The Internet is experiencing severe outages across North American and Asia - <AUTHOR> http://internettrafficreport.com/namerica.htm <comment><USER2> Ok, first, I have to say that I never expected to see "The interwebs are borked" become a national thing. Every where I've worked, at some point folks would start wandering around saying "the internet is down" which was code for "help us, we can't use the web" and various folks would then figure out what their particular issue was, then that problem migrated to my home when we got always on 24/7 internet, something that started out "why would I use that?" has become like oxygen "ZOMG I can't get to the webz!" and here we have an interesting variant on it that a transit monitoring service notes a lot of disruption. Clearly whom ever is currently the current CIO of the US [1] is not doing their job :-)

That said, there are no doubt folks on the other side of those down links with calls in to three or four NOCs, a couple of trouble tickets being escalated, and people driving out to non-nondescript buildings near railroad tracks and in industrial areas carrying weird looking devices which can measure the intensity of laser light and do time-domain reflectometry (TDR) measurements. We can only wait and see what they discover. If we were playing the Ops edition of the game Clue I'd guess "Colonel Mustard with a Backhoe in New Jersey" :-)

[1] [http://www.archives.gov/press/press- releases/2011/nr11-124.h...](http://www.archives.gov/press/press- releases/2011/nr11-124.html)

<comment><USER3> Your second paragraph reminds me of the fantastic South Park episode ("Over Logging;" S12, E6) where The Internet goes down across the entire US, and everyone tracks it to its source in a desperate attempt to fix it.

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

<comment><USER4> > South Park episode ("Over Logging;" S12, E6)

Available online along with all the other South Park episodes on their official website: [http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s12e06-over- lo...](http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s12e06-over-logging)

<comment><USER5> broken link...what's going on, guys??

<comment><USER6> The internet is down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Internettrafficreport isn't the most reliable (normally there are lots of zeroes on their graphs), but it does indicate a large change in some numbers.

Another place to check for good information is <http://www.outages.org/>

There have been a few incidents as of the past few days. Last night, there was a nationwide outage from Frontier that has since been resolved.

The day prior there was a triple failure in the Midwest as reported [http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2012/10/windstream- outag...](http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2012/10/windstream-outage-takes- out-phone-service-to-customers-across-the-midwest.html) that affected lots of services in a large area.

<comment><USER8> All 3 of the listed Wisconsin routers are small businesses. 2 are currently listed as being down, and have been for months now. However, their web pages are up, they probably just changed around their IP's or something, and never notified.

I could see a core router at UW being a major measure of the internet, but not some small consulting company in a small town..

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Aside from infrastructure woes like this, one of the original premises of the internet's resilience was its decentralized and organic design, however, as developers migrate to the cloud we are going in the exact opposite direction where a single cloud provider going down takes with it a ton of popular web services. We have moved to the mainframe model and the new IT dept is now GAE, AWS etc. While cloud providers try to decentralize their infrastructure it seems that we are in the early days of figuring out how to do this, because for the past few days we have had major disruption to essential services like tumblr (for kitten photos) et al.

Fortunately to date the affected services are all non essential, mainly entertainment/trivial stuff like blogs, instagram, dropbox etc etc, but when we start to see things like water supply and electrical power management systems, hospital records, aviation system etc affected the consequences could be severe.

If the very best IT minds at AWS and GAE can't keep their systems running, what hope have government departments got? Anyone that's ever been to a DMV, or USPS knows just how good the US Government's IT departments are.

<comment><USER2> Leslie Lamport in the 80's _""A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable"_

<comment><USER9> I don't think in the 80's anyone, even a luminary like Lamport really had any idea how distributed systems would evolve. Also he was talking about something different. I very much know there are computers in Google's datacenter that run my apps, and when they go down my computer is not rendered unusable, but rather the service executed by those apps are no longer accessible. Lamport was talking about distributed systems where multiple computers are working together to achieve a common goal. A cloud system is more like a mainframe, or client/server system. Lamport did some fabulous work (at SRI if memory serves) on distributed system.

<comment><USER2> I will give you an example of Leslie's quote in action. At my house we forward DNS requests to a machine hosted by our ISP. (Well we used to, but let me finish) My wife came up to me and said "the TV is broken." The TV was trying to load its NetFlix application which was trying to resolve a netflix URL which was going through our Internet setup, which went to the ISP's two DNS servers, both of which were offline because the switch they were connected to had failed.

Now how to explain to your spouse that the _TV_ is broken because ns-18.sbcglobal.net is not working.

<comment><USER10> I had to explain to my girlfriend today why our Apple TV would play Netflix but the Internet on laptop failed, BTs DNS pooped and the Apple TV was on a custom DNS provider. She settled with "isn't the Internet weird". Which it is, it's really weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Could it just be that the hosts on <http://internettrafficreport.com/> are out of date? I'm in Vancouver, BC trying it hit the UBC hub and I don't get any further than the main educational provider, bc.net. Maybe the UBC host listed on internettrafficreport.com isn't supposed to be up and its been replaced with a different host.

</comment><comment><USER12> Backbone latency seems fine <http://www.internetpulse.net/>

<comment><USER13> What about the view on 24 hr packet loss pct?

<http://www.internetpulse.net/Main.aspx?Period=RH24>

I have no idea what those numbers should look like?

<comment><USER14> Big numbers are bad and I don't see any.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> you might be interested in this thread: [https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/outages/2012-October/00465...](https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/outages/2012-October/004655.html) on the outages mailing list: <http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages>

      Most of those zeroes have been zero for a long time.  The ITR isn't
      well-maintained and I wouldn't use the data as a primary source.

<comment><USER16> There is this:

      I am having some routing issues with my Frontier DSL service
      (residential) and after speaking with technical support at Frontier, they
      confirmed they are having a nationwide routing issue with no ETA
      currently on the fix.

      Packet loss is intermittent regardless of destination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This may be related to the NYT article about China's political elite. A basic tit-for-tat to say "don't think that posting things in the US about us is without consequences".

Of course, they couldn't possibly be that dumb as to make a massive DDoS in retaliation. _snicker_

<comment><USER14> China looks inwards, not outwards. They fire-walled off the NYT awhile ago from internal users.

The USA has been fighting a very dirty fight against Iranian science programs, including using the stuxnet worms. Iran was also recently fingered for attacking Saudi networks.

EDIT: The West also crashed Iran's currency, where it lost 40% value in one week.

FYI: most serious attacks come out of Chinese networks and are managed by Eastern Europeans where the attack software is written.

<comment><USER18> Apparently China did not have the NY Times blocked until today, in response to the article (obviously going back further it might have been blocked previously):

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/world/asia/china-blocks- we...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/world/asia/china-blocks-web-access- to-new-york-times.html)

<comment><USER19> Wasserain is an senior Linux SA in an ODC located in Pekin, we meet hugh pack lost from Pek office to US DataCenter this week; when we check the openvpn log, many TLS Error happened, it started from last last Friday (2012-10-12), but the shutdown-time is tiny in last last week, but it became longer and loonger this week, about down 6mins for every 30mins at Mon & Tue from Telecomm 's line, then we switch to Unicomm, but it still the same -- almost worse 10mins per 40mins, TLS handshake is hardly be done; at Friday, we try a new way to link, separate the plan-txt data and openvpn data on 2 link, that make a better status, but we can't sure that is the real reason, maybe the GF\/\/ is in it's maintain date. Guess: GF\/\/ is made a pre-Graet-18 exercise on the funczion of shuting-down-TLS/HTTPS/OpenVPN. Prophecy: some outage likely will happen again in the next 30day. (until the Graet-18 finished;)

Other issue met this week, Yahoo msger report TLS error sometime when login at 0900-1000 in the morning.

<comment><USER14> [https://isc.sans.edu/portascii.html?port=443&start=2012-...](https://isc.sans.edu/portascii.html?port=443&start=2012-04-28&end=2012-10-28)

Doesn't look port 443 specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This must not be affecting everyone because my ssh connection from Toronto to Portland is working just fine without additional latency.

