GNU Nano 4.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nano-editor.org/news.php <comment><USER2> >An overlong line is no longer automatically hard-wrapped.

Finally. It was one of the most insane defaults in the history of text editors. Things like this are the reason why it's so hard to recommend nano to beginners.

<comment><USER3> I like the idea of hard wrap, line of code shouldn't be longer than 80 characters... sure it's confusing for beginners + sometimes data shouldn't be hard-wrapped, but in general (imho) it's better than worse

<comment><USER4> Nano is a text editor, not an IDE. There's no reason why _every text_ (not just code) should contain less than 80 characters in every line.

<comment><USER5> Can you explain your thought process here? I believe the idea is that old terminals were 80 characters wide. Also, even with modern monitors it can be nice to have shorter lines so you don't have to move your eyes/head as much. I can't think of why the rule would be specific to source code or why it would apply any differently to other forms of text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "nano" is an interesting creature - it was originally developed as a replacement for the "pico" command that shipped with "pine" (an amazing curses-based email client) because the license on pico was just not really clear.

I still use nano 50% of the time because it's so easy to jump into a file, make some quick changes, and jump out. Plus the mark/cut/paste keystrokes are seared into my memory after years of use.

<comment><USER7> I would recommend micro. It's simple like nano, but has full mouse support. The only real downside is that it's not installes by default.

<comment><USER8> So one day someone will write the improvement and call it milli, but then what? Is there a prefix for 10^0? Do these people not plan ahead?

<comment><USER9> Well you can use some of the convenience steps around 1, e.g. centi and deci and then skip the 1.0 and go straight to deca and hecto.

<comment><USER10> You can call it one, or alternatively:

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's amazing how, no matter how old or small a piece of software is, as long as it keeps being used, itremains a living thing and keeps on changing and evolving.

<comment><USER9> For a stable piece of software the build script(s) somehow turn into a change hotspot. You might have not touched the core of the software in five years, but guess what, every couple months some change to the build script is necessary.

<comment><USER12> Depends on how much nonstandard stuff you're using, and whether you have flags such as -Werror that can cause "new" build failures.

<comment><USER9> And on how many platforms the software is used. E.g. when people try to compile things on HP-UX, perhaps even an older version, things often get interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There needs to be a console text editor installed by default with CUA keybindings, like notepad, sublime text, dos edit, and borland tools were back in the day.

Nano can get partially there, micro is the current best though it has a few MacOS oddities around home/end but can be configured, in the past used ne.

<comment><USER14> mcedit, the editor of mc, is a nice DOS-like editor, complete with blue background and pulldown menus. The mc suite contains a simple but powerful hex editor, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's a bash script to install Nano Editor v4.0 with syntax highlighting enabled on the Mac (should work as-is on Ubuntu, Fedora etc. as well)...

[https://gist.github.com/fevangelou/be744753730e86b8783fd481f...](https://gist.github.com/fevangelou/be744753730e86b8783fd481f311a7c9)

</comment><comment><USER16> [https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/rope+of+sand](https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/rope+of+sand)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm sure nano/pico and the like are _nice_ but to me there's two things a terminal editor can try to solve for: being nice, or bring ubiquitous. The nicest ones (say emacs) are way nicer than nano in terms of features, extensibility, etc. Now for being ubiquitous, nothing beats vi to date. I can't tell what nano is aiming for?

EDIT

I guess I had assumed that vi/vim was significantly more widespread than nano. Maybe that's an outdated assumption? I feel like I've come across a few instances where vi has been the only choice...

<comment><USER18> Why nano? nano is sane.

With Emacs/VI you need to bring a HUGE mental framework to just use it.

And maybe, with luck or some years of pain training, to just EXIT it :)

\---

Vim/emacs are powerful. Nice? Never. Easy? never. Good for most common editing task in the terminal?. Nope.

Claim that Vim/Emacs are good is like say "why people use Sublime Text when Eclipse is so much better?"

Except, with eclipse, you know how exit it.

<comment><USER19> Vi's not too bad. 'i' to edit text. ESC to get out of editing. ':w" to save changes. ":q" to quit. ":wq" to do both. ":q!" to quit without saving. "hjkl" for navigation in case the arrow keys don't work.

That's enough to get by for quick edits. I haven't used vi a ton in my life, but I've managed to remember that much.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, but you NEED TO KNOW THAT before use it.

With nano, all is straight in the UI. That is powerful, and so obvious.

Why Vim/Emacs not have that?

<comment><USER20> Emacs comes with extensive built in documentation. At the bottom it says hit C-h C-a which takes you to an about page which has various help links.

The GUI app as a menu bar, a standard gui feature that includes at the far right an entry entitled HELP under which one can find a manual, docs, a tutorial, a FAQ and various other options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's too bad the Windows Store only contains Ubuntu LTS editions. It'll be July 2020 before all the improvements from 2.9.3 on up become available for most WSL users. :(

<comment><USER22> No need to wait until 2020. From the GNU nano README:

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

 _How to compile and install nano:_

        Download the nano source code, then:

            tar xvzf nano-x.y.z.tar.gz
            cd nano-x.y.z
            ./configure
            make
            make install

        It's that simple.  Use --prefix with configure to override the
        default installation directory of /usr/local.

        If you haven't configured with the --disable-nanorc option, after
        installation you may want to copy the doc/sample.nanorc file to
        your home directory, rename it to ".nanorc", and then edit it
        according to your taste.

<comment><USER23> This indeed. This is one of my first steps on any new computer/OS install.

I'm a daily Nano user and in my experience the only real headache you can run into is missing the right version or configure not finding where readline and nucrses/ncursesw are. Those are really easy to install on any platform (even from source).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Did anyone noticed that date at the top right is 2018?

</comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone have an Ubuntu PPA with up to date versions of GNU Nano?

</comment><comment><USER26> >A newline character is no longer automatically added at end of buffer.

yesssssssssss

<comment><USER27> Such an insane default. Currently programming a bittorrent client and was edited files to test some functionality. Was confused for a long time until I realized nano was turning my "echo 'this is a test' > test" into "echo 'this is a test\n' > test"

<comment><USER28> Pretty sure nano was changing your code to

        echo 'this is a test' > test\n

and then echo was adding the newline because you didn't specify -n.

<comment><USER29> ...and also

      echo 'this is a test\n'

doesn't produce an additional new line because -e _wasn 't_ specified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Serious question: how often do you log into a box where it would be impossible or considered rude for you to install a proper editor? I feel like I must have been blessed by the sysadmins in my life (them often being me) but it's never happened in 25 years of logging into *nix boxes.

<comment><USER31> In any large-ish organization, you probably don't do this on a production machine. You _absolutely_ do not do it if you aren't _the_ person (or on the team) who will get called/paged if it breaks, or you're probably risking your job if the package manager goes sideways or you flub it up and let the package manager throw in a couple of extra upgrades or whatever.

<comment><USER30> So you ask that team to install Emacs (because you're less likely to mess up config with a proper/familiar editor) and they just say no, forever?

<comment><USER31> Probably, yes. If you're lucky, it might get rolled into the next deploy/upgrade.

Luckily, you usually don't need to do extensive editing there, because you usually can't change much. Most of the changes you'd want to make to config files, etc. also have to go into the next deploy or through some change management process anyway.

You definitely get used to using vi, though.

<comment><USER30> I suppose I have been lucky. If I ever actually had to edit something critical on an unfriendly box, I suspect I'd still just do it in Emacs via tramp because I know I'd be less error prone. But as you suggest, for many years now I've experienced a strict divide between config changes, which are managed properly and not just done as ad-hoc edits, and boxes that are meant to be interactive, in which case the environment is tailored to the users.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What tech feeds do you subscribe to? (other than HN) - <AUTHOR>

I really enjoy the links/topics/banter on HN. What other feeds or sites do you subscribe to daily in order to get your fix of tech/news/science/business? Linkage... Sharing is caring..! <comment><USER2> ReadWriteWeb Lambda The Ultimate Dzone (specifically Big Data/BI Zone)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers threepipeproblm. I tend to hit www.reddit.com/r/technology/ which overlaps with here. And individual blogs. Great suggestions. I will add them to the list.</comment></comment>


Joe Stagner Quits Microsoft: "Free from the Borg Collective" - <AUTHOR> http://www.misfitgeek.com/2011/09/my-last-day-at-the-evil-empire-%E2%80%93-free-from-the-borg-collective/

<comment><USER2> What's the relevance of this? Who is Joe Stagner other than a guy who hasn't filled out all the tabs on his wordpress blog and just quit Microsoft?

I'm asking seriously. I googled him and didn't see anything of import.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a hell of a way to burn your ships behind you. No going back to the Borg in case the new job doesn't work out I guess.

<comment><USER4> Or, more importantly, expecting any of your former colleagues to vouch for your skills or help get you hired when you realize your new dream job isn't as rosy as it seemed in the interview process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This blog hits a number of my "urgh" criteria:

\- random capital EMPHASIS on words that don't appear to be important

\- over exclamation!!!!

\- tempting the reader with a secret they are unlikely to care about.

<comment><USER6> ...and does he really need to make so many basic spelling/grammar mistakes?

"I worked for 1 of 2 other folks" (doubt he meant "1 out of 2")

"I feel think I hit the lottery !!!!" (which is it?)

"I'll gibe you some hints."

