Ask HN: GRPC vs. 0mq/nanomsg? - <AUTHOR> My intention is to have few load balanced NGINX servers with DPDK patches to do further request routing within the infrastructure.
With recent addition of gRPC to nginx, I thought of foregoing having an additional service running on the same machine as nginx to translate public API requests to our internal mq based services.
The bad thing is that gRPC is HTTP/TCP based, while our internal services were all zero copy/IP-less/RDMA based and our engineering has grown used to do synchronous processes across the rack.
Is it a worthy undertaking to write an own gRPC transport that can work on top of some RDMA protocol like SDP?
Or am I better staying with double layer routing: nginx --UWSGI--> script translating http requests to mq formats --SDP--> internal services <comment><USER2> Latest NNG (nanomsg-next-gen) has the ability to support HTTP and SP protocol in the same application. You have to write your own code to map the two and add business logic, but it should be pretty straight-forward.

NNG doesn't have an RDMA style transport today, although that can be developed. (Staysail Systems offers commercial support of NNG and nanomsg, including custom development.)

Ultimately, there are lots of ways to solve this, but you need to have a better understanding of your particular needs -- the fact that you're using DPDK and RDMA suggests to me that latency and performance are very important to you, and some more assessment would be required to make a good recommendation.

If you want, you can reach out to me -- I'm the author of NNG and now maintainer of nanomsg. I'm also the CTO for Staysail, so if you need commercial help, I can offer that. (See www.staystail.tech or firstname.lastname@example.com for contact info.)

<comment><AUTHOR> >the fact that you're using DPDK and RDMA suggests to me that latency and performance are very important to you, and some more assessment would be required to make a good recommendation.

A company preparing to handle wire speed services for millions of Internet toasters, fridges and such.

Stuff like high frequency logging, handling millions of active TCP connections on a single endpoint, faster than realtime media recoding/recognition, wire speed object storage, distributed search and indexing.

Effectively, the engineering task is to squeeze Amazon DC into a single rack or two that can be shipped to a colo.

We are a Chinese company, so I doubt we will ever be hiring engineering cadres or external contractors at anywhere near American wages.

<comment><USER2> With the tasks you're trying to achieve, you should have both the budget and the ability to hire competent engineers anywhere in the world. Maybe not to hire hundreds of them, or keep them employed indefinitely, but a few dollars (or yen or whatever) invested wisely at the beginning can spell the difference between success and failure, or between having a model that works efficiently and profitably, and one that has to be re-engineered and costs many many times what would have been invested up front.

<comment><AUTHOR> No doubt that, just here an HDL engineer can be hired cheaper than web dev monkey in US. If so, why not?

In between 3 to 4 k usd of monthly income here allows a person to live very very well, better than with double of that in SV.

<comment><USER3> Curious, why doesn't that developer work remote for US/EU/UK and cash-in but works locally for 4K?

<comment><AUTHOR> >Curious, why doesn't that developer work remote for US/EU/UK and cash-in but works locally for 4K?

Certainly some do. If US/EU/UK companies were more open to hiring remote freelancers with near nil language/social/work culture skills who can run away with money at any moment, Western labour market would've been overrun long ago.

Please guys, no more further derailing of the original topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because you mentioned grpc + nginx ... [https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-1-13-10-grpc/](https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-1-13-10-grpc/)</comment>


Facebook Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> http://www.calacanis.com/2007/07/27/facebook-bankruptcy/

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... it makes no sense to me to build inside of someone else's platform when you have the wide open internet out there to develop on ..."_

Probably the smartest thing I've read for a while. Is it what people want though?

<comment><USER2> It does make sense to build inside Facebook's platform, so long as you also have an outside service available to the "wide open internet". Limiting yourself to Facebook-only is stupid, unless it's an app that will only function in that environment.</comment></comment>


MIT's Not So Crazy Quest to Get Rid of Stoplights - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3057985/innovation-by-design/mits-not-so-crazy-quest-to-get-rid-of-stoplights <comment><USER2> And what is wrong with traffic circles or roundabouts again?</comment>


Scala – A post-functional language (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scala-lang.org/old/node/4960

<comment><USER2> Odersky has since changed his mind, he now calls it a _modular_ language: [http://parleys.com/play/53a7d2c3e4b0543940d9e536](http://parleys.com/play/53a7d2c3e4b0543940d9e536)

<comment><USER3> Yep, he has changed his mind. IIRC, he is now working on a Scala successor.

<comment><USER2> Dotty is just a research project. It's not necessarily intended as a Scala successor, more as an incubator for future improvements to Scala. At least, that's how it was discussed at Scala Days last month.

<comment><USER4> Oddly enough, the mailing-list hasn't received a single email since May. Did it move somewhere else?

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/dotty- internals](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/dotty-internals)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me Scala is not so much "post-functional". To me it is "mixed-paradigm", which in the mix as Scala presents it, is scaring me.

<comment><USER6> I've heard it said that Scala is the new C++. But to me that doesn't sound bad at all. Sure, you can shoot yourself in the foot, but you can also design beautiful things, the choice is yours.

<comment><USER5> Bad is not the good word. Being pragmatic is not "bad". But I think C++ too is scary in the complexity that it brings to the table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Best languages combine programming paradigms (OOP, functional etc.). The very best ones combine type systems as well (static + opt-in dynamic).

<comment><USER8> I assume you were referencing this, but just in case: [http://www.scala- lang.org/api/current/index.html#scala.Dynam...](http://www.scala- lang.org/api/current/index.html#scala.Dynamic)

Used quite pleasantly by Rapture JSON: [http://rapture.io/jsonSupport](http://rapture.io/jsonSupport)

<comment><USER9> He/she may be referring to C# with its 'dynamic' type (and Dynamic Language Runtime)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >A Postfunctional Language

Is it a web-scale cloud big data language?