Edit:

The Ontario router seems to be dropping packets:

      $ ping gw02.wlfdle.phub.net.cable.rogers.com
      PING gw02.wlfdle.phub.net.cable.rogers.com (188.8.131.52) 56(84) bytes of data.
      From <snip> icmp_seq=1 Packet filtered
      From <snip> icmp_seq=2 Packet filtered
      From <snip> icmp_seq=3 Packet filtered

      --- gw02.wlfdle.phub.net.cable.rogers.com ping statistics ---
      3 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors, 100% packet loss, time 10206ms

Though I have no issue with routers under that sub-domain:

      $ traceroute <snip>
      traceroute to <snip> (<snip>), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
      1  <snip> (192.168.1.1)  1.489 ms  2.038 ms  2.669 ms
      2  * * *
      3  126.96.36.199 (220.127.116.11)  17.599 ms  17.584 ms  17.339 ms
      4  so-4-0-0.gw02.wlfdle.phub.net.cable.rogers.com (188.8.131.52)  31.992 ms  31.972 ms  31.819 ms
      5  188.8.131.52 (22.214.171.124)  33.198 ms  34.687 ms  34.596 ms
      6  * * *
      7  pos-3-15-0-0-cr01.ashburn.va.ibone.comcast.net (188.8.131.52)  35.557 ms  28.952 ms  28.818 ms
      8  126.96.36.199 (188.8.131.52)  33.029 ms  42.176 ms  41.924 ms
      9  he-0-4-0-0-cr01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net (126.96.36.199)  49.244 ms  45.218 ms  44.940 ms
      10  pos-1-2-0-0-pe01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net (188.8.131.52)  37.146 ms  40.169 ms  40.372 ms

Note: so-4-0-0.gw02.wlfdle.phub.net.cable.rogers.com is having no issues. I don't know how Rogers' internal network is setup, but it seems like if there are issues they are handling them so that customers (or at least I) don't see them.

<comment><USER20> Packet filtered is an ICMP response that indicates that the ping request was actively responded to with something other than icmp reply. Most likely cause is that the router, or some other router en-route rejected the request with icmp prohibited.

<comment><USER16> Oops. I glanced at '100% packet loss' and assumed it had sent more than 3 packets. My bad. You're right, there is no packet loss, per se.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> China is reeeaaally mad about that New York Times piece.

<comment><USER22> That would be the one hell of an annoying rage quit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So the ITR report dropped back to normal right around the time that google claims to be returning to normal due to their load balancing infrastructure failing. [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google-a...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google- appengine-downtime-notify/SMd2pDJsCPo)

</comment><comment><USER24> "The Internet" means Google App Engine. So yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> GAE, Tumblr, Dropbox, and more all experiencing issues.

Akami reporting attacks 50% above normal: <http://www.akamai.com/dv1>

<comment><USER14> SANS is still green:

<https://isc.sans.edu/>

<comment><USER14> Reported attacks for 10/25 doubled from 10/24 (!)

<https://isc.sans.edu/submissions.html>

8,000 attacks reported for 10/24 17,000+ attacks reported so far today

<comment><USER14> Enter the month of October 2012 and look at the graph.

HUGE scans yesterday. Something is going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It appears to be very binary -- all or nothing. It smells to me like there's a weakness that's either being exploited or not.

<comment><USER26> My first thought was that this is probably a virus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Various news outlets are starting to report on the outage:

[http://www.theaustralianeye.com/current-news/widespread- inte...](http://www.theaustralianeye.com/current-news/widespread-internet- outages-reported-aoi36747.html)

[http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/26/major-sites-and- pla...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/26/major-sites-and-platforms- experiencing-outages-today-including-dropbox-and-google-app-engine/)

[http://investorplace.com/2012/10/tumblr-comes-tumbling- down-...](http://investorplace.com/2012/10/tumblr-comes-tumbling-down-outage- for-millions-of-blogs/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if Tumblrs current issues are related to this?

<comment><USER29> Doesn't Tumblr always have problems

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here's the page for Asia: <http://internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The data for Asia: <http://internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm>

</comment><comment><USER31> Looking at their 30 day chart I am more concerned with what happened 2 weeks ago. Spike of packet loss, then less traffic overall?

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm in Maryland and up/down speeds are completely fine despite the supposed 100% packet loss. Feel this is a bogus post.

<comment><USER33> Do you know how routing works?

<comment><USER34> Re-read what he said. That site says 100% packet loss where he is, but he is experiencing no problems.

<comment><USER35> The site is just listing the status of the few routers it is monitoring. It's not indicative of all traffic.

Do you really think all traffic in/out of MD goes through a single (2 if you count DC) router?

Put it another way, imagine you're monitoring traffic for SF by monitoring average speeds on the Northbound 280. One pile-up that blocks the road completely brings the average speed at that point to 0mph. Doesn't mean that every road in SF is blocked. Traffic will bail off the 280 and use other routes to get to their destinations (albeit slower and causing average speeds on the surround[ing] road network to drop too), but the one thing you are measuring (average speed on the Northbound 280) has dropped to 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What would seemingly be my ISP's router is mentioned here as having 100% packet loss for the last 24 hours. I had great speeds yesterday and the last few hours, been downloading large files.

Perhaps I'm just lucky? Or there is issue with how this is reporting or there is more than one router that everyone else on my ISP uses.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember about 10 years ago one of the UK connections to the US dying, which meat a big chunk of the Internet failed and how everyone was a bit puzzled. That was when the Internet using population was much lower, I wonder how an outage like that would affect people now.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm in singapore, and by this report should not be able to post this comment.

<comment><USER38> Why ? Singapore is a major data hub in the SE Asian region.

There isn't just one router where all data flows in/out from.

<http://submarine-cable-map-2012.telegeography.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Well it says Europe had issues until 13:00 or so today

<http://internettrafficreport.com/europe.htm>

I wonder how reliable this is.

</comment><comment><USER39> Even here in Amsterdam, The Netherlands I get reports from friends their DSL lines dropping. Loos like traffic re-routing is choking up core routers here and there.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's the US putting up the next great firewall :P

</comment><comment><USER41> Even from NJ we're currently experiencing intermittent packet loss to some of our linodes hosted in the NJ datacenter... very odd.

</comment><comment><USER42> It is obviously because people are auto refreshing the Team Fortress 2 blog in preparation for the update.

</comment><comment><USER43> Traffic over my TW Telecom and Charter links look fine in my data center. I live in southern California.

</comment><comment><USER44> Might be completely unrelated but we had some DNS issues the last few days because of Level3.

<comment><USER45> I think this is it.. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703264>

Now I see the problem of private subnets is fixed at the L3 dns servers that were borked 2-days ago (184.108.40.206 188.8.131.52). The one the popped up today is still borked (126.96.36.199).

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Seems bogus. The Ashburn router is pingable (at least from near Ashburn) even though it's listed as down:

Pinging 184.108.40.206 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 188.8.131.52: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=56 Reply from 18.104.22.168: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=56 Reply from 184.108.40.206: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=56

<comment><USER47> 184.108.40.206 is OpenDNS's "not available" redirector, so you aren't actually pinging the router. It's listed as the ip address for at least one other router that is listed down.

<comment><USER46> Understood. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> coming back up: [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google-a...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google- appengine-downtime-notify/SMd2pDJsCPo)

</comment><comment><USER49> Windows 8 ISO Downloads

</comment><comment><USER50> "across North America_n_ and Asia"

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm in Texas but apparently it has 100% loss. I call shenanigans.

<comment><USER52> That's not what the "location" column means- you don't think there are exactly two cords leading into the state of Texas, do you? It's just the physical location of that router.

<comment><USER53> no, not two cords, two very wide tubes that trucks can go through.

<comment><USER51> That's for international communication. States have power poles (notice all the wires on them? they're not just power...) and buried wires that a lot of the internet also go through.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


In 2016, mainframes very much a part of business: study - <AUTHOR> http://www.itwire.com/enterprise-solutions/75541-in-2016,-mainframes-very-much-a-part-of-business-study.html <comment><USER2> Might be time to learn cobol ... shudder.</comment>


China's new "secure" OS - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=3385

<comment><USER2> "The rush to participate in the "national security operating system" arms race is pretty evident across the world, with the European Union's secure OS Minix, the U.S Air Force new 'secure distribution of Windows XP' and Russia's interest in a similar secure OS."

Hilarious. I was a little bit interested in how a 'security' blogger could conceive of Minix being some new cutting-age security product, and found this article: [http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/67026/europe- funds-...](http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/67026/europe-funds-secure- operating-system-research)

Turns out Tanenbaum recently got a grant for more development of Minix. It's biggest security feature? The micro-kernel!

Seems like old is the new new.</comment>


Ask HN: I write mathematical essays. What do you want to read? - <AUTHOR> Hi
I have an ambition to write a book about "The Mechanics of Abstract Endeavors" in the next few years, as soon as I finish my Ph.D. To that end, over the last year or so, I've written about fourty or so essays on Medium about various math-related topics, to get into the rhythm and habit of writing daily.
Several of these essays have been featured on the front page of HN and relevant subreddits (except /r/math, they hate me), including:
1. "The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann"; 2. "Einstein and Hilbert's Race to Generalize Relativity"; 3. "Uncomputable Numbers"; 4. "The Mathematical Nomad, Paul Erdos"; 5. "The Math behind that Dick Joke in HBO's Silicon Valley"; 6. "The Black-Scholes Formula, explained"; and many more.
I still want to write more essays and have a bunch of ideas for topics. My next long essay will be a biography of Norbert Wiener, tentatively entitled "The Absent-Minded Father of Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener".
However, these take a fair while to write and of course are hit and miss with the HN audience, so I figured I'd head straight to the source, and ask:
- What math essay would you love to read that you still haven't read?
Thanks a bunch, you guys/girls are the best! <comment><USER2> I think there's a ton of interesting cross over between machine learning, statistics, linear algebra, real analysis, topology etc. In the sense that there exists theorems and methods in different areas of math that are essentially the same, just different interpretations. It would be fascinating to see an exposition of this, for instance here is the geometrical interpretation of x,y,z, but actually this is the same as this theorem in calculus based statistics, except for this case...

