Crowdsourcing and user generated firings - <AUTHOR> http://www.rogerd.net/articles/crowdsourcing-and-user-generated-firings

<comment><USER2> I think "crowdsourcing" is a bit of a flaky concept, really. You're not getting anything valuable from Average Joe, you're either getting a democratic assessment of something (ie, 1K Average Joes), which is nothing new, or you are tapping into the top 1% of a particular niche.

That being said, the concept of firing your employees to tap the crowd as an entity for free is completely flawed.

What I find more likely to happen is that the crowd, whether the 1% or the group as a whole will begin to understand the value they create and will start to charge for that value. If the business community wants to hasten that reaction by ensuring the crowd is as under-employed as possible, then so be it. This generation of workers has shown themselves to be much more adaptable than "super efficient" businesses ever were.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing about crowdsourcing in tech support is that the crowd is the one that's experienced the problem, and is practiced in using the solution. The thing that Brad Smith does not understand is that the technical support staff from Intuit play a different role in the ecosystem around his product than user experts; and removing the in-house tech staff would likely drive away the user experts.

I don't think the 'crowd' is going to wake up and start charging for things they currently do for free because the most effective forms of crowdsourcing depend on small individual contributions being given collective effectiveness by the context.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Biggest wins when reducing cloud computing costs - <AUTHOR> I'm curious about the best ways people have found to reduce cloud infrastructure costs.<p>Has moving from a third-party service to a self-managed solution been worth the additional work required?  What about simply shopping around and switching from one vendor to another? <comment><USER2> It's going to depend upon your scale, and your architecture.

Rearchitecting your application to avoid $10K a month in cross-AZ replication may make sense. Doing that to save $10 a month is likely ridiculous.

Migrating between vendors to save a few bucks is generally a fool's errand for anything that's sufficiently complex. Find a platform, commit to it, and then work to leverage resources responsibly within that platform.

Remember that "elastic" means scaling down as well as up.</comment>


This couple built their own tiny home for $10,000 - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/this-couple-built-their-own-tiny-home-for-less-than--10-000-162920658.html <comment><USER2> I was wondering how hard it would be to convert a 40' high cube cargo container into living space. Tricky to get light in but renting a plasma cutter is fairly inexpensive. You'd get to start with a nicely durable structure for not too much more than they paid for the trailer platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> Correction: They built a trailer and mooch off the girls parents. Not really all that commendable.

<comment><USER4> It seems like the right order to do things actually, I can understand starting off that way. It's not too different from simply building a traditional house on the land permanently (whatever you think of building on your parents property), both are a step up in certain ways compared to simply living in the parents house. And this one is on wheels, it can be moved away at some point if they want to.

I think it'd be worth it, if at all possible, to build in such a way that real plumbing can be swapped in when the time comes. "litter box for humans" is making me cringe :)

Also the parts of this story that are about them as a couple are cute I think.</comment></comment>


Show HN: DashNotes – Gather Notes directly to your new tab page - <AUTHOR> http://dashnotes.rocketfuse.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

I made DashNotes in the last couple of evenings. DashNotes allows users to save notes (text, images, pages) while they are browsing the internet. It requires no signups, and the data isn't transferred to any server. So its super quick to use.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

<comment><USER2> DashNotes looks great, if you'd like to use Diffbot to generate summaries of pinned links, I'd be happy to hook you up with some free calls. Hit me up at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words Mike. I would definitely love to integrate Diffbot, it looks like a really useful add on. I'll give you a shout.</comment></comment></comment>


What percentage of users have opted to stick with smaller iPhones? - k-mcgrady http://qz.com/603581/we-now-know-what-percentage-of-apple-customers-have-opted-to-stick-with-smaller-iphones/ <comment> k-mcgrady Was interested to see the discussion here. I've never liked big phones. I find the iPhone 6 just about possible to use but I need two hands to do most things. The plus device is just impossible for me. The rumours about the potential '5se' (upgraded iPhone 5s) are very exciting and this article shows there is a potential market for it. If Apple can build a phone that's as powerful as the larger devices but with a 4" screen I would definitely go for it. The iPhone 5s screen size was perfect for me. It was pretty much the largest screen I could possibly use with one hand. I'm even willing to give up some features for it (3D Touch for example, which I really like but isn't necessary). As long as performance and the camera are on par with the larger device I'd be happy. I'm sure I'd lose a little battery life but I was always able to get through the day on the older iPhone's so that should still be fine.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nice they will actually thinking of create a smaller device. I hate the size of the iPhone 6s. I upgraded from a 4s which was much needed but I constantly feel like I am balancing the phone when trying to use it one handed. My wife has a 5s and I've considered trading her many times.

<comment><USER2> The article does suggest we are not alone. A sleek and small iPhone would be a hit with a reasonable number of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> This will get me on a rant. I want an updated iPhone 4. I am not small, but the iPhone 4 is so easy to carry around in my pocket that I have not upgraded. Apple if you can't think of anything new then think small.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love a phone the size and shape of the HTC Wildfire S.</comment>


What Amazon's ebook strategy really means - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/understanding-amazons-strategy.html

<comment><USER3> I'd have more sympathy for this point of view if the Big 6 publishers hadn't been running a de facto cartel since, well... forever, and basing their relationship with authors on a business model that could be compared, unfavorably, with a payday loan operation.

The DeBeers artificial scarcity model of publishing doesn't work any more. I won't miss it.

Note that there will still be plenty of work for editors, cover artists, and other creative professionals. There's just no longer a need for a "publisher" that essentially does nothing but sit in the middle and siphon off 80% of the revenue. Art, printing, even copyediting are already largely outsourced by the publishers, and have been for years.

The difference between the old-school publishers and Amazon is that Bezos _knows_ the ebook business can be disintermediated if he starts screwing authors and consumers. It could happen in a matter of months. Maybe weeks. All it would take would be for one Stephen King to hire some guys to set up a server farm and start providing ebook distribution for his fellow authors under better terms than Amazon ("Stephen King" used as a placeholder here for "author with excellent name recognition and some spare capital hanging around" -- I doubt King himself would be interested).

"I had to run my own self-publishing op I'd lose half my writing time to what is essentially a peripheral activity"

Nonsense. He could put his books up for sale with little more effort than it took to put up that blog post.

If he's talking about covers, copyediting, and so forth, you can hire that done. There are even people now who will take care of the whole book package for you for an up-front fee (rather than raking 80% off the top in perpetuity) -- quite possibly involving some of the same people that the publisher is already using.

I really can't think of anyone who's been as consistently wrong about ebooks as Stross (I do like his fiction, though :-)).

Note this post from 2007, where he basically pooh-poohs the whole _idea_ of ebooks becoming a significant player:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/03/why- the-...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/03/why-the- commercial-ebook-marke.html)

As Clay Shirky put it recently, publishing is no longer a _job_ , it's a _button_.

Classic publishing is already dead. It just hasn't stopped twitching yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahem: apropos that 2007 post of mine, I will stand right behind it. Back in March 2007, it was right on the nail.