>The essential parts of functional programming were all absorbed into Scala

All the "essential" parts of functional programming are present in assembly (i.e. none of them). How can one possibly quantify "essential" here? A purely functional languages has a lot of benefits over a mixed-paradigm language, and vice versa.</comment>


Altair 8800 Simulator - <AUTHOR> https://s2js.com/altair/sim.html <comment><USER2> Very nice! I actually found a mint 8800b in the rafters here at work during a cleanout. Took it home and added it to my collection. It was used as a PLC to control a machine with custom I/O cards and ROM around the very late 70's.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool, it was fun to play with. Thanks for also including the Altair info, that was a blast from the past.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're looking for something a little more downloadable, z80pack has emulation for Altair 8800/Imsai 8080 including front panel emulation:

[https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/z80pack/screenshots/2014.h...](https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/z80pack/screenshots/2014.html)

Comes with prepackaged CP/M images and can run Alan Cox's amazing FUZIX system:

[https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX](https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX)

[https://hackaday.com/2017/04/16/z80-fuzix-is-like-old- fashio...](https://hackaday.com/2017/04/16/z80-fuzix-is-like-old-fashioned- unix/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This makes me put my ZX Spectrum in the right perspective.

<comment><USER6> The Z80 is a science fiction luxury space ship when compared to the 8080.

<comment><USER7> The Z80's nice, but I always thought of the 6809 as the Chrysler Cordoba of 8 bit microprocessors, with soft Corinthian Leather upholstery and a luxurious automatic multiply instruction.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsg97bxuJnc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsg97bxuJnc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shouldn't it get confused when you turn it on and off really fast again and again?

</comment><comment><USER8> What did people use these for in real life? Were they essentially toys or were there peripherals that made them useful for solving problems?

<comment><USER9> That's a bit like asking what did carpenters did with hammers and hand-saws in this age of CAD/CAM. :)

I assure you the Altairs were quite useful. Mostly, owners enjoyed the luxury of working on their very own computer, rather than a time-share machine's account from the corporation or university.

It's difficult to communicate how this felt, in this age of ubiquitous computing. A machine that one could reboot whenever you wanted. Tinker. Explore. They wrote games. Controlled hardware. Learned what made a computer tick. Connect a modem and talk to others. Sure, it was primitive, but at the time it felt as cutting-edge as space travel.

If I recall correctly, the Altair ran CP/M, and could run the early Zork infocom text adventure series.

<comment><USER8> I guess the basic model was so lacking in features that I found it hard to understand how people would make use of it. So it's more like asking how people actually used old steam cars after watching a video of Jay Leno spending hours prepping his and learning they could only drive 15 miles between fill-ups.

I did some research after posting that and realized that you could get teletype terminals for them. This makes it much easier to see what people did. I originally thought that most people punched op-codes into that front panel, which seems like an awful lot of work for not much reward.

<comment><USER10> Video of someone loading BASIC with a teletype:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv5b1Xowxdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv5b1Xowxdk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really well executed. I had a project like this on my idea list, although for the Raspberry Pi.

</comment><comment><USER12> This makes me want to go code a 8080 emulator.

<comment><USER13> That simulator has an 8080 emulator built-in. It's fully functional.</comment></comment>


British man sentenced to nearly three years in prison for movie piracy - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/british-man-sentenced-to-nearly-three-years-in-prison-for-movie-piracy/ <comment><USER2> The _losses of the film industry_ , what BS. Someone that pirates a movie will not pay for a ticket if the movie is not available now. He will simply wait for a pirate copy to appear.</comment>


What online backup do you use for a mac? - <AUTHOR>

They've all got their pros and cons:
Dropbox - great but not automatic Mozy - automatic but a hog Backblaze - automatic, 4G limits on files, so no zips.
etc.  Would love to know what online solutions people here prefer and, importantly, why.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> I just use TimeMachine, backed from a FreeBSD server at home using AppleTalk.</comment>


Picsplore - <AUTHOR> https://www.picsploresocial.com <comment><USER2> At its heart Picsplore is a brand new social network! Our focus is on your local area, we want to show you what's new and exciting around you . It could be a band playing at a dive bar , a carnival , a house party , the possibility.</comment>


IBM CityOne: A Smarter Planet game - <AUTHOR> http://www-01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/innov8/cityone/

<comment><USER2> Was highly anticipating this for many months when it was announced. But it lost me after a few minutes when A) I had to do a lot of thinking and reading for B) a lack of any sense of "fun" in return. It isn't so much a game as a learning simulation. Very dissapointed, as I felt it had some great potential to be a "smarter" Sim City type game, but just overloaded me with informational decisions straight off the bat.</comment>


Apple's new minimalistic iPhone site design - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/iphone/ <comment><USER2> It's beautiful and spare, without a single thing wasted. One of the thinnest and sleekest sites on the market. Sites keep getting bigger and bigger, but the iPhone site totally bucks the trend. Easy to use with one hand. And even though it's small it packs a mighty punch. This is a very powerful and capable site, boasting the same top-notch internals as the iPhone site from before, except now its stripped-down minimalism leaves no distractions... which somehow makes it seem all the more extravagant, by its restraint.

