Show HN: Bvckup 2 – Fast File Replicator for Windows - <AUTHOR> https://bvckup2.com/ This is a long-running project that started as the proverbial need to scratch my own itch and then somehow evolved into a full-time job of the past 6 years.
Link: https://bvckup2.com
I thought I'd do a Show HN for two reasons.
1. I obviously want to show my baby to those who haven't seen it.
Its primary purpose is to do very fast file replication. If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" - same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them. It can be used for both mirroring and archiving backups, among other things.
It is light, very small and it is really quite fast. Half of the development time was sunk into the UI/UX design, so there's that too.
Existing version is a result of 5 years of a _very_ careful evolution, focusing more on perfecting existing features rather than adding new ones. Said No to more feature requests than I can remember. The blog captures some of that in a form of development screenshots, sketches and what not [1].
2. Secondly, I wanted to add an anecdotal data point that the desktop software development is still very much an option despite of all the nasty rumors. The demand for well-written Windows software is still there. The biggest takeaway has been that there is LOTS of people, on Windows, that recognize software quality as a feature. They acknowledge and compliment it, and they are actively looking for it.
That's the niche. If you are thinking of trying the Windows ISV path, I'd aim there.

    --
 By the way of introduction - I'm in my mid 40s. I've been a programmer for my entire life, mostly on the sysdev side of things - firewalls, network stacks, VPNs, etc. - which is one of the reasons I still like things to be as small and as fast as possible. I'm also the original author of Hamachi VPN, there's a chance you might've heard of it.
Any thoughts or comments on the program itself, would appreciate to hear them. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them if I can as well.

    --
 [1] https://bvckup2.com/wip <comment><AUTHOR> This is a long-running project that started as the proverbial need to scratch my own itch and then somehow evolved into a full-time job of the past 6 years.

I thought I'd do a Show HN for two reasons.

1\. I obviously want to show my baby to those who haven't seen it.

Its primary purpose is to do very fast file replication. If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" \- same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them. It can be used for both mirroring and archiving backups, among other things.

It is light, very small and it is really quite fast. Half of the development time was sunk into the UI/UX design, so there's that too.

Existing version is a result of 5 years of a _very_ careful evolution, focusing more on perfecting existing features rather than adding new ones. Said No to more feature requests than I can remember. The blog captures some of that in a form of development screenshots, sketches and what not [1].

2\. Secondly, I wanted to add an anecdotal data point that the desktop software development is still very much an option despite of all the nasty rumors. The demand for well-written Windows software is still there. The biggest takeaway has been that there is LOTS of people, on Windows, that