In case you've forgotten:

\- In March 2007, most book titles from the big six were not available as ebooks at all.

\- Kindle did not exist. (Launched November 2007)

\- Those ebooks that were available were usually priced at the same, _or higher than_ the equivalent paper edition "in order to avoid cannibalizing sales".

\- We had a systematic problem with proliferating, rival ebook file formats: ePub wasn't a standard yet (not until September 2007 - that blog entry was from March '07), Mobipocket was still out there and competing with weird shit like Aportis Doc and iSilo for the PalmOS market, Microsoft was still performing CPR on .LIT format, and so on.

\- Sales of ebooks amounted to less than 0.5% of the total sales of books. The big six were ignoring them, basically.

\- The iPhone as an app platform did not exist. (The original iPhone was announced on January 9th, 2007, but was to only run web apps. The app store lay in the future.) Android didn't launch for another year, and the multitouch big-screen smartphone (capable of running an ebook reader app) simply did not exist.

\- Cheap ebook reader devices ... are still a minority pursuit today, even though the price has pushed down to just under $99; the real breakthrough has been the [free] ebook _apps_ for Android and iOS which turn every smartphone into a potential ebook reader. Back in March 2007, a typical e-ink ebook reader cost around $399 (something like the Sony PRS-505 or the Irex Iliad) and the nearest thing to a smartphone you could buy had _buttons and a stylus_. Not to mention an eye-stabbingly bad screen (anyone else remember having a Treo 650 with a 320x320 pixel display and being so happy because it was an _improvement_ over what they had before?).

I will plead guilty to not having predicted the disruptive effect of iPhone apps in March 2007, sold from an app store that Steve Jobs had pretty much ruled out. How about you?

<comment><USER3> "Cheap ebook reader devices ... are still a minority pursuit today"

Amazon sold over 4 million Kindles in December alone, and now sells more ebooks than paperback and hardcover _combined_.

With one or two exceptions, every serious reader I know has a Kindle, an iPad, or both.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you've forgotten just what things were like even as little as five years ago.

The rate of change in publishing today is like the web circa 1992-97.

<comment><USER4> Have you ever read ebooks on a palm? It was pretty obvious to me that that was the future. It needed someone to take the idea seriously for it to become mass market. Amazon did.

As, I should add, have O'Reilly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have read ebooks on a palm. And on a Psion 5 before that. (I started reading ebooks around 1996-97 and have been banging on about them ever since.)

Yes, O'Reilly. Yes also Baen (via Webscription.net). But there wouldn't be a mass ebook market at this point if the big publishing conglomerates -- who produce 80% of the books sold -- weren't on board with ebook publishing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Har. Nice article and a well-made argument. However I suspect that the big 6 are going to accept a world without DRM the same way as the MPAA and RIAA before them: kicking, screaming and fighting until the last breath to prevent anyone from staunching the massive gaping wounds they've inflicted on themselves.

In an ideal world, a world where media companies do what's best for themselves and their customers, I think publishers would act as you've predicted, for the reasons you've said. But instead I'd wager they'll standardise on some other format, or maybe a few (incompatible, of course) formats, announce some token partnerships with uninspiring hardware manufacturers, and generally mill about without any kind of strategy.

Meanwhile Amazon starts quietly disintermediating its way through the publishers themselves with its self-publishing programme. It starts to look pretty compelling, especially with mushrooming ebook sales. A few medium-big authors make the jump and start crowing about their awesome royalty rates. Publishers freak the hell out. The standard ebook price drops to $5. Repeat until everyone else is out of business.

Frankly, I think the only hope is an indie renaissance a la Bandcamp and the recent wave of DRM-free comedy. A compelling online publishing startup that knows how to appropriately wield its "we're not Amazon" cred could get some serious traction. Most authors I know are pretty savvy, and extremely wary of an Amazon monopsony. Unfortunately, they have to go where the money is, and the available options seem to be dwindling.

<comment><USER6> So, in your doomsday scenario, I get books for $5 and authors make more money? I'll take it.

The crux of Stross's argument for why we should fear Amazon's low prices is that it's "predatory pricing"--that Amazon was selling e-books below cost so they could jack up the prices later after they had their monopoly (or, equivalently, lower payments to authors after they were a monopsonist).

But apparently Stross didn't read the DOJ complaint, because it turns out Amazon's e-bookstore was consistently profitable! 9.99 bestsellers were just the equivalent of cheap milk at grocery stores--loss leaders.

The DRM prediction in the article is pretty good, but both you and Stross misunderstand why Amazon is winning. It's not because they're cheating--it's because they're more efficient and so can make money at lower price points.

<comment><USER5> Oh, I don't think Amazon is cheating. The whole point of disintermediation is to be more efficient and drive down prices. I'm certain prices will be lower under King Bezos, and perhaps payments to authors will stay high (though that's far less certain).

It's important to consider that Amazon has always behaved quite consistently. Even when it had 90% of the ebook market, it was the one pushing to keep prices down. In its other markets (cloud services, physical books, other goods), evidence suggests that it tries to cut prices as much as possible. I'd go so far as to say it's part of Amazon's culture. I don't think they know how to have a big fat margin on something. It'd make them itchy, like their very own fat middleman waiting to be crushed.

So my issue isn't that Amazon is waiting patiently to pump up their prices once they have enough market share. It's more that having no competition is dangerous in itself. Google and Valve, for example, are two companies that I like immensely, and I think they do a great job in their respective markets. Yet Google can arbitrarily cut off access to my email, and Valve can do the same with my games. Both have been known to use these powers when it makes sense to them. I'd change providers, but everyone else, frankly, sucks.

I want there to be robust competition in e-readers, but the Kindle is too good. I want there to be robust competition for e-bookstores but Amazon always has the best prices. There's a kind of bittersweet ambivalence in knowing that the industry leader is there because they're a clever company doing it right, but still wishing that someone else was there to challenge them. Nobody's right always, or forever.

<comment><USER7> _Google and Valve, for example, are two companies that I like immensely, and I think they do a great job in their respective markets. Yet Google can arbitrarily cut off access to my email, and Valve can do the same with my games._

Especially in terms of cloud email, isn't that going to be true of _any_ service provider you choose? That has nothing to do with monopolies, it's just the nature of the beast. People you buy services from can stop providing those services.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. Anyone you do business with can do anything not forbidden by the law. But competition is a great reason to avoid doing things that make your customers unhappy.

If there was another cloud email provider that was as good as Gmail, but additionally had a reputation for never disabling accounts, I would switch to them. Gmail would lose my business, and I wouldn't have to worry about my account disappearing if some bayesnet decides I'm a bad guy.