</comment><comment><USER3> Website doesn't work on iPhone.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/c9xw0229z8y1rgx/2018-01-08%2018.04...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/c9xw0229z8y1rgx/2018-01-08%2018.04.41.png?dl=0)

<comment><USER4> I'm not certain, but I think that's the joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Access denied on the stylesheet: [https://images.apple.com/v/iphone/home/w/built/styles/overvi...](https://images.apple.com/v/iphone/home/w/built/styles/overview.built.css)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm guessing this is a preview for the new design language in iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 Blazed Mountain. I wish other companies had the courage to be this forward-thinking about a fast and responsive web.

</comment><comment><USER7> I love it. Back to basics for Apple designers.

</comment><comment><USER8> I heard that the new site design saves battery power on mobile versions. Love their sacrifice for customer experience.

</comment><comment><USER9> CSS file missing, 500 error:

        Access Denied
        You don't have permission to access "http://images.apple.com/v/iphone/home/w/built/styles/overview.built.css" on this server.

        Reference #18.d7ce33b8.1515463786.2649f685

</comment><comment><USER10> They've gone back to the beginning and redesigned from the ground up what a website should truly feel like.

</comment><comment><USER11> It took courage to remove the stylesheet.

</comment><comment><USER12> "what to expect with our brave, game-changing webkit security updates"

</comment><comment><USER13> They went a little overboard with this, just my 2 cents.

Ps. Why flagged? :S

</comment><comment><USER14> Now we wait for @JonyIveParody to chime in.

</comment><comment><USER15> 6 hours later and it's still not fixed.

</comment><comment><USER16> iPhone website for Lynx users.

<comment><USER5> Come on, no-one uses that.

It's all about elinks now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How courageous</comment>


Ask HN: What's your favourite front end technology for 2017? - <AUTHOR> What's your favourite frontend technology for 2017 ? could you explain why ? <comment><USER2> VueJS + TypeScript

</comment><comment><USER3> RiotJS</comment>


Divshot acquired by Firebase/Google - <AUTHOR> https://divshot.com/ <comment><USER2> Another one for ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com

<comment><USER3> First thing I thought, too.

But seriously, "Our mission continues to provide great products and services! We're turning off divshot in 60 days. Migrate your hosting to Firebase. And if you used our Architect UI, that's gone. Completely."

"And if you had a $20/month plan with us, sorry! You'll have to go to a $49/month plan!" (of course, this point, they don't mention...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> rip. When creative and promising business is shut down under the pile of money, kittens die throughout the world.</comment>


Surprise - The world's top social sites by # of users. - <AUTHOR> http://socialnomics.net/2010/11/22/worlds-top-social-media-sites/

<comment><USER2> ~515M is Facebook's active monthly number, I'm sure the registered users number (which she uses to measure every other site on the list) would be much, much higher.

<comment><AUTHOR> good point, I didn't think of that

facebook does seem to be way more in the public mind than skype

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't know why skype doesn't enhance its product with its own social network and compete with facebook!</comment>


Show HN: Faceless – Open-source version of Secret - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/delight-im/Faceless <comment><USER2> I like that you made this open source. I'll reserve criticism for GitHub issues / pull requests, but overall I applaud your efforts. :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! That's great, criticism is probably most durable and helpful on GitHub, anyway :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting concept of pseudonymity.

If your friend only has one or a few friends, there's a pretty good chance that they'll the identify of the poster.

In generally, I love the call to 'Enjoy openness and kindness'. We can definitely benefit from more of that :)

<comment><AUTHOR> By the way, to address the problem of guessing your friends' identity: I know this is a critical point in the system and thus I added something to prevent that guessing, of course. However, it's a dirty fix, as it may introduce new issues (but of course that may be improved soon): When address books are synced with the friend lists in the app, those "friend" connections are always reciprocal. So even if you have only one single person in your address book, and you're seeing posts from friends in the app, you don't know if that's the person in your address book or any of your friends who has started using the app as well. Someone that you don't want to hear from may add your phone number to their contacts, but you may block any user inside of the app and this blocking is persistent.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here -- feel free to share your criticism and questions :)

<comment><USER4> I can't install it on my Nexus 7 tablet. Maybe because it expects a phone?

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. Sorry, should have mentioned that. I wasn't really sure how to handle this. The problem is that (a) the app is optimized for phones and (b) it has to ask the user to enter their phone number manually if the device has no telephony features and (c) it can run on a single device only. I wanted to prevent users from the confusion that arises when they have the app on their phone already, install it on their tablet as well and then see that it stops working on the phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curious if this takes the same pains with anonymity as Secret itself, where identities and post associations are, supposedly, opaque even to individual founders - it takes at least two to reveal the identity behind a post, and only reveals it for a single post.

<comment><USER6> Didn't we learned it the hard way we can't trust _anyone 's_ claims about their services, unless it's _really_ verifiable?

There are loads of services who claim one thing, but that's either completely untrue or somehow true but filled with "if"s and "but"s.

Say, Dropbox had claimed they do encrypt everything in a manner they don't have any way to access to user data, but it occurred they had just lied.

Or, Secret claims they don't send phone numbers and email addresses and says nothing about names _but_ from reverse engineering their app I found out they _do_ for whatever reason send contact names - which, for many Google/Gmail contacts, are the same as email address - and if you use "invite" function they _do_ send unmangled number/address (the latter's reasonable, but still it's an exception from the claim and users aren't really warned about it).

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, this is why I hope this app can prove beneficial and I hope that any weaknesses are found by people checking the code. And, of course, the possible risk factors "lies" and "hidden practices" are off the table for this app. Not to forget: Services that are valued at $100M need to find a proper business model. True anonymity/pseudonymity prevents you from pursuing ideas for potential business models in many cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> thanks for putting this out here, I will use this as a resource for a project I was planning on getting started on. I am excited to play around with it.

