Memcached turns 10 years old today - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/gimme-the-cache-memcached-turns-10-years-old-today/

<comment><USER3> Brad Fitzpatrick is one of the most interesting programmers to watch. He's written a dozen _really_ interesting and useful pieces of code. Whatever he's working on is probably worth your attention. Right now he's working on Go at Google.

<https://github.com/bradfitz>

<https://twitter.com/bradfitz>

<comment><USER4> Yes, another of his inventions (or something he was at least involved in implementing) is Gearman (<http://gearman.org/>), a queue/worker system which I used in my last job at a domain registrar/web host to hack up parallelised domain name look-ups. Similar to memcached, it was ridiculously quick and easy to set up and use, and bought me massive efficiency gains with very little implementation cost.

<comment><USER5> Whoa, he did gearman? That's awesome. I had no idea.

<comment><USER6> He also invented and prototyped OpenID.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I followed Brad on LJ around this time, a time before I learned to program but was into running Linux/FreeBSD on my desktop and taking multiple unsuccessful stabs at building things. I remember his post about memcached:

<http://brad.livejournal.com/1893677.html>

I didn't really know what he was talking about but it was really fascinating and inspiring (as a lot of his tech posts were).

<comment><USER8> It's interesting to see that the idea came to him while taking a shower, similar to Clifford Stoll's "Operation Showerhead" idea that took down Markus Hess. I wonder how many of the world's most important inventions were thought up in a shower...

<comment><USER9> This conversation came up within the last week, though I forget where: Rather than being "thought up" in the shower, the shower is more likely the place where the idea seeps into the conscious mind. We're generally in the shower after a night's sleep. During that sleep, we're working through thoughts, ideas, problems. Before we can make use of that processing work, we need it to be accessible to the waking mind. The shower is a place that wakening happens frequently.

<comment><USER10> Sometimes it's a case of ideas popping into our heads when we've relaxed our minds from the problem. eg Some of my best ideas come to my while I'm on the toilet because I can be staring at a piece of code for hours and not find the fault. But the act of walking away from the problem and relaxing my brain for a few minutes is sometimes all that's needed to see the problem from another angle (and thus stumble onto the solution).

It's the same reason that I used to have a bath whenever I'd get stuck on a college assignment.

<comment><USER11> Absolutely! Taking 5 minutes away from a problem can bring to light the solution when you're not trying to "bruteforce" the solution in your head.

Same as sometimes when driving as I'm not focused on work can bring about good ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Memcached actually turns 10 tomorrow - Wed 22nd.

I consider memcached to be one of the most important programs of recent time, it has been a core component for almost every large scale website you can think of. Ubiquity isn't always synonymous with quality, but in this case it clearly is.

Its incredibly powerful and very easy to deploy. A great piece of work, one that has saved my sanity many times, and congratulations to all involved.

</comment><comment><USER13> I miss LiveJournal so much. I was so reluctant to leave it but with all my irl friends migrating to Friendster and then myspace I had no choice. Privacy settings were easy, friend management was easy, desktop client was easy (and powerful). RIP

-quasidan

<comment><USER14> I agree with this a lot. LJ by its nature encouraged writing, not just status updates. It was a much more interesting - if sometimes drama-filled - <USER2> than my Facebook news feed is with many of the same people.

Also, LJ groups have not been successfully replicated by any of the other major social media networks.

<comment><USER15> _LJ by its nature encouraged writing_

Wordpress does the same, which is why I primarily use it and not the innumerable alternatives.

I think the desire to do long-form writing, especially regularly, is a relatively rare one, which is why we see most people migrating to sites that mostly do images / sound bites / etc.

But the people who _do_ do long-form writing will probably always be with us and probably always need tools appropriate to that genre. I don't know much about the history of LJ or why /how Wordpress supplanted it for long-form writers, but I do know that WP works pretty well for me, or at least well enough that I haven't seen any alternatives good enough to consider switching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm always impressed how such _obvious_ tools (e.g. memcached, junit) can change the face of software development.

Do you have similar other _obvious_ ones in mind? (please no rails :-)

<comment><USER17> Git, or in general distributed VC.

Not obvious to implement. But the concept was obvious.

<comment><USER18> Even if DVC lacked the D, the concept of versions being a DAG was an incredibly important. A very big improvement to how classical CVS systems have developers think about history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I must say, the best thing to happen to memcached since memcached has been (in my experience) twemproxy[1].

We ($dayjob) have been using it in production and it has been _solid_. twemproxy is quality engineering.

[1]: <https://github.com/twitter/twemproxy>

</comment><comment><USER4> The other thing that nobody seems to have brought up is the forks, descendants and similar pieces of software it inspired in one way or another: e.g. memcachedb, Tokyo Cabinet, Redis, etc. Memcached's release was very much a watershed moment.

</comment><comment><USER20> Here is the canonical presentation about Brad's fun with scaling Livejournal (including memcached). It's still a good read even now if you want an introduction to the whole topic:

<http://www.danga.com/words/2005_oscon/oscon-2005.pdf>

edit: Think about the number of decade-old pieces of software still used almost universally because they're still one of the most effective solutions in their field. That is what makes me appreciate memcached most of all.

</comment><comment><USER21> Apparently the first version was in Perl - did Brad himself rewrite it?

<comment><USER22> I wrote most of the initial C server. Brad helped with code reviews, some bug- hunting, and IIRC he wrote the first version of the slab allocator. Prior to using the slab allocator, we tried straightforward malloc (thrashed under load due to fragmentation) and Judy arrays (didn't scale).

Brad handled the Perl client (initially the only client), and I think we hashed out the protocol together. I was an employee at LiveJournal at the time.

(I want to emphasize that the credit for the _idea_ of memcached belongs 100% to Brad)

<comment><USER23> Anatoly is too modest to say it, but he deserves credit for being the author of memcached as people know it today. Which isn't to say Brad stole the credit or anything like that, but rather to note most successful projects involve more than one person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Memcached is the ancestor of the front end for Couchbase, so while we regularly come in as one of the most consistently fast NoSQL databases, we can't take complete credit for that (other than picking a great foundation).

</comment><comment><USER25> Such a great, stable, and easy to use product. Keep it simple and reliable.

</comment><comment><USER26> Btw, did anyone else too think of Gimme the cash! when seeing this story <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_aOtFAcO4>

</comment><comment><USER26> Kudos for creating and maintaining one of the most important pieces of software used on the Web today!

</comment><comment><USER27> This makes me feel old.

</comment><comment><USER28> Now I feel old. :(</comment>


Twitter is not a public utility - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Gargron/twitter-is-not-a-public-utility-2bc49567152b <comment><USER2> Federation makes a lot of sense for a micro blogging service, as no community is the same. Allowing for different rules and styles of moderation without trapping users in silos / walled gardens, is exactly what we need in the social media space, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course it isn't, the big question is really whether it should be, since network effects mean it's much harder to compete with established social networking sites/services.

Still, I do hope Mastodon does well, since a federated Twitter esque service makes a lot more sense than a centralised one, and feels far more in tune with what the internet should be.</comment>


Insider Build of VSCode for Windows/ARM64 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/33620#issuecomment-635367046 <comment><AUTHOR> The Visual Studio Code version from the Insiders Program is now available as a native arm64 build for Windows 10. Owners of Surface Pro X can finally use a native editor on the platform.

Still this is still an electron-based editor and even in native arm64 it uses a lot of RAM. On my Surface Pro X, I just launched both VSCode compiled for ARM64 and Sublime Text compiled for ia32. VSCode is using about 300MB+ and Sublime Text (working under built-in ia32 emulation) is using 15MB.

I'm happy to have native VSCode, not only because many people rely on that but because it means that Electron, NodeJS, and node-gyp must be working for Windows on ARM in a somewhat stable manner and that will open the doors for other applications to arrive in the platform soon (I hope).

I know that most readers here are not keen on anything Microsoft related, I understand that and in many cases share the sentiment and views but there might be readers that got an SPX and were waiting for this release like I was. If you were running the insider preview compiled for ia32, it won't automatically change to arm64, you'll need to download again.

<comment><USER2> I feel like a dinosaur because a "native" app to me means pretty much the exact opposite of an electron app.

<comment><USER3> True, but remember when many apps were not made for Linux, because it was not worth it? With Electron at least we have apps like VSCode for Linux too. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

<comment><USER4> Blender, Photoshop, Premiere, Maya, ZBrush, CATIA, AutoCAD, and hundreds of other specialized tools are not moving to Electron anytime soon...

My point is that we shouldn't embrace for Electron just because we want applications in Linux.

In addition, Election is not a guarantee of a Linux port either.

<comment> seph-reed Eventually we're going to just have a means of saying: Save this webpage as an app.

I mean, we do already. It's called PWAs, and I have many of my favorite sites saved as an app. But it's featureless and lame.

Point being, Electron is just a stopgap while PWAs are figured out. And with the advent of WASM, we'll be able to run some pretty heavy stuff.