<comment><USER7> Okay, but email is a highly competitive business. Competition doesn't mean you don't make customers unhappy, it just means you're judicious about how/when you do it. Any time you have to balance customer needs with abuse mitigation and legal compliance, you're going to have to do some things that make some customers unhappy in the name of being able to provide the wider service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The history lesson on Amazon's business model is important, but the OP has it a bit wrong. The business model innovation was about inverting the cash flow and holding cash instead of inventory. Amazon actually pays suppliers much faster than traditional book retailers, making it better for the suppliers.

Traditional book retailers pay suppliers 90 days after the book enters inventory whereas Amazon averaged about 58 days. The problem for traditional retailers is they held books in inventory (i.e. the book went unsold) for an average of 167 days versus Amazon's 16 days. This resulted in retailers carrying the cost of the book for ~78 days while Amazon was able to hold the float for ~41 days.

The end result of that type of inversion is that Amazon can accept a much lower margin, earn the float on the cash and live off much faster inventory turns than a traditional retailer. This was much more brilliant than "disintermediation" - as another poster has correctly noted, Amazon was an aggregator/replacement, not a true disintermediator.

</comment><comment><USER9> I largely agree with the analysis in this essay, but I believe the book market can be more significantly disrupted than is currently being suggested. Here are the significant changes I see:

\- Screen technology will improve so that the distinction between e-paper and conventional displays becomes irrelevant. I really think the retina display on the iPad is good enough for most people in most situations, and that the iPad will be a significant rival to the Kindle in the ebook market.

\- Currently ebook readers are very limited in what they can display, due to their display technology and limited processing power. This limitation will disappear (see above -- the iPad)

\- When the above occur there is no need for a special ebook format. An ebook is just a website. We have a huge investment already in creating websites which makes the cost of doing so virtually zero. Creating a book will require far fewer people (maybe an editor, some marketing assistance, and a few days of a graphic designer's time).

\- Once we realise that an ebook is just a website, we can get away from the idea that a book is a single homogenous entity. Why not sell a chapter at a time, and use the feedback to improve subsequent chapters, in the same way we use A/B testing (or hopefully, bandit algorithms [<http://mynaweb.com> \-- my startup]) to improve sites? Why not sell multimedia packages of text, screencasts, etc for technical books? (This already happens.) This gets away from the stupid model of paying advances that publishers currently use.

\- People will need a discovery mechanism, but we already many of these for the Internet in general. Maybe new ones specialised to books will emerge. In this more open world it will be harder for anyone to get a monopoly.

So, what have I missed?

<comment><USER10> I'm looking forward to a world where some books return to their 1800s newspaper-style formats: short chapters published weekly, like we get some graphic novels on the web now. I WANT to pay the author, and look forward to this happening. It's definitely a great space to look into. It may exist already and I don't know about it? (again, leaving it open for some startup to make waves..)

<comment><USER11> This is happening to some degree in audiobook form with Podiobooks.com - <USER2> authors release episodes weekly, as they write and record them. This is likely happening in text form too, but I find that I listen to rather than read books these days. Also, Amazon bought the dominant digital audiobook distribution platform in Audible.com for what that's worth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some clarifications, I guess? I don't think Amazon is loss-leading the ebook market to secure a monopoly; you do that in an already established market. Instead, what I think they are doing is trying to bootstrap the ebook market. And successfully, at growth rates far exceeding 100% every quarter.

Also, Amazon is not replacing warehouses with on-demand just yet. They are rapidly expanding with many new warehouses opened every year. What they are doing is much more ingenious: they setup marketplace to allow other companies to sell products lacking in Amazons portfolio through their website. Then they offer the vendors to do shipping and storage through Amazon warehouses. Then they ultimately add products generating lots of revenue (and profit) to their own portfolio, cutting out the vendor completely.

As with "amazon basic" products, sometimes their scheme extends as far as to completely replace the producer.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm with Amazon in this battle, and this battle alone, because I want e-books to become cheaper, but in the same time we need to see what we can do about Amazon later on to make them adopt an open e-pub format. I say open e-pub format because others use e-pub, too, and it's still closed (like Apple with iBooks).

We need to get to a point where people can easily leave the Amazon bookstore if they wanted, and they wouldn't feel "locked in" within the Amazon ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER14> But how is Amazon "disintermediating" anything? It's simply taking the place of a previous intermediary (bookshops).

The next step will be that authors will sell to readers directly; that will disintermediate both publishers and Amazon, and there's no reason it should not happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Au contraire: the reason it won't happen is that most folks are not tech-savvy geeks. Most writers want to write, not deal with the minutiae of self- publishing (which is not the same thing at all), and most readers who buy ebooks aren't savvy enough about downloading files and shoving them onto a peripheral device. Oh, and reading books is already a marginal activity: anything that reduces the size of the market by even the 10% who are least tech-savvy is going to hit the producers in the wallet.

(It's easy to lose sight of, but the entire world does not consist of people similar to HN readers gearing up to launch a new startup. Not even close.)

<comment><USER14> My nephew is 14 and has already published not one, but four books on the Kindle platform (one he wrote himself, the other three his grandfather wrote).

The new generations of authors will be very tech-savvy, to a point that may sound incredible now but is very real.

And even if some, or the majority, of authors don't want to do this themselves, why can't they hire a bunch of folks to do it for them? Why would they hand over 70 to 85% of potential returns to a publisher or to Amazon when they can pay someone a fixed price for editing, proofing and page layout, and keep 100% of the returns after that?

Publishers are clearly doomed since they don't provide enough values for the fees they demand; but I doubt Amazon's position is a lot more secure.

<comment><USER15> _My nephew is 14 and has already published not one, but four books on the Kindle platform_

So your example for something that could replace Amazon... is Amazon?

Amazon is doing at least two things really well that is going to be completely impractical for individual self-publishing authors to do on their own: Providing a go-to place for customers looking for books, and payment processing.

<comment><USER14> > _So your example for something that could replace Amazon... is Amazon?_

Yes! ;-) The example was used to refute the fact that authors are technically incompetent. In the next generation most people will be able to put together an ebook.

I think the threat to Amazon will come first from best-selling authors, who already have a faithful following of their own. For everybody else, Amazon is great, for now.

But imagine a future where a search engine can help you find great ebooks, and where a simple payment system can let you buy them directly from authors (charging 2-3% to authors) -- why would you need Amazon then?

<comment><USER15> "a search engine can help you find great ebooks, and where a simple payment system can let you buy them"

You just described Amazon. On top of that, they have the recommendation engine, public wishlist, affiliate program, and allow you to buy all kinds of other products via the same UI.

It's going to be very, very hard for any competitor to become attractive enough for customers to matter. I don't think even best-selling authors can just ignore that factor.

<comment><USER14> Of course customers don't mind one way or the other. Authors do; they'd rather keep 100% than 70% or 30%.

<comment><USER16> Authors realize the importance of distribution channels. They'd rather keep 70% of 100k sales than 100% of 10k sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What would the world be like, if you could instantly buy every book as an ebook anywhere in the world, if ereaders were clearly more convenient to use than paperbooks and if they were so cheap, that everybody who now owns 1 book would own 1 ereader?