I bring this up because there is already a ton of content about popular topics, but little that goes deep and draws parallels between disparate (not that those areas I outlined are really disparate) areas of math.

Even more interesting would be to choose common areas used in industry, like machine learning, and bring in some parallels and depth from fields that are not really studied outside an academic setting.

But then again your audience for this is rather small

</comment><comment><USER3> A few suggestions:

— N vs NP Deconstructed and Explained.

— Prime Numbers. Patterns in Primes (like prime spirals); how prime sieves work; how mathematicians work with crazy large primes.

— Graph Isomorphism

— Topology and Topological Data Analysis

— Information Theory. Entropy. Relative entropy. etc.

Can't wait to read your work.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to read some more optimization problems and techniques along with imaginary numbers and their applications

</comment><comment><USER5> I would read a short article on how to read/translate complex mathematical formulas into plain English. Bonus points if you include a glossary for all the arcane symbols different sub-fields use in their formulas.

</comment><comment><USER6> Those are some really good topics. Do you links to any of your essays?

I have been always fascinated by unsolved problems in mathematics. Have you written something before or maybe you could write an essay on one of those problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> To your question: Google "The Riemann Hypothesis, explained" and look for an older essay of mine from 2016. Still unsolved

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I will check it out.</comment></comment></comment>


Hoare: A Half-Century of Computing - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/hoare-080411.aspx

<comment><USER2> _But I have now discovered a way of getting the three major traditions in the exploration of the theory of programming under the same umbrella. It's so simple I can tell people in 20 minutes what it's all about._

Anyone have a link to an exposition?

<comment><USER2> Finally found this from last month, but I don't think people will understand in 20 minutes:

 _An Algebra for Program Designs_ [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/events/sssev2...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/events/sssev2011/slides/tony_2.pptx)

<comment><USER3> For the PowerPoint avoidant (including myself):

[http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.micro...](http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fen- us%2Fum%2Fredmond%2Fevents%2Fsssev2011%2Fslides%2Ftony_2.pptx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was lucky enough to do some work with Tony when I was at Microsoft Research. As well as being brilliant, he's a gentleman in the best sense of the word -- and continues to remain open to new ideas. I sure hope I'm like him when I grow up!</comment>


Conversational Terrorism: the ways people (consciously or unconsciously) conversationally cheat - <AUTHOR> http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html <comment><USER2> I was subjected to the variants of "YOU'LL GET OVER IT" many times when I was young -- it seems to be a favourite fallback of 30- or 40- year olds when they realize that they've been outreasoned by 10 year old.

Oddly enough, in spite of being 27 years old now, I still haven't "gotten over" the notions that a schoolroom is a perfectly good place for a reasoned debate; that English essays should be marked on the quality of the writing, not on the conclusions reached; or that constitutional protections, including due process rights, should extend to all places where government regulation is enforced.

Maybe I'm just not old enough yet.

<comment><USER3> This is indistinguishable from the 10 year old just not getting it (because they don't have the first-hand experience) and being so tiresome you don't want to continue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Nit-Picking" is indistinguishable from someone trying to clarify what you are saying!

<comment><USER4> Motive, not method.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> These are great things to keep in mind for online communication. There are a lot of logical fallacy fanboys online. Their M.O. is to look for the tiniest gap in your _method_ of debate and then latch on to it like a terrier. Their initial hope is that their wall of logical rules is impenetrable to you. Then, even though they are accusing their opponent of logical fallacies left and right, they end up on the _Sleight of Mind_ path rather quickly! Maybe now this list can serve as a counter for that behavior (although they probably won't respect these as "real" fallacies).

<comment><USER6> AD HOMINEM!

No seriously. It is. If you present an argument online, and someone points out that you've committed a logical fallacy. They've undermined your argument and rendered your conclusion unproven. If your response is to attack them as "logical fallacy fanboys".. attacking their intentions and other non-salient points... that doesn't change the argument at hand and consequently you've committed an ad hominem!

I think I might be one of those logical fallacy fanboys.

<comment><USER5> I'm saying that all they do is point out logical fallacies, and that eventually they point out ones that are merely their own inference, and were not actually part of what you said. It becomes an endless meta-argument about how to argue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I finally grasped the concept of "Intellectual Dishonesty"!

</comment><comment><USER8> What isn't conversational terrorism?

<comment><USER9> If you want the opposite extreme:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_communication></comment></comment>


SpinRite and pseudoscience - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SpinRite <comment><USER2> When I tried listening to Security Now! I was always sceptical about SpinRite claims and especially those fake gushing reviews from "users".

I'm actually pretty dubious about anything Steve Gibson says. I think he paints himself as an expert in things he clearly isn't.</comment>


C++ name hiding puzzle - <AUTHOR> http://pixelstech.net/article/index.php?id=1336894286

<comment><USER2> Actually, it's very well explained in one of the "Effective C++" series.

IIRC, when calling a function, the compiler first looks at the name and only then will try to match the parameters (and choose the right function if there're multiple ones).

So, in that case, it tries to find a function with the name "func" in the Derivate class.. it finds one. Then, it tries to call it and fails because it has the wrong argument. I.e. It won't look at the Base class since it already found a function with the right name.

TL;DR: First = search by name, Second = Match parameters.

<comment> alok-g This does not seem to explain it completely. Even with "first search by name..." rule, shouldn't the order be:

1\. Find "all" the functions accessible bearing the same name. This would include functions available from the base classes.

2\. Now match parameters

Seems like the order actually used is:

1\. Find the function by name in the specific class (not including base classes)

2\. If found, go to 4.

3\. Include functions from the next base class (end if no more) and match by name only. Go to 2.

4\. Try matching by name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here I was hoping for a true mind-stretching puzzle to start the day/week, and all I get is a rehash of things every C++ programmer should already know.

Is it something that catches people off guard the first time they experience it? Yes. Does it not "make sense" to those who don't understand how C++ compilers work and (more importantly) _why_ they work that way? Yes.

As another poster said, this is already explained in "Effective C++", as well as "Thinking in C++", and like TFA mentions the spec has it too. Yes, we all know C++ is crufty; that's why they invented Java. But it's powerful and it's flexible, and sometimes it's all we've got, so it's best if you learn to use it properly if you're going to use it.

</comment><comment><USER4> To my surprise, things can get funnier in the .NET world. There, you can mix and match what C++ does with what this post expects: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexghi/archive/2010/01/27/visual- ba...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexghi/archive/2010/01/27/visual-basic-hides- virtual-methods-from-c-not-really.aspx)

<comment><USER5> There's a big difference, though: in C#, you can't accidentally mask a base- class function; you have to do so explicitly. If you fail to tell the compiler whether you're overriding, hiding, or replacing, then it's a compilation error. That's a very different beast than the C++ issues discussed in this article.

<comment><USER4> That is true, but I still hold that .NET is more complex than C++. With C++, the language made a choice (unfortunately, probably not the best one). With .NET, one can encounter both choices in a single program. "Don't do that" is not suffient here; the two choices might have been made in different third party implementations of a common interface (let's say logger subclass A hides Log(char) in the base class with a Log(int), while subclass B overloads it with a Log(int))

Far-sought? Probably, but still surprisingly complex for a language that tries to be simpler than C++.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, gcc 4.6.3 has no trouble with this code (or my hand-typed simplified variant). So is it incompliant or just not subject to a bug that affects the spec and (presumably) MSVC?

</comment><comment><USER7> I do wish c++ had a keyword designating a function as implementing a base- class virtual function, similar to C#'s override. Then this kind of thing wouldn't be necessary.

<comment><USER8> C++11 has override and final [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B11#Explicit_overrides_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B11#Explicit_overrides_and_final)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems like a good question for stackoverflow

<comment><USER10> Yeah, in fact, it's already there:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4146499/why-does-a- virtua...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4146499/why-does-a-virtual- function-get-hidden)</comment></comment>


'The chair is out to kill us'. Studies point to the health risks of sitting - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-dont-sit-20130525,0,3673157.story <comment><USER2> Is there a study that doesn't assume correlation == causation? Yes, lots of people who are generally unhealthy also have jobs that require sitting for hours at a time. But what does that mean for someone who lives an otherwise healthy lifestyle?

Let's say person A burns 1000 calories a day at his job, and only sits for a few hours when he goes home. Person B burns 1000 calories in his off time, but sits at work for 8 hours. Is person B still more likely to suffer health defects and die early? If so, _why_?

<comment><USER3> All the studies so far indicate sitting (or other forms of inactivity) are bad no matter how much you exercise at other times.