[https://wasm.continuation-labs.com/d3demo/](https://wasm.continuation- labs.com/d3demo/)

My long term strategy: Learn rust for WASM, keep an eye on PWAs

<comment><USER4> Wasm is still very early and lacks a _lot_ of features. It is also not as fast as a native application.

The browsers also lack many APIs to compete with native applications, and those are not coming soon either.

Web apps are just fine, even nowadays, for many things. But for heavy lifting, no, they are still way, way behind.

(By the way, you can compile to Wasm with almost any popular language, not just Rust).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome, now we just need VSCode running natively on an iPad with Docker support! Pipe dreams?

<comment><USER6> I have absolutely no hope for docker support on OSX, let alone iPadOS

<comment><USER7> I'm confused about this - I don't use OSX for anything other than Logic, but there's a Docker desktop app for OSX [0] so I assumed it could run docker containers? Is that not true?

[0]: [https://hub.docker.com/editions/community/docker-ce- desktop-...](https://hub.docker.com/editions/community/docker-ce-desktop-mac)

<comment><USER8> I think the poster may mean performance, or other aspects are problematic. You can definitely use the Docker desktop app for macOS to run docker containers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meanwhile, Google still hasn't released an arm64 Windows 10 build of Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if you know but Firefox has native builds for Windows on ARM. You might want to give it a try. It is one of the reasons I was OK with buying the Surface Pro X, I was sure I'd have a good native browser.

<comment><USER9> I forget to use Firefox. I just installed the Edge Chromium browser to see how fast it feels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks cool. This combined with the release of the new RasPi will be a great era for lightweight computing on small devices.

<comment><USER11> While I don't think this is what you intended with your comment, it got me thinking that Windows on a Raspberry Pi would be a very interesting proposition!

<comment><USER12> Good news!

[https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/install- windows-10-on-r...](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/install- windows-10-on-raspberry-pi,5993.html)

There's also the more official "Windows 10 IoT Core" option which has images specifically for Raspberry Pi.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=550...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=55029)</comment></comment></comment>


Europe now has its own Green New Deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/12/11/21010681/european-green-new-deal-climate-change-cop25 <comment><AUTHOR> Key part for me:

"EU officials said fighting climate change doesn't have to disrupt economic growth, and that Europe has the track record to prove it. Between 1990 and 2018, the EU's emissions fell by 23 percent, but its gross domestic product grew by 61 percent."</comment>


New £1 coin to be introduced to combat counterfeiting - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26632863 <comment><USER2> I am amazed that people would go through the effort to counterfeit a £1 coin, you would literally need to counterfeit millions of coins to make the enterprise worthwhile and then how would you launder them all? Obviously the benefit is worth more then the cost but I find it strange none the less

</comment><comment><USER3> Or you could just end counterfeiting all together.

[http://indolering.com/puf-bitcoin](http://indolering.com/puf-bitcoin)

It can be applied to normal currencies as well.

<comment><USER4> You're right, bitcoin is the obvious alternative to a physical coin used daily by over 60 million people being easy to counterfeit.

You should run for queen of england, the current one is getting a bit old.

<comment><USER5> > You should run for queen of england, the current one is getting a bit old.

It's remarkable how long she's been around. I'm no spring chicken, but her _son_ is quite a bit older than I am.

I'm not in the Commonwealth, so I haven't closely followed the changes in her visage over the ages. But in the sidebar titled "HISTORY OF THREE PENCE PIECE", Elizabeth II on the coin doesn't look that bad, practically a "babe".</comment></comment></comment>


DeepNude was killed off by its creator - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/27/tech/deepnude-naked-women-ai/index.html <comment><USER2> Not a domain expert, but curious if one would comment. This was _only_ trained on 10,000 images and was supposedly not bad at its function. Would it be fair to say "the horse is out of the barn" and copycats are going to crop up trained on far more images to improve accuracy?</comment>


Bitcoin Mining Hardware Accelerator with Optimized Message Datapath - <AUTHOR> http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20180089642.PGNR.&OS=dn%2F20180089642&RS=DN%2F20180089642 <comment><USER2> Some complicated pipelining optimization that claims to reduce the critical path of each pipeline stage, increasing the clock speed and/or decreasing the required voltage for a given clock speed, written in impenetrable patentese.

The easiest pipeline optimisation, which is basically free hardware-wise and is documented in the academic literature for years, is to move the computation of W + K + H to the previous pipeline stage, reducing the critical path. This is a trivial win because all the data is available already and H can be discarded afterwards, which also has the nice bonus of mapping more efficiently to certain FPGA hardware. It sounds like Intel have taken this and expanded on it to move even more things into earlier and later stages of the pipeline.

Or, as Intel puts it, "The precomputed (H.sub.i+K.sub.i+W.sub.i) may be stored in the 32-bit register 402 dedicated for H.sub.i. This optimization reduces the critical path for the computation of E.sub.i+1 by one CSA or approximately three logic gates." I implemented this back in 2011 in some open source FPGA mining code, and it was an old trick even back then. They don't seem to be citing any prior art, which is a bit dubious.

<comment><USER3> I take it you understand the specific optimization.

Is there a reason they keep talking about a '32-bit' this and that? or should that be '32 byte' as that would be 256 bits?

<comment><USER2> SHA-256 operates almost entirely on 32-bit values, because it's designed to be efficient to compute on general-purpose CPUs without special hardware support. The SHA-256 state consists of 8 32-bit integers, of which 2 are updated each round. (SHA-512 uses 64-bit integers instead for some reason.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't read too much into this. Intel have very generous employee "patent creation" bonuses that encourage them to constantly file patents, ca. $2500 per patent IIRC.

That being said, it's still interesting seeing Intel encouraging and embracing crypto ASIC design.

<comment><USER5> Is that incentive per application or per grant?

<comment><USER6> It differs by company, but is not that easily gameable. (I've tried many times and succeeded only once in filing an application that was completely trash). The company's patent lawyers ultimately decide what they will and won't file, and they are more time constrained than budget constrained).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Intel encourages employees to file all sorts of crappy patents, but I don't see it as a bad or evil practice, but rather as a defensive strategy. Meaning that they don't really enforce patent usage on others, instead they need to have a trove of own patents as defense against patent trolls.

<comment><USER8> Except if they go out of business at some point, and all those patents end up in the hands of trolls.

<comment><USER9> I don't see Intel going out of business any time soon...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As usual the patent gets awarded to the party that doesn't have a product or even a proof of concept while the market has already moved on and has been selling the product for years.

<comment><USER11> >As usual

Is that what usually happens? Really?

<comment><USER10> Most patents that I come across read as landgrabs, not as companies that actually have working prototypes, proofs of concept or any plans to produce those.

The patent system is seriously broken.

<comment><USER11> If the market has been selling the claimed product for years, why would anyone waste the money on a patent application?

<comment><USER10> Being late never stopped anybody from filing for a patent.

I've been sued by patent trolls that somehow got a patent on live streaming video to the browser way past where we were doing it in public. Others have been on the receiving end of similar lawsuits. Fortunately our efforts were very well documented so we managed to get rid of them but it was quite annoying that such a patent ever got granted. Especially because I made a conscious decision _not_ to patent it myself because I felt it was a trivial thing and the time was simply ripe for doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kind of pointless since all Bitcoin hardware is made by Chinese companies who don't give two shits about patents.

<comment><USER13> bitmain certainly cares enough about asicboost to oppose a bitcoin extension that would break asicboost (segwit).

<comment><USER14> Stop spreading this conspiracy theory stuff (which is very popular on /r/Bitcoin)

Bitmain's own pools—AntPool and BTC.com—were voting for (not against) Segwit through nVersion flags in July 2017

Although Bitmain have had criticism about segwit, they are overall «publicly on record as historically supporting it» source: [https://blog.bitmain.com/en/regarding-recent-allegations- sme...](https://blog.bitmain.com/en/regarding-recent-allegations-smear- campaigns/)

They signed this pro-segwit letter: [https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable- con...](https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable- consensus-266d475a61ff)

<comment><USER15> Yeah... Im not sure how you can twist the available information into attempting to say bitmain is PRO segwit.

Anyone in the space knows they are not. But please try to confuse newcomers to the space by continuing this nonsense

<comment><USER16> No, you're spreading opinionated propaganda, and a political witchhunt. And I don't think this is appropriate for HN.

/r/bitcoin is heavily censored and is an echo chamber. It is no way representative of the bitcoin community.

Go to any in person Meetup and you know the majority of old bitcoin era and experts are not on /r/bitcoin's side, and wanted the block size raised a year ago. I'd suggest diversifying your news sources because /r/Bitcoin is more biased than Breitbart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tried to read the claims and realized again that patents are unreadable to an engineer and completely useless for any useful advancement of the field.

Clearly, somebody was working on a mining chip design and took advantage of the patent incentives these companies offer employees to build a warchest. The lawyers then took the description they provided and turned into this steaming pile of technolegal jargon.

</comment><comment><USER18> They filed ~2 years too late as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER19> Isn't it first-to-file now?

<comment><USER20> (a) it is first /inventor/ to file. You cannot patent stuff you (for various values of you) didn't invent. (b) it is still subject to prior art disclosures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting this was filed in September 2016

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> src: [https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Intel-beantragt- Pate...](https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Intel-beantragt-Patent-auf- Bitcoin-Mining-Chip-4009695.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Title change required.