Agreed on the weird caps too. Makes me keen on learning more about the old OSDT ("Open Source Development Technologies")

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Completely unprofessional. I would never hire someone after seeing a blog port like this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh my god, is this dude for real? His blog makes him look like a clown.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks like somebody was fired and is pissed off by that</comment>


Lexus has created a real, rideable hoverboard - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zTCgMPZRuo

<comment><USER2> There are soft wisps of vapour that can be seen during that clip.

My money is on it being a compact cryogenic superconductor and the Meissner effect.

A new state of the art in compact cryogenics would be pretty cool. (pun intended) But this hoverboard is likely little more than a gimmick.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good analysis! I'm just hoping that it is real and one day I can get on one. Its a step in the right direction though.</comment></comment>


The Flash Web Server (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~vivek/flash/ <comment><USER2> Brief summary:

The flash web server's distinguishing feature is that it uses multiple lightweight processes to do the blocking I/O required to read a file from the disk.

I think that their paper is flawed in some ways. They state that other web servers will block when doing disk I/O. But this is not true; you can easily read a file in and send it out over the network without any blocking at all, by using techniques like sendfile() (and related syscalls, sendpath(), splice() etc), or by mmapping files.

Several web servers used one or more of these techniques back in 1999. The paper doesn't even mention sendfile(), which has the added performance advantage that the file contents don't even have to be copied into the web server's process memory. It's hard to see how their approach is better.

I'm not going to claim their benchmarks are wrong, but it's very easy to optimize your own server while testing against a sub optimally configured competitor.

Edit: They tested on FreeBSD 2.2.6 - which lacked sendfile() - this may explain their results.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe that Apache incorporates most of the optimizations today. However, unlike Flash, it is not event driven.

<comment><USER4> Actually, Apache 2.4 does include an event-based, async MPM: Event. The Event MPM has not been "just" an optimized keep keepalive Worker variant for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone have a link to the paper? It's 404 on TFA.

<comment><USER6> Try the USENIX archive: [https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix99/full_papers/pai...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix99/full_papers/pai/pai.pdf)</comment></comment>


OCFS2: Unappreciated Linux File System - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7809 <comment><USER2> I agree; OCFS2 is unappreciated, and it is quite a good filesystem. However, it does have it's limitations.

We use OCFS2 for backup volumes on our fibre channel SAN storage. We've found it performs adequately enough, although filesystem performance can slow down when you have a lot of sequential writes going to the storage.

It does some things really well, but in the end it has a single point of failure - the storage array or server hosting the storage becomes a bottleneck and SPOF. It doesn't take the place of newer clustering technologies that spread data around multiple points of failure.

</comment><comment><USER3> OCFS2, in the v1.4 branch has some extreme fragmentation problems. It seems to be just fine if you're dealing with large files, or lots of small files that don't change frequently. However, if you've got lots of turnover of lots of small files, you're going to get bitten.

If that describes you, you need to be willing to track the latest kernel releases, and able to rebuild your FS semi-frequently.

(I'm being bitten by this right now, and I need to rebuild the FS... not something I'm happy about.)

<comment><USER2> We ran into this as well. The main problem is that when you get fragmented too badly you run into space allocation issues where you have tons of free space, but the kernel returns an "out of disk space" error because it couldn't allocate new blocks.

The only solution is to rebuild the filesystem and restore from tape. I suppose Oracle doesn't really have any motivation to fix this because most of their customers are using it for large database files rather than small files.

<comment><USER3> It's also annoying to have open bugs that can't get any traction... I'm more than willing to do almost any test (short of destroying my data) to help them along, because an easy way to get multiple boxes with block access to a volume is pretty awesome...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll toss out the suggestion of GFS as well, if you're evaluating clustered filesystems.

<http://sourceware.org/cluster/gfs/> <http://www.redhat.com/gfs/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Since the cloud doesn't support shared storage, I predict that this will remain unappreciated.</comment>


MongoDB: We think it is time for an extension of copyleft - <AUTHOR> http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-October/003672.html <comment><USER2> In this I count on MongoDB Inc's intentions to be hollow. I doubt care about copyleft being extended so much as trying to find new avenues for require paid licenses for existing use. In this sense they are not born of a desire for more copyleft, but profit.</comment>


Airbnb and Housing - <AUTHOR> http://publicpolicy.airbnb.com/airbnb-housing/ <comment><USER2> There's a line: if it becomes more profitable to rent at Airbnb's nightly rates than at monthly / long-term rates, property investors will then drive down long-term housing supply, increasing property values and monthly rents.

Airbnb's claim is that there is no evidence suggesting that the line has been crossed, so the only impact of their service is that existing landowners / renters get to line their pockets a bit.

They don't have a leg to stand on if you see people successfully investing in property to rent exclusively at short-term rates, which has started to happen in some markets [1][2]. I'm tempted to cheekily link to their own blog post here indicating that 13% of their NYC hosts are doing exactly this.

And don't even get me started on the fact that while looking for a place to live, landlords have justified their insane asking rate by telling me that the previous tenant rented out a spare room on Airbnb.

1\. [http://needwant.com/p/buying-apartment- airbnb/](http://needwant.com/p/buying-apartment-airbnb/) 2\. [http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/20/home-sharing- sit...](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/20/home-sharing-site-san- francisco-evictions/)

<comment><USER3> > And don't even get me started on the fact that while looking for a place to > live, landlords have justified their insane asking rate by telling me that > the previous tenant rented out a spare room on Airbnb.

Ah, that's lovely. Coupled with the "no subletting" clause standard in NYC leases, this means that landlords can jack up rent while _also_ giving themselves an easy excuse to terminate your lease at any point in the future when they decide it's convenient (for them) to do so.

(If you think this is too sleazy and underhanded to be believable, you've never tried renting an apartment in NYC. There are certainly some great exceptions - my current management co. is great - but I've heard some great horror stories, and experienced one of my own.)

<comment><USER4> it's a strange thing to contemplate how a startup like this could directly contribute to housing cost inflation in your own backyard. and to think you might be right - the answer could be you might need to give up some privacy (let strangers have run of your home) to live where you want - wow - that's a bright future we're working with.

i'm an apartment dweller myself - i'm going to check with the building management today to see if they ban this kind of short term rental in my building. at least protect myself on my own turf.

<comment><USER5> > to live where you want

To use an extremely scarce resource that is considered to be valuable by most humans. I am sure there are no problems like these in cheaper, less popular cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am really tired of these "oh shit we have to issue a PR spin control response" posts that presume I've already read the original drama and don't link to it.

"You might have seen a story" my ass. Link to something if you're going to respond to it.

<comment><USER7> You're right; we should have linked to it. I'm changing that now.

<comment><USER8> Are you also planning on addressing the numerous factual misrepresentations in the post? Because your [edit:AirBnB's (Brian is CEO is AirBNB)] already poor credibility is taking a real beating: see pretty much all of the comments on this page.

<comment><USER7> I am not aware of any factual misrepresentations, but I am working my way through some of the comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I kind of hate when people cherry-pick stats to be misleading, even if I otherwise support them.

The relevant number for NYC is not the _percentage of hosts_ sharing a primary residence, but the percentage of total listings in NYC, or percentage of room- nights booked. I'm sure those numbers are far worse than 13%. Anyone renting non-primary residences is probably renting a _lot_ of non-primary residences.

<comment><USER7> You are correct that there are some hosts that list multiple properties, thus skewing the listing breakdown. It depends on the city. In most cities, room nights and revenue for "primary dwellings," meaning the homes people live in, are around 70-80%. We are in 34,000 cities, so this really varies quite widely. I would like to see the breakdown to be skewed much closer to primary dwellings for two reasons - (1) they have much higher review scores from guests, and (2) they don't typically enrich cities the way ordinary hosts do (though there are always exceptions. We are actually working with cities and our community to remove corporate rental companies that don't meet the above.

<comment><USER9> What is acceptable varies by market too (IMO). In Bali, the "owner lives in a house with 3-4 rental houses attached" is totally fine, and just as "authentic" as sharing a single house, since it's common for an extended family to live like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> PR disguised as science. I like Airbnb in many ways, but these arguements are shallow and wrong. If Airbnb is used to help pay for rent, that necessarily pushes rent upwards. That their research shows Airbnb makes housing "more affordable for families" could only be based on families renting out vacant rooms, something not all families want to do but may be forced to do if Airbnb is widespread.

This is Fox News level "science." This article made me slightly queezy.

<comment><USER11> > If Airbnb is used to help pay for rent, that necessarily pushes rent > upwards.

I definitely know people who are contemplating getting a bigger place with a spare room specifically to AirBnB it. Besides general effects on the housing market, this can increase people's financial risk (depending other aspects of their finances, such as savings cushion). It amounts to over-provisioning their housing in the hopes of reselling the spare capacity at a profit (you figure you can get more on AirBnB for the 3rd room than the incremental 2rd->3rd room costs you). That can turn out badly if somehow the reselling doesn't work, isn't as profitable as you thought it would be, you end up unable to manage it for a period of time so the extra capacity sites idle, etc. Sort of like buying extra servers in a colo because you figure you can make the money back by renting VPSs at a markup. It can definitely work, but to really make it work you are now in the VPS business, and you might lose money if you aren't good at that business.