Do you have any screenshots of the android application you could put on the github or an imgur link. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! On the GitHub page, there is a link to the app in Google Play [1] and this is where the screenshots can be found. I'm quite sure the app is not really beautiful (yet), so it was an intentional decision not to put up screenshots on the GitHub page which would impair the first impression ;)

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.delight.fac...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.delight.faceless)

<comment><USER7> great one more question, on my rough inspection it looks like the encrypted text and the key is stored in the same database entry. pardon my lack of knowledge, but this seems insecure.

Can you explain your decision?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a server secret that is not stored in the database at all and there is a message secret (unique per message) that is stored in each message's database entry. They are combined to the actual key for decryption.

<comment><USER7> oh okay, thank you very much!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this post sponsored by Twilio?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, why do you think so? :) Twilio is actually only a very small part of what makes the app work. It's used for the verification via SMS only, i.e. usually once per usage on a device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> These kinds of startups really aren't tech startups. They're media startups. It's not about their technology. When Facebook bought WhatsApp they were not buying technology.

That being said-- trying to replicate such thing is not a bad programming exercise.

<comment><USER10> Not at all? WhatsApp has a phenomenal engineering team from what I have read.

<comment><USER9> I didn't say it was bad, just that it wasn't the primary asset that was acquired. Facebook could easily have built a massively cross platform mobile chat app in-house.

... and it wasn't the best, either... look up their single hard-coded AES key for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fully agree. Same is true for Poke/Snapchat. And WhatsApp was also using plain HTTP for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's no way to "securely encrypt" a phone number.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, you can "securely encrypt" things, and it doesn't matter if this is a phone number. But you're probably referring to the fact that the phone number is used as an identifier and is thus hashed and not encrypted. Nevertheless, it makes sense to call it "encryption" when describing the app to non-tech people and give the technical terms (i.e. hashing) in brackets etc.

<comment><USER12> I am not an expert but it seems to me that hashing of phone numbers is relatively useless here because there is a relatively small search space of potential phone numbers so I can just brute force check, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the search space is certainly small and thus brute force becomes much easier. But I wouldn't really call this "useless". You can, of course, apply your hashing repeatedly too make brute force slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> awesome would like to use this to build an app around organizing protests, flashmobs, etc...

<comment><AUTHOR> You are free to do so :) It's GPLv3, as noted in the repository.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The title makes a dubious connection between their valuation and their technology. I guess that Secret investors are not interested in the technology but rather the network of users.

<comment><USER15> I guess it just points out that technology != valuation. However, it also highlights that what Secret is doing isn't terribly special (nor Twitter, etc) and that they have a pretty reasonable chance of someone swooping in and taking over their market (happened with MySpace for example) at some point if the community becomes bored.

<comment><USER16> You don't understand how powerful network effects are.

<comment><USER17> network effect works both ways

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why PHP? I would argue that in this day and age, that is a bad decision. There are simply better, lighter weight languages to use that will get you going faster and cause less problems down the road. Maybe not _you_ personally if you're a PHP wizard, but certainly the industry in average. I'd recommend you skate to where the puck is going. :)

<comment><USER18> If you downvoted, feel free to share your opinion on why this is wrong. I could care less about the votes, I want to hear your discussion! Why would you use PHP?

Here's an excerpt from a Facebook engineer explaining why we still use PHP: "The reason Facebook hasn't migrated away from PHP is because it has incumbent inertia (it's what's there) and Facebook's engineers have managed to work around many of its _flaws_ through a combination of patches at all levels of the stack and excellent internal discipline via code convention and style - the _worst attributes_ of the language are avoided and coding style is rigidly enforced through a fairly tight culture of code review"

<comment><USER19> You answered the question yourself. If someone is a wizard in PHP, then they should use PHP. People that get caught up in the decision of what language to use don't ship code. Shipped code > language decision circle jerks.

<comment><USER20> Exactly! Done > Perfect</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adventures Building a Self-Driving RC Car - <AUTHOR> http://rahulrav.com/blog/self_driving_radio_controlled_cars.html <comment><USER2> If anyone here is interested, check out [https://diyrobocars.com](https://diyrobocars.com) or [https://diyrobocars.com.au](https://diyrobocars.com.au) in Australia. I organise the DIY Robocars events in Australia (and we are looking for a sponsor). I'd also recommend joining the Donkeycar and DIY Robocars Slack groups which is where most of the discussion happens in between events.

<comment><USER3> I got really excited but then the site was a bit of a let down... forms to fill, missing guide... meetup last October...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Jetson Nano provides a very fair amount of computing power for AI applications like this- I've been following JetsonHacks[0] for a while and there's some neat projects posted on the site. The site owner's Youtube channel[1] also goes into detail on interoperability across the TX series such as cameras, code libraries, and assembling a car based on MIT's open-sourced Racecar[2] built with a TX2.

[0] [https://www.jetsonhacks.com/2019/03/25/nvidia-jetson-nano- de...](https://www.jetsonhacks.com/2019/03/25/nvidia-jetson-nano-developer- kit/)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQs0lwV6E4p7LQaGJ6fgy5Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQs0lwV6E4p7LQaGJ6fgy5Q)

[2] [https://racecar.mit.edu/platform](https://racecar.mit.edu/platform)

<comment><AUTHOR> JetsonHacks is pretty great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your page can't be scrolled with the keyboard and it's missing the native scrollbar. You should remove those overflow rules from the body and .content div.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies. This is a new blog I am working on. Will fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you have even a peripheral interest and are in the Bay Area come to the meetup / race referenced - all are welcome!