Look at the linked page, it says: "United States Patent _Application_ ".

The linked doc is an "application". It is _not_ yet a patent. It very likely has not even been looked at from a patent-ability standpoint.

<comment><USER23> Thanks, we've updated the title from "Intel patents Bitcoin mining hardware accelerator".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If this is actually enforced my money would be on a hardfork changing to a PoW.</comment>


Circle Acquires Poloniex - <AUTHOR> https://poloniex.com/press-releases/2018.02.26-Poloniex-joins-Circle/ <comment><AUTHOR> Poloniex statement: [https://poloniex.com/press-releases/2018.02.26-Poloniex- join...](https://poloniex.com/press-releases/2018.02.26-Poloniex-joins- Circle/)

Circle statement: [https://blog.circle.com/2018/02/26/circle-acquires- poloniex/](https://blog.circle.com/2018/02/26/circle-acquires-poloniex/)

As a Poloniex customer, I am concerned. I haven't heard of Circle before and wonder if they are trustworthy.

</comment><comment><USER2> Active Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16466064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16466064)</comment>


I Can't Work Under These Conditions - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/30/i-cant-work-under-these-conditions/ <comment><USER2> "Kick someone's ass on the first day, or become someone's bitch. After then, everything will be alright."

This seems to be Michael asserting his place in the pecking order, in his own mischievous way :-)

<comment><USER3> I think this has more to do with Arrington asserting his place in the _industry_ pecking order; "no, really, see, I'm not AOL's bitch."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Obscure clause on Page 47 of the M & A documents:

"This deal becomes null and void if any internal AOL documents end up on Techcrunch.com before the end of the due diligence period."

</just kidding>

</comment><comment><USER5> After noticing this was written by Arrington, I think this was clearly tongue in cheek, and partially meant as a display of "Look, here's some proof that TechCrunch is not really changing and is not going to censor stories due to various financial interests. We're still going to complain about things that are dumb, and I think meetings are dumb."

<comment><USER6> At least until after the meeting...

<comment><USER7> "New shit has come to light! .. I mean, there has been a new development pertaining to our expected level of professional conduct .."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apparently the smiley was left of the HN Title.

Considering Michael Arrington put a Dilbert cartoon in the post, I assume this is meant as humor.

<comment><USER9> which is funny because it's true

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Ok, I'm off to go review HR policies, or something. On the upside, there's a guy here named Brian from corp dev and I think with enough pressure he's going to tell me all the other acquisition deals AOL is working on._

It pays to be an optimist.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wait, you think your company can be bought out by another company and NOT have a meet-n-greet?

I would think it seriously odd if everyone tried to ignore the change and the new overlords didn't introduce themselves.

<comment><USER12> I don't think Warren Buffet or other Berkshire people do a lot of meetings after a buyout. Sure, they bring him over to show to an average worker, but they're not there to manage. If they don't believe in firm or management they won't invest in the first place.

<comment><USER13> Most of their buyouts are private because the founder wants to retire or the heirs don't want the hassle of running the company. In either case the people in Arrington's role don't stick around because they already have professional management in place.

<comment><USER14> that's actually not true, they like the founders to stick around; Buffett is great at keeping founders around long after Berkshire buys them

<comment><USER15> You two have opposing statements, and neither of you backs up your argument.

<comment><USER12> I'm sorry, I don't get it. What two opposing statements does he have?

And also I don't see what argument is he trying to make in your opinion. From what I see he makes factual rebuttal of previous (incorrect) statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Arrington seems to be unreasonably excited about the gifts. What will he do when the dump truck pulls up with all of the 'recycled' AOL CDs as gifts. :-)

<comment><USER17> They'll do what everyone does: use them as coasters, play dangerous frisbee games, and test their quality by breaking the CDs in half with their bare hands.

Theoretically they could connect to the Internet by accidentally sticking it in a CD tray, but I suspect TechCrunch already has Internet access.

<comment><USER18> You forgot microwaving them.

<comment><USER19> And _you_ forgot charging them up on a dremel

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I still think that at some level Michael Arrington approved this deal because it meant one more story he could break. He's clearly crossed from dedication to addiction.

<comment><USER21> If that's so, I bet he's pretty sore with Om Malik these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This smells contrived, as if TechCrunch will somehow be cooler if it rebels against its parent a la Reddit v. Conde Nast.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can someone explain what "Working Session" means to me? There's nothing listed for them to work on.

<comment><USER24> I'm guessing that they're not going to find out what they're working on until they start. Perhaps its something like ranking all the employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just don't forget to turn in your badge when you leave.

AOL took like $50 out of my last paycheck for mine!

</comment><comment><USER26> I think he just wrote a blog post. He can apparently work under these conditions.

</comment><comment><USER27> We have a big meeting coming up soon where I work. I can very much relate. I was recently thinking "That something like 1500 man hours wasted on all this togetherness when we could be accomplishing something."

</comment><comment><USER28> This article is a better put "Service Temporarily Unavailable" message. Way to make news when you're too busy to do real journalism :-)

</comment><comment><USER29> Did anyone else find it hilarious that an entire section of time is blocked out for "Administrative Happiness"?

</comment><comment><USER30> So, we can assume there will be nothing worth reading on TechCrunch tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one who thinks it's funny that he published the agenda of their internal all-hands?

At least where I work, these things always have "confidential" in tiny print in a corner for no obvious reason.

</comment><comment><USER32> Gifts, what could it be? A mobile built from AOL CDs perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER33> I hate HR orientation :(

</comment><comment> spyne-02139 Lest anyone forget the absolute utter dirt bags running the show at AOL, let me regale thee with all time hit #1 "Cancel the account" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY>

Good luck Mr. Arrington, and better luck getting out.

</comment><comment><USER34> 2:30-3:00 Return to their desks and start looking for new jobs?

</comment><comment><USER35> I wonder how much he is being paid to attend that 3 hour meeting

</comment><comment><USER36> "STFU and go cash your check, numnutts."</comment>


Scaling Reddit from 1 Million to 1 Billion – Pitfalls and Lessons [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/scaling-reddit Jeremy Edberg shares some of the lessons learned scaling Reddit, advising on pitfalls to avoid. <comment><USER2> What a horrible website. Made an account to get the mp3. Just to discover that the mp3 download link doesnt work even then. Thank god I used a throwaway email to sign up. Otherwise I would be even more pissed.

<comment><USER3> [http://bugmenot.com/view/infoq.com](http://bugmenot.com/view/infoq.com)

Bugmenot is great for sites like this.

<comment><USER4> [http://10minutemail.com/](http://10minutemail.com/)

is what i use, much simpler.

<comment><USER5> Another similar option is Mailinator: [http://mailinator.com/](http://mailinator.com/)

<comment><USER6> Some websites block emails from mailinator which is pretty annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disappointment in the HN community has reached a new high today.

So, instead of discussing the topics in the video, the majority of commenters here are discussing the flaws of the website it's hosted on or debating whether or not reddit is profitable. Neither of which has ANYTHING to do with scaling.

I expected better, people. Seriously.

<comment><USER8> The dominance of non-relevance is interesting for HN. Was writing exact the same thing, and just saw yours.

In this and some other technical topics, people end up discussing their personal tastes with web site's design, their individual UI frustrations with some button on the web site, the font, the color, and other random non- relevant topic; like now the profitability.

<comment><USER9> It's no excuse, but I see a reason for this: most people feel they understand these irrelevant topics better than they understand the scalability features of the infrastructure Reddit has built. People talk about their comfort zone.

<comment><USER10> This is the fundamental rule of bikeshedding, which HN has discussed, decried and regurgitated since time immemorial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "ask me anything about running a profitable social media company".

Except for that reddit is not profitable.

[http://blog.reddit.com/2013/08/reddit-myth- busters_6.html](http://blog.reddit.com/2013/08/reddit-myth-busters_6.html)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1ihwy8/rathe...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1ihwy8/ratheism_and_rpolitics_removed_from_default/cb50c8c)

<comment><USER12> Funny story about that. When we were owned by Conde, the accounting was a little different (they took on some of the charges, like Akamai), and so we were actually told we were slightly profitable.

When that blog post went up I was as surprised as you to see it wasn't profitable when I was there.

<comment><USER13> But weren't you "deeply involved in the business?"

<comment><USER12> Yes. What point are you trying to make?

<comment><USER14> I think his point is that he doesn't understand accounting and how complicated it can be so he thinks that if you were deeply involved in the business you should know every facet of every debit and credit.

If he's right I guess I wasted about 300 hours studying for Financial Reporting and Analysis section in the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) program.

<comment><USER12> Since this isn't reddit, I won't just say: ^^this.

But yes, I believe he was trying to point out that I couldn't have been involved if I didn't know, but doesn't understand the ins and outs of G&A and other such accounting practices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was confused about the memcached problem after moving to the cloud. I understand why network latency may have gone from submillisecond to milliseconds, but how could you improve latency by batching requests? Shouldn't that improve efficiency, not latency, at the possible _expense_ of latency (since some requests will wait on the client as they get batched)? And while maybe efficiency is valuable, why would that be an improvement for a problem they didn't have before?