<comment><USER12> In most rental markets, it's more difficult to find affordable housing for 3BR and 2BR units for families. If more people rent out 2BR and 3BR appartments to rent out the extra room, that's going to put more pressure on families looking for affordable housing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know how they can argue with a straight face that using short-term rent to pay mortgages and leases doesn't raise the prices of real estate. That extra income is (obviously) going to get factored into real estate prices when someone makes an offer on a property. And the people who are using it now to supplement mortgages are going to use that income as a selling point when they try to sell their property - "gets $XXX/day on short-term rentals."

EDIT: typos & minor wording

<comment><USER14> Hacker News stories need an auto-bot-post explaining supply and demand and "seller's market" AMD "buyer's market".

<comment><USER15> But my gut feeling tells me that supply and demand have nothing to do with price! It's all greedy landlords and tech elitists trying to evict me out of my home I can't afford.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "56% of Airbnb hosts in San Francisco said they use their Airbnb income to help pay their mortgage or rent."

If these people didn't use AirBNB they couldn't afford their rent. They'd move out or find a cheaper place. Now they have AirBNB they can afford to pay more rent which raises the market.

<comment><USER17> Which is no doubt very true. But this still may be an argument for _keeping_ Airbnb in the bigger picture if you value diversity in your neighborhoods. Any by diversity I mean the ability for many low to mid wage workers to live near their jobs.

<comment><USER16> That could be true.

The risk is that it prices the low to mid wage workers out with AirBNB not even keeping them in an area. I'd love to see a study on the average income of AirBNB hosts outside of their AirBNB income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They are referring to this article on Slate - [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/02/airb...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/02/airbnb_gentrification_how_the_sharing_economy_drives_up_housing_prices.html)

> If you're looking for a place to stay in Marfa this evening, there are a > total of five options available. In the six year history of Airbnb, only 17 > properties have ever been booked in Marfa. So it's difficult to argue that > Airbnb is having any impact on the housing market in this community.

Kinda funny reading that then the original article on slate attempting to make something out of this non-story

<comment><USER10> So you found there to be some reliable information in the Airbnb article? Please extract that here, as I all I found was a bunch of unsupported defensive statements cleverly disguised as scientific conclusions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > 87% of Airbnb hosts in New York share only the home in which they live

Does this mean they're admitting that 13% of Airbnb hosts in New York are sharing other properties?

I was under the impression that Airbnb strongly denied such people existed.

<comment><USER20> That's kind of crazy -- more than one out of ten is an illegal hotel as per their own statistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So, if I'm reading this right, a bit more than one in eight AirBnB hosts in New York are violating the law? Is that not an issue in of itself?

<comment><USER22> Worse. 2/3rd of listings are or would be violating NY laws:

"Two thirds of the listings that contain user reviews are for the "Entire home/apartment" room type (listings without reviews are slightly less, at 64%). Because of a New York State law regarding short-term housing, it is almost always illegal to rent a full apartment when the host is not present for less than 30 days."

<comment><USER23> This seems to fly in the face of AirBnb's claim: "87% of Airbnb hosts in New York share only the home in which they live."

Anecdotally just surfing around what's currently listed - the _vast_ majority of listings are for whole home/apartments, only a minority are shared.

IMO there are some major shenanigans going on in AirBnb's numbers.

Side note: I _hate_ , _HATE_ , this weasel word, "sharing": "Rosen's work also examined whether some people would stop renting their apartments to permanent residents and start sharing them only on Airbnb."

IT'S CALLED RENTING. AirBnb hosts are "sharing" their apartments to visitors as much as my local restaurant is "sharing" their food with me.

<comment><USER24> I completely agree with you about the term "sharing" economy. That term is certainly a PR victory for many of these companies.

This is commerce, and I would agree that a new, disruptive, form of commerce has been enabled by the web. There will be tremendous benefits, and there will be new problems and externalities. The old regulatory regime will need to adapt, but (in my opinion), this does not mean that zoning laws are now obsolete. Some laws are obsolete, others may be more relevant than ever.

Maybe "micro-commerce" would a better term? In any case, "sharing" is an extremely inaccurate and misleading term here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Boy that Slate article is just bad. So one sided. Airbnb is absolutely disrupting the home ownership/rental and hotel markets. Like any market there might be winners and losers. It will sort itself out though and we'll settle at a new balance.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a great example of the the danger of consuming "raw" corporate propaganda. Without professional journalists to fact-check, look for other perspectives, and filter corporate self-interest, many readers will come out misinformed. Information supply becomes further tainted by attempts to manipulate the average Joe.

I really hope the NYTimes and Washington Post don't go out of business; I rely on them to adjudicate most of my news.

<comment><USER26> Agreed - especially given the popularity of sites like the Tampa Bay Times' politifact.com, I hope we'll continue to see newspapers take advantage of their fact-checkers and editorial teams outside (and inside) of their own publications. It might be a great way for those organizations to stay relevant - sort of like "Snopes for the real world".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From a purely user point of view I wonder if they could automate this classification and let me use it as a search filter. AirBnB's compelling use- case for me is as a "paid couchsurfing": people renting out spare rooms in their residence, the whole residence while they're temporarily gone, etc. In many cities those are indeed the main kind of result. But in a few cities there are a lot of listings that are more like a commercial operator, depending on the location ranging from "DIY hostel" to VRBO-style listings. I'd rather just exclude those from the search, because I don't find AirBnB to be a very useful portal to that kind of property (most of the legit vacation- rental type stuff have their own websites where you can rent directly, and the "DIY hostel" stuff I'd rather stay away from). As is I have to spend a good bit of time manually trying to filter them out.

</comment><comment><USER27> Surprised to see them mention NYC in this -- given the legal attention they are facing, it would have been better to not mention the city at all, or any stats about it, so as not to give the critics ammunition (eg: "In their OWN BLOG POST, they admit...")

</comment><comment><USER25> Hotels are a form of progressive taxation: rich out of town travelers pay more for housing than permanent residents. Generally travelers are richer than non travelers because traveling is usually a discretionary expense or paid for by a corporation.

AirBnb eliminates the progressive taxation, thereby raising living expenses for poorer residents. Rich people love it, poor people hate it. Sure, you can make some money in the short term by renting out your spare room, but in the long term, as rents rise, this process involuntarily turns your two bedroom apartment into a one bedroom + strangers' room apartment.

Just wait until San Francisco "Google bus activists" get a whiff of AirBnb.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, HN community in these threads is against of Airbnb because it pushes up the prices of housing in desirable cities/city regions. Did I get it right? What's so bad about that?

<comment><USER7> There isn't actually evidence that this occurs that I am aware of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The solution to this problem is to allow property developers and landowners to freely increase the housing supply. And then start charging land taxes instead of property taxes, to encourage such development.

<comment><USER29> > The solution to this problem is to allow property developers and landowners > to freely increase the housing supply.

I dont think such a thing will ever be possible. Some big companies in the housing market might even be against it.</comment></comment>


Virtual rate cut forces Nintendo gamers into riskier assets - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/68f96d24-02f0-42fd-b132-aba0acba777f <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the Corrupted Blood incident.[0]

"The Corrupted Blood incident was a virtual pandemic in the MMORPG World of Warcraft, which began on September 13, 2005, and lasted for one week. The epidemic began with the introduction of the new raid Zul'Gurub and its end boss Hakkar the Soulflayer. When confronted and attacked, Hakkar would cast a hit point-draining and highly contagious debuff spell called "Corrupted Blood" on players."

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident)

</comment><comment><USER3> > It did not take long, however, for players to spot that they could defraud > the game's bank by depositing large sums in saving accounts and then "time > travelling" into the future by tweaking the console's internal clock. The > bank duly pays decades of compounded interest, making rapid bell > millionaires.

This reminds me of how you are able to pay your hefty bill at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Good on the FT writers. They didn't lose the whimsy.

Edit to add: archive version (a few hours ago at time of posting) - [https://archive.is/jR7mK](https://archive.is/jR7mK)</comment>


Wufoo's Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/04/25/wufoos-interview/

<comment><USER2> "We had to spend two months writing the whole billing system up; Chargify and those services didn't exist at that point. So, if we wanted to have recurrent billing we had to write it ourselves and do all the logic"

If you implement a new service out of necessity to solve a problem you have at work, it is a very good indication that service is also needed by other companies. Instead of using this service you created internally only, you should release it and see if there is a great demand for it.

I think this was a missed opportunity for Wufoo to create another great service.

<comment><USER3> I'd guess that their work on Wufoo was taking up all of their time. They solved the payment challenge, except it was a front-end solution for customers, not developers. Might have been a larger market to go after.

I don't know how much Chargify makes, but Rusenko had to build Weebly's payment system and he didn't like doing that. Same story with Djangy. WePay also comes to mind, but I don't recall them seeming frustrated about implementing theirs. I would imagine it's such a difficult problem (or would have been in 2006) that it'd feel like running another full-time startup when they still had the challenge of delivering a good form builder as their main priority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love that they only raised $118k and sold for $35M. These guys are my heroes.</comment>


Uber's Chief Systems Architect on Their Architecture and Rapid Growth - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoq.com/articles/podcast-matt-ranney <comment><USER2> Nice talk (although I just read the highlighted transcript). Not the usual 'This is how we do it. We be so cool!' rather 'This is why we choose to do it this way, these are the tradeoffs and this is what doesn't work too well...'</comment>


Make any picture blink festively with Photo Lights for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/12/06/make-any-picture-blink-festively-with-photo-lights-for-ios/ <comment><USER2> Please don't.</comment>


Where Is Starman? Track Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster in Space - <AUTHOR> http://www.whereisroadster.com/ <comment><USER2> He's in space, probably shouldn't be called a roadster anymore. How about voidster, spacester, solster, starster.