It's surprisingly fun and they serve an awesome BBQ lunch - both me and my 7 year old son enjoyed the program immensely -

[https://www.meetup.com/DIYRobocars/](https://www.meetup.com/DIYRobocars/)

<comment><USER7> We also have a fun one in San Diego. You can find your local one here (or how to start your own!)

[https://diyrobocars.com/local-meetup-groups/](https://diyrobocars.com/local- meetup-groups/)

<comment><USER8> Looks like NYC one might be dead?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related:

[https://github.com/markku-ai/donkey-vis](https://github.com/markku-ai/donkey- vis)

Donkeycar neural network model visualization built to "see" how the AI sees.

</comment><comment><USER10> Donkeycar is a fantastic project and it got a whole lot better with the recent release of Donkeycar 3.0.

Keep it up guys!

</comment><comment><USER11> That freaking awesome! I was thinking about making a self driving RC car with image recognition to hunt down some rabbits in my yard, maybe you can help me with that!

Great job man, great job!

<comment><USER12> I've been thinking about the same thing but for deer. They keep eating my bushes in the middle of the night, so I'd like a little patrol car to chase them away.

<comment><USER13> My mother has found the a motion detector water sprayer works great for this application. Deer comes by and they're sprayed with water.

It looks a lot like this one: [https://www.amazon.com/Hoont-Blaster-Repellent- Activated-Spr...](https://www.amazon.com/Hoont-Blaster-Repellent-Activated- Sprinkler/dp/B078R6PRZ6)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not to be that guy, but is it still an "RC" car if it's self-driving? :)

<comment><USER15> I will take the 'that guy' crown from you. I am thinking what is self driving if the video shows it going off the track and not slowing down for the curves. This reminds me of back in the day with slotted race cars that if you didn't pay attention they flew off the track.

This is not to say that it's not admirable but I was not as impressed as I think I should be when someone is doing self driving.

<comment><AUTHOR> The rules of the race are that you can't cut corners from inside the track. Going out of the track is a natural penalty, so it's allowed. The car actually slows down a bit.

The ML algorithm being used is called behavioral cloning (and it's cloning me). It's just that I am a pretty rusty RC car driver :)

<comment><USER16> _"Going out of the track is a natural penalty"_

No, it isn't. If the track is concave, driving the convex closure of the track shortens the distance travelled, decreases the amount of turning to do, and no corner will become tighter. That must mean the convex closure is faster to ride.

I guess that's why the red cones are there. Passing them on the wrong side must lead to a steep time penalty or immediate disqualification.

Also, I would think that, in a really tight turn, you would have to slow down so much to stay on the track that overshooting the turn without braking as much is faster (I think the video shows that in the last corner of the round, at the right edge of the video)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is ethical application of AI I can get behind

</comment><comment><USER18> Cool project! Thanks for sharing

Two questions to know a bit more:

\- how long did it take you to complete that project?

\- what is the rough total cost?

<comment><AUTHOR> My first car took about a week. The second one took a day. The total BOM was around 400$.

Note: I am not great with hardware.

<comment><USER19> What took you so long the first time or: did you reuse compiled code the second time?

<comment><AUTHOR> The first time I was building Donkey for an entirely new (and previously unsupported) SBC - the Asus Tinkerboard S. I was also unfamiliar with how everything was put together.

The second time was a breeze. Jetson Nano runs Ubuntu so getting everything to work was relatively easy.

<comment><USER18> Good to know, thanks for answering!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> transistor-man Awesome project! Are there build details about getting everything running on the Nano? Do you have a block diagram or interconnect schematic that you could post? Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Join the Slack channel. We can help you out if you have questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tiny self driving vehicles could be fun and safe way to transport small things. Think an army of cleaning drones gatherings trash to a collection point.

<comment><USER21> So a roomba?

<comment><USER12> More like Wall-E

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You mentioned

> Having read some amazing books on machine learning ...

Which books did you read and what was your experience with them?

<comment><AUTHOR> The ones I really enjoyed reading were:

[https://www.pyimagesearch.com/deep-learning-computer- vision-...](https://www.pyimagesearch.com/deep-learning-computer-vision- python-book/)

[https://www.machinelearningisfun.com/](https://www.machinelearningisfun.com/)

and

[https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Python-Francois- Chollet...](https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Python-Francois- Chollet/dp/1617294438)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> my one can be found here its simple and still a work in progress [https://github.com/aetar](https://github.com/aetar) will try to implement yolo3 later project name road trip

</comment><comment><USER24> Watch Dogs 2

</comment><comment><USER25> George Hotz, former apple device jail-breaker left Tesla to start working on Self-Driving Cars, the DIY approach. So far he has been training the cars with HD Maps and has had decent progress considering his competition. [http://comma.ai](http://comma.ai)

<comment><USER26> That's a lot of mis-information. Hotz exchanged some tweets with Musk but never worked for Tsla. Comma uses cameras, not HD maps.</comment></comment>


The danger of cosmic genius - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/12/the-danger-of-cosmic-genius/8306/

<comment><USER2> This whole article is an academic's idea of an _ad hominem_ attack.

"Brilliant", a "cosmic genius", yet "dumb", "emotionally incapable of understanding", and further a lame attempt at psychoanalysis; instead of actually appealing to Dyson's statements and trying to combat them with facts.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's pretty sure the longest ad hominem I read in my life so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is hilarious. The article spends N pages of intermittent insults and biography and then deigns to write exactly _one sentence_ describing what might actually be wrong with his views: _"They promise side effects, backfirings, and unintended consequences on a scale unknown in history, and we lack the financial and political wherewithal, and the international comity, to accomplish them anyway."_ Is this our cue to nod sagely and stroke our beards? Flagged as crap, filed into the "Dangerous Knowledge" cabinet.