The best natural experiment was the London bus driver study which showed huge differences in heart problems between drivers (sitting all day) and conductors (standing all day). Both were drawn from the same pool of employees and randomly assigned roles, so the experiment was naturally controlled for everything except the difference in behavior.

There were some other differences such as drivers having a more stressful job and conductors having more social interactions which might explain some of the differences in outcomes apart from the sitting/moving difference. But in any case, sitting for hours a day at a stressful job with minimal social interaction is incredibly bad for your health. Programmers take note!

<comment><USER2> Interesting. It would be a bit more legitimate of if the difference was between standing and sitting bus drivers (assuming there was some way to stand and drive a bus).

Or, straight to the point, if there was a study involving standing programmer and sitting programmers... preferably one in which the roles were randomized, because I'd suspect that programmers who've already chosen to stand while they work are probably a more health-conscious lot as it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just opened a coworking space a couple of months ago. It used to be an auto shop, so we tried to maintain that feel. My favorite part is the old hydraulic lift that we converted into a standing height desk.

[https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ash3/579181_296764684...](https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ash3/579181_2967646845592_239634524_n.jpg)

<comment><USER5> What surface are you using? Can the lift still move up and down?

<comment><USER6> I would've been tempted to modify the lift such that the entire desk could retract into the floor, leaving an open area when it's needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One reason I live where I do is so that I am within a mile (which, for me, is walking distance) of much of my shopping and from the county library branch. Being able to walk to do errands reduces driving, which reduces sitting, and increases exercise.

At my computer keyboard, where I live continually, I sit on an exercise ball rather than any kind of chair. Even at that, I should probably get up and move around more, but at least I have the routine of a homeschooling parent of three children still living at home to provide interruptions and occasions to change my posture. It's hard to optimize for everything, but so far I've avoided the worst of the health symptoms mentioned in the article kindly submitted here, even though I am already of middle age.

<comment><USER8> My understanding is walking rather than than driving for instance is NOT a solution to this specific issue (It's great for other reasons).

It is in part, as in you might sit for 13 hours a day so 30 mins less sitting makes you 3% better off but really it's not the solution. Similarly to getting up and walking around, if you do it 5 mins ever hour that's 4% better off.

My understanding is these studies are saying to make change you need to stop sitting for large periods of time (ie reduce by 50+%), if you don't want to die/become crippled early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This sounds very like Stanley Green (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Green)a> very well known english eccentric who used to walk up and down oxford street with a sandwich board that read "Less Lust, By Less Protein: Meat Fish Bird; Egg Cheese; Peas Beans; Nuts. And Sitting,"

I believe one of his thesis was that to much sitting led to horrors like the Rolling stones and the whole permissive 60's

He was a well known sight to any one who worked in central London pre 1993 when he died.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't entirely know what to do with this story.

"Sitting" (or more specifically, the way I "sit" all day) resulted in me having pretty awful back pain that required treatment earlier this year. I had bad posture spent 4-5 hours stationary writing code. Having a standing desk would have probably helped me to take more breaks and move around. A little app called Kitchen Timer, combined with a very mild set of stretching/exercises works for me now. I don't have heart problems. My "inputs" match my "outputs". I've maintained my weight within 5 pounds for 10 years.

The thing that bothers me about this article is the way it's presented. It's designed to scare ... and I know first hand that it works. Growing up, my mom wouldn't let me stand anywhere near the microwave because of something she saw on 20/20. We heated up food the same way we lit fireworks ("strike" and "run!") When I purchased my first cell phone she panicked about the RADIATION and warned me against using it regularly (Chernobyl === Magnetron to her). My mom watched 20/20 _all the time!_

I have no interest in a standing desk. I work well sitting down, and the timer gives me a nice reminder to stretch out which I can choose to ignore if I'm focused on something I can't pull away from. I smoked as a teenager ... maybe I'm being naive and using anec-data, but my chair is no Marlboro.

</comment><comment><USER11> Standing desks can hurt you if you don't wear proper shoes and/or use some kind of standing mat; regular desks can hurt you if your chair is unergonomic (there was an article on HN about this two weeks ago.) In a similar vein, you can develop RSI if you use an poorly designed keyboard, but that doesn't mean typing will eventually give you RSI.

Hn discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5719891>

</comment><comment><USER12> Lately I've been using my phone to do a cycle of 15/5 minutes sitting/standing, with standing time also being a break from the computer. It's worked really well. The break time is not really an interruption; 5 minutes is enough for most small chores, and if I don't have any of those, I can use it for mindfulness practice. Plus chopping it up gives me better estimates about time usage and how much I can get out of any given work day - after a certain point it becomes clear that I'm spending most of each cycle on distractions, so I'll start adjusting my plan to match reality.

I could probably use Pomodoro or any similar cycle and also get good results, I just happened to try this first.

</comment><comment><USER13> Too much of anything is bad for you. Too much sitting? Get up and move around. Too much standing - take a load off. Too much sugar, too much caffeine. How's this any different than the standard saying of "all in moderation".

</comment><comment><USER14> Well, this article is rubbish and is pretty typical of crappy scientific reporting.

However, I like thinking about ergonomics. Do many people here recline while working? I've been working for a year now, laying back on a couch, feet up and head on a pillow. It works well, but even before this I had carpal tunnel which this doesn't help (it did for a while though). I've resorted to padded gloves that ease my pain:

[http://www.activeforever.com/smart-glove-wrist- support?produ...](http://www.activeforever.com/smart-glove-wrist- support?productid=292)

<comment><USER15> I've been reclining a lot and now my right arm is painful. I'm not typing with it at all for the next two weeks. I need to work out some system of props to rest my elbows on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Standing all the time isn't healthy either, but one thing standing desks promote better is taking breaks more often. I'm more willing to walk around and stretch if I'm already standing, than if I'm sitting.

I've been using a GeekDesk for 2 years now. I recently purchased a LifeSpan Treadmill (just the base) for my standing desk as the next step, and really like it. Careful though, you can't go from sitting to treadmill, it's too much body shock, you'll need to ease into standing for a few months first.

<comment><USER17> Price is steep on these, presumably due to the motors. Is there a similar desk that you can elevate with a simple hydraulic foot pedal? Kind of like the chairs at a hair salon.

<comment><USER18> For a while, my home desk has been a $100 bar table bought from Ikea; if I want to sit, I have a stool handy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone have experience with the Humanscale Float standing desk? [http://www.humanscale.com/products/product_detail.cfm?group=...](http://www.humanscale.com/products/product_detail.cfm?group=float)

I've been thinking about getting a sit/stand desk for a while, but don't like the electric ones as they seem really slow. This seems the nicest of the manually operated ones (better looking than the steelcase one IMO).

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know if sitting at an angle is actually significantly better for you? The coworking space I work out of in RI just got one of these: <http://www.focaluprightfurniture.com/ergonomic-benefits/>

<comment><USER21> Or lying on a couch. All studies compare sitting with walking. How about sitting vs standing? Or sitting vs lying? When I work, I prefer to lie on a couch rather than sit at a desk. And I am not kidding - I am more productive that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > "Every hour of TV that people watch, presumably while sitting, cuts about 22 > minutes from their life span, the study's authors calculated."

Can that be real? That's a very serious issue if true.

<comment><USER23> This LA Times article, like every article that you ever see discussing any of these results, describes a causation: "sitting cuts about 22 minutes from their life span". None of these "studies" were "experiments" that are capable of demonstrating causation: they are either cohort studies or surveys, and are only able to demonstrate correlation.

In this case, "The authors constructed a life table model that incorporates a previously reported mortality risk associated with TV time. Data were from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study, a national population-based observational survey that started in 1999–2000. The authors modelled impacts of changes in population average TV viewing time on life expectancy at birth."

We thereby have to ask, what is the more likely explanation: that sitting causes your life span to decrease, or that the same things that cause your life span to decrease make sitting, or watching television, something you do more often? We aren't doing experiments where we assign people into groups, one which will sit for most of their life and one which will stand/walk, so we can't assume the causation.

Maybe you don't have any friends, and maybe that is why you sit inside all day watching the television. Some people believe being a social outcast directly leads to health issues, but one could also point out that friends often are the people who goad you into seeing the doctor for that thing you never cared enough about, or are quite literally the people who pick you up when you fall, maybe calling 911.

Alternatively, it could be that your life really sucks, and you need the outlet of watching television to make your life feel more reasonable. Things that cause peoples' lives to suck might be abusive relationships, chronic illness, or stressful jobs (and other studies, I believe even real experiments, and I even further believe demonstrated mechanisms, show that stress leads to health problems).

Some might argue "it is easy to control for people who are dying and remove them from your study", but it is very difficult to control for subtle effects, and we are talking about a subtle effect here. This is especially true once you look into compliance effects: people who don't sit around all day watching television are probably also the kinds of people who visit the dentist regularly, or simply eat better food.

The result of this mistake is that it could even be _dangerous_ to be making claims that sitting reduces your lifespan: maybe by telling the people who are sitting around watching television that its unhealthy for them (again, based on no direct evidence) causes them to now feel bad about watching television, increasing their stress, or even causes them to push themselves even further to exercise, when they were sitting down because their knee was already giving out.