</comment><comment><USER2> It would be neat if it sent pictures back.</comment>


Show HN: Find a convenient California DMV appointment - <AUTHOR> http://bookdmv.org/

<comment><USER2> Many, but not all, DMV procedures can be handled at a local AAA office ([http://www.aaa.com](http://www.aaa.com)). I don't remember all of the details, but it sure beats lines or appointments. It might be worth noting this on your site, and it might be a potential way to extend the functionality. I've got no clue if other Auto Clubs (Emergency Road Side Assistance corps) offer similar DMV procedure services to their customers, but it kind of makes sense that they would.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" Is this site authorized or endorsed by the DMV? No, and I have no idea how to ask."_

Messing around with a computer system without permission (especially one owned by the government) could land you in significant legal trouble. If the DMV wanted to allow you to write apps that made appointments for people, they'd probably have a public API for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Obligatory IANAL, and if you are then go ahead and school me, but_ :

That's not the usual interpretation of the CFAA, which holds that accessing the publicly served pages of a webserver is not accessing a "protected computer". Perhaps if such access were in violation of a Terms of Service or a Cease and Desist letter there would be an argument, but the CA DMV has no terms of service that I could find.

The only sections that apply to a non-protected computer are (6) and (7):

(6) knowingly and with intent to defraud traffics (as defined in section 1029) in any password or similar information through which a computer may be accessed without authorization, if—

(A) such trafficking affects interstate or foreign commerce; or

(B) such computer is used by or for the Government of the United States;

(7) with intent to extort from any person any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any—

(A) threat to cause damage to a protected computer;

(B) threat to obtain information from a protected computer without authorization or in excess of authorization or to impair the confidentiality of information obtained from a protected computer without authorization or by exceeding authorized access; or

(C) demand or request for money or other thing of value in relation to damage to a protected computer, where such damage was caused to facilitate the extortion;

I am neither attempting to defraud nor extort anyone, so... no CFAA violation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> my roommate and I noticed that every time an user starts a session and picks a date this won't be available until the next day (midnight) even if they don't complete the procedure. This is a _silly_ way to prevent collisions I think. My roommate made an appointment right after midnight and many slots were free again.</comment>


Skype blocked my business account - <AUTHOR>

I made the (poor) decision of choosing Skype as my phone number and VOIP provider for my business.
About a month ago I saw a strange charge on my credit card statement from Skype that did not appear on my account purchase history. After notifying Skype of the issue, they proceeded to block my account for unauthorized access.
For more than a week, I have not been receiving phone calls on my publicly listed number. Skype has not worked with me to resolve the issue. They have asked me to fill out a verification form 3 times and each time they have told me that I have left out some crucial information. I have provided them with absolutely everything I have knowledge of. This procedure should not even be necessary since there is no evidence of unauthorized access to my account. The charge does not even appear on my Skype account - only on my credit card statement. It is likely a billing issue.
This post is meant as a word of warning to anyone who was considering using Skype for their business. Stay far away.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a better VOIP service than can provide me with a number and unlimited calls in the US/CA? <comment><USER2> > They have asked me to fill out a verification form 3 times and each time > they have told me that I have left out some crucial information.

I got stuck in this exactly hole(!). One day out of the blue Skype locked out my account, I contacted them from the registered email address. They told me to fill out the verification form, which I did, several times. I then asked them what the problem was (again from the registered email) and they said that they couldn't discuss it until I verify and I couldn't verify without more information...

So one day I just got fed up and sat there filling out the form over and over again. It finally worked when I selected a different payment method.

I just got lucky. Their CS told me to "make a new Skype account" (losing over $10 in credit, and a Skype number subscription in the process). Since they weren't able to willing to help me simply because I was answering just one of the questions on their silly form "wrong."

</comment><comment><USER3> Vonage served me very well for many years. I cancelled my service from them a couple of years ago, but purely because my circumstances changed.

The were rock solid, courteous, and professional from start to finish.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google Voice? I've had nothing but great luck with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe I tried them first, but they did not have the area code I wanted. I will check again!

<comment><USER5> Also check out Twilio ([http://www.twilio.com](http://www.twilio.com)).

<comment><USER6> We use Twilio and OpenVBX for our phone solution. It works good plus let's us automate a bunch of things, including text messages and calls etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Co-founder hunting - <AUTHOR> I'm Quynh, founder & CEO of TourMega - I'm a serial entrepreneur and have built a startup that profited over 500k.  I have a background in building marketplaces & aggregators.  TourMega is my current venture.  It's a search engine for tours and activities. Check us out here:   https://angel.co/tourmega
We've just launched in November 2016, already have 17,000 tours & activities.  We aggregate tours and actives from our partners and doing a revenue sharing structure with them.  We are making more revenue than we spent on ads this month.  I'm looking for either a technical or business co-founder, who's
Interested in the travel space
Interested in marketplaces
Interested in aggregation/data collection/machine learning
Been there and done that, knows how to wear multiple hats, grow and scale the business
Please contact firstname.lastname@example.com if you're interested in chatting ;) <comment><USER2> Just a heads up, your other site tournative.com has an expired SSL certificate and Css is not loading correctly on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER3> Impressive!</comment>


Run-ahead transfer prediction in the Mill CPU architecture - <AUTHOR> http://ootbcomp.com/docs/prediction/index.html <comment><USER2> The point of the page is that the Mill CPU (of which I know almost nothing, I don't think I had heard of it before) does _not_ do branch prediction, instead it focuses on the memory traffic and does _transfer prediction_ :

 _[...] it predicts transfers rather than branches [..]_

So, the title of the post is annoyingly misleading and I would really appreciate it if someone could edit.

<comment><USER3> Did you watch the video of the talk? The wording in the summary is a bit misleading.

The Mill does exit prediction on extended basic blocks -- it predicts which branch will be taken rather than if a particular branch will be taken, and it can chain these predictions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've gotta say, organizing the code in terms of EBBs instead of calls makes lot of the features in earlier videos make a lot more sense. I have no idea how they'll be able to handle interrupts or avoid having to deal with interrupts, but I'm sure they have a story for that. Really gotta re-watch the memory video now.

Hand coding assembly for this would be really painful, but we already knew this with the belt. The Mill really seems to have been designed with compilers in mind.

<comment><USER5> Sure was! I write compilers; much better to have the hardware team do the work :-)

Mill interrupts are nothing but involuntary function calls, and handlers are perfectly ordinary functions. There are no privileged operations; all security is memory based - an upcoming talk will cover that. ootbcomp.com/mailing-list to get talk announcements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> until i can see some decent attempt at an implementation (either in an FPGA, or an open-source simulator), where i can see cycle counts for some benchmarks, i will be erring on the side of scepticism, primarily because this CPU design still has some major issues (in my opinion).

compilers should _not_ be deciding instruction scheduling - this is exactly the issue that kills VLIW ISAs (e.g Intel's Itanium CPU, AMD's Northern Islands and prior GPUs) when used for anything other than DSP-like codes. as much power and die space as an out-of-order schedular takes, run time is the only time (really) that the order of operations can be determined (in my humble opinion).

<comment><USER7> Have you watched all of the lectures? Your questions are answered in them. The Mill is not at all like other VLIW architectures.

<comment><USER8> He is talking about the fundamental problem of VLIW architectures. They rely on the static scheduling of programs to enable instruction level parallelism -- which is critical to performance. Scheduling is an NP Complete problem.

<comment><USER9> The harder the problem, the worse it's going to be to calculate it on the fly.

<comment><USER6> not true. an OoO scheduler has a fixed window size with which to re-order. and as soon as you have data-dependent branches or dependencies, your compiler cannot possibly schedule instructions effectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I found it interesting that in a presentation given in 2013, the (only) comparison to a competitor's processor was the Pentium 4 (Prescott) from 2004(!).

<comment><USER4> He's just using the P4 because it has the longest mis-predict penalty of any recent mass produced CPU. I'd guess that the Mill is going to be clocked fairly slow given the cycle latency numbers I'm seeing so I wouldn't be surprised if the Mill's 5 cycle mis predict penalty came out to the same time delay as a 10 cycle penalty on a Sandy Bridge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there architectures where a programmer can just use a specific opcode to inform the cpu what's most likely?

<comment><USER12> Yes, its called static branch prediction. I'm not sure how popular it is in modern ISAs, but MIPS and SPARC had such instructions.

<comment><USER13> The Pentium 4 introduced prefix opcodes that hinted that the next branch would be likely or unlikely to be taken. These are still legal, but afaik post- NetBurst CPUs ignore them, and Intel's optimization manuals have dropped mention of them.</comment></comment></comment>


iPhone 4S outselling iPhone 5 - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2012/12/14/iphone-5-sales-iphone-4s/

<comment><USER2> This entire article is garbage.

\- It talks about "investors starting to panic" about Apple's future. The linked article has no such wording, nor does the USA Today articles that I saw.

\- The title makes it seem like the iPhone 5 sales have been outperformed by iPhone 4S sales... No where in the article does it claim that, unless you mean the analyst that says "'Some of our Chinese sources do not expect the iPhone 5 to do as well as the iPhone 4S,' Millunovich wrote."