<comment><USER12> Sorry that wasn't clear. The latency didn't get better, but what happened is that instead of having to make a lot of calls to memcache it was just one (well, just a few), so while that one took longer, the total time was much less.

<comment><USER16> I actually did some (simplistic) examples of this in a small presentation to illustrate the performance improvements of batching memcached requests, if anyone's interested: [https://speakerdeck.com/robotmay/a-simple-introduction- to-ef...](https://speakerdeck.com/robotmay/a-simple-introduction-to-effective- caching-in-ruby-on-rails?slide=11) (slides 11 to 14)

<comment><USER12> That's a better explanation than mine. :) Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So did anyone else take the most important lessons in the video as:

1\. Use AWS

2\. Use Postgres

3\. Use AWS

4\. Use Cassandra

5\. Use python, so later you can write C when shit needs to go super fast

That's what I got.

<comment><USER12> I find this interesting, this is really great feedback for me actually.

Those are some of the important lessons, although use (postgres|cassandra) are really too prescriptive. More like "use the right tool or tools for the job".

Also, use consistent key hashing where appropriate is another important less that I should emphasize more.

And "build for 3" is another important lesson. It makes scaling much easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://d1snlc0orfrhj.cloudfront.net/presentations/13-jul- sca...](http://d1snlc0orfrhj.cloudfront.net/presentations/13-jul- scalingreddit.mp4)

</comment><comment><USER19> Thrilled to finally see this on InfoQ -- already an underappreciated resource for technical talks. What is it about video + slides that appeals so little to people?

<comment><USER20> Large banner and tiny video frame, site rendering completely garbled for 8 seconds until fully loaded, signup required to view the slides (after realizing that the video doesn't cut to slides at all). The talks are interesting, and the interview transcription is nice though there are UX issues there as well– I need to click to view each response, and despite the entire question being hyperlinked clicking it actually does nothing. Show all works thankfully (ah, but the frame breaks my scroll).

I'll probably be back to check out more of the videos, but definitely not because of the site. If the editing is good, YouTube is just fine, otherwise SlideShare plus an audio file is just perfect.

Edit:

        [F] First Byte Time
        [C] Keep-alive Enabled
        [C] Compress Transfer
        [A] Compress Images
        [A] Progressive JPEGs
        [F] Cache static content
        [ ] Effective use of CDN

Source: [http://www.webpagetest.org/result/130816_PE_AYH/](http://www.webpagetest.org/result/130816_PE_AYH/)

<comment><USER21> > SlideShare plus an audio file is just perfect.

Although slideshare is not as bad as infoq by a long shot, it's not very useable (or fast) either. I much prefer speakerdeck.

<comment><USER20> Speakerdeck is actually what I was thinking of, but the gist is slides + audio = happy. A more polished UI would do some good for SlideShare, but I don't have any major issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know how the different storage systems are utilized, and why each system is utilized for that purpose? The presenter mentions using memcached, Cassandra, and PostgreSQL, and mentions the same type of data when discussing each (votes, for instance). I would definitely benefit from a more in-depth understanding of how each system is utilized, and why.

<comment><USER12> Each tool has a different use case. Votes is a great example.

Memcache has no guarantees about durability, but is very fast, so the vote data is stored there to make rendering of pages as quick as possible.

Cassandra is durable and fast, and gives fast negative lookups because of its bloom filter, so it was good for storing a durable copy of the votes for when the data isn't in memcache.

Postgres is rock solid and relational, so it was a good place to store votes as a backup for Cassandra (we could regenerate all the data in Cassandra from Postgres if necessary) and also for doing batch processing, which sometimes needed the relational capabilities.

<comment><USER22> That makes a lot of sense. Were the majority of your systems using this "durability chain" so to speak -- memcached -> Cassandra -> Postgres? Additionally, in retrospect do you find this type of chain to work well, and would you use it again (perhaps you already are over at Netflix)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Side question: is vote queuing the reason behind the sometimes large drops in score on highly active and popular submissions on reddit?

<comment><USER12> No. That's generally because once something gets popular and jumps to the front page, it gets a huge boost in visibility, especially from people who weren't looking at the niche subreddit it comes from.

A lot of those people aren't interested in that content, so it will suddenly get an influx of downvotes.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the reply.

I'm glad there is an explanation based on user behavior for this phenomenon because admin level vote tampering is such a tired theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if the demise of Digg three years ago and the (supposedly) inflow of new users have been problematic at the time.

<comment><USER12> There wasn't actually a very large jump in traffic when Digg v4 was launched. Most of those folks were already reddit users. Traffic bumped a little bit, but not all that much.

It's important to keep in mind that reddit was already doing twice as much traffic as Digg before they launched v4.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for your input, didn't know that.

I, for one, went from a /r/php lurker to real user at that time so I thought there was dozens of us, dozens !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reddit still uses Pylons, and I imagine moving to Pyramid would be very painful. He's not clear on this in the video.

<comment><USER12> I don't think I made any indications one way or another, but yes, it would probably be difficult to move.

<comment><USER25> Great presentation man. Do you think Pylons will serve Reddit for years and years to come? Is there any need for you to switch to Pyramid or another framework? I made the choice to use Pylons for a recent project, and it just feels kind of odd using an old framework which is now in "maintenance only mode", but I truly did not like Pyramid... much less Django.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For me link works only in safari. Firefox plays only video and chrome just does not work.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am curious how much a Go lang rewrite would make a difference in scaling up.

<comment><USER27> It depends how much time is spent doing computation and how much time is spent doing lookups from disk. If the latter is clearly dominating, then a switch to Go will not help much.

<comment><USER8> thanks for the insight. i did not have much to do with Go. But hear a lot of positive benchmarks here on HN. Reddit is kind of like an example social web app, and I read a lot on its architectural changes and scaling efforts. So for social Web 2.0 apps, which are getting older now, I m curious how much Go would make a difference. Mainly for Google applications, apparently Go brings a lot of speed and performance on the same server.

<comment><USER28> It doesn't really matter what the _genre_ of an application is. What matters is the runtime fundamentals. How much time is spent computing vs waiting for I/O? Whichever one is slower is the current bottleneck and is what you should fret about. Go becomes something to consider if the bottleneck is computation time. It's tangential otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reddit's not profitable though..

<comment><USER30> If there is one lesson that HN needs to learn, it's that profitable is not the same thing as important.

<comment><USER31> So they are important, but need to live off ramen every day (figuratively). What good does that do to them?

I don't think grandparent should be downvoted, he raises a good point. Tons and tons of people use Reddit, but Reddit has a hard time making a living.

<comment><USER32> > So they are important, but need to live off ramen every day (figuratively). > What good does that do to them?

Maybe they enjoy it? Maybe it makes them happy?

Not everything is about money.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Strange World Of Copyright Misconception - <AUTHOR> http://www.bennjordan.com/blog/?p=519

<comment><USER4> Oh dear. Clearly he doesn't understand Fair Use. He categorically states you cannot sample something under any circumstances without permission.

As it turns out, Fair Use provisions fall under 17 U.S.C. § 107, which reads:

 _Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:_

 _1\. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;_

 _2\. the nature of the copyrighted work;_

 _3\. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and_

 _4\. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work._

 _The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors._

It really, _really_ helps to read up on this sort of stuff before you spout off on it. Even typing "fair use" into Google takes you to Wikipedia, which explains the concept clearly and in detail.

Bottom line: don't trust what this guy says. He can't even do basic research.

<comment><USER5> It is you who does not understand what he (the author of TFA) is talking about (admittedly he's not being very clear). He's using "sampling" as it's used in the DJ and electronic music scene, to mean "include part of one commercial piece of music in another commercial piece of music".

And he's absolutely right: that's not "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching [..], scholarship, or research", so it does not fall under fair use, and the length and nature of the sample is completely irrelevant.

<comment><USER4> I think he's being clear. He wrote:

"So let's set the record straight. You cannot legally sample music without clearance. It begins and ends there. If someone were to take a tiny clip of one of my songs, pitch it down to 10% speed, reverse it, and slam 8 minutes of echo on it, I could sue their pants off (not that I would, or even be able to detect such a thing)."

He's saying this under all circumstances. Note that you can create works for commercial purposes for teaching. If course, the statute states that this will be taken into consideration.

Now don't get me wrong, fair use is a nebulous thing. You'll most likely not fall under fair use provisions in most circumstances. It's not always clear what a court will decide, so I agree - if you sample, best to get permission! But making sweeping statements that something is not and will never be covered under fair use is wrong.

<comment><USER6> As much as I dislike arguing semantics, the resolution of this comes down to the definition of "sample". For what it's worth, I read it to mean for the use in commercial works.

<comment><USER4> And yet it can still be valid to have a sample in a commercial work under fair use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When considering his arguments, please bear in mind:

      a) he is only detailing US law, the nuances of copyright law vary around the world
      b) as he states, he is not a lawyer
      c) not every violation of copyright law ends up in court
      d) not every copyright law case in court is ends up being a violation
      e) the world is moving on
      f) the law often doesn't keep up with the real world
      g) it all sucks. mostly.