A lot of people, at this point, get angry at shoddy science reporting. That's a real problem: articles like this blow studies that are correlations into causations. The result is that people hear every couple years opposing information on some debates they care about (such as whether something like wine or aspirin is "good for your heart"), and eventually decide "it isn't like scientists know anything" and "give it a year, we'll learn something new", something they then apply to other branches of science (like evolution).

But, frankly: the scientists who are publishing these papers really need to use less ambiguous wording--especially if they are not going to be really proactive reaching out to press to be involved in the writing of the articles, making certain the right kinds of hedges get quoted by the reporters (which may scuttle the article, as maybe it is no longer interesting to them: in comparison to bad information spreading, less reporting should be a positive thing)--as I think they are complicit in the confusion.

This paper uses wording that technically doesn't imply a correlation if you know what all of the words mean and you are careful with your reading, but to any normal person they are quite clearly saying "X causes Y": "The amount of TV viewed in Australia in 2008 reduced life expectancy at birth by 1.8 years (95% uncertainty interval (UI): 8.4 days to 3.7 years) for men and 1.5 years (95% UI: 6.8 days to 3.1 years) for women...".

When I read that, I know that that just means "if I'm building a probability distribution over the life expectancy of a person (who would be similar to the people studied, potentially including 'having not heard about this study') and I know how much TV they watch I can use that information to adjust my expectation based on this metric, as established by this well-founded study". However, "X reduced life expectancy" to normal people means "if I do X it will reduce my life expectancy, and if I avoid X, I can avoid that effect".

:(

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there a good resource online that gives the best practices when sitting on a chair to minimize damage per second to ourselves ?

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm glad I replaced my comfortable Herman Miller chair with a very cheap ball chair which encourages active sitting

</comment><comment><USER26> At this point I feel that I might as well have a working theory of "if it is pleasurable or comfortable, it kills me" and go from there...

<comment><USER27> I want to party with you, madman.</comment></comment>


A.I. predicts Greenbay Packers to win it all - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2017/01/19/ai-that-clinched-the-trifecta-gave-the-super-bowl-to-green-bay-in-august/#679482212e74 <comment><USER2> I'd be dismissive of a pick made preseason, but the World Series prediction was impressive.</comment>


BeeWare – The IDEs of Python - <AUTHOR> http://pybee.org/ <comment><USER2> The title misrepresent the content, just trying to clarify it in the second sentence with "Each tool follows the Unix philosophy of doing one thing well".

Almost everyone will expect an IDE such as JetBrains PyCharm, Visual Studio, and Eclipse.

<comment><USER3> I was also expecting something along those lines. I haven't used much Visual Studio for Python development, but in my experience PyCharm is much better than PyDev(Eclipse). I did see someone use VS, but I can't really compare it to PyCharm.

For me, PyCharm has been so good, it's become one of the main reasons why I've been staying with Python, because no matter how much I complain about the issues of Python ("it's slow", 2 vs 3, Python in Windows 64 bit, to name a few), PyCharm does a lot of things right and helps in development.

It's also great to welcome new developers: just install it and it'll all magically work (99% of the time). Not the experience we had with Eclipse.

<comment><USER4> Can you talk about the main things that make PyCharm good for you? I've tried it but decided to stay with command line + sublime text... What are the game changers? Thanks

<comment><USER5> PyCharm's debugger is awesome. [1] It really is faster then the import pdb;pdb.settrace(). (which happens to get committed sometimes). Code coverage displaying is really well implemented. Autocompletion and introspection is great. On a lot of frameworks as well. Continuously displays python linting issues and suggests fixes. Vagrant support works really good, even for remote debugging and running tests/devservers. The git implementation is quite useful, although I do fall back on command line every now and then. You can customize pycharm's interface a lot (impossible to explain in just a line or 2). If you like to edit distraction-free... there is a mode for that too. It has an internal git system. So if you screw stuff between git commits, you can revert to a previous version nonetheless (local version) There are a few ways to open files: a tree view, an "alfred"-like method and probably more.

1: [https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/features/#debugger](https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/features/#debugger)

Things i do not use: The internal terminal; iTerm just is a lot better. The interal ipython console. I prefer iTerm + iPython. FTP and oldschool stuff like that. Did not try the new profiling feature yet.

<comment><USER6> You should note remote debugging is awesome too. You can remote into external servers or even a local vagrant and debug it as if it was local code.

<comment><USER7> Do you ever have problems with the debugger losing its place, failing to step properly, or not being able to evaluate commands, when using a VM with Vagrant? I was really excited to get PyCharm working with our development VM, but these issues made the debugger useless for me.

<comment><USER6> The only issue I had was sometimes the debugger wouldn't stop at a breakpoint, but this was rare and easily dealt with by putting a small cluster of breakpoints at the problem area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Related talk by the developer, re. developing GUIs with TKInter, and introducting the Cricket test runner: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI7NYgP54sw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI7NYgP54sw)

</comment><comment><USER9> These tools look like something I might use, I've never been a fan of IDE's (mostly because the work I've done haven't been large enough in scale to necessitate one). It's a pretty misleading title though.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is probably the best name for anything ever.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone can compare toga vs kivy?

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, it makes a change from the Ides of March.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why would I use Rubicon instead of pyobjc?

</comment><comment><USER14> " BeeWare follows Python community code of conduct."

I'll pass. I'm not Adria Richards, and I don't indict innocent men.</comment>


Graceful reloading with zero downtime for web apps - <AUTHOR> http://daniellombrana.es/blog/2015/07/01/the-art-of-graceful-reloading.html

<comment><USER2> > The documentation from uWSGI is really great

I don't think the documentation is really great. I think it is terrible. Every page seems to assume you understand the internals and the documentation attaches fancy names to concepts that are difficult to understand from the documentation.

For example, "workers' mercy", "zerg mode", "emperor mode", "the zeeg problem", "uwsgi mules", "harakiri mode".

I for one would like uwsgi a lot more if it focused on a few simple patterns that worked for the majority of cases and explained them thoroughly, including their tradeoffs.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like Twisted all over again. A powerful framework with a steep learning curve.

<comment><USER4> Sort of. You can definitely be up and running relatively easily, it's just there are so many different knobs and switches and ways to set things up, you never know if you are doing things the right way. I also agree that the documentation is not particularly helpful and sometimes it's contradictory. The software itself is rock solid though, gives me very little trouble (other than logrotate & emperor mode being a pain)

<comment><USER2> It's theoretically rock solid. In practice there are many common scenarios where uwsgi goes wrong. Here's one where a seemingly normal configuration of supervisor and uwsgi doesn't work because uwsgi attached a special meaning to SIGTERM

[https://github.com/unbit/uwsgi/issues/296](https://github.com/unbit/uwsgi/issues/296)

Note that the bug is closed because it will be fixed in an as-yet unreleased version!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you are right. But, IMHO the solution is really simple. In your supervisor config you ony add this option and everything works as expected:

stopsignal=QUIT

We're using it and no problems so far. Simple!

<comment><USER2> Read the thread I linked - multiple commenters say that using SIGQUIT does not solve the problem for them and eventually unbit states that he recommends using --die-on-term.

You are using the wrong workaround, so if you haven't had problems yet, it could only be a matter of time.

And this is only one aspect of uwsgi that is buggy/unclear

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll have a look again :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Adding a zerg server still feels a little like adding another layer to my stack. Or do I misunderstand? I guess it's not literally a new package to install, but it definitely feels like one more thing that can go sideways.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Not really. That's why we love so much uwsgi. All you have to do is to add a new config file for your zerg server, and you are done. This is handled without problems by supervisor and we've never experienced an issue with it.

I've another blog post about our full infrastructure, explaining specifically why we love uwsgi + supervisor. Because we don't need extra software within our stack and everything is pretty simple and runs on Python :D

<comment><USER5> But I'm not running a zerg server right now (I don't think!) so it would be a new daemon even if it's part of an existing package, right?

Looking forward to more blog posts. Uwsgi is new to me, but so far I've been very pleased with it.

I've been considering solving deploys at a higher level by spinning up a new docker container and moving traffic from one to the other.

<comment><AUTHOR> You only have to add a new daemon/process. Then you'll have this graceful reloading feature ;-) From my point of view is has less impact than booting a new container.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That visual effect when hovering over a link is really bad.</comment>


Haskell Packages for Development - <AUTHOR> https://wunki.org/posts/2014-05-17-haskell-packages-development.html <comment><USER2> Greg Weber gave an awesome talk at BayHac 2014 on just this subject. [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1suMuLRo1xS5NxWn-L9lG...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1suMuLRo1xS5NxWn-L9lGHtVNpOH48F9ZnDyv5PyxEpI/edit?pli=1#slide=id.p)

<comment><USER3> Any chance there's a video of that talk?