I might be wrong, but in my imagination this would be awesome, offering nearly limitless possibilities for disruption. For example the adoption of open- source textbooks in schools would be much easier, academic research in some countries would really benefit from easier access to materials.

I think there is no question that this will be technologically feasible at some point in the future. The question is, if it happens and when. I hope it happens as fast as possible and judging by the development of the ebook world from 1990-2007 and 2007-Now, Amazon is by far more beneficial than the traditional publishers in this regard.

Certainly a monopoly is never optimal, but let's worry about that once the future has arrived. There is always antitrust law. Until then, I hope Amazon (or Google or Apple or ...) achieves as much marketshare as possible and pushes the development onward.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm curious about the economics of self-publishing.

What does it cost for an editor to edit a 300-400 page novel written by a decent author?

How about cover art?

Marketing is an entirely different animal. I dont think you do book tours for ebooks.

<comment><USER19> It depends. Most seem to hover in the neighborhood of around $.01 – .02 per word; take someone like this guy, who I've thought about hiring: <http://www.mikesirota.com/fees.htm> . A typical novel will run about 85,000 words, so he'll probably charge about $1500. I think these guys: <http://www.bookdocs.com/> charge similar prices. If you want to publish a 250,000-word epic fantasy novel, that's obviously going to cost more.

 _How about cover art?_

About $500: <http://www.extendedimagery.com/info.html> . You can probably find people charging more money or less.

This is a topic of great interest to me because I'm probably going to take the plunge in the next six months, if not sooner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I agree largely with this--especially about removing DRM. What complicates it for me is that it's very hard for me to have any sympathy for the publishers as they brought this upon themselves. They can't play victim as long as they keep DRM.

<comment><USER21> And what's to keep Amazon from keeping the DRM even if the publishers don't require it?

<comment><USER22> Just like they did with Audible. And according to this[1] article on BoingBoing, they promised to do away with DRM, but have still not done it in FOUR years! Link[1]: <http://boingboing.net/2008/01/31/amazon-buys- audible.html>

edit: they = Amazon

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra "Amazon has the potential to be like that predatory big box retailer on a global scale." Amazon is not so good at global (compared to other big internet businesses anyway) It only really works in a selected few countries/languages (US + Canada China France Germany Italy Japan Spain United Kingdom, as the site tells us)

Another interesting question arising from that is: What are countries/languages which has no Amazon are going to do? They don't have monopoly, but they perhaps also lag behind in e-book sales, suffering from the lack of synergy and convenience provided by amazon website + readers + applications + 3rd party support.

</comment><comment><USER23> Charlie, while I basically agree with your article, from my perspective Amazon has been good for you: I bought one of your books for the Kindle platform after reading a comment you wrote on HN, liked it, and have bought several more. If the whole process was not so quick and easy, I might not have done the impulse buy and bought the first book. Sounds like a nice town to live in.

</comment><comment><USER24> This was a interesting read and the OP makes a good point. But couldn't the publishers just make a deal with e-book reader makers (which are struggling against Amazon too) and create a DRM "open" standard?

By the way, I'm almost only buying ebooks from Amazon lately and, despite the convenience, this does make me pretty uneasy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect if they tried such a gambit, AMZN could -- justifiably -- call for a DoJ investigation into unfair restraint of trade. (Or just ignore it altogether, insofar as AMZN has still got over 60% of the US ebook market.)

Besides, the whole point of DRM is to impede portability. What's got the publishers into this mess is being more concerned about piracy (and therefore opposing portability) than about empowering a hostile monopsony. The quickest way out of the quagmire is to open up.

We saw this before, with music in the iTunes Store: 2003, everything is DRM'd up the wazoo. 2010: suddenly Warner Music are happy for Apple to sell you un- encrypted downloads. Luckily for the music cos, Apple are primarily interested in selling hardware. Amazon's priorities are different, and much more dangerous ...

<comment><USER25> In one important aspect music differed from movies and books: Music was never in a copy protected format. The point of digital songs with DRM was absurd, because you could just rip & burn an original CD. But movies were copy protected even on VHS cassettes. DVD and BluRay are easy to rip/burn, but pro forma they have a DRM. And ORC scanning of books is inconvenient. It makes sense to at least try to establish a DRM for digital books.

But it is true: "All this has happened before. All this will happen again." (So say we all)

iTunes DRM helped not the big labels, but turned out to be a (small?) competitive advantage of Apple. Steve Jobs just didn't care, because Apple is in the business to sell the razor (iPod). This is a compelling analogy what happens now in the eBook disruption. With the difference that Amazon is in the business to subsidize the Kindle plattform to sell more blades (books).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We recently purchased patio furniture and elected to buy Amazon's brand.

It's cleverly branded "Strathwood" because it was (a) Rated well (b) About 60% as expensive as other, lower rated choices.

The benefit to ME, the consumer, in this case is substantial - better quality, cheaper and - oh yah - shipped in 2 days to my home for free (Prime).

That convenience and quality factor is going to be damned hard to defend yourself against in retail, and clearly this is where the future of consumer retail is going.

The author seems to be arguing against letting this play out in the free market.

Yet in the past decade we've watched AAPL serve consumers with innovation and quality, and vertically integrate themselves into the world's largest company.

We are living through an unbelievable change in consumer purchasing and commerce.

The full impact of this change is hard to overstate, and trying to regulate it properly would be like a sandcastle against the sea at this point.

edit - Calacanis has an interesting article on this as well, further suggesting retail stores, etc -> [http://www.launch.co/blog/amazon-has-a-ton- of-white-label-pr...](http://www.launch.co/blog/amazon-has-a-ton-of-white- label-products-and-is-hiding-them.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> So does this mean that the major publishers have to re-disrupt Amazon's disruptive business model? That seems ironic.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're still reacting. But they've finally woken up and smelled the smoke from their burning walled gardens, and they're trying to form a bucket chain.

The trouble seems to be that 19th/early 20th century anti-trust law, from the era of the coal and steel and oil monopolies, is a _really_ bad fit for modern service industries. Not to mention moving too slowly. And taking aim in the wrong direction. (Such as the DoJ ignoring the $48Bn goliath with 85% market share and taking aim on the half-dozen $1-4Bn corporations trying not to get squashed by AMZN by sucking up to AAPL.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So with all this I wonder if Apple will eventually go non-DRM on iBooks much like they eventually did with music on the iTMS.

</comment><comment><USER29> Faced with the prospect of removing DRM or watching their business die most businesses would rather watch it die.

</comment><comment><USER30> Not everyone lives in cities surrounded by mega bookshop/cafes, prior to Amazon, if I wanted a book I had to order it from the library, pay $2 and pick it up after a 50 minute drive to town. ditto if I wanted to buy a book it was $15-$30 and a 50 minute drive and a really small choice unless I ordered and waited another 2 weeks. (Prices converted from NZ$ to US$) - Amazon delivered actual real books from the US to NZ for less than that and the kindle moves me now to a level playing field with the rest of the world and no trees cut down or gas guzzled in the process.