<comment><USER8> s/not every/almost no

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's also the common misconception on YouTube and similar sites: _"No copyright intended!"_

<http://waxy.org/2011/12/no_copyright_intended/>

</comment><comment><USER10> IANAL:

What is interesting is that he misses the biggest myth in which belief hurts creators of original works.

Unless the author of a work is an employee or explicitly assigns copyright to someone else, the author retains the copyright. In other words, the freelance copywriter owns the copyright not the piano company unless the copywriter explicitly assigned copyright to the piano company.

The relevance for software development (or in my case architectural practice) is that the work product of contract programmer (or drafter) does not belong to developer (or architect) absent explicit assignment of copyright.

Absent a properly structured contract, a contract programmer may share code they wrote as they wish. Furthermore, a less scrupulous person might make claims of code authorship which are difficult to disprove despite going beyond what they actually authored.

<comment><USER11> How interesting; I was under the impression that work done by a freelancer was automatically considered to be a work for hire. But you appear to be right.

<comment><USER10> Unless the contract explicitly states that it is work for hire, it isn't.

I will add that as layers get added to the contract relations - <USER2> used by the contractor, sub-subcontractors by the subcontractor, etc. - <USER3> exposure grows.

This sort of issue is largely addressed within my industry via standard contracts developed over the course of 100 years. However, they only go a few layers deep because this is sufficient given the economics.

On the other hand, the economics of software development are such that even a tiny piece of code might be deemed to contribute several million dollars of value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _It is, however, legal to copy a CD to your computer or download something from iTunes and re-encode it to an MP3. However, you legally cannot make a tangible duplication (burn another CD)._

Is this right? I understood the 1992 _Audio Home Recording Act_ explicitly permitted making of backups for noncommercial use & the DMCA only rescinded this where there was anti-copying mechanisms.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act#Exemp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act#Exemption_from_infringement_actions)

</comment><comment><USER13> HE's not a lawyer, and he's not correct. See the blog comments for examples: vaguely right, but really this is therefore about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

<comment><USER11> >a chocolate teapot

That sounds _delicious_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >However, you legally cannot make a tangible duplication (burn another CD).

There is zero precedent for this one way or the other, but the only people who seem to agree with the author on this extreme point of view are the RIAA. And even they say it's ok if you buy those royalty-paid Audio CD-Rs. Everyone else seems to agree that making a copy of a CD for personal use a blindingly obvious case of fair use.

</comment><comment><USER14> 'However, you legally cannot make a tangible duplication (burn another CD).'

Uhh, this may depend on the country but I thought an archival copy of something like a CD was permitted?

With software, for instance, you're allowed to make a backup physical copy under UK law.

</comment><comment><USER15> "If An Artist Samples Less Than 3 Seconds Of A Copyrighted Song, It Falls Under Fair Use..."

I was told this one by a high school instructor, and figured it was BS.

I should probably forward this to him; for his students sake.

It's pretty funny how rumors about things manage to spread so well. Stuff like a "three requests" policy sounds plausibly convenient enough for people to imagine it's true. I can only assume this is because the reality of copyright law is; frankly nuts.

<comment><USER4> If you forward this to your professor you'll be correcting unsubstantiated assertions with... unsubstantiated assertions.

<comment><USER15> Yes, he (the author) is absolutely wrong on fair use, at the same time; in the context of making commercial media I can't fault the "get clearance" advice. The legal penalties if the court doesn't like your fair use argument are steep. The real reason for the forward would be my cynical evaluation that handling the issue honestly (eg: Actually explaining fair use and that the metrics he cites aren't rules at all.) would just end up with him writing off 3 second samples as fair use per his convenient reading of the law and repeating the same advice unfettered.

It's easier to get people to do the right thing for the wrong reason.[0][1]

[0]: Though it's a lot harder to divert course later once you've employed this method. (<http://lesswrong.com/lw/uz/protected_from_myself/>)

[1]: That's not something I do often, either.

<comment><USER4> You'd be better off forwarding him the actual fair use statute, and get him to tell you why he believes 3 second samples are legal under fair use.

<comment><USER15> That's probably a better idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The title of this article could apply very well to the contents of itself. In addition to the things mentioned by other commenters, this was odd and clearly wrong:

> Even if you get a response saying "go for it!", that provides you with > nothing in the terms of US copyright law.

Promissory estoppel would surely bar collection of damages where the rights holder gave unequivocal permission to use the copyrighted material.

</comment><comment><USER17> This _seems_ like an interesting article, but I was only able to read a few paragraphs before all the letters got jumbled in my visual cortex and I got a headache. For the love of god, light text on a dark background is a bad idea: [http://blog.tatham.oddie.com.au/2008/10/13/why-light-text- on...](http://blog.tatham.oddie.com.au/2008/10/13/why-light-text-on-dark- background-is-a-bad-idea/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Both the article and the comments here and on the blog suffer from the mistake of being binary.

You can get in trouble for copyright violation for doing anything. Reality and law have nothing to do with it. Its a common techie misconception that there exists a root password or exploit to the law. Law is an engineering puzzle with factors of safety based on human judgement, not a mathematical puzzle or proof.

What the author wrote is basically true, from the perspective of what you need to do at the level where you want a typical judge to laugh an accusation out of his court. In strict contrast, most of the comments here and on the the blog are "if you wish really hard, this is the way I'd like it to be" or at best "at least some people after spending tens of thousands on legal defense won at least one case trying this" and even more hilarious "Sure its illegal, but most people get away with it".

There are several analogies with online discussion of speeding tickets and cars.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nobody cares. Copyright is dead.

If you insist on shaving a dead cat 21 ways the whole world is probably fine with you keeping it to yourself.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, go tell Jammie Thomas-Rasset that copyright is dead.</comment></comment>


No Matter What Microsoft does, the Xbox One is Doomed to Fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamerheadlines.com/2014/07/no-matter-what-microsoft-does-the-xbox-one-is-doomed-to-fail/ <comment><USER2> There are multiple problems with Xbox One sales. Prominent being as the article mentions the DRM backlash.

After June, when MS started to sell kinect less XBone, the playing field was on level for MS and PS4. Unfortunately PS4 has a runway lead.

The only thing now decides, which console to buy, is what exclusive are on and which console are your friends on. The exlusive part is looking more blurry, while with the early lead most probably, your friends will be on ps4.

Interesting what steps MS will take in coming months, but expect some exclusive and price cutting are in the offering.

</comment><comment><USER3> What an obnoxious point of view. The author is taking the perspective that anyone who doesn't like the Xbox One is a miserable unhappy person. In Reality, most people were going to buy only one next gen console. Microsoft did everything they possibly could to piss off gamers.

Sony got a standing ovation at E3 for allowing people to trade physical copies of games. Microsoft blew it and gamers shouldn't have to explain why they aren't spending $400 on another console just because Microsoft made things better.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's amusing that people hate Microsoft/XboxOne _more_ than Sony/PS4. And this is after Sony's stumbles, such as the CD root kit fiasco and removing ability to run Linux on the PS3.

How could Microsoft have allowed itself to get into this situation? Wow!

Will Xbox do better now that Uncle Fester [1] (aka Steve Ballmer) has "retired"?

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

<comment><USER3> After the PSN SQL injextion attack, I was all about getting a next gen Microsoft console. And then rumors started swirling that it would be always online. This immediately after diablo 3 and Sim city had such disastrous launches. As soon as they confirmed it, they lost me. I'll take data breaches over always online DRM any day of the week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What has two thumbs and is an Xbox fanboy? The author of this article. I don't use the derogatory term lightly here; the article is dismissive of genuine complaints, and concludes with "so make up your mind. When will you be happy?" Oh, yes, folk who spent $500 on a console to find out it ain't all that just can't be pleased! (And here's a clue, smart guy: the ones complaining about an issue and the ones complaining when the issue is "fixed" may not be the same people.)

You know why users complain? Because there are a bevy of things about which to complain. The author sees this as "can't be pleased". On the contrary, users can be pleased but Xbox started so far in the hole that they'll be a while digging out. Their Kinect argument harkens back to the IE days with the DOJ: "Kinect is so integral to Xbone that we _can 't_ unbundle it!" Six months later, in response to low sales and pricing complaints, what do they do?

If bought on launch day, that extra $100 gets you a Kinect whose voice recognition engine, on a good day, might hit 80%. More often than not it will leave you asking yourself, "why didn't I just pick up the goddamned controller?" as you repeat the same command three or four times.

Most annoyingly there are a number of things that worked wonderfully on XB360 that are broken on Xbone. Their later fixes to the party system took it from "plain broken" to "sucks less than it used to", and it's still a move backward from the 360. Users still occasionally need to power cycle the box just to get the microphone to work. And speaking of voice parties, where in the hell is my wireless headset? I'm astounded that it's going to be close to a year before that piece of hardware comes out (and I've heard nothing to say it will _ever_ come out, but I don't pay a lot of attention).