<comment><USER4> The videos for BayHac 2014 have not been (officially) released.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I built a template for hi that sets up stylish-haskell, a test suite, an executable, and much more. Check it out: [http://taylor.fausak.me/2014/03/04/haskeleton-a-haskell- proj...](http://taylor.fausak.me/2014/03/04/haskeleton-a-haskell-project- skeleton/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Of course, when I last tried installing stylish-haskell (last week), it insisted on taking non-compatible/broken dependencies. Yes, on a clean environment.

When I learn more Haskell, I may succeed to figuring out what's wrong.

<comment><USER4> The package management story in Haskell, I don't want to say broken, is just too complicated for beginners, err actually everyone.

For instance, to install stylish-haskell you will ultimately need the "happy" executable, but cabal is not smart enough to get it for you.

I don't know what a "clean" environment means, nor do I know what you mean by "broken dependencies." Did you:

        mkdir stylish-sandbox
        cd stylish-sandbox
        cabal update
        cabal sandbox init
        cabal install happy stylish-haskell
        cabal copy
        cd ..
        rm -r stylish-sandbox

That might work.

<comment><USER7> so, what does `cabal copy` do? copy the sandbox to your local .cabal/bin/?

<comment><USER4> yeah

<comment><USER6> Doesn't do it. In other news, stylish-haskell appears to have been updated and now installs. :)

Still, as a first experience of haskell, it ain't great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It still takes a long time when sandboxing if you're on a project using yesod and you get to re-build the entire dependency set for each project.

<comment><USER4> Sandboxing is merely a stop-gap to reproducible builds (I hope). Nix style multiple instances of the same version of an installed package will lead to better reuse, thus faster builds.

If the fingerprints can be made precise enough, binary caches can be distributed from trusted parties, similar to what other package managers do.

<comment><USER8> Just a thought, why not have fingerprints be like a Merkle tree?

A (naive) example: a built package has the hash derived from the package identity and all dependency hashes at compile / link time.

<comment><USER4> This is the plan I think, or something like it.

Currently package _are_ referred to by unique hash that sort of works this way, but there are few unfortunate restrictions in GHC and cabal that need to be lifted to allow future installations to not conflict with past installations (multiple instances of the same version, right now there can only be one foo-0.1.0.0 even though it also has a unique hash).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The amazing story of illegal arms dealer Viktor Bout (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/magazine/17BOUT.html?ref=viktor_bout&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Check out the archives of the blog Yorkish Ranter. He ran a Bout-tracker, that scanned the air flight databases of places like Sharjah, to track the flights of Bout-connected shady air transport companies.

Very interesting.</comment>


Learning in Business by Following the Heart  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/jobs/27boss.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> What's with these NYT fluff pieces where startup gurus tell their "story"?

While TechCrunch gets knocked for various shortcomings, the NYT sure doesn't seem to be trying hard with regards to tech startup coverage.</comment>


Show HN: Get latest job offer detail from tech companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.branchtip.com/ <comment><USER2> (Requires LinkedIn credentials)

<comment><USER3> If you cancel it, it will throw "Internal Server Error"

EDIT : [http://www.branchtip.com/oauth2callback?error=user_cancelled...](http://www.branchtip.com/oauth2callback?error=user_cancelled_authorize&error_description=The+user+cancelled+the+authorization&state=987654321)

I think here else case is missing.

Another thing IF you mimic actual url param '[http://www.branchtip.com/oauth2callback?code='](http://www.branchtip.com/oauth2callback?code=') it will show ``code length = 0``

^ Might be log.</comment></comment>


China's tech sector is in the doldrums - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2019/03/09/chinas-formerly-white-hot-tech-sector-is-in-the-doldrums <comment><USER2> [https://outline.com/7Cdf8g](https://outline.com/7Cdf8g)

</comment><comment><USER3> > By one count 48 million people in China lack sufficient drinking water. The > number of people facing severe drinking water shortages doubled to 5.9 > million in early 2008 because of a severe winter drought. China has more > than a fifth of the world's population but only 7 percent of its fresh > water.

Not from the article, but if there was a startup needed and one that could jump start their sector there, a significant problem to solve is clean water.

<comment><USER4> What's China's position when it comes to desalination? I'd expect they have massive desalination plants along their large coast.

<comment><USER5> The problem isn't the lack of fresh water sources, the distribution network is riddled with pathogens. This is due to poor design and workers taking shortcuts (not performing sanitation steps to meet deadlines).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any time I see an article about China's tech doom I'm skeptical. Are there any solid, trustworthy sources for statistics on these matters? Where should I be looking for signal?

<comment><USER7> All western, liberal media sources refuse to publish anything that paints China in a good light. <conspiracy-theory>I think it is because the US is falling behind while China is pushing forward.</conspiracy-theory> However, China media sources are as completely bias as western sources, only in the opposite direction. I suspect reality is some where in the middle.

<comment><USER8> Western media sources (many of which are not liberal) rarely publish anything that paints anyone in a good light. Why should they make an exception for China? They hold everyone's feet to the fire all the time, and so they should.

<comment><USER7> I used the term 'liberal' as in they are pro-market, which the Economist claims to be.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TechMeetup alongside Startup School - <AUTHOR>

There a few of us scots invading SF for the startup school, so to get the most out of the trip I think it would be a good chance to meetup with some of the local tech people outside of startup school and see what everyone is working on (and to show everyone what we are working on).
there are 3 things that would need to be sorted, date, venue and format
Date: the sunday after might be the best?
Venue: I have talked to some poeple and noisebridge looks like a good candidate.
Format: since startup school will have all the big keynote type talks, I think this should be quickfire talks, three 5 minute talks about your startup in a row, then a 20 minute break for socialising, and do that two or three times?
hopefully we can get some pizza and more importantly beer :) on the go.
Does this sound good? if you think a different venue/date/format would be best then just say nothing is set in stone. any anyone who wants to present their startup, speak up :) <comment><AUTHOR> for a bit more of an idea about what I was thinking about,

<http://techmeetup.co.uk/blog/> are meetups that are ran in scotland by hassy and sam collins, we have had a good few bunch of speakers so far and its been incredibly useful just knowing what everyone is up to, the pizza and beer help as well.

</comment><comment><USER2> Could be fun. We're planning a big tech event in Scotland for next year if anyone fancies coming over to reciprocate! ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like an awesome plan to me. I should be around at least 21st-28th, but I was kinda hoping to catch a football game (just because I've never seen a real one before) on the Sunday. Still, Tech Meetup would trump that if it did happen to clash.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would be definitely interested.

Btw there is bunch of guys(startup people, entrepreneurial students etc) coming from Finland to visit the Valley roughly 23rd-31th, so some of our guys could perhaps attend and even help to organize the meetup.

<comment><USER5> I'll be in CA from Oct 20th to 28th and would be definitely interested in joining. Coming from Estonia, close to Finland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> not a scot, and not from the area, but still interested!</comment>


409A Valuations – Why get one? What to expect - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ltse.com/409a-valuations-why-do-i-need-one-and-what-to-expect-daae30c8e003 <comment><USER2> Hey, a fast409a.io developer here. We think 409As are a waste of early founders time and money. The law is broken and does nothing to prevent tax abuses. All it does is distract early founders from working on their startup. However, for as long as the law exists there should be a painless way to get it out of the way.</comment>


Using Facebook Notes to DDoS any website - <AUTHOR> http://chr13.com/2014/04/20/using-facebook-notes-to-ddos-any-website/?

<comment><USER2> > In the end, the conclusion is that there's no real way to us fix this that > would stop "attacks" against small consumer grade sites without also > significantly degrading the overall functionality.

Nonsense. Every web crawler should have some form of rate limiting. That's just good etiquette. I can control the number of requests that the Google search indexer sends to my site via webmaster tools. I don't see a good reason why Facebook can't be a good net citizen and do the same.

<comment><USER3> Especially, Facebook is not supposed to intelligently crawl websites but to just proxy images. That's an easy one.

<comment><USER4> Ah, but intelligently for whom?

Benefits to Facebook might outweigh intangibles like "being nice" to the people and places they are indirectly making money off of.

<comment><USER5> I think in this intance we've passsed the line between "not being nice" and "being a dick", or in this case being an accessory to a dickish move.

If the issue is used to DoS a site Zuckerberg cares about, not that I would encourage such action as it would in itself be a dick move, I'm sure some form of rate limiting will be implemented in short order...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is actually the _third_ time this has been submitted [1] (including once by the actual author of this post). There's an extra `/?` appended to the url so HN thinks it's a different link. Not sure why - just adding the slash and question mark doesn't change the target.

[1] [https://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/past_month/0/ddos%20facebook](https://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/past_month/0/ddos%20facebook)

<comment><USER7> Next post: using hacker news to DDoS any website.

<comment><USER8> Actually it has a name, "The HN Effect" (inspired by "The Digg Effect", I guess) and it's a real thing as many web sites go down when they are featured in the front page.