</comment><comment><USER3> The maps fiasco makes it clear that Apple is at a crossroads: They can

1\. Open up the platform, or

2\. Go down the _same_ road that they went down in the 80s/90s, handing the bulk of the business over to an open platform.

I know which way I'm betting this turns out.

<comment><USER4> All roads lead to open by way of a maps fiasco? I can't even begin to diagram your thought process.

<comment><USER3> > _All roads lead to open by way of a maps fiasco?_

Where did I say/imply "All roads lead to open"? I can't even begin to diagram your method of reading comprehension.

<comment><USER4> > 1\. Open up the platform, or 2\. Go down the same road that they went down > in the 80s/90s, handing the bulk of the business over to an open platform. >

You gave two options at a crossroads as a result of a maps fiasco, both options end up with the "open" solution winning. My reading comprehension is fine, your arguments are faulty.

<comment><USER3> > _both options end up with the "open" solution winning._

I see you've changed from "all roads lead to open", so it's a start. Keep going.

Edit: On second thought, don't. This thread doesn't have a lot going for it, I'm out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not very long ago stock of the iPhone 5 wasn't always available. My wife would have waited a couple of weeks for her replacement work phone if she waited for the 5. Other people may have changed their choice based on availability.

The iPhone 5 is a better phone and in my view better value because it might have a longer useful (kept up to date with the latest OS) life. Having said that the 4S is still a very good phone and I have no intention of replacing mine anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love how these articles totally ignore dates. A June 5s launch would mean the 5 has about 80% of the time to sell as the top iPhone compared to the 4s. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't sell as many of the 5.

There may be something to be said for the new iPhone having no new must-have features, but that's not unique to Apple.

</comment><comment><USER7> oh damn I hope smartphones aren't reaching a peak already in general. Because to be honest every new generation now suffers from diminished returns, and for someone who likes to keeps his money together and still has an iPhone 4 for instance, there's really no good reason to buy a new phone yet. And after we've all been all profiting from the exploding market in the last years. But then again there's so much potentially crazy stuff coming, like good 3D displays and tactile feedback touchscreen. Should keep the boat afloat for a while.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ugh, I made the mistake of scrolling into the comments. As much as I love my tech, it's horrifying to see the ignorant vitriol which people spew out of personal allegiance to _brands_.

</comment><comment><USER9> When faced with 3 pricing choices, it seems consumers will choose the one in the middle. And it could also be a case of "overshooting" most consumers - i.e. most Apple customers are starting to think iPhone 4S level of hardware is "good enough".

This could mean that if Apple continues the current strategy, of making the "best" smartphones, they risk being relegated to under 10% market share again, as the smartphone market grows. Actually, they already are only at under 15% globally, and they've never really passed 18%.

<comment><USER10> Probably some hesitation over the lightning connector is holding back some people upgrading to 5 instead opting for the 4s - it's cheaper, better than their 3 or 3gs, and existing accessories will still work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 4S was basically the best phone on the market until the 5 came out. 5 comes out and is the best phone on the market and now the 4S is cheaper and the 4 is "free" on many carriers.

For many people the 4S and 4 are beyond "good enough" and would save $100 by buying the 4S instead of the 5.

That being said, cheaper products tend to sell in higher volumes. How is this news?

</comment><comment><USER12> My opinion, Apple's stock is being manipulated by traders and hedge funds. Spread bad news about a company, buy the stock at a lower price, wait for the Quarterly earnings, watch the stock price sky rocket.

<comment><USER3> > _Apple's stock is being manipulated by traders and hedge funds._

AAPL has 20M shares traded daily, each at $500/sh for a total of $10B traded daily. When trading down for 2 weeks = 10 trading days, it's a total of $100B.

So how exactly is the stock "being manipulated by traders and hedge funds"?

<comment><USER12> What is the point of your reply?

"Spread bad news about a company, buy the stock at a lower price, wait for the Quarterly earnings, watch the stock price sky rocket."

buy low, sell high. what is so difficult to understand?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Google Recruiter contact etiquette - <AUTHOR> Hey, HN!
So in 2014 I was contacted by a recruiter for google through my linkedin (I am an undergraduate student at a state university) and I proceeded to speak with him on the phone about general things. The conversation went well and he asked that I reach out to him when I got closer to graduation to talk further.
Personal issues ended up delaying my graduation by a year and a half and now as I plan to graduate in August '17 I was wondering if too much time has passed to directly contact the recruiter.
Thanks guys! <comment><USER2> What is worst that can happen? You have nothing to lose by contacting the person.

To quote Wayne Gretzky:

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

</comment><comment><USER3> The task of the recruiters is to bring leads to Google. Do not feel bad about any delay in graduation; have an answer in case you are asked and focus on the actual process.

</comment><comment><USER4> > he asked that I reach out to him when I got closer to graduation to talk > further.

So give him a ping with an brief update. Understand that you're one of hundreds of individuals he speaks with. But he may have notes saved on your profile.

Also, rule of thumb-- start your corporate recruiter reach out campaign 6 months prior to your availability. Bigger companies typically have long hiring cycles.

</comment><comment><USER5> Go for it! If that recruiter is no longer at Google, let me know and I will connect you with one who is.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not too late. But it's possible the recruiter may no longer be working for google.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the replies - I was anxious about "dropping the ball" with this opportunity and it is reassuring knowing that I haven't totally wasted it

<comment><USER7> Recruiters are always under pressure to bring more leads. So, there is no real concept of "dropping the ball"

<comment><USER8> Especially for a company that's always hiring engineers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Chances are he forgot about you. But contact him anyway.</comment>


Node.js SSRF via request splitting - <AUTHOR> https://www.rfk.id.au/blog/entry/security-bugs-ssrf-via-request-splitting/ <comment><USER2> Any ideas why this page has the date "Tue, 09 Oct 2018"?

<comment><USER3> Because I typo'd the date; thanks, fixing now...</comment></comment>


Buying Lotion on Amazon.com - <AUTHOR> https://chrxs.net/articles/2017/06/11/buying-lotion-amazon-com/ <comment><USER2> It's important to note that at least some of this problem is the fault of traditional retail. Aveeno MAKES all these ridiculous size and quantity combinations (at least some of these multipacks are shrink wrapped together). When a store stocks them, they choose to stock only a few. But Amazon is giving you GLOBAL insight into all available options Aveeno makes from any distributor who has access to them.

It would be nice if Amazon could make the comparison easier for us. But in this case most of the problem is that it's simply exposing the underlying wholesale/distributor model directly to the consumer.

<comment><USER3> For largely B2B McMaster Carr seems to have solved this. I can easily select items, the sizes, quantities and prices are all obvious. Amazon should strive for this level of simplicity for more of it's items. Especially compare the Amazon supply/small parts items to McMaster options. Did like the lotion described in the article is even worse.

<comment><USER4> I think a big part of McMaster's model is to be able to put a very high price on things, knowing that for business customers the time saved by having such a well-organized inventory is more than worth it.

They also white-label almost everything so that it's hard to go directly to their suppliers.

I'm guessing that that level of curation comes at a high cost to add new SKUs to the catalog; they go as far as to commission artwork and provide CAD models. It would be really hard for Amazon to approach that while striving for minimal margins and letting 3rd parties add SKUs in huge quantities.

<comment><USER5> Having the CAD models is amazing. Being able to drop their ready made models into my projects for verification before ordering the parts is worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to work in Amazon Seller Support. It's a complicated issue when you build a platform for selling things, and then let anyone in the world use it without any training whatsoever.

You got a lot of sellers coming over from sites like eBay, where your listing is your listing. You upload an item to sell, it gets a page all to itself, and you can do whatever you want with the listing quality. Then they migrate over to Amazon because reasons, and can't cope with the fact that items for sale are grouped together with everyone selling that item. This leads to tons of shenanigans like people making up their own UPCs to get their own listings, using the wrong UPCs to get onto more popular listings, and all manner of trickery.

Occasionally you could catch a case with one of these malfested ASINs, and work with the catalog to unwind the broken mess. Unfortunately, more often than not, that wasn't your job to do that. Further, doing that would take a long time, which would destroy your average case resolve time. Better quality of the catalog was not job number one, only metrics, always metrics, ever increasing and eventually impossible to satisfy metrics. As far as I could tell, quality control wasn't anyone's job, and thus it led to the Amazon catalog you have today. It's almost as if Amazon has decided that bad quality listings will lead to low sales, and the problem will eventually sort itself out, but as we can see that has not happened.

For myself, before and after the job, I always look for Shipped and Sold by Amazon. Otherwise, you literally never know what you're going to get, and it's on you as the buyer if you want to take the gamble or wade into the waters of the A to Z return guarantee. But that's a whole other mess for another thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight. That sounds about like what I figured while thinking about this.

And yeah, I think the "fulfilled by Amazon" filtering is the key to simplify things. It won't always be the best deal (and isn't in this case) but there is a real sense of "risk" with other options - something that I don't think can be solved by the third party store pages and seller feedback.

<comment><USER7> > And yeah, I think the "fulfilled by Amazon" filtering is the key to simplify > things.

This is actually different from products shipped and sold by Amazon since Amazon now stores and ships products on behalf of its third party sellers as part of its fulfillment program in order to increase the number of products available under Prime.