Without writing a line item list of "reasons I wish I didn't spend $500 on an Xbone", I'll summarize. Every Facebook/Google/Whatever article on HN will have someone in the comments who thinks they're clever by pointing out that "if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product!" Haha, yeah, you're a real smart guy. But the Xbone comes across as a product that I not only paid dearly for, but I'm still the product. What did Microsoft do to make _me_ happy? Not much in comparison to what they did to make game publishers and content providers happy.

Finally, why I scroll through the comments on the article page is beyond me, I know better by now. But this time it paid off with this gem that may state the case better than my paragraphs of text: "Fighting a losing battle...where even your own fans want you to lose just so they can justify how mad they are at you".</comment>


Global Rich List : See where you stand  - <AUTHOR>

http://www.globalrichlist.com/ <comment><USER2> This website is broken. If I input $1,000,000 as my annual income I am apparently 107,565 richest person in the world. However, if I change that number to 5x, 10x, 20x (you get the point...) that amount I am still the 107,565th richest person in the world.</comment>


From Iterative to Functional Perl 6 Code (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://perl6maven.com/from-iterative-to-functional-perl6-code <comment><USER2> For those still interested in Perl 5: I've added a translation of the functional example from this article to the functional-perl project(1) here:

[https://github.com/pflanze/functional- perl/blob/master/examp...](https://github.com/pflanze/functional- perl/blob/master/examples/existing_files)

(1) [http://functional-perl.org](http://functional-perl.org)

i.e.

        my $paths    = stream(qw< /tmp /var/tmp >);
        my $filename = 'temp123';
        my $ext      = list(qw<pod pm pl>);
        my $existing_files =
          $paths->cartesian_product(list("/$filename."), $ext)
                ->map(*list_to_string)
                ->filter(unary_operator "-e");</comment>


Attack code for critical Microsoft bug surfaces - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/external/idg/2008/10/23/23idg-Attack-code-for.html

<comment><USER2> The linked blog entry talking about the bad code in Windows that caused the vulnerability is much more interesting: <http://blogs.msdn.com/sdl/archive/2008/10/22/ms08-067.aspx></comment>


Fighting Spam for a New Startup - <AUTHOR>

Heya!  For my site launch I'm pretty sure I need to be ready to fight spam, but I'm not sure how ready.  At the very least I'll set up a basic spam filter, but I'm unsure if I should train it myself beforehand (by copy and pasting the 1000 Gmail spam emails I have in my inbox) or wait until site launch.
People will write text that other people see, so it's probable that some of it will be spam.
What do you all do?  Is there a big database of spam to preconfigure spam filters? <comment><USER2> For email spam - <http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~gvcormac/treccorpus/>

For web spam - [http://www- static.cc.gatech.edu/projects/doi/WebbSpamCorpus....](http://www- static.cc.gatech.edu/projects/doi/WebbSpamCorpus.html)

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen I figure old spam should work.

On a side note, how many people are making spam-filtering startups?

<comment><USER2> There can't be that many (edit - that many Email spam startups at least. Web spam, blog spam etc are another issue). It's a crowded and relatively mature market that just went through a round of acquisitions of mature private anti- spam companies (CipherTrust, IronPort and Postini)</comment></comment>


Tracking solar collector without electronics (2011) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrMltEp-dcw <comment><USER2> Electronics are incredibly cheap and an electronic version would be smaller, lighter and more reliable.

I definitely appreciate the effort and am very interested in similar approaches, but for commercial use, electronics based systems are very cost effective, especially if engineered for a specific project and optimized.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is meant for third-world countries where you need easily maintainable and accessible components. Plus, using electronics implies an infrastructure that we take for granted: it's more complicated in rural third-world.

<comment><USER2> You see that reflector, gears, evaporating liquid stuff in the solution, yeah that will not last 3 months in a rural area. For a rural area, _this_ is a complex setup.

In 1 week, you would either have bird shit all over the control mechanism light reflector, probably have a bird build a nest in it, or perhaps have a flying piece of plastic tangle in the mechanism.

Electronics does not imply an infrastructure we take for granted. Just look at mobile phone usage in African countries. No one thought mobile phones are a bad idea because they don't have the infrastructure to repair them.

A motor controller with a motor attached is cheap, can be made to work for years, sealed off in a water proof and dust proof container, and still be configured with bluetooth.

And, the infrastructure problem you talk about, that will only be solved with consumers in the first place.

No one in Africa built a mobile repair business without the phones being their first.

Sorry, your perspective is negative and counter productive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Look, you could be right. I don't really know what the supply dynamics are anywhere in the third world. The author does travel the third world for humanitarian purposes, so I'm making guesses based on that. This project, that was posted ~9 years ago, is the most complicated project he posted. His newer projects are mostly simpler and he did create electric wind and hydro turbines. So I'd guess electricity is a problem at least some places and electronics are accessible enough to consider these projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's very clever, but wouldn't a simpler way to track the sun without electronics be to use a mechanical clock set to local solar time?

You'd have to rewind it and adjust the time slightly every few days, but then the mechanism in the video doesn't appear to have any way to return at the end of the day, so probably has to be reset daily anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a cool idea, though a mechanical clock could be hard to come by in certain places. Most of the things this guy makes are meant to be very cheap and accessible in the third world. I recommend his channel. A lot of fun low- tech stuff like DIY water filters in Uganda, a vertical wind turbine, a "Kiwi" DIY wind tunnel for that wind turbine (mounting it on a car and going for a drive).

<comment><USER4> You can make crude mechanical clockwork out of wood.

E.g. [https://www.lisaboyer.com/Claytonsite/Claytonsite1.htm](https://www.lisaboyer.com/Claytonsite/Claytonsite1.htm)

These are obviously more elaborate than you'd need because they're artwork as well as functional clocks. (Some are just kinetic sculptures.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's interesting. In the 70's Steve Baer (Zomeworks) was doing this sort of thing using freon, which obviously became a chemical-non-grata. The zomeworks trackers didn't use gearing, just weight transfer between two freon canisters on either side of the solar receiver. It's nice that ethanol can be used in a similar way.

<comment><USER6> Probably water can be used in the same way, if the collector was larger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Commercial application using wax cylinder: [https://www.sulasindustries.com/media](https://www.sulasindustries.com/media)

<comment><AUTHOR> Why wax? Is it unique in how it expands/contracts when heated/cooled?

<comment><USER8> Wax has a very high expansion coefficient and is dirt cheap. Also, the force an expanding column of wax exerts is substantial compared to the size of the column of wax so you can use it to drive mechanical devices directly.

This principle has been used in a - now defunct - model of insulin pump.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nah, just another Rube Goldberg machine.

Deep parabolic mirror, hugely inefficient. Huge amount of materials to control the orientation.

If you split all the materials, you could have built two collectors facing different directions. You would not need much more space because a lot is already wasted. You would get better efficiency because for portion of the time both collectors would be operation.

I know it is nothing special, but I personally like simple designs that work dependably.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice to see this on here!

Also worth checking out the creator's $30 windturbine [1]

He also runs an active community on facebook around the designs [2]

[1] [https://opensourcelowtech.org/wind_turbine.html](https://opensourcelowtech.org/wind_turbine.html) [2] [https://www.facebook.com/groups/windturbinemakers/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/windturbinemakers/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think this is incredibly neat and when I see things like this often wonder what a person with such creativity could do if they had more free time and money.

<comment><AUTHOR> I enjoyed his UN conference interview [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJGc5Jv6wr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJGc5Jv6wr8) sounds like he spends part of his time doing workshops in the West and the other doing workshops in the global South, as he calls it.

<comment><USER12> I really enjoy his videos, however there was one where he created a packed bed filter and suggested it made the water safe. It certainly makes the water look cleaner but that is a long way from being safe to drink.

It made me think twice about his credentials.

<comment><USER13> If you expose water to sunlight UV, it will sterilize.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely, if the sun is able to penetrate (the container is UV transparent i.e. plastic bottles) and there aren't large clumps in the water which protect the pathogens from exposure. Which would make a packed bed filter a reasonable pre-filter before bottling and leaving in the sun for a number of hours. However, that wasn't what he said in the video, which was that the water hadn't been tested but was probably safe to drink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I once saw a very elegant solar tracking mechanism with no moving parts. The panel array was hinged to swivel freely. 2 solid tanks sat below the fore and aft edges, and were connected by a solid copper tube.

As the sun moved though the sky, if one tank got more light, a working fluid would move from one to the other moving the center of mass. This caused the panel to swing to bringing them back into equilibrium.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can these mechanisms recover from cloudy periods?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I suspect one can do something like this with a bimetallic strip that bends when heated, which can move the collector. You'd also need another bimetallic strip in the shade so that the movement is based on the temperature differential, not the temperature value.

</comment><comment><USER16> The same machine but in action (time lapse)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lva3bm3psyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lva3bm3psyI)

</comment><comment><USER17> OR, instead of a parabola, use the same space and cost in materials to aim several solar panels in different directions?

Not really 'tracking' but neither is the OP I don't think. Relies of the parabola to correct for angle. But sacrifices available surface area.