<comment><USER9> Actually it has a name, "Slashdot effect".

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

<comment><USER10> Theres so many local variations. In the german speaking part of the internet, there is the verb "geheist", after a popular tech news site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thought Facebook had already fixed it. I tried with an image on my domain and it only went till about 660KB/s.

Then I found a bigger file.

It's now maxes out my upload speed (50mbps on fiber). The notes have been deleted but Facebook continues to do http requests for the file. That, or Apache continues to write requests to the access log after they finished and Facebook does not close active connections when it knows that the answer will never be used.

Edit: Found a video (big file) hosted by Facebook. Guess who's under attack now :D

Edit2: Seems they're loading at about 1.6-1.9gbps speed, calculating from how quickly the images seem to 'load' (become blank 1x1px images) on my client and how big the actual file is.

<comment><USER12> I wonder, what is the legality of having them DDoS themselves, using something they've suggested will not impact on someone of their scale, and that they won't fix?

Are you breaching their ToC or AUP? (I'm sure I've "agreed" to it but I doubt I've ever read it in full.)

<comment><USER11> I have no clue and I personally do not really care :P

It's way easier to just fix the issue than to sue me, as long as I don't noticeably disturb their infrastructure (i.e. don't bother other users).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > In the end, the conclusion is that there's no real way to us fix this that > would stop "attacks" against small consumer grade sites without also > significantly degrading the overall functionality.

Why not just limit the number of request per site _and_ per user? Ie. John Smith can only make X request (let say 1000) to www.google.com.

Doesn't seem too hard.

<comment><USER14> They state that 400-800 mbit/s == consumer grade sites? really?

<comment><USER15> Outbound traffic. That's only serving up a few large images a second. It's entirely IO bound on network output. Getting a 1Gbps connection is not a big deal.

<comment><USER16> I don't know what your setup is like but a connection != the requests my webserver can handle.

<comment><USER15> I know, it was two separate comments. A: It's "just" IO, performing probably the most heavily optimized IO pattern in the world (serving static files) and B: buying a 1Gbps uplink is trivial.

<comment><USER17> >"buying 1Gbps uplink is trivial"

1 Gbps dedicated uplink is not trivial everywhere in the world. You also need more quota. Facebook easily crawled more than 1 TB of data during an hour. The more the better may not be best solution here. The higher the uplink, faster Facebook may crawl. So instead of transfering 1 TB in an hour for a 1 Gbps uplink, the transfer will be 10 TB if you have 10 Gbps. This will also depend how much bandwidth they allow their crawler, there must be an upper limit though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Could one use this to attack Facebook from within its network, bypassing its DDoS mitigation measures?

<comment><USER19> I'll bet that if it could then suddenly they might start caring more about it.

<comment><USER20> I'll bet that could end you up in jail.

<comment><USER21> Wait... This comment thread looks familiar. Did this happen already?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised they aren't going to give him a bounty for this. I also assume they realize that most reporters will post their rejected findings soon after they get denied.

If enough people start using technique they will have no choice but to create a fix for this.

<comment><USER22> It doesn't really hurt Facebook.

<comment><USER23> Tying up these servers impacts them, makes people start blocking them, breaking this service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Same as [http://chr13.com/2014/03/10/using-google-to-ddos-any- website...](http://chr13.com/2014/03/10/using-google-to-ddos-any-website/)

<comment><USER25> so if Facebook and Google got this bug ... or feature ... point one to another and boooom goes the internet!

<comment><USER26> But isn't Google constantly "ddos"ed by definition? (I mean simultaneously used by almost every computer on Earth).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ideally, if the webserver should just return HTTP 420 (Enhance your calm), 429 (Too many requests), or 509 (Bandwidth Limit exceeded).

<comment><USER28> Side note: 420 is not a standard HTTP error.

<comment><USER29> While this is true, it's also not a huge problem, exactly:

      > HTTP status codes are extensible. HTTP applications are not required
      > to understand the meaning of all registered status codes, though such
      > understanding is obviously desirable. However, applications MUST
      > understand the class of any status code, as indicated by the first
      > digit, and treat any unrecognized response as being equivalent to the
      > x00 status code of that class, with the exception that an
      > unrecognized response MUST NOT be cached. For example, if an
      > unrecognized status code of 431 is received by the client, it can
      > safely assume that there was something wrong with its request and
      > treat the response as if it had received a 400 status code. In such
      > cases, user agents SHOULD present to the user the entity returned
      > with the response, since that entity is likely to include human-
      > readable information which will explain the unusual status.

[http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-6.1.1](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-6.1.1)

This text was basically unchanged in httpbis: [http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf- httpbis-p2-semantics-2...](http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf- httpbis-p2-semantics-26#section-6)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Now that they've been informed and chosen to do nothing do they have some legal liability if it's used in an attack?

</comment><comment><USER31> To the people saying that this won't really hurt facebook, I beg to differ, this is a relatively simple to deploy DDOS attack, if enough people start utilising it, I can see a fair amount of Facebooks resources being tied up in these attacks.

They will only fix it when it starts to hurt them it seems.

</comment><comment><USER32> This can be fixed easily ( i have read it fast, but i suppose this could be a fix)

Add a boolean to a attachment in the db, queryDiff

Add a string (for md5 hash)

Calculate the hash on every file with a query parameter, if the file is requested the second time (with different query parameters), check if the file hash is the same. If the file hash is the same, change the bool queryDiff

Next time you fetch the file, queryDiff is false, so you shouldn't fetch the url and only get the original one (which was already downloaded)

<comment><USER33> There's no way to know if difference in query parameter is a different image or not, you can't simply re-use a prior URL which is equivalent but for query param in place of a new one.

        http://example.org/images?image_id=12121
        http://example.org/images?image_id=7272

<comment><USER32> If

       http://example.org/images?image_id=12121
        http://example.org/images?image_id=7272

contain the same images, chances are very high that other query parameters will be the same.

If they are different, chances are very high that other query parameters are also different.

Want to up your chances, then instead of only 2 requests, raise the bar to 10 different query parameter checks and add some additional db values (like CountFetch:int,sameUntillCurrentFetch:bool)

As soon as sameUntillCurrentFetch = false, then you request all images in the future. If CountFetch = 5 and sameUntillCurrentFetch = true, then queryDiff = false.

It's kinda weird my answer was downvoted, any better solutions to avoid the stated problem then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This looks like a great free load testing tool! :)

</comment><comment><USER35> This is one of those "worse cast scenarios" when it comes to web application design...

</comment><comment><USER36> So giving a 404 for unknown get parameters should fix this for your own site? A way for Facebook to detect such a thing would be to hash the images and when two images have the same hash and only differ by some get parameter it could remember that it can ignore that parameter.

<comment><USER37> Not a reliable check. If the first 2 are the same, then this would cause a false positive as the third, fourth and fifth could all be completely different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Interesting. I wonder if being behind CloudFlare would mitigate this?

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm really impressed digital ocean droplets can sustain ~900mbps

</comment><comment><USER40> You can do the same thing with Google Docs...

</comment><comment><USER41> So now Facebook can DDoS anyone they like, and claim it's out of their control?

</comment><comment><USER42> Just use etags!

</comment><comment><USER15> He's using "outbound" traffic as a DoS metric which is sort of novel. I guess it looked better than "1000 HTTP requests"?

<comment><USER17> Actually the number of HTTP requests is 180,000+.

<comment><USER15> An an HTTP request requires what, 3 packets inbound? Just saying calling it a "DDoS" seems slightly generous.

<comment><USER17> We also have to remember that these requests are shared between 100+ Facebook server.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Approaches to PostgreSQL Replication and Backup - <AUTHOR> https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2018/02/21/three-approaches-to-postgresql-replication/ <comment><USER2> A fourth option, for those in physical datacenters who do not need to run active/active, is of course to eschew network replication entirely in favor of a RAIDed JBOD shared between two or more servers. If you have the hardware, this is often the easiest to configure, and the most efficient.

EDIT: I should clarify that, like the other HA solutions in the article, of course you need to couple this with a backup solution, like periodic dumps to S3, such as the article suggests.

<comment><USER2> Those downvoting, care to give a technical reason why I am wrong?

<comment><USER3> The short answer is that RAID is not a backup solution.

<comment><USER4> It also doesn't manage failover. Shared storage is a totally viable approach. (I've worked as a PostgreSQL DBA for over a decade and have built multiple shared storage-based HA environments for multiple employers.)

If you mis-manage failover, _you will destroy your data_. This makes proper backup even more important.

<comment><USER2> Nor does Postgres replication manage failover. Either way you need a 3rd party tool.

Yep, botched failovers are bad. Of course, a botched failover between replicated DBs is no walk in the park either. In many such cases you'll still want to pull backups anyway, if there's no clear way in your domain to merge two "authoritative" databases.

<comment><USER4> > _In many such cases you 'll still want to pull backups anyway..._

In _all cases_ where you care about your data, you must take backups. There is _no substitute_ for that step.