So it's possible to receive a product stored and shipped by Amazon at their own facilities, but sold by a third party seller. The user to whom you replied searches specially for products sold by Amazon itself. Amazon is the seller in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a user I find Amazon astonishingly hostile when searching for products. Sure - the delivery, order process, support etc. is excellent, but I find it difficult to actually find products in the first place.

I appreciate they've used some kind of system to identify products and group the various options from different sellers into one listing. But I've never seen an example where this has worked well. The sizes, styles, colours and so on that are displayed are always completely mad. Like, enough to the point where I frequently abandon my attempt and just buy from somewhere with more sensible categorisation.

<comment><USER9> A lot of this is because of 3rd-party sellers. To make things easier, I usually filter by "ships from and sold by Amazon". Some of the pricing and "styles" for 3rd parties are ridiculous because they're algorithm-driven. That's likely why the $9.99/oz price happened. [https://www.fastcompany.com/3060803/algorithmic-pricing- is-c...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3060803/algorithmic-pricing-is-creating- an-arms-race-on-amazons-marketplace) has some context on _why_ and [http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358](http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358) talks about _how_ . TL;DR Amazon picks (using _their_ secret algos, ofc) which selection should be the default among the sellers. Everyone wants to be that to get more sales. Sellers then fix the price to a different item which has the price sometimes fixed to that other item, or potentially a loop with more products involved. They then proceed to algorithmically price each other far beyond normal costs for the item.

<comment><USER10> sure, it's "because" of the third-party sellers but it's still amazon's fault. If they want to provide options for third-party sellers in their product listings, it's amazon's responsibility to make sure those listings are correctly categorized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's called "the paradox of choice":

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

There is undoubtedly money to be made here (one way or another - see last reference): the supermarket chain ALDI has invested in a strategy where they provide limited choices of goods (e.g., spaghetti sauces, breads, etc.) thus reducing buyers' anxiety, store size and increasing profits. It seems to be working:

"Why I choose to have less choice":

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/18/choose...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/18/choose- less-choice-shopping-around)

"Why C[onvenience]-stores Should Consider the Aldi Approach":

[http://www.csnews.com/product-categories/other- merchandise-s...](http://www.csnews.com/product-categories/other-merchandise- services/why-c-stores-should-consider-aldi-approach?cc=8)

Finally, there's a debate as to whether the paradox of choice is real or not:

"Is the Paradox of Choice Not So Paradoxical After All?"

[http://freakonomics.com/2009/12/02/is-the-paradox-of- choice-...](http://freakonomics.com/2009/12/02/is-the-paradox-of-choice-not- so-paradoxical-after-all/)

<comment><USER12> Hmm. I like having choice in the sense that I can choose what I prefer and someone else can seek their choice as well. An alternative is only having access to the popular product in that segment (maybe I don't like Fujis, or I prefer whole milk over skim).

I think the paradox of choice is an issue when you initially don't have prior information on something, but once you know what you prefer, there is no paradox as one is pretty much settled with one's choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> To me the real lesson of this post is something about analysis paralysis and losing financial perspective.

The majority of the options appear somewhere around $1-$2 per oz and it appears a typical bottle is around 10oz, so the difference here in the pricing is somewhere around $10. Worrying about this problem for more than about 10 minutes loses all the money you'd "save" by ensuring you're on the cheap end of that spread.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here - this is perfectly true. I, perhaps ineffectively, tried to cover that briefly in the conclusion - basically I am worried about dealing with this sort of thing when I become a father in a few months. Expenses will rise, my wife's salary will fall, and time for doing this sort of research will be hard to find.

<comment><USER14> If you combine your story with the stories of counterfeit items sold by third parties on Amazon, you'll pretty much just never buy certain items from Amazon ever again.

I even found reviews for _counterfeit diapers_ on top of this problem of 10000 types of packaging for the same diaper and so now I just buy all my diapers and my prenatal vitamins from Costco.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Amazon.com also has a tendency to combine different (but related, sort of) products into the same page as different "sizes" or "styles" supposedly of the same product.

Reviews from all of these are merged, as are the Questions & Answers.

For a current example, [https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0056OUTBK/ref=oh_aui_de...](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0056OUTBK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00) combines listings for computer cases in a variety of tower and rackmount sizes, server racks, drawers, and rails. Separate items all available as options on this page.

For reviews, Amazon now labels them with the "style", i.e. one review is for the "Server Rails" style, while another is for the "Server Case" style (though there are a half dozen different "Server Case" style items on the page, each with different characteristics). Questions & Answers are just a free-for-all that requires humans to sift through context and figure out which product is actually being discussed.

One of the questions on the linked product page, ironically asks, "Do I need rails to mount this in a rack?" It's a complicated question to answer because the question could have been posed about one of the many 2U or 4U cases ("yes", unless maybe one of them ships with rails) or it could have been asked about a tower case ("no, this isn't rack-mountable"), or it could have been asked about the rails or the rack themselves (as humans, we screen these possibilities out by context and logic), or about the shelves offered (not a completely unreasonable question -- maybe a shelf could be sold without rails?).

Or if we're not so observant, we click Buy after reading Q&A and reviews, only to later learn that we bought a different "style."

</comment><comment><USER16> I really don't get on well with Amazon (uk). Finding products is hard. I mean there are things in life that you research, then there are things that aren't really worth researching. Examples: I wanted an Exercise Ball once, Or a waterproof bluetooth speaker.

These types of search yield generic cruft, and despite all the options, none of them seem to have any meaningful impact in the search.

The only other notable thing winding me up is ebay "not collection only".

<comment><USER17> > I wanted an Exercise Ball once, Or a waterproof bluetooth speaker.

If it helps, my strategy is usually to do five minutes of research through Google first and then just get the item from Amazon. The only things I discover through Amazon's search function are things that are more or less commodities, in which case I buy the cheapest that fits my constraints for whom reviews aren't horrible. I buy and have bought a LOT of stuff on Amazon and I've never experienced the choice paralysis or search issues everyone is talking about here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This unfortunately matches my experiences shopping for conditioner, toilet paper toothbrushes, toothpaste etc. on Amazon.

Someone on HN at some point made a web site that used to list the cheapest items in some common categories by unit price. It was called papersomethingorother, but I un-bookmarked it because it went down awhile back.

And it gets even worse when you find the typical retailer game where you list unit price for the same product in two different units (price per ounce for one size, and per gallon for another) so now have fun doing unit conversions too.

It's all just a complete mess.

<comment><USER19> Why would you buy this stuff from Amazon?

I can go to any of about four supermarkets between home and work, or two personal care stores, to buy toothbrushes, toothpaste, conditioner etc. The shops have chosen between three and ten or so lines from several manufacturers, depending which one I chose, and all the products are legitimate and meet the required quality and safety regulations. Searching online seems much harder than looking on a shelf and picking one.

(You may have fewer shops close by, but presumably there's at least one shop selling these goods.)

<comment><USER7> > Why would you buy this stuff from Amazon?

You can purchase products in larger sizes for lower $/[unit] and in many circumstances set them to be automatically purchased and shipped on a periodic basis for even greater savings all from the comfort of your couch.

You can additionally get 5% back on top of all of this if you use an Amazon Prime credit card and pay it off monthly.

The savings add up over time and it also results in a cart that is considerably less full during the weekly grocery shopping trip. Paper towels eat up a great amount of the volume in a standard US grocery store shopping cart.

The easiest way to avoid the pain many users experience is to exclusively purchase products shipped and sold by Amazon and to make use of third party sellers only when necessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> My specific example (from the article) seems to counter some of what you suggest, though. E.g. -

\- Of the 37 sizes, only three are available for subscription.

\- Even the 5% subscription discount is not the best deal.

\- The lower $/unit on larger quantities does not consistently hold true.

I was unaware of the additional 5% back on the Amazon Prime card, but I'm not sure that should really factor in here. My AmEx, for example, gives 6% cash back at grocery stores and I'm sure other cards have comparable offers. Also, Amazon Prime, like my AmEx card, has a yearly fee that will eat away at some of those additional savings.

If we accept that the amount of choice Amazon.com provides is a good thing (and I think it is), does the subscription model not defeat that advantage? I think it does, at least to some degree. Since the 15% discount subscription price is the best deal (on Amazon.com), why even have the other 36 "sizes"?

What you suggest as the "easiest way to avoid pain" is precisely what I fear - that Amazon.com may eventually become "shopping".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The best part is when you're switching through the various sizes, styles, etc. and you find out that some of them are actually _completely different products_ than the one you were shopping for. How did they get lumped together? No indication is provided. So you have to be _very careful_ when ordering these types of things to avoid buying something completely other than what you actually wanted.

<comment><USER21> This is frustratingly common. Worse is that it also lumps the reviews together. It's really easy to find a product you're interested in, see that the reviews are positive and then on further inspection realise that the reviews are for a completely different item, and that there's either no reviews or much less positive reviews for the specific item you're looking at.

<comment><USER20> It even happens in _books_ now, and books used to be one of the few types of products where Amazon's UI was more or less bulletproof. In books that have multiple translated versions available, for instance, switching from "hardcover" to "paperback" can switch you to buying an entirely different translation. Even worse, the _only indication they provide of this_ is that the cover art is different, which is often true for hardcover and paperback versions of the same book too. So it is _very_ easy to buy the wrong thing.