Seriously I've been stuffed ridged on price for the past 30 years by book sellers and publishers, and as much as I hate corporate evil, I dont consider amazon has done anything evil (yet), and if anything they have delivered payback in the form of a large kick in the nuts to the big publishing houses. If these people envy Amazons business model then make a better one and stop fucking whinging!

</comment><comment><USER31> Don't miss the comments in the article, as they are as worth as the article itself.</comment>


Acting like an extravert has benefits, but not for introverts - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/acting-like-an-extravert-has-benefits-but-not-for-introverts <comment><USER2> >'Thus,' write the researchers, 'the main effects of the intervention were wholly positive, and no costs of extraverted behaviour were detected for the average participant.' The advantages were to a large extent mediated by participants acting more extraverted more often – though, interestingly, not by being in more social situations: ie, by changing the quality of their social interactions, not the quantity of them.

I was under the impression the extrovert/introvert distinction was essentially one of quantity: the introversion demand less social interactions, extroversion more. This conclusion reads to me as if it said, "It is mentally healthy to consistently assert yourself" which I take to be true regardless but that also kinda calls into question this whole distinction to me.</comment>


Linus will not be merging any code from systemd developer - <AUTHOR> http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1677152

<comment><USER2> Oh, the actual bugzilla thread is (if possible) even more depressing:

[https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76935](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76935)

I had actually started to warm to the idea of systemd, thinking that it couldn't end up the same clusterf*ck of mismatched reinventions that didn't really solve any problems that pulseaudio was. I guess it's time to move to Debian/kFreeBSD and ignore this crap.

<comment><USER3> After reading that, I won't fault Linus in blowing up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Systemd is soon to be integrated as the default init daemon for Ubuntu, one of the most user-friendly Linux distributions available.

It worries me that Sievers, and the systemd team aren't approaching testing with an almost paranoid attitude. Linux is finally getting a foothold in consumer desktops, it'd be a shame for people to go back to other operating systems purely because "it broke one day, something about systemd".

<comment><USER5> I haven't used linux on a desktop in several years, but my experience was that "it broke many days, something about everything". Why should this one component be held on a pedestal as make-or-break for the whole OS? Is a broken init daemon worse than a broken xorg.conf from a desktop user's perspective?

<comment><USER6> As you said, you haven't used the Linux desktop in many years. It's come a long way in that time.

For example, editing your xorg.conf is virtually a thing of the past these days. I haven't touched it in years and run a fancy triple monitor setup.

<comment><USER7> right up until a ubuntu kernel update breaks the binary gpu driver, and you spend the next two days trying to figure out which binary or open source driver allows you to run everything the way you were at the beginning of the week. Repeat this every 6 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow. This comment captures it best:

> "Hmm, a user adds to the _kernel_ command line "debug" and systemd starts > spitting out so much crap that the system doesn't boot anymore? That sounds > like a major regression to me. Note this is a kernel command line, not a > systemd command line. Userspace tools should not be using the same kernel > parameters that are defined by the kernel. That's just broken and wrong.

> This bugzilla is the poster child of why people hate systemd and do not > trust the developers that work on it."

<comment><USER9> > Userspace tools should not be using the same kernel parameters that are > defined by the kernel. That's just broken and wrong.

My understanding is that this is not the issue and, in fact, the command line parameters are provided to userspace in the way that they are exactly so that applications can do this kind of thing.

Rather, the real issue is that the flag IS commonly used this way, and systemd's response to it being set was so aggressive that it prevented it from being used for anything else. A not-uncommonly-used system configuration, having "debug" set, was being broken unnecessarily and in an unintuitive way.

<comment><USER8> Yes. Linus explains that the kernel will ignore flags it doesn't know for that reason; however, systemd should not be doing anything with the debug flag as that is meant for the kernel. The systemd flag should be namespaced.

<comment><USER10> I think as always the kernel should be made robust enough (in this case through rate limiting) to handle such abuse.

In a way this Sievers guy is right but he could have been more polite in asking the kernel devs for this feature. And he needs to co-operate by cutting down the log traffic until the kernel is fixed.

<comment><USER11> I disagree - it's not the kernel's job to prevent user-space programs from doing stupid stuff.

<comment><USER10> I think it is. It is the kernel's job to protect itself from user-space mischief. It always has been. For example why are processes isolated from each other? Why does it guard against invalid memory/resource accesses etc? The kernel should be able to protect itself from denial of service attacks and must remain functional at all costs. A fork bomb is equally bad it is no excuse for the current failure mode.

BTW Linus agrees rate limiting is desirable here. This is the reason why I said systemd has to hold off its fire hose until the kernel can take care of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Linus will _not_ be merging any code from Kay Sievers into the kernel until Kay changes his pattern of not fixing problems in code he previously submitted.

<comment><USER13> Early in the thread Linus explains it:

It does become a problem when you have a system service developer who thinks the universe revolves around him, and nobody else matters, and people sending him bug-reports are annoyances that should be ignored rather than acknowledged and fixed. At that point, it's a problem.

It looks like Greg has stepped in as a baby-sitter for Kay, and things are going to be fixed. And I'd really like to avoid adding hacky code to the kernel because of Kay's continued bad behavior, so I hope this works. But it's really sad that things like this get elevated to this kind of situation, and I personally find it annoying that it's always the same f*cking primadonna involved.

Steven, Borislav, one thing that strikes me might be a good idea is to limit the amount of non-kernel noise in dmesg. We already have the concept of rate- limiting various spammy internal kernel messages for when device drivers misbehave etc. Maybe we can just add rate-limiting to the interfaces that add messages to the kernel buffers, and work around this problem that way instead while waiting for Gregs fix to percolate? Or are the systemd debug messages going to so many other places too that that wouldn't really help?

              Linus

They then went into a rate limiting discussion. Later in the thread it seems to have come up again, leading to the post 0x006A summarized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Although I've heard a lot of others disagree, I like the fact that Linus' posts are straight and to the point. No sugar-coating or euphemisms, just telling the hard reality like it is.

<comment><USER15> ...Is a good way to turn otherwise-skilled people with some problematic but fixable habits into people who refuse to work with you ever again.

Brutal honesty works with computers, but it's not always the best policy for keeping humans productive. Linus gets away with it because he's a celebrity, and moreover the right kind of celebrity. These comments would look very different if the public mockery was coming from, say, Steve Jobs.

<comment><USER16> He's been this way long before he was a celebrity coder. This is just how he runs Linux, and I think that is evidence enough that the process works for him.

The team itself might be a self-selecting group of people who can work with Linus. But, overall, I'd say that his brutal honesty works "well enough". It might not be a good way to run a corporate project, but for an OS kernel, the benevolent dictator model seems to work pretty well.