<comment><USER18> Single axis tracking is typical.</comment></comment>


CSS Image Orientation Lands in Firefox 26 - <AUTHOR> http://sethfowler.org/blog/2013/09/13/new-in-firefox-26-css-image-orientation/ <comment><USER2> I never understood why the EXIF rotation tag was invented. It's caused so much pain and wrongly rotated images. Why can't whatever software writing those tags just rotate the JPEG blocks instead? "jpegtran" can losslessly rotate and flip JPEG images fine.

<comment><USER3> EXIF rotation tags exists because it was way more simple for camera manufacturer than actually move the pixels around depending on orientation sensor on camera.

That said, what I don't understand myself is software devs that thinks it's ok to rotate the pixels and saving the image with EXIF tags without updating the rotation one.

<comment><USER4> > what I don't understand myself is software devs that thinks it's ok to ...

Most people, including software developers, think of JPEG as just a bunch of pixels.

I think if you were to do a random survey of software developers, most wouldn't know that the rotation field exists, and an appalling percentage wouldn't even know that EXIF exists.

Now that I think about it, I wonder what percentage would know that JPEG is a compressed format, let alone the fact that it's lossy...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's the technical reason that Firefox (and presumably other browsers) can't just read the JPEG EXIF data to obtain the proper orientation?

This CSS tag could still be marginally useful: you could store only one corner and one side of a custom border, and flip the image for the other three. Once the tag is ubiquitous, of course.

<comment><USER6> > What's the technical reason that Firefox (and presumably other browsers) > can't just read the JPEG EXIF data to obtain the proper orientation?

It's what `image-orientation: from-image` does.

But it can't be done automatically (you have to explicitly use this property), that would break the web: until now, images were not rotated automatically, so developers might have rotated their images in CSS (`transform:rotate(90deg)`). If Firefox were to rotate automatically the images according to the exif data, you'd get a double rotation, or unexpected image rotations.

<comment><USER7> but what happens when you view a direct link to an image? imo, the rotation data like that should be associated with the file, and respected all the time. it might break a few things, but i'm fairly certain people could figure out the fix required :)

<comment><USER8> The point is that if you fix it in new browsers, you'll break it in old browsers, and vice-versa. Adding an "opt-in" for the new (correct) way of doing things lets you serve the old client-side rotation logic to the old browsers, and the CSS pragma to the new browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Uhmm, all the images are oriented right in Safari on my iPad.

<comment><USER10> But not Safari on the desktop.

So, what's your issue?

<comment><USER7> from what i can see, both chrome and safari respect the rotation data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Only on the iPad, where they're both using Apple's iPad version of WebKit.

This isn't standards-compliant behavior. I had no idea that there were any browsers that actually did this!

<comment><USER11> And iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Will this be misused. Will sites have tons of rotating images. The new blink?

<comment><USER13> Rotating images were already possible before with transform:rotate().</comment></comment>


An Introduction to the Lambda Calculus (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.learningclojure.com/2015/11/an-introduction-to-lambda-calculus.html <comment><USER2> Any introduction to anything should start with a clear statement of what it is and why you might want to use it. I find this a particular problem with computer language topics; _I don 't know yet_ why The Author find This Thing so useful so tell me up front a few benefits I might get from investing my time in learning it. Unfortunately, the people who are best at using something are not always the best at communicating it.

This is particularly important for audiences like teenagers, who already have multiple private and public actors competing for their attention and future economic potential.

<comment><USER3> Any example like what you said?

I agree with you. So, I want to know examples out there that have a great explanation about something.

<comment><USER2> There was a thread a day or two about about a book called _The Scientist 's and Engineer's guide to digital Signal Processing_ which I think is _the_ best-written technical book I've ever encountered. The other one that springs to mind is _C: How to Program_ by Deitel and Deitel. They've done multiple programming cooks but that's the only one I've owned.

<comment><USER3> No problem. Anyway, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have an Android phone/tablet and want to play around with the lambda calculus, I made an app that lets you build and evaluate expressions using a touch interface:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alangpierc...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alangpierce.lambdacalculusplayground)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OzpqDDniDs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OzpqDDniDs)

It's lower-level than the stuff in the post (you need to build booleans and math yourself) and doesn't have any instructional content built-in at the moment, but I think it's a nice way to see how far you can get using only lambda expressions. The most complicated thing I've done with it is used the Y combinator (among other things) to compute 6! = 720, which is a fun exercise.

<comment><USER5> Just out of curiosity, is there a particular reason why some people refer to lambda calculus with a definite article?

My professor in CS Theory would refer to it as "the" lambda calculus, but another professor I had chose not to (I call it "lambda calculus").

This is totally trivial, I'm just wondering if there's a reason why you, or some people, say "the" lambda calculus.

<comment><USER6> "<x> calculus" without an article is an activity, whereas "the <x> calculus" is a concept. That's the way I've always parsed it internally. For example, you would never say to someone "Do you know about SKI Calculus?" because it's not something people do. You would say "Do you know about _the_ SKI Calculus", referring to the abstract notion that someone constructed. We often use the phrase "calculus" for the calculus of derivatives and the calculus of integrals because it's something people do as an activity very often. Same with the lambda calculus.

<comment><USER7> That may work for your internal parsing, but it's not correct with respect to any standard of English grammar. Consider that any activity can also be a topic of knowledge, and it doesn't change article usage: "do you know about football?"

"The", the definite article, has a couple of purposes in English, but by far the most common is to refer to an individual member of a set of nouns. The decision to use it or not in this case depends on how the the words "lambda calculus" are interpreted:

1\. "Lambda calculus" is a compound noun that describes a unique or uncountable object or concept. In this case, "lambda calculus" is in effect the only member of the set to which it belongs, and so "the" is not used. Compare with any other conceptual noun, e.g. "mathematics".

2\. "Lambda calculus" is a compound noun, but is not unique - that is, there are multiple things that could be referred to as "lambda calculus". In this case, "the" is used to select a particular _lambda calculus_. An extended phrase might be "the lambda calculus introduced by Alonzo Church, as opposed to the lambda calculus introduced by Joe Shmoe." Note also that in general parlance, "the" can be used alone to refer to the most common one of something, as if that member of the set were always considered an antecedent to current conversation. For example, in certain circles in California, "the industry" refers to the _entertainment_ industry. Because it's so common to refer to that particular member of the set of all industries, "the" on its own is sufficient to select it.

3\. "Lambda calculus" is a generic noun (calculus) with a modifier (lambda) that makes it unique. In this case, similar to (2), "the" must be used, as it along with "lambda" serves to select the particular _calculus_ being referred to. Compare with "the Nile River" \- "Nile River" is unique, but since "Nile" is a modifier for a generic noun the article is required. (Following the final point from (2), saying simply "the calculus" would under this interpretation normally refer to the calculus of derivatives and integrals, since that's by far the most common.)

4\. Same as (3), but "calculus" is not countable in the same way, and so it does not make sense to refer to the set of all things known as "calculus". In this case, "lambda calculus" refers to a portion of the singular concept "calculus" rather than a member of a set, and so "the" is not used.

I think the most common intentions are (3) and (4) for using or not using "the", respectively. (4) is more common among non-mathematicians for whom "calculus" is a singular subject in school, while (3) is more common among people who are aware that "calculus" is a general term for "form of calculation", and who might refer to the particular "calculus" taught in high school as "the calculus of derivatives and integrals". I'm normally partial to (1), myself (i.e., "lambda calculus" and "integral calculus" are each topics of knowledge, grammatically identical to "mathematics").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great read - I worked through it in JavaScript in the console. Writing Scheme- ish code in JS is so much nicer with ES6 than it was with ES5!

        const iterativeImprove = (guess, improve, goodEnough) =>
          goodEnough(guess) ?
            guess :
            iterativeImprove(improve(guess), improve, goodEnough);

I think the example used (and the intermediate functions) come straight from SICP. I always intend to do the exercises in this book, but never have... This post actually got me to do it, so hat's off to you!

<comment><USER9> On that note(SICP in Clojure) there is also this which has been mentioned here on HN before:

[http://www.sicpdistilled.com/](http://www.sicpdistilled.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> No word wrap, horizontal scroll is hijacked and the content goes off screen (Chrome on Android) the topic sounds interesting but the post is unreadable

</comment><comment><USER11> The Wikipedia page [1] for Lambda calculus is also a great read (even for those who don't know anything about it before).

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

</comment><comment><USER12> Personally I prefer this introduction by Barendregt (his books on Lambda calculus are really good): ftp://ftp.cs.ru.nl/pub/CompMath.Found/lambda.pdf

</comment><comment><USER13> I highly recommend the book "To mock a mockingbird" for gentle and fun introduction to combinatorial logic.

</comment><comment><USER14> Does learning about the Lambda calculus have any take-aways for programming in modern languages, or is it more of a cool toy/mostly of interest for language designers and academics?

<comment><USER15> I've found understanding the lambda calculus goes a long way to understanding functional programming—in particular, it does a wonderful job demonstrating just how simple the core ideas underlying languages like Haskell are, contrary to their reputations.