<comment><USER5> It is crap, but it's interesting crap. It's wrong, but it's wrong in an interesting way. And a discussion on Freeman Dyson is always worthwhile.

But now it's dead. Sic transit gloria frontpage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 'Dead wrong (about global warming)'? For this to be true, there would have to be a demonstration that net positive feedback effects from increasing atmospheric CO2 (leading to runaway warming) have been <conclusively> shown to be taking place.

I would guess that Dyson along with other sceptics has not seen such irrefutable evidence which would kill anti-AGW views.

</comment><comment><USER7> Mosly unrelated: What struck me from reading this article is how much the Dyson family obviously served go influence Neil Stephenson. From the birth of digital processing (Diamond Age) to Aleutian canoes (Snow Crash) to the depiction of Orion's nuclear space ark (Anathem) ... Makes me wonder what other sources of inspiration Neil might have out there. Perhaps I should actually read the acknowledgments in Stephenson's books.</comment>


Is Piketty All Wrong? - <AUTHOR> http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/is-piketty-all-wrong/ <comment><USER2> The Giles quote provided by Krugman is illustrative of his agenda -- or his delusion:

 _> >The exact level of European inequality in the last fifty years is impossible to determine, as it depends on the sources one uses. However, whichever level one picks, the lines in red in the graph show that – unlike what Prof. Piketty claims – wealth concentration among the richest people has been pretty stable for 50 years in both Europe and the US.

>>There is no obvious upward trend. The conclusions of Capital in the 21st century do not appear to be backed by the book's own sources._

Of course the upper class wants you to believe that wealth inequality has not been increasing. Of course they want you to believe that things are fine and dandy. They want you to believe these things because they don't want their wealth taken away, either via taxes or via revolutions. And Giles is simply their mouthpiece.

Like Krugman, I'm looking forward to Piketty's defense. But I doubt the errors are anywhere enough to overturn his conclusions.

<comment><USER3> Piketty definitely needs to respond thoroughly to the errors that Giles found, and Piketty's response so far is too flippant and superficial. This is serious stuff and it deserves a serious response.

That said, those who don't want to talk about inequality are prematurely jettisoning Piketty's conclusions.

A very simple way to measure inequality is the ratio of the wealth of the top quintile to the middle quintile. It's easy to see how this ratio escalated over the last 25 years.

[http://houseofdebt.org/2014/05/24/piketty-and-u-s-wealth- ine...](http://houseofdebt.org/2014/05/24/piketty-and-u-s-wealth- inequality.html)

Spreadsheet errors notwithstanding, the inequality story is not going away.

<comment><USER4> The trouble is that the inequality story is a complete mischaracterization of the problem and it's very misleading about what the prospective solutions are. It leads people to believe that the issue is with John McCain owning houses across multiple states, when the actual problem is with the Koch Brothers owning Senators across multiple states.

And what's the solution? Everybody says "tax the rich." The problem is that income taxes doesn't cause their wealth to decrease, they at best cause it to increase less rapidly. In practice they do nothing (or worse than nothing) because the biggest companies don't pay them anyway, and it creates a large competitive disadvantage for companies not large enough to engage in international tax avoidance, which makes the problem even worse.

Meanwhile any money you manage to raise you can't spend until you first fight against a bunch of "domestic companies creating American jobs" who want to use it to fund Deep Water Horizon 2.0 or studies denying climate change or supply attack helicopters to the North Dakota state police, because aforementioned billionaires still have a thousand times more money than you with which to lobby Congress.

The only way to fix any of it is to shut down K Street. Obviously that's a chicken and egg problem, because K Street is in a good position to protect itself, but if that's not your end game then you might as well stay home.

<comment><USER5> The only solution is to take power out of the hands of politicians.

Get rid of K Street and something worse will take its place.

Get rid of Congresses ability to regulate every detail of the economy and K Street will have a lot less to lobby for.

<comment><USER4> There is certainly something to be said for placing clear limits on what Congress can do, but it's extraordinarily difficult to set out what they should be able to do ex ante and get it right. For example, it makes reasonable sense that the federal government should be in charge of the national defense, but then Washington is colonized by the defense industry which allocates itself a budget the size of Sweden's GDP. On the other hand, state governments have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to be captured by major industries within the state (e.g. coal in West Virginia, oil in Texas) and if it wasn't for the EPA those states would be [even more] uninhabitable, but we only have the EPA as a result of reading the commerce clause quite broadly. Making environmental regulations isn't specifically enumerated as a power of the federal government.

I sometimes wonder if the problem isn't one of having _too much_ accountability. If terms were twice as long then politicians could spend half as much time campaigning and wouldn't have to take as much money from private interests to stay in office. If federal senators went back to being appointed by the state legislatures there would be less voting but there would also be less unwarranted federal interference in state affairs. And so on.

<comment><USER5> It's interesting that you bring up environmental issues. Those are especially tricky, since they deal with the commons: our air and water, which are typically not privately owned and thus are legally forbidden from being handled by the free market.

And the military? Well, sure there are issues there. We can all agree on that.

Now, the military and environmental regulation are inextricably linked to the economy, no doubt about that. And their impact on the economy can be large, no doubt about that either. But there is so much which the government gets involved with - and where there is SO much money to be made via lobbying and influence peddling - which the government really doesn't need to be involved in.

I guess I'm saying that if the EPA and military corruption were the only issues we had to deal with, we'd be in a much better space than we are now.

<comment><USER4> But those are just examples. You would have the same issue with state-level regulatory capture with finance in New York, or internet and other utility providers capturing the states they provide service in, etc. And then there's antitrust and copyright and other such things that essentially have to be done at the federal level because they have national scope.