Maybe Amazon has just given up on UI and assumes that everyone will be buying via Alexa?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I actually find the options amazingly helpful. For most items, there is a description of what the different options mean.

Would you rather have them show just a single option, which may or may not work for you? Or give you the choice of one that works for /you/ the best?

<comment><USER23> If amazon had a !#$%!#$%ing table like TFA posted then it would be fine; I was ordering something recently, and it was similar to this where the price per unit was an order of magnitude different between all the options, with the additional complexity that some options were "add-on" only (cannot buy except in orders totaling a minimum of $25).

<comment><USER24> Yes, the combination of "add on only", or "prime exclusive" makes shopping on Amazon a lot more stressful than it should be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In the past couple years, Amazon.com has been a prime example of a company getting too big; because of its size, it can get away with consumer-hostile behaviors like implementing a terrible UX, shipping counterfeit goods, or allowing sellers to game the review system and put cheap products at the top of the search results with hundreds of bought-and-paid-for 5-star reviews. If Amazon had serious competition, I don't think they could get away with this stuff.

But is there any good alternative? I buy from Target.com whenever an order includes food or health products, because I actually have _some_ confidence in their supply chain. But of course their shipping efficiency is years behind Amazon's.

<comment><USER26> > But is there any good alternative?

They don't have a million different options like Amazon does, but Costco is an excellent option. They have an amazing customer service with a very generous return policy, high quality products, great value proposition. Plus they have B&M stores, for when you want to actually try things before purchasing, etc.

<comment><USER25> Thank you, I had no idea Costco was selling so much stuff online now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> He'll also now see ads for lotions across the entire internet. To me that's the creepiest part about shopping on Amazon. I will see ads for things I searched for days afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER28> The size and variety issues are a big problem when buying shoes. I see the following sizes on some Chuck Taylors: 9.5 Men, 9 1/2 Men, 9.5 (D M), "Womens 11.5/Mens 9.5," and some European sizes mixed in.

If I want to buy some shoes, I have to check every combination of my size and the colors to find what I am looking for. Sometimes there are multiple names for the same color, too, e.g. "gray" and "charcoal."

I think the bottom line that Amazon is letting sellers enter whatever values they want. They should make sellers choose things like shoe sizes from a dropdown that has a standardized list.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am also increasingly leary of amazon.com since I simply feel they are getting too big. I don't really care for brick and mortar options that much but rather I simply don't feel there is enough competition to keep amazon on their toes and ensure that competition will get consumers a good deal going forward.

</comment><comment><USER30> The main issue that Amazon have, is that they don't give a shit about data quality. Or more at least they didn't, they cared more about having everything available and figure that they could deal with the complexity of product data later. This is Amazons biggest mistake, they never considered how complex product data, and perhaps they don't need to care. Profit certainly seems to indicate that it's a minor detail.

Amazons search only work on titles, nothing else. At least that's what they tell you when using the reseller API. That's it why title on Amazon sucks and why you can't find anything specific, yet are able to find EVERYTHING. Amazon have perhaps 200.000 different HDMI cables, produced by far fewer manufactures, it's just the branding that's different. Amazon doesn't have to care though, it doesn't matter which cable you by, they get paid anyway.

If Amazon had chosen to deal with having good, high quality product data, it would have taken them many more years, and much more resources to get where they are. More importantly: They would have made it much harder for resellers to push their products feeds to Amazon, and they would have pick eBay as their main platform instead.

tldr; Amazon have shitty product data and it doesn't matter, because shopping on Amazons platform is a lot easier than trying to find the same product elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER31> It would be funny (not really) if the lotion that arrived was counterfeit.

Due to Amazon's "just throw it all in the same pile!" method of combining their and re-sellers stock.

</comment><comment><USER32> > However, my biggest reason for avoiding Amazon.com is simply that it has > become incredibly confusing to shop there. Searching for just about anything > will yield thousands of results and it takes (me) a lot of effort to > determine which one is appropriate.

On the other hand once you _have_ figured out what to buy once, it is trivial on Amazon to buy that again when you need more.

Consider toothpaste. I use Crest, purchased at my local Walmart. They seem to stock a bazillion different kinds of Crest, emphasizing various combinations of promoting/preventing/improving/accommodating one or more of:

      • cavities
      • gingivitis
      • sensitivity
      • plaque
      • tartar
      • whitening
      • fresh breath
      • surface stains
      • acid erosion

They also come in a variety of flavors and textures (gel or paste).

I care about cavities, gingivitis, plaque, tartar, and acid erosion. I am indifferent to the rest, except for whitening. From what I've read there are at least two different ways a toothpaste can promote whitening, one of which is arguably bad for you (weakens enamel or something like that) and one of which is neutral, and so I prefer to avoid whitening products unless I'm sure they use a definitely non-bad method.

The last several times I've bought toothpaste at Walmart I checked my current tube before heading to the store and attempted to buy one that matches it, and have failed. I have no idea if I failed because Crest reshuffled the combinations or I botched the matching, but whatever the reason I end up spending 15 or 20 minutes in the toothpaste aisle trying to make a choice every damned time.

The last couple of times I've checked prices toothpaste was actually cheaper locally than via Amazon, but I'm probably going to switch to Amazon anyway just to be able to use the "buy it again" feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's certainly fair.

Generally I've found that Amazon is rarely cheapest option, but I can understand paying the convenience.

In addition to my particular type of lotion, I only buy a particular type of toothpaste (because most toothpaste has SLS and that gives me canker sores). Basically my approach is to find the cheapest possible price and buy it in bulk. I have done that a few times over the past couple of years (I currently have 10 tubes, hah) and, I think, always with different retailers. That tends to work well for me, and I don't think Amazon.com's additional features are worth the extra cost, in that case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I also found Amazon to be increasingly difficult to navigate, which is why I made nugget ([http://nuggetapp.co/](http://nuggetapp.co/)). nugget uses a mix of machine and human curation to pick out awesome stuff at great prices from Amazon.

<comment><USER34> Word. This looks cool

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This seems like a perfect FNAC startup... an alternative Amazon interface that is curated to only display the highest real rated items in a category and lowest cost per unit. Screen-scrape and/or use an API, not hard at all. Also, can use a stronger verification (like phone number and captcha) to ensure comments are real and not some seller gamification spam. Basically, add a layer of metadata that Amazon doesn't provide and a better/alternative shopping experience. Throw in some machine learning to recommend items and some community tips which can recommend specific items.

Something like [https://anom.az](https://anom.az)

</comment><comment><USER36> I've also had a taste of amazon bullshit:

I went to buy K&R C from amazon and it costed 150€. That was too much for me, but there was a different version below it: a "used" K&R from a different publisher and different cover, that costed 30€.

The book arrived and it's just photocopies of the original, in the form of a book. Normal Photocopies on what seems to be a just a bit finer than the average photocopy paper.

I've read the book. I still don't know why the original is so expensive, and if the authors/rightholders received any of my 30€.

</comment><comment><USER37> Seems Amazon may be creating an opening for manufacturers to sell bulk products direct, for that subset of consumers who just want no nonsense options.

Example:

[https://griffinremedy.com/product/omega-3-unscented-body- lot...](https://griffinremedy.com/product/omega-3-unscented-body-lotion- gallon/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been looking for this in some cases recently. If there is a particular product where I either know I need a certain brand or have researched options and settled on one, I try to remember to check the manufacturer's website first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> A imagine a memo from Jeff Bezos with that link attached going around on Monday (if not sooner)</comment>


Pipe pressure 12 times too high before gas explosions - <AUTHOR> https://www.wpri.com/news/new-england/massachusetts/pipe-pressure-12-times-too-high-before-gas-explosions/1457034544 <comment><USER2> Why is the NTSB doing the investigation?

<comment><USER3> Short answer, it's within the purview assigned to the NTSB.

Longer answer: pipelines are a form of bulk material transport and are a non- trivial bit of transportation infrastructure. The NTSB seems like not too bad a place to assign accident investigation for pipeline accidents.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transportation_Safety...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transportation_Safety_Board)</comment></comment>


Flash Player a Declining Asset - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bengarney.com/2011/11/21/flash-player-a-declining-asset/

<comment><USER3> My company makes 7 figures in revenue selling and hosting Flash-based websites (portfolios for photographers).

Our attrition rate is not that high but when people leave, it's now _always_ to go to an html site (usually WordPress-based). Before it was usually to a Flash-based competitor.

Our HTML5 service is in beta and appears to be promising (for us).

</comment><comment><USER4> Flash is transitioning from a platform for websites to a platform for high- performance code, such as gaming, graphical simulations, etc... Whatever strides WebGL might be making at the moment it's a long way from the kind of things Flash 11 is capable of. If Adobe can keep the barrier to entry lower on Flash than WebGL then they ought to have a viable product.

Unfortunately for many Flash developers the bread-and-butter site stuff is going away; if you're not skilled enough to transition into gaming and other such computationally intensive work then best to familiarise yourself with the HTML5 suite, and quickly.

<comment><USER5> Don't forget cryptography. Flash 11 have a secure random number generator.

<comment><USER6> Are you being sarcastic? Flash is the worst possible place to do cryptography. You should never do closed-source crypto, especially not when a company like Adobe is involved. That would be a security disaster.