It's also a great way to get a deeper understanding of computation and how it relates to logic. The lambda calculus is special for being an incredibly minimal model of computation that's still expressive enough to write programs (albeit a little awkwardly). Expressing something you care about in lambda calculus is _way_ easier than using a Turing machine directly or even programming in assembly!

<comment><USER16> I think lambda calculus encodes _computable functions_ , but not _algorithms_ , because changing evaluation order can make you go from O(n) to O(n^2) etc. To define time and space complexity, you need to assume something like Haskell's graph reduction. That's more complicated than starting with assembly and counting steps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> At the end, when talking about number notations:

> _Mathematicians worry about that sort of thing. Engineers don 't. Sometimes > aeroplanes crash. Mostly they don't._

I would argue this statement which (to me) wrongly blames the intrinsic _lack of exactness_ in applied science, otherwise a good read.

</comment><comment><USER18> Factorials in pure lambda calculus:

[http://www.flownet.com/ron/lambda- calculus.html](http://www.flownet.com/ron/lambda-calculus.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> (2015)

</comment><comment><USER20> So many parens. Much cumbersome.

Why not Haskell?

<comment><USER21> This is my opinion as to why not Haskell. I do on the whole prefer lazy languages where the parens are not mandatory, but let's be honest about the drawbacks.

So in Haskell you have "name1 name2 name3 name4 name5;" which is the application of some function to some arguments, of course, so this seems like a win compared to having to parenthesize the same thing. But when you have name1 name2 name3 + name4 name5, you had better want (name1 name2 name3) + (name4 name5) because that's the precedence. I think in some scenarios you can throw $ at the expression to get a more advantageous interpretation. And for fun you can do name1 name2 `name3` name4 name5 which will make things interesting.

And then there's name1 name2 . name3 name4 name5 which in some contexts might mean the coder is using point-free style, which is NOT named after a lack of periods. But point-free style is considered cool by some Haskellers.

Some LISPers like the long row of closing parens on the last line of a definition, so one man's meat, right?

There's no such thing as free syntax.

(I invite technical corrections, I'm still learning Haskell).</comment></comment>


HN Meetup: New Delhi on Friday, June 10th - <AUTHOR> http://www.techmeetup.in/events/18845721/

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a lot of hackers joining the group from other cities of India as well.

If anyone want to plan a similar event in other cities in India, I suggest to use our Meetup group at <http://www.techmeetup.in> and leverage the existing user base.

In that way we can build larger base and utilize the same mailing list.

</comment><comment><USER2> Had an awesome time at the last meet. Looking forward to Friday's.

Thanks Ravish, Best, \- Jassi

</comment><comment><USER3> if something is happening in pune, i would be very interested. as others have chimed in, bangalore was not such a great experience for me either.

<comment><USER4> +1 for Pune. Would be fun to meet other HN folks in-person.

<comment><USER5> +1 more. Anyone want to suggest a time/place? (I've only been here a few weeks, don't know my way around yet.)

My suggestion: we pin down a time/place, a few of us precommit to being there, and we post to the main page. Others will show up. At least, that's what happened last time I tried this.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=241233>

I'd propose Sat Jun 11 or Sun Jun 12 as a possible date.

<comment><USER6> Infinitely Beta would be more than happy to be the host. More details on the post by `nunb`.

Feel free to email me. Info on my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've started to feel that startup culture here in Bangalore is not as much as it is believed. I want more fellow hackers to confirm this.

<comment><USER8> I used to be a regular at the Bangalore circuit few years ago at TiE, Barcamps, MoMo's, Headstart etc. It got a bit monotonous; same people, same stories etc. Then the downturn happened and I also got busy. The events still are happening though. Barcamp 10 dates are out. On Meetup there are a few tech related events in Bangalore too; MySQL, PHP, etc. Don't know how active they are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same thing happened in Delhi too, Triggr.in is the new spark.

<comment><USER8> Looks interesting. I guess Bangalore needs a new spark too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it good time to be in Delhi considering the latest clash between government forces and Ram Dev supporters ? I guess there is a sit-in at Raajghat. It seems BJP has also joined the fray. But I guess that won't affect the usual business, would it ? ( I am not from Delhi so I have no idea how things work there)

<comment><AUTHOR> You wouldn't even know about it if you don't watch / read Indian news.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We had a meetup in Delhi NCR last month. Around 25 hackers showed up, and we had great time.

We have booked a bigger venue to accommodate more hackers this time.

<comment><USER10> Ravish, thanks for organizing this meetup. Last time it was a great event. Enjoyed candid startup experiences (from raising VC funding to expanding team, etc.) Hope we can make it even better this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have recently relocated from Hyderabad to Bangalore. Would love to meet hackers in Bangalore.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anyone planning something similar from Mumbai?

<comment><USER13> +1 to Mumbai</comment></comment>


Show HN: Open-source online board gaming platform build atop blockchain tech - <AUTHOR> https://apps.saito.network/arcade <comment><AUTHOR> Blockchain is an ideal way to free physical board game makers from the constraints of manufacturing and big-brand contract conditions.

Here at Saito we have released an online Arcade powered by the Saito Game Engine (SaGE) — a fully distributed, fully on-chain platform, currently featuring classics such as Chess, WordBlocks, and Twilight Struggle as examples of what can be done.

All games run directly in a browser and communicate using Saito's blockchain as a peer-to-peer network.

Would love to connect with anyone interested in developing on our platform, or those open to discussing the use and ideas of blockchain tech more generally.

Thanks for your time, and any feedback or thoughts you can share.

<comment><USER2> Not trying to be a jerk, these are all serious questions and I am thankful for insights, because I seem to be blind to the benefits of blockchains in that regard.

How is a Blockchain better here than just a SQL database? How is it the blockchain exactly that frees you from 'the constraints of manufacturing' a physical board? How is playing chess on your platform any improvement over playing it on lichess, chess.com or chess24? Why would a developer of a game want immutable and distributed data?

<comment><USER3> Not OP, but I could see the fun and value in an immutable and distributed record of a board game. Cheating would be very hard, and I imagine a passionate player feels good knowing the platform will exist for as long as there are players, and about having an eternal record of all of their games ever. Pro leagues can refer back to the chain for scores and arbitrage, customized game clients can hook up to the chain (perhaps tagged with a hash of the client so players can agree on subgenres of 'legal' clients), players can easily pick up and play any game in history from any state..

I don't know about being 'freed from the constraints of manufacturing'.. But a game on a blockchain might be one of the few uses of blockchain I can think of that actually sounds useful.

<comment><USER4> How is a blockchain a practical way to ensure no cheating? Why not just write software that doesn't let you cheat? Or referees....

<comment><USER5> Speculating here... A game with rules encoded in a blockchain is transparent, and publishing rules clarifications is also transparent. You could play on a game in the blockchain, have everyone's moves be encoded on the blockchain, and never have to trust a server wad cheating. A few year's back, UltimateBet.net, a poker site, was caught rigging the poker games being played. [1] Even if UltimateBet.net had open sourced all of their software, one wouldn't be able to trust their servers were actually running that software. With a game on the blockchain, there is no server to trust.

[1] [https://upswingpoker.com/ultimate-bet-absolute-poker- scandal...](https://upswingpoker.com/ultimate-bet-absolute-poker-scandal/)

<comment><USER6> From your link:

> The cheaters relied on a superuser account named "Auditmonster2," that would > observe tables and was able to see everyone player's hole cards.

So.. the game was played exactly by the rules, and the full visibility would not have helped. After all, it was purely info exposure.

But you may say: in blockchain, we'd design special cryptosystem that will ensure other players do know know cards too early, as well as a verify that game is played according to the rules

My answer would be that if you have designed such a cryptosystem, you don't need blockchain anymore! Keep existing infrastructure, but apply encryption and verification at each client. After all, you do not care about world consensus for your poker game -- you just care about consensus between players. You will get all the advantages of centralized solution (high speed, very scaleable, low device requirements, easy upgrades), and server won't be able to rig the games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Send this address to your opponent for invitation:

How?

> Transfer tokens to this address or fund this address from the main faucet.

How?</comment>


What your culture really says - <AUTHOR> http://blog.prettylittlestatemachine.com/blog/2013/02/20/what-your-culture-really-says

<comment><USER3> I was so excited to read this..!

I often hear people in the startup community valorize "critical thinking." Most often though, they're talking about creative talents applied to tech (software & business) problem solving.

That kind of critical thinking (which I consider as cleverness with a specific category of puzzles) is readily available though - there are plenty of great hackers in the world.

There is another kind of critical thinking that I find broadly neglected - <USER2> kind in this post. The startup/software community needs more of this.

Can you imagine what the world might be like if the resourcefulness of hackers become more strongly intertwined with institutional&cultural critical thinking? What if "disruption" wasn't 98% motivated by $$$, but originated from studied/steeped desire to move power, class, race, politics, representation, and art?

</comment><comment><USER4> When I hear 'culture'... I unlock my Browning!

[http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/02/whenever-i-hear- wor...](http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/02/whenever-i-hear-word- culture.html)</comment>