I wonder how the kernel groups at Apple and Microsoft work though... or how FreeBSD is organized... that'd be an interesting comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For anyone interested in what ensued, Greg KH submitted a patch to systemd to fix this issue. Linus then replied (among some other words) to Greg's confirmation of his patch with:

"It does become a problem when you have a system service developer who thinks the universe revolves around him, and nobody else matters, and people sending him bug-reports are annoyances that should be ignored rather than acknowledged and fixed. At that point, it's a problem.

It looks like Greg has stepped in as a baby-sitter for Kay, and things are going to be fixed. And I'd really like to avoid adding hacky code to the kernel because of Kay's continued bad behavior, so I hope this works. But it's really sad that things like this get elevated to this kind of situation, and I personally find it annoying that it's always the same f*cking primadonna involved."

</comment><comment><USER18> This is quite confusing after reading Sievers' reply on Google+ (third comment on the post) [1]

> my last kernel patch is more than a year old, my last non-trivial kernel > patch 2 years old. i stopped working on the upstream kernel "long ago" for > reasons i cannot stand the attitude of these guys, i decided to work with > grown up or funny, or grown up and funny people instead and i enjoy it a lot > more. not sure what this childish blackmail attempt relates to.

[1]: [https://plus.google.com/108087225644395745666/posts/3cWXzYqB...](https://plus.google.com/108087225644395745666/posts/3cWXzYqB6MB)

<comment><USER19> I'm guessing Linus is referring to udev (which is broadly tied to the kernel). For no good reason, udev -- a separate daemon -- was pulled into systemd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> this links provide a better context on the attitude of the systemd developer: [https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76935](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76935)

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems reasonable to me.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't get why there are so many egos in kernel and low-level development circles. I get that it's a bit more challenging than usual application development but the egos seem way too big relative to what's involved.

<comment><USER23> The reason is, in the typical contentious low-level development human interaction, one developer is an idiot with insane scrublord opinions, while the other isn't. So the first developer has an inflated ego, and the second doesn't, and people standing on the side who don't have a clue which is which. In this case, we have one who thinks it's reasonable for the debug flag to bring down the system, and the other is a sane reasonable person who's not going to tolerate this crash-the-planet type behavior any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was looking at devkmsg_open() because of Linus's patch, and I noticed that user->prev initialization is missing in that function and a few other places where seq/idx gets reset.

This is at best a minor bug since it only affects the first line read from /dev/kmsg, but I thought I'd point it out if anyone wants to fix it.

</comment><comment><USER25> The nerd fight tl;dr so far:

\- Kay claims a system not booting due to a casual kernel log flood from systemd is not an issue.

\- Linus agrees the "debug" flag (along with other generic kernel flags) _should_ be used by services like systemd, yet blasts Kay for using it, because it "usually isn't a problem", but here "it's a problem".

\- Linus threatens not to accept kernel patches from Kay.

\- Kay has not written a non-trivial kernel patch for over two years, and doesn't want to write any.

\- Linus agrees rate limiting should be applied on the kernel's side, but that's not a solution somehow here, because reasons.

\- Kay says Linus is involved in a "childish power play".

\- Linus calls Kay a "primadonna who thinks the world revolves around him".

In short: [http://media.giphy.com/media/6HFUDKwlWcAbC/giphy.gif](http://media.giphy.com/media/6HFUDKwlWcAbC/giphy.gif)

<comment><USER26> "\- Linus agrees rate limiting should be applied on the kernel's side, but that's not a solution somehow here, because reasons."

Wouldn't it be better for the entity writing the messages to prioritize them and select the most relevant so that it doesn't write so many that the system cannot start, rather than let an entity that doesn't know the meaning of the messages arbitrarily discard most of them?

Rate limiting seems a last resort not a proper solution.</comment></comment>


MapReduce for the Masses: Zero to Hadoop in Five Minutes with Common Crawl - <AUTHOR> http://commoncrawl.org/mapreduce-for-the-masses/

<comment><USER2> That already hit HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3362163> . Nonetheless, the commoncrawl foundation is a big thing.</comment>


Google vs. China, a game theoretic model - <AUTHOR> http://www.drewconway.com/zia/?p=1994

<comment><USER2> My browser (Firefox 3.5 on Fedora 12) doesn't appear to be interpreting the mathematical symbols correctly; e.g., \Gamma doesn't appear as a gamma symbol, but instead as a grey box containing the characters (without quotes) "\Gamma", and when the pointer floats over the box, I get a popup caption repeating "\Gamma". Any quick fixes?

<comment><AUTHOR> I use a LaTeX plugin for WordPress, but I thought it just rendered them as images. I will see if there is an upgrade, thanks for the heads up.</comment></comment>


OpenBSD source tree moved to version 5.7-beta - <AUTHOR> https://zbsd.org/2015/01/04/openbsd-cvs-tree-moved-to-version-5-7-beta/

<comment><USER2> Even though I fully know that I'm being superficial and silly, I cannot help but find it hard to take seriously projects that do not use either git or mercurial for the sources in 2015.

<comment><USER3> What will git or mercurial gain them? There is no feature they want from git or mercurial. None. Zero. Zip.

DVCS? Easy branching and merging? No. No. No.

Why not? Because that's not how they code. It would actually promote bad behavior.

The OpenBSD way is to write your code correct the first time. Commit often, incrementally. Do not introduce large, sweeping changes that leaves things half broken. Be mindful that everyone else is going to compile and run your next commit. The result is that their HEAD/trunk nearly always compiles and works. They don't have to deal with huge code drops that now make it questionable whether or not they can safely cut a release every 6 months because the code hasn't been tested or reviewed well enough.

Their code practices are better than probably any other project and the lack of features in CVS are the reason.

<comment><USER2> >It would actually promote bad behavior.

Can you elaborate on that?

<comment><USER3> Pretty much as I described -- developers making too many changes without anyone else seeing them and then later doing a big push and now lots of stuff that has changed since is broken.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beaming Good Cheer to a Norwegian Town's Dark Days - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/world/europe/beaming-good-cheer-to-a-norwegian-towns-dark-days.html?ref=science

<comment><USER2> Previous substantial discussion of the project, although this submission is a more recent update of the situation:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6603990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6603990)</comment>


Air pollution linked to far higher Covid-19 death rates, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/07/air-pollution-linked-to-far-higher-covid-19-death-rates-study-finds <comment><USER2> I sent feedback to the worldometer [1] site suggesting an overlay of air pollution and ARDS cases by location. Could this data be graphed somewhere else in the mean time?

[1] - [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to take medicine for asthma but it went away.

When I was asthmatic I found that New York City was the only city I would go to in the U.S. and feel my breathing get worse. At that time I was also going to D.C. and L.A. a lot and had no problems with either of them.</comment>


Build a dirt cheap, tough-as-nails field computer in a Pelican case - <AUTHOR> http://www.southernfriedscience.com/build-a-dirt-cheap-tough-as-nails-field-computer-in-a-pelican-case/ <comment><USER2> For about the same price, you can get a used Panasonic Toughbook on eBay.[1] Those are rugged even with the cover open, and faster than a BeagleBoard.