<comment><USER5> Except that JavaScript crypto is even worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds reasonable. Flash as a player seems on the way out in a lot of ways. Flash as a content creation tool could have a much longer lifespan if Adobe plays it right. The tools are quite powerful and the number of artists that can use it and use it well is large. As mentioned quite a few games use flash to create assets but have their own custom export and playback. Castle Crashers and Shank spring to mind but there are quite a few others.

Unreal Engine 3 announced support for exporting to flash. Given that they also support Scaleform it would be possible to write a mini-game in flash running inside UE3 running in a flash player. And if you throw Unity into the mix...

<comment><USER8> Adobe has been adapting its tools to HTML5/CSS3[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Which is great for HTML5, designers/developers who are used to such tools and Adobe.

In the end, if Adobe pulls this off, it can focus on what it does best: productivity tools. No longer needing to maintain Actionscript, language tools, or an entire platform in multiple OS.

[1] <http://www.adobe.com/devnet/html5/articles/css3-regions.html>

[2] <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/>

[3] [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/exclusive-adobe-ceases- deve...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/exclusive-adobe-ceases-development- on-mobile-browser-flash-refocuses-efforts-on-html5-updated/19226)

[4] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3214454>

[5] [http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/10/adobe-html5-animation- ide-...](http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/10/adobe-html5-animation-ide-edge)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The big problem with Flash is that we're going to have a billion mobile Internet devices in a few years and none of them will display Flash in a mobile browser. iOS and Android alone should hit a billion devices. The iPad and Kindle are probably going to be two of the hottest gifts during the holiday season.

</comment><comment><USER10> Flash may be a declining asset, but it seems like nearly every web page I visit still uses flash. It has a ways to decline before developers can just ignore it.

<comment><USER11> Definitely. The article actually tries to make that exact point - <USER2> the lifespan in years at minimum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Or how to remove a subtle "?" to get your point across.

</comment><comment><USER13> The video is the asset.

Many ways to serve it. Many ways to retrieve it. And many ways to convert and play it.

The skills to do those things are perhaps assets.

But the software is all open source and free.

</comment><comment><USER14> Flashing is declinning, but there is no vector animation engine for the Web yet.

SVG? A bunch of xml is not exactly what vector graphics animation needed.

<comment><USER15> I don't really understand your argument here. SVG is supported by every modern browser, has strong tool support (Illustrator, Inkscape and any programming language with an XML package) and has very powerful animation capabilities, eg <http://mbostock.github.com/d3/ex/>

<comment><USER14> > has very powerful animation capabilities

OK, please do a simple key frame transformation from a circle to a rectangle.

svg is only suitable for simple animations like move or rotate some nodes.

<comment><USER16> <http://raphaeljs.com/animation.html>

<comment><USER17> Not keyframe animation. Not SVG.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


737 MAX 8 still airborne over US - <AUTHOR> https://flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/B38M <comment><USER2> Ferry flights is my guess.</comment>


Guess Who Doesn't Fit in at Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/opinion/sunday/guess-who-doesnt-fit-in-at-work.html

<comment><USER2> Hiring for "cultural fit" means "let our bias roam free".

It makes me wonder why I bothered learning how to write software, if employers are going to reject me for being a "bad cultural fit". If you're different in any way, that means you don't get a job?

<comment><USER3> Everywhere I've worked and to my knowledge everywhere I've interviewed has considered culture fit. I don't think it's always as pernicious as you're describing. When done right, hiring for culture fit means some combination of "don't hire people who aren't excited to work here" and "don't hire assholes, no matter how well they code." Both of those are important filters, and I don't think either of them is unfair to the applicant.

Unfortunately I've also seen teams where it meant "don't hire anyone who isn't a workaholic," and teams where it meant something like "don't hire anyone who is going to wreck the hard-partying vibe of the workplace." (I've never seen anything nearly as crazy as "don't hire Yankees fans.") It sucks to get rejected for a job because the current team all hangs out and they don't think you'd dig the vibe. It would also probably suck to get hired into a team that's also a close-knit social group that you aren't particularly interested in joining. I think the takeaway is that if you get rejected for a team for being a bad cultural fit you've probably dodged a bullet anyway. Go find a job with a team that knows how to make people of all ages and stripes feel welcome.

EDIT: I just remembered my favorite "culture fit" interview question of all time. I was head of engineering at a startup that was interviewing around with potential acquirers. I was talking to a senior engineer at one of the companies. He ran me through a couple simple warm-up questions and then hit me with the big one: "If we acquire you, are you likely to up and quit in two months?" I stuttered for about two minutes.

It was a great question! In hindsight, I almost certainly would have. We both dodged a bullet there!

<comment><USER4> _don 't hire people who aren't excited to work here_

That sounds to me like what they actually want are people who will put a lot into their work and strive hard to do well.

Sounds to me like their interview process and interviewers suck so badly that the only way they can tell if that's the case is if the candidate is excited, and they will be rejecting every candidate who would do want they want because, for example, they're a conscientious professional. Because ultimately, who gives a damn if someone is "excited" to work there? Surely what should matter most to the company is how good a job they're going to do.</comment></comment></comment>


Google open sourcing voice and video engine for the web - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/webrtc/blog/introducingwebrtc-anopenreal-timecommunicationsproject

<comment><USER2> Is this Google's response to MS purchasing skype? Seems like the classic strategy of commoditizing your competitor's business (and they get a 2-for-1 deal since Apple is also wielding FaceTime).

<comment><USER3> Hm, I don't think so. This post is dated May 3rd, which predates the Skype deal's announcement by 7 days. Also, the WhatWG group for RTC's mailing list was first posted to April 12, 2011. So that potentially indicates this was in the works beforehand. Since Google purportedly put in a bid for Skype they no- doubt knew Skype was on the market, though.

I would guess this is more likely a response to FaceTime. Apple's core business is around getting people to buy iPhones, and FaceTime is exclusive to the iPhone and other Apple products.

<comment><USER4> There is an IETF realtime-web working group :

<http://tools.ietf.org/wg/rtcweb/charters>

and this is part of Google's involvement with that.

However the original question is still valid, as this release might have been accelerated quite a bit because MS bought Skype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apple, where is the Facetime open spec that you promised? Google may just beat them to the punch.

<comment><USER6> does Apple really intend to do this?

<comment><USER7> I remember the facetime announcement including that they were going to publish it as an open standard, and I'm not the only one:

      "The company said it plans to make FaceTime an open industry standard, potentially allowing
      communication with other devices."
      -- http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/07/apple_announces_open_standard_facetime_video_chat_for_iphone_4.html

and it's not just AppleInsider - that's just the first non-wikipedia hit for the search "facetime open standard". That said, they never (to my knowledge) delivered, which is a shame. At least now there's something, though it's a pity that FT users will likely be left out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone have any ideas what the timeline for browser support is likely to be?

The website currently says they've been _working closely with Mozilla_ and _we expect to see WebRTC support in Firefox and Chrome soon!_.

<comment><USER3> I wonder when Safari will get WebRTC support?

<comment><USER9> Isn't that about survival of the fittest? Why use a browser that don't support shit when there is a few that does. Might work for now, but not in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Finally we know what's going with iLBC codec. For more than a year it's been in a limbo.

<comment><USER11> Yep, sorry about that. You can still use the old code under the old license, but you can also use it under the new (and more permissive and favorable) license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very nice, thank you Google.

Glancing over the API docs, I'm not clear what will be used for signaling. It appears to be based on XMPP/Jingle, am I right?

What about SIP?

<comment><USER13> From the FAQ: Builds on the strength of the web browser: WebRTC abstracts signaling by offering a signaling state machine that maps directly to PeerConnection. Web developers can therefore choose the protocol of choice for their usage scenario (for example, but not limited to: SIP, XMPP/Jingle, etc...).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How do iLBC and iSAC compare to the (also open source) Celt, Silk and Opus (Silk+Celt) codecs?

</comment><comment><USER15> What does this mean to existing SIP/Jingle based systems? Are they now deprecated, or is there some kind of interoperability planned?

</comment><comment><USER16> One way to decimate adversaries is to open-source your entire competitive advantage. Unfortunately that only works when you're the market leader.

So nobody cares about open-sourcing WebRTC. Something that would be actually noticeable in this field right now would be Microsoft that open-sources Skype and gives everything away under the BSD license.

<comment><USER17>
         So nobody cares about open-sourcing WebRTC

Except the people that would want to use it? Think of Chatroulette.

         Something that would be actually noticeable in this
         field right now would be Microsoft that open-sources
         Skype

Noticeable yes, but useful, not really.

What would be useful is for Skype to become a standard that allows interoperability with other services and protocols, such that you could build a client, like a website, that would allow users with a GTalk account to video-call Skype users. Now that would be something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If Pidgin (the cross platform IM framework that Adium/others use) doesn't get this, I'll be sad/grumpy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not long until I'll be able to video chat on my Android via Google Talk, woo!

<comment><USER20> This is already possible on Gingerbread phones.

<comment><USER21> Actually the GTalk update that was released with 2.3.4 uses Neon-specific code rather than the actual video API that Google wrote themselves. It makes no sense and it's the reason that GTalk doesn't have video chat on other Gingerbread phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So is this another segment of HTML5 block or a completely novel idea?

It looks like a <device> element with streaming but they don't mention it at all.

</comment><comment><USER23> Good work, Microsoft!

Embrace and extend.</comment>