not the technology.

<comment><USER2> Namecoin, Ethereum and Open Transactions come to mind.

Maybe the future is much more evenly distributed and we all make a living by offering energy and computing power to those services? Why did PGP never take off? I would love to set up my own "miner" for it to play its part in a truly decentralized and secure Email service. Open source as the "business model" is key in that scenario.

I don't have enough energy nor am I smart enough to actually create those kinds of services but I do feel stuff like that is the way out of this mess.

Interesting articles on topic:

"Enter The Blockchain: How Bitcoin Can Turn The Cloud Inside Out"

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/22/enter-the-blockchain-how- bi...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/22/enter-the-blockchain-how-bitcoin-can- turn-the-cloud-inside-out/)

"Can Namecoin Obsolete ICANN (and More)?"

[http://theumlaut.com/2014/02/05/namecoin- icann/](http://theumlaut.com/2014/02/05/namecoin-icann/)

<comment><USER3> The problem here is that the money is made by providing commodity services rather than engineering effort. So the person who designs the innovative decentralized system makes much less money than the person who can throw a lot of cheap servers into a rack.

<comment><USER4> Bitcoin itself is possibly one of the first exceptions to that.

We could see more opportunities for distributed services to be monetized in similar ways. It needs to be done carefully, as there's a strong bias against "pre-mined" schemes.

Read up on DAO/DACs if you're interested ("Decentralized/Digital Autonomous Corporations/Organizations" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Autonomous_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Autonomous_Corporation) [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Distributed_Autonomous_Community_...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Distributed_Autonomous_Community_/_Decentralized_Application)). It's still mostly theoretical stuff, but Ethereum, ProtoShares, etc are working on these ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was speaking to someone in the esports industry yesterday who said that DDoS attacks have become a real problem in high tier tournaments. Apparently you can get a bot net which is more than capable of blowing out the whole opposing team for as low as $100.

<comment><USER6> The problem of DDoS in high tier gaming isn't a new one, probably 10 years or longer. What I don't understand however, is why these players who are affected by DDoS are still leaking their IP with Skype all the time.

Uninstall Skype, get a new IP, and it'll probably never happen to them again.

<comment><USER7> Or use a secret skype if it is necessary... A lot of streamers use skype to provide content of them interacting with others in an interesting way (and skype is pretty good for this without the hassle of ventrilo, mumble, teamspeak, or whatever alternative).

I don't see why more of them don't make token skype accounts regularly. It isn't much of a hassle and it raises the security bar quite a lot compared to always using the same account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> heh...basecamp, meetup, vimeo, and bit.ly are 'small'.

Are there any documented instances of this happening to smaller startups? And, relatedly, are a set of best practices emerging to deal with this sort of a thing?

<comment><USER9> I'd be really curious to see best practices for smaller startups. We've never been hit with a DDOS, but bot attacks seem pretty commonplace. I'd love to see the open source community come together to create some mitigation strategies, though I admit I don't know what they would entail.

<comment><USER10> I naively think I could just go to cloudflare with my attacked site, am I wrong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This stuff have been taking place in the Russian segment of the internet for several years and create a quite profitable business of DDoS protection.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Even after the attack was mitigated, the attacker continued to send increasingly whiny emails."

What whiny emails did they send?

</comment><comment><USER13> Incidentally, I recently noticed that Digital Ocean was also under attack and our servers were real slow for quite a few days, and i was wondering if Amazon/GoDaddy had anything to do with it :)</comment>


On Testing: Some Programmers Refuse to Get it - <AUTHOR> http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/weblog/arch_d7_2008_04_12.shtml#e960

<comment><USER2> I'm sympathetic to a few of these points, but this is just weird:

 _If you write applications without tests then you are a bad person, incapable of love._

Dumb attempt at humor? Maybe, but the zealotry of TDD advocates is to me a pretty strong indicator that something's wrong somewhere.</comment>