I've been buying EeePC 1001px machines on eBay for under $40 for some semi- embedded work. I put Xubuntu on them, and they get the job done. If they break, I'm out $40.

If you're going to build stuff for outdoor use, coat the electronics with a waterproof silicon conformal coat.[2] (Mask the connectors first.) This will prevent corrosion on the coated parts. Automotive and marine electronics usually get this treatment at the factory, but, annoyingly, mobile devices usually don't.

[1] [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-ToughBook- CF-30-MK3-Rugged...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-ToughBook- CF-30-MK3-Rugged-Laptop-L9300-1-6Ghz-4GB-160GB-TOUCH-Win7-/161426447741)

[2] [https://www.techspray.com/d-3-fine-l- kote.aspx](https://www.techspray.com/d-3-fine-l-kote.aspx)

<comment><USER3> I dislike these type of replies. Read this:

 _" So I tapped into the wealth of Maker experience I've accumulated over the last few years and build a new one, using a single board computer, some extra peripherals, and a 3D printer. And I shoved the whole thing into a Pelican case. Say hello to the BeagleBox, a dirt cheap, tough-as-nails field computer for about $200."_

Anybody can get a mass produced piece of equipment if they spend money. Not everyone can re-purpose cases, then hardware and convert it into a usable device, that is cheap, hackable and fit for purpose. I have to read this article again.

<comment><USER4> It's fine to build a tool for the sake of building, but if you want to present it as effort-saving you need to compare it to what you can buy if you know where to look.

<comment><USER3> _" but if you want to present it as effort-saving you need to compare it to what you can buy if you know where to look."_

wrong metric(s), cost-saving & (hack-ability).

<comment><USER4> The core of this is a $60 system. It does not save money over a $40 laptop that you could put in the same waterproof box.

And what does 'hack-ability' mean in this context? It's not easier to replace any parts on the beaglebone. Swapping the screen is easier; nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I avoid loyalty to any particular brand, but Pelican makes incredibly durable cases that are unrivaled by anything I (and many anecdotal others) have seen. If you really need to protect something, they are worth the money.

<comment><USER6> In my experience, things that leave pelican cases in smoking ruins were unable to destroy zero halliburton products. I was sufficiently impressed that I switched luggage brands.

<comment><USER7> If you're worried about water, pelican tests their cases to be IP57, IP66, or IP67 rated. I don't see anything about that kind of testing on the zero halliburton site. Also my gut worry is that aluminimum cases w/ metal framed closures would have a tendency to accumulate damage and leak over time more easily than the plastic Pelican cases.

<comment><USER8> It's not in the same league even Pelican makes tools, ZH makes 1000$ posh suitcases and 300$ lifestyle/everyday carry bags.

[http://zerohalliburton.com/collections/](http://zerohalliburton.com/collections/)

<comment><USER9> Wow, that web page is completely unusable on my computer. I'm scrolling at less than 1 FPS.

<comment><USER10> Works fine on my HP Stream 11 with Mint Xfce in Chrome with uMatrix blocking everything except zerohaliburton.com. Scrolling isn't super smooth, but more than usable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know how many of you have worked in or around salt water, but you can't have anything besides stainless steel even exposed to salt air without it corroding. Pretty unlikely a toughbook will last more than a few months in this environment.

Even a pelican case being opened daily will mean corrosive salt will get on the components, but its got more of a chance because it does seal tightly.

</comment><comment><USER12> It looks like he has a v2 build here:

[http://www.southernfriedscience.com/the- beaglebox-2-a-dirt-c...](http://www.southernfriedscience.com/the- beaglebox-2-a-dirt-cheap-tough-as-nails-3d-printed-versatile-field-laptop/)

His blog posts are oddly undated though. Not sure why anyone would decide to omit this.

<comment><USER13> "His blog posts are oddly undated though. Not sure why anyone would decide to omit this."

Because it's the smart thing to do. See [http://doncrowther.com/blogging/blogpostdating](http://doncrowther.com/blogging/blogpostdating), [https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/content-m...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/content- marketing-strategy) or more in general [https://www.google.com/search?q=don't+date+blog+posts](https://www.google.com/search?q=don't+date+blog+posts) .

<comment><USER14> While I can get behind some of the points made in the articles you reference, for tech articles the date provides very important context. Imaging the shift in your thinking if this article was 10 years old. Little in tech is timeless, especially hardware. Put the date, please.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From my experience with a raspberry pi's, they're disks can easily become corrupted. If I needed a rugged computer out in the field, that would be a last choice. (I know he didn't use a pi, but I'm sure the problem still exists.)

<comment><USER8> That's a combination of cheap SD cards and an OS/File System that isn't very conservative on write calls.

Older Pi's basically just eat SD cards for lunch when they were used especially if you had swap enabled which you kinda had too for any realistic desktop performance on the early boards.

It's slightly less of a problem now they have more RAM and tweaks to the OS made the Pi slightly more compatible with SD cards but you are still going to run into problems if you can't fit everything in RAM unless you are really buying high end SD cards (and even then it's a bet).

The same holds kinda true for all of these embedded boards and memory cards (unless you go for CF which are somewhat designed for "HDD" level of RW/ops). If you are going to build Pi style PC I highly recommend to either get one of the Pi like boards that has SATA or get an expansion board like this one [http://www.suptronics.com/xseries/x300.html](http://www.suptronics.com/xseries/x300.html) and just use a normal/low power 2.5" drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Note one reason to go with something like a Beaglebone Black over other options is that it has massive I/O options for electronics and sensors, and the ability to go into massively reduced power sleep modes.(that depends on the kernel, of course)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is cool but what about a waterproof tablet case and the cheapest android tablet you can find? Would probably have the same computing capacity and is easier to replace/carry spares/deploy multiple.

<comment><USER13> Can't hook up external sensors as easily. It's hinted at in the OP.</comment></comment>


Find you nearby on map. - <AUTHOR> http://chatsocial.me Find your nearby on my start chat , send message, find social links. <comment><USER2> Quoting:

      > You can find your nearby on map, start
      > chat online's or send message your likes.

Please, please, if you want to write in English, get a native English speaker to copy-edit your text. The above is clearly a very poor translation of something that's probably clear in its original language, but very unclear in English.

I have an inkling of what it's about, but no real idea, and I'm simply not going to bother finding out.</comment>


No Medium - <AUTHOR> https://nomedium.dev/ <comment><USER2> I'm down with the message of this site but directing people to "just use Hugo + Netlify" leaves out crucial steps for non-devs. While there's a link to a how-to it assumes a level of knowledge many, like myself, don't yet have.

It would be cool if there were instructions for neophytes. I've been interested in hosting a static blog but haven't found resources that outline how.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely want to write this. The problem is time. Would you help me write it maybe?