There are certainly things currently done by the feds that could be reasonably handed over to the states. Social security comes to mind as a big one. But social spending is hardly the area where moving that out of Washington would make the largest dent in K Street.

<comment><USER5> The point of moving regulation to the states is to foment competition amongst said states - this should exert downward pressure on corruption, but how much we don't really know. Certainly we currently have some states which are more corrupt than others. Which would certainly be an improvement on the status quo.

Copyright is certainly a popular issue here on HN, and I'm sure K Street makes a lot of money on it, but again it's like the EPA - something which the government _has to_ by definition regulate in some way.

In fact, moving Social Security and Obamacare subsidies to the states would probably put a larger dent in K Street than all of the other issues you've mentioned combined (military, EPA, copyright, antitrust). You're talking about trillions in handouts, issues which impact every single citizen, massive bureaucracies fighting for power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The nice thing about Piketty is all his data is right out in the open, on the web, and not behind some kind of crazy academic journal paywall type of thing. You don't have to take him or his detractors at face value for anything.

<comment><USER7> > The nice thing about Piketty is all his data is right out in the open, on > the web, and not behind some kind of crazy academic journal paywall type of > thing.

Is it? I assumed you have to buy the book, which is the oldest incarnation of a content paywall.

<comment><USER8> Here [0] you'll find a lot of data by Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.

[0]: [http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/#income](http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/#income)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Piketty's response: [http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/23/piketty- response...](http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/23/piketty-response-to- ft-data-concerns/)

Note that, as mentioned in the comments there, it's not clear whether FT gave Piketty Giles's specific points to respond to. The response was written before the column was published.

Previous discussion on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7793609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7793609)

</comment><comment><USER10> TL;DR: FT used some GB data that even the original agency HMRC no longer used after methodology change.

For the "Wealth Inequality in Britain 1810-2010" data, FT 'argues that Piketty's graphs simply "do not match" his underlying data on the UK, and that official estimates show no significant increase in the country's concentration of wealth since the 1970s.'

(From: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/05/23/financial_tim...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/05/23/financial_times_on_piketty_his_data_is_wrong.html))

FT's Giles then used the following data to rebuke Piketty's "overestimation" of the top 1% & 10% wealth share, as noted in Giles' Excel sheet (not in the text):

"Data comes from Inland Revenue tables. They are accurately transcribed. [http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120403124426/htt...](http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120403124426/http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/personal_wealth/13-5-table-2005.pdf")

Excel: [http://interactive.ftdata.co.uk/files/docs/FTPikettyspreadsh...](http://interactive.ftdata.co.uk/files/docs/FTPikettyspreadsheet22May2014.xlsx)

The only problem I have is that the "13-5-table-2005.pdf" is a table before HMRC made major change to the methodology and its historical tables:

[http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120403124426/htt...](http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120403124426/http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/personal_wealth/menu.htm)

HMRC concluded with "... we would no longer be able to produce the marketable wealth series used in tables 13.3 and 13.4", which the table 13.5 relied on. And those historical tables (prior 2001) never exist again in the following years. By the way, HMRC Personal Wealth data only covers partial estates: "For 2001 to 2003 this covers 35% of estates and for 2005 to 2007, 34% and for 2008-10, 31%."

</comment><comment><USER11> Krugman is all wrong:

Giles: _unlike what Prof. Piketty claims – wealth concentration among the richest people has been pretty stable for 50 years in both Europe and the US._

Krugman: Take, for example, the landmark CBO study on the distribution of _income;_ "

Krugman then shows some graphs about _capital income_ (which is not the same thing as wealth) which don't clearly demonstrate any change _among the richest people_. This is fairly typical Krugman, but I hope HN readers are smart enough not to be duped by this.

<comment><USER12> How do you respond to Krugman's next sentence?

> It's just not plausible that this increase in the concentration of income > from capital doesn't reflect a more or less comparable increase in the > concentration of capital itself.

Also, given that he has this sentence, I don't think Krugman is trying to deceptively confuse capital income and wealth.

Also, the report that Krugman links to ( [http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42729](http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42729) ) seems to show a significant change (yes, in income not wealth) among the top 1%, which does seem to be a change "among the richest people". How am I misinterpreting this report?

<comment><USER11> It is highly plausible. If capital income is increasingly coming from sales of homes, it will become lumpier (in time) and inequality will go up.

I.e. if 100 people own identical houses but only 1 person sells in a given year, wealth is perfectly equal but capital income inequality is huge.

<comment><USER13> Not really. If you assume a relatively even distribution of the rate at which people sell homes. For example, let's take those 100 people and assume that on average they sell their home every ten years. In any given year, 10 of those people will sell their homes, realising their capital gains. Now, because you have 100 people, the average increase will be divided by 10 (100/10). Which is exactly what you would get if you amortise those capital gains over the ten years. Large numbers of people smooths out lumpiness of individual income.

<comment><USER11> If you have 10/100 people selling their homes in a given year, then 10% of people earn 100% of the capital income. This is true in spite of a _completely equal_ distribution of wealth. The fact that the 10% number is stable over time doesn't change this.

Capital income and wealth are simply not the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Probably: [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/wha...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/what- do-the-piketty-data-problems-really-mean.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)</comment>


Apple WWDC 2014 Live Streaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2014/ <comment><USER2> This is working perfectly for me on windows: [http://www.twitch.tv/applekeynote](http://www.twitch.tv/applekeynote)

No commentary or anything

<comment><USER3> How did you find this; my google skills failed me.