Additionally, you want to periodically restore your backups and test them for validity — ideally automatically. There's a saying in the ops world, borne of bitter experience:

"Your backups are only as good as their last successful restore."

<comment><USER2> What grantwu said. You misinterpreted me. Seems to be a theme today. I guess I should spell things out more clearly in the future.

<comment><USER4> Ok, my apologies. I've never heard that phrasing before, but now that you clarify, I understand it.

Ambiguity in online discourse is an ongoing problem. Thanks for helping resolve this occurrence without acrimony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sorry for the dumb question, but which of the 3 approaches is pg_basebackup?

My understanding was/is that with pg_basebackup the new replica would only need to replay state changes since the last checkpoint, not "the entire state from the primary node—from the beginning of time". What am I missing?

<comment><USER3> Definitely the third one and possibly the first one depending on what's being backed up. It seems to imply it's just a logical pg_dump backup going to the offsite store but doesn't clarify.

The second option is at the physical block layer. It's not specific to any one DB but is a bit of a blunt instrument (works everywhere but lacks finesse).

The third option would involve base backups being pushed off site as well as archived WAL logs. The replicas would restore the base backups, then catch up via WAL logs. Finally you can directly link up to the master to have a live standby for read only queries. This is the approach used by the WAL-E and WAL-G backup/restore tools and is the one I generally recommend as it has the most flexibility and resilience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm, just a quick clarification for the first approach. It says that the replay operation may then introduce significant load on the primary node. Is this because when new nodes are added, the logs have to be dumped to the new slave nodes from the beginning, and the IO to do so is expensive, possibly interfering with normal operation of the master node?

<comment><USER7> That's how I read it.</comment></comment>


The JVM is not that heavy - <AUTHOR> https://opensourcery.co.za/2017/01/05/the-jvm-is-not-that-heavy/ <comment><USER2> Start time and memory usage are atrocious. This is heavy plenty enough.

> To clone and run one sample app I needed to upgrade XCode, upgrade the > command line tools for XCode (>6GB in total), install a new Ruby version and > bundler and then bundle install in the sample app...

> That whole exercise took hours.

Just because you do sh&t with even heavier and crazier tools doesn't change the fact that JVM is heavy. You just look in wrong direction, that's all.

> I run at least 5 JVM processes on my 2012 MacBook Pro with 8GB of memory. > This is all day, every day. I would never have tried to start 5 Rails apps > at the same time.

Wow, what an accomplishment. I run twice that number of Python web applications on a VPS that has 768MB RAM, and the server hosts also other things.

You just don't have the right perspective.</comment>


Why you should take everything Mike Arrington says with a grain of salt. - <AUTHOR> In talking about the Flip Ultra (video camera:)<p>"And I just can't figure out why people like this thing." http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/05/the-flip-v-my-cheap-canon-camera-flip-loses-across-the-board/<p>That single sentence discredits quite a few things he says for me since it's really simple why people like it. It's simple! Duh! <comment><USER2> I can understand someone posting an article then other people commenting on why they disagree, but to start a thread just to say "here's another reason I disagree"? I don't get it. Not only that, but saying one sentence (minor at that, in my opinion) discredits "quite a few other things" but not listing them? I don't know... there's a lot of useless stuff being posted on HN lately, but I don't waste my time (or other people's time) saying "this doesn't belong on HN" over and over and over. This just seems to cross a line though, so I felt the need to reply.

On top of that, what's with all the Arrington bashing lately? Some of his stuff is good and some is questionable. If you disagree with him, great, just put some meat into the argument. This just seems like you're going out of your way to post something negative. If you want to lay out your arguments for the "quite a few things", that could lead to an interesting thread, but I just don't get what you were expecting to achieve by posting this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry but I totally disagree. I don't need any more links to TechCrunch. I think I can figure out how to subscribe to TC's RSS after the first 100 or so simple links.

I tried to start a discussion instead, based on the fact that he doesn't "get" the Flip. He's a guy that puts himself out there and implies that his opinion is better than others.

Which gets to my point: How can he be soooo wrong here? He acknowledges that people LOVE the flip, he acknowledges that they've been "harsh" (and really, wrong) on the flip in the past, and he goes on to make a list of all the reasons why it's wrong.

And it's the same reasons that people use against the iPod, iPhone, Basecamp, and lots of other really really good products.

Lets go through them:

1\. "doesn't play nice with Macs" - Fair point. Could be better, but macs are what, 5% of the market. And I'm posting from a mac.

2\. "editing video requires a number of extra steps". That doesn't even mean anything to me. Have you tried to capture video from a camera (point and shoot or video)? The Flip's individual files are by far easier than trying to capture from a tape.

3\. "Flip insists on encoding video in a proprietary format that iMovie can't handle directly". They said the same thing about aac and the iPod. People don't care.

4\. 99.9% of people DON'T EDIT VIDEO. He's bashing a great product on a non- issue. Has he never seen youtube? View the "most recent" posted videos, not all the ones on the front page, and there's billions of 12 second clips of people goofing off.

5\. MA then goes to a laundry list of features that some random camera does better than the flip. Again, was he not around when the iPod or iPhone came out? It's the interface stupid, people don't care about features. No one gives a flying leap about any of that. They want to know how much video it holds, and that they press a red button and a trash can, and a play button. Oh, and they don't have to buy more cards, and they don't have to buy some stupid adapter for said cards, and there's no stupid card to lose with all your video on it.

6\. "But my Canon is pretty darn easy to use, too". Please read "The Paradox of Choice". Does your cannon have more than 3 buttons?

7\. "There is no way I'm going to drag two devices around when I only need one: The Flip loses." Hi. iPod. Bye.

8\. "More and more mobile phones take video now, too, and can use wifi or cell connectivity to stream the footage to the Internet." Wow. Just wow. Why would anyone who cares about streaming footage directly to the internet care about the flip? Good lord. This is like saying, "No one will ever buy a VW Beetle because they can't go 200 mph." Good lord, how wrong can you be?

9\. And now for the best part: " That means Flip is getting hit from three competitive directions: mobile phones on the low end, decent camcorders on the high end, and tens of millions of everyday digital cameras that outperform it on video." Mike, have you considered there is room in the market for more than 1 type of product? That no video camera needs to rule them all. That the Flip is in no way targeted at you? And that you don't represent the target market in any way?

So why does this discredit him in "quite a few things"? This should be his forte. All the time he says he rejects talking about companies because they have "bad products" (like the guy that broke into his house this week). As someone else points out about Ning, he's constantly spouting off his (sometimes) terrible opinion, and then touting how much he knows about this stuff and how influential he is (see his back patting on the TC40 stuff). So, as I said in the title, this is precisely "Why you should take everything Mike Arrington says with a grain of salt."

<comment><USER3> I can't stand the new, delusional Arrington, but I agreed with every point in this particular article. I have the same digital camera, and had a flip. The canon is great, and super easy for video. It plays nice with both Macs and PCs and... also takes great still shots. The flip sucks balls in comparison, for all the reasons MA states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't a good example of Arrington being off-target. His point that you can get a much better product for less money is well-supported in his article. How hard is it to use a point and shoot camera exclusively for video, if that's what someone wants to do? A crayon and paper are simple too.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is typical Arrington:

 _So I haven't actually tried out the new Flip Mino. But I've spoken with people who have, and I used the Flip Ultra, which launched late last year, for a while before abandoning it. And I just can't figure out why people like this thing._

So you're reviewing something you've never used? _That's_ credible.

I assume the people he's "spoken with" here are the same people he's spoken with about twitter being slow because of Rails. I'm starting to think that Arrington has a lot of "imaginary friends."

</comment><comment><USER6> That is his opinion, and I doubt it would stop someone from buying the product. Mr Arrington bashed Ning on of his first reviews and said it was headed it to the Deadpool. Well, 560M dollars later, Ning prove that Mr Arrington opinion is just that. He can help you with a lot more traffic than your servers can handle, but he won't stop people from hitting BUY if they like it enough.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't exactly qualify Ning's funding as egg on Arrington's face.

<comment><USER8> Neither would I, however he offered other reasons for changing his opinion on the value and prospects of Ning well before their recent funding round.

Example: <http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/26/ning-in-full/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's a pretty poor argument to support your thesis. There are plenty better ones out there, some of them straight from Arrington's mouth, i.e. he's basically said the key to techcrunch's success is that they don't have to go through the whole verification process that other media outlets do - in other words - take everything he says with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can handle him saying this...He is a features guy, he likes a lot of features.

I will begin to lose respect for him when a company he invest his money in goes on stage at TechCrunch 50.

I will definitely lose all respect for him if one of the start ups he invests in wins TechCrunch50. At some Point he needs to decide if he is his own PR firm or a third party commentator.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's what discredits Arrington for you? How about the way he pimps the startups he invests in a la Seesmic video comments? All the same, I still read and enjoy his site.

</comment><comment><USER12> To be fair, you should probably take everything anybody says with a grain of salt.</comment>