<comment><USER2> I would be happy to.

ericsilver [dot] us [at] gmail</comment></comment></comment>


Average salary for a Software Program Manager - <AUTHOR>

1. what is the current average salary for a software program manager?<p>2. I have around 8 yrs of exp as a Sr. Dev and now want to move to Program Management. For such cases, any idea of what the avg. salary can be? <comment><USER2> glassdoor.com has pretty good info</comment>


A typewriter where letters are typed via a chord of several keys - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/lorenschmidt/status/1197375291469029377 <comment><USER2> "stenotype, stenotype machine, shorthand machine or steno writer is a specialized chorded keyboard or typewriter used by stenographers for shorthand use"

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


At SEC, a Scholar Who Saw It Coming  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703415804575023402762491286.html

<comment><USER2> Click through from google search for full article: [http://www.google.com/search?q=At+SEC,+a+Scholar+Who+Saw+It+...](http://www.google.com/search?q=At+SEC,+a+Scholar+Who+Saw+It+Coming)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks. The first couple lines were very interesting.</comment>


Deep Learning intuition for a business user - <AUTHOR> https://www.deeplearningtrack.com/single-post/2017/04/24/Deep-Learning-intuition-for-a-business-user <comment><USER2> Interesting...great share on explaining the flexibility in layman terms</comment>


Jacinda Ardern's coronavirus response has been a class in crisis leadership - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-why-jacinda-arderns-coronavirus-response-has-been-a-masterclass-in-crisis-leadership-135541 <comment><AUTHOR> I shared this article for two reasons.

1) I thought it did a good job of calling out the role of leadership as "direction-giving", "meaning-making" and "empathy".

2) It highlights the concept of using a transparent "alert level decision- making framework" as a tool for citizens to make sense of that is happening and why. (see: [https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/covid-19-alert- system/](https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/covid-19-alert-system/))

This is particularly relevant to startup founders who are in the process of making decisions for their companies, and may find value in providing a framework to their teams for decision making before making decisions.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep track of the interesting things you find on HN? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I use [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/) to take notes and tag.

I've been working on Histre and it aims to be your internet copilot, helping you with painless, seamless knowledge management and other things.

One example use-case is, vacation planning. My gf used to use a spreadsheet to research and shortlist AirBnBs. It was painful. We're off to Portugal in a few days and she used Histre to plan the whole thing. She took notes and tagged AirBnB listings right from their website and filtered it on Histre. She's ecstatic ;-)

I'd love to hear from you (email@example.com) and I'll build any features that'll help you.

<comment><USER3> I am confused by what exactly it is that you are trying to do. It kinda sounds like I should upload my internet history to you and then I can tag it? Or do I search through your site?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for checking it out and giving me feedback. I definitely need to improve how I describe it.

Right now it does:

1\. Improved history (tree style, time spent, dedupe)

2\. Improved bookmarks + notes + tags; that is, you can go to any website and take notes and type #tags in your notes. When you go to [https://histre.com/notes/](https://histre.com/notes/) you'll see all your notes. You can filter by tags, search etc.

3\. Low Friction Publishing : when you take notes as described above, you can add #pub and the note will be published and be available on your public page. Here are some notes other members have published: [https://histre.com/pub/all/](https://histre.com/pub/all/)

You'll soon be able to share with just your team, and see only relevant notes/bookmarks from others in the topics that interest you.

I'll also send this to you by email so that you get notified. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use a small bookmarking site i made for saving links quickly. It filters by domain / date / tags, plus i use it to keep notes on links. It also tracks the referer which is handy to remember where i found the link (if available; google search and HN do not allow that though). It also saves an archived copy of the page for future reference. The site is [https://pinplz.com/](https://pinplz.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't, very much. Mostly I read, and move on.

Once in a while, I find something longer which I really want to read later. I save those to InstaPaper.

<comment><AUTHOR> but shouldn't you? At this very moment I vaguely remembered that I came across an offline reader of web pages, but for the life of me I can't remember where I found that ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><AUTHOR> found it, luckily I had parked a web page that linked to it [https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> More like blog posts, articles, links, etc.. I've tried few things in the past from plain browser bookmarking to buku or even just a plain text markdowns. But nothing seems to be a perfect fit to the problem.

Interested to see what other people do and use.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it is a blog that I care about, then I add its rss feed. If it is something else, then I either add it to pocket to read later or store a bookmark in my browser, because I like to pretend it is 1993.

</comment><comment><USER6> The 'favorite' button that is on every post? I assumed thats why its there

</comment><comment><USER7> I grab them with a control-D to a collection I call Alpha. When I have a little time, I right click Alpha and 'open all', which opens them all in tabs. I then view them one at a time, going incognito for some paywalls, and failing to see some paywalls. Those I want, remain in Alpha, others I delete from Alpha. If a site is paywalled and I am able to find a way to defeat the paywall and like it, I keep it. Currently Alpha is at 43, when I get to 50 that I want to keep, I will start a 'beta'. When I have idle time I browse and hop skip and jump until I fall into the arms of Lethe.....

</comment><comment><USER8> Pocket + tags

<comment><USER9> I think that [https://notion.so](https://notion.so) worth a try.

<comment><USER10> Pocket for me too. Wish I could use Notion for this (I use it for many other things), hope they release their Firefox extension soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pinboard.in</comment>


Ask HN: How do you monitor multiple cloud infrastructure services? - <AUTHOR> Our startup is getting ready to launch, and I'm looking for an "easy" way to monitor our usage of the various cloud services that our product is built on. Specifically, I'd ideally like to monitor:
- Heroku performance and system usage
- Heroku logs (optional I suppose)
- SendGrid email usage (how have been sent)
- AWS S3 stats, particularly storage size
- Maybe errors from NewRelic
- Our own internal DB data (signups, etc)
- Etc.
I've looked, and couldn't come up with anything that would let me aggregate these into a single view. My default would be to do something like just opening a bunch of browser windows, or building a plain HTML page with a bunch of iFrames.
I realize constant real-time info might not be necessary all the time, but I'm thinking of like a monitor that just has this up in the background.
What do you all use? <comment><USER2> I haven't used it personally, but I know a couple of people who have had some success using Stackdriver: [https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/](https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/)

For the individual services, there are monitoring tools like S3Stat[1], created by HN user jasonkester. It does a great job and is affordable, but I realize that individual tools like this don't necessarily help with aggregating everything into a single view.

I've been thinking about creating a desktop app that helps with this. When I'm already paying monthly for a bunch of services, I often want to avoid a bunch of extra monthly fees for monitoring them all. The way I envision it, the app would come with plugins for monitoring common services, and make it easy to create new plugins for monitoring any cloud or local service you might have. Do you think something like this would be useful, or just overkill for most people?

[1] [https://www.s3stat.com/home.aspx](https://www.s3stat.com/home.aspx)

<comment><AUTHOR> What you described actually sounds really useful, but probably not for the hobbyist. For people with just hobby projects, yeah, it's probably overkill.

I definitely agree, though. My intent is to monitor for if/when we get close to entering a new billing tier, see any obvious abnormalities in usage, etc. Thanks for the recommendations, I'll check them out!</comment></comment>