<comment><USER2> It was in a reddit thread.... (sorry, no skills here either)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Windows users: download this, open it with VLC: [http://p.events- delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14poiunaepo...](http://p.events- delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14poiunaeporfnsvpobjuanefvpjb6a/refs/14pijbefvoihbfva6_sl_ref.mov)

<comment><USER5> Here's the network stream link so you don't have to download the file: [http://p.events- delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14poiunaepo...](http://p.events- delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14poiunaeporfnsvpobjuanefvpjb6a/m3u8/sl_mvp.m3u8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Chrome doesn't load the page, and in Firefox it still asks for QuickTime. Come on, Apple. It's 2014, and you're still using plugins for video! I thought you were all for "HTML5 video" \- unless it doesn't suit you, apparently.

</comment><comment><USER7> If I were Dropbox I'd be really worrying now. All of the big 3 has it's well- integrated cloud storage -- so far Dropbox was the de-facto cloud storage for Apple users. Now what?

<comment><USER8> Except that DropBox is still cheaper, has a good app, stores file revision history, syncs across various operating systems. Dropbox always seemed to me to be a bit more sophisticated product than just "I want a backup in the Cloud" type thing, and I doubt anyone who's using it more than just a simple one-computer/one-OS backup system will leave. And I guess it gets most of its revenue from business accounts anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this mean that Apple will be sending all my spotlight keystrokes to the cloud (ie: to Apple/Bing for live results)? Hrm.

<comment><USER10> Apple must have been inspired by Ubuntu's "built in spyware". Their search box also sends queries to the cloud by default. Richard Stallman must be thrilled: [http://www.zdnet.com/free-software-father-declared-ubuntu- li...](http://www.zdnet.com/free-software-father-declared-ubuntu-linux-to- contain-spyware-7000008516/)

<comment><USER11> Don't know why you're framing Ubuntu in a bad light. Windows does something similar with Bing. It's pretty easy to turn it off on ubuntu, will Apple allow you to do the same?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You'll need to use an Apple device to view this stream. -iOS 4.2+ -Safari on OSX -Apple TV

<comment><USER13> Is there a stream for Linux users? (without vm)

<comment><USER14> I've got it working by downloading the referenced mov-file, with the QuickTime UserAgent, and opening it in VLC:

        $ curl -A QuickTime/7.6.2 -O http://p.events-delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14poiunaeporfnsvpobjuanefvpjb6a/refs/14pijbefvoihbfva6_sl_ref.mov

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I usually glance at the Techcrunch live blog[1] every 10-15 minutes for WWDC keynotes.

Since it is a text-stream (with a few photos), it's helpful if you don't have an apple device to view the stream or are busy with office work or meetings to watch the live video stream.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/02/apple-wwdc-2014-keynote- liv...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/02/apple-wwdc-2014-keynote-live-blog/)

<comment><USER16> Macrumors usually does ok, and has a nice auto-refresh feature that I leave running

[http://www.macrumors.com/2014/06/02/wwdc-2014-keynote- live/](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/06/02/wwdc-2014-keynote-live/)

<comment><USER17> thanks, I like some of the commentary on this feed:

11:45 am Swift.

11:45 am Crowd goes "Whaaaaat?"

11:45 am New programming language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How is an attachment meaningfully encrypted through iCloud if someone who isn't using a Mac can download the file through a link in the email they receive? If that link can be generated for them, it can be generated for anyone.

Edit: Even if a link is generated client side along with an access key, it's sent plain text and anyone who sees it can click it.

<comment><USER19> I'd imagine these users will have to go through a process that proves they don't just have the link but can also access the email account in question. Just like email subscription confirmations work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm seeing a trend of a lot of 3rd party app that filled functionality gaps in OS X Mavericks are being integrated natively into OSX Yosemite.

Observant HNers lets start a running list of OSX Yosemite Feature => 3rd Party App / Feature

</comment><comment><USER21> Ouch. Big blow to OpenGL by Metal. It's iOS hardware (A7) specific.

</comment><comment><USER22> That video really helped let us know how much Apple cares about its developer community Tim...except your responses to bug reports or pretty much any developer interaction...don't.

</comment><comment><USER23> This already said below, but in clearer terms:

      Will NOT load on Chrome on Mac currently
      Will load in Safari.

</comment><comment><USER24> OSX Yosemite

</comment><comment><USER24> WebGL on Safari for OX Yosemite, yeah ... hopefully for iOSX 8 too

</comment><comment><USER25> What is new in iOS8 iSkype, iPaint, iChina, iApplause.

</comment><comment><USER26> the audience seems composed only by men :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Discrimination for real. what's next ? Google banning safari browser from accessing search?

<comment> k-mcgrady It probably cuts down on the number of people that can stream it making it less expensive for Apple and the stream more stable. And at the end of the day it's an Apple developer conference - Apple developers typical have Apple hardware which this can be viewed on.

<comment><USER28> What about freebsd and clang developers whose work gets used prominently in apple products but who dont own apple hardware.

<comment><USER29> Isn't clang more or less an Apple-funded project? I also thought the guy who was principally responsible for LLVM was an Apple engineer.

<comment><USER30> Yes, Chris Lattner is a tech lead at Apple.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mapping FinFisher's Continuing Proliferation - <AUTHOR> https://citizenlab.org/2015/10/mapping-finfishers-continuing-proliferation/ <comment><USER2> They ARE out to get you.</comment>


New non-profit technology company is crowdfunding to raise for first product - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/coding-for-cures?a=998168

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a lot of the initial cost should be easily covered by a serial entrepreneur. There's also no talk about what the first product will be and what it is aiming to solve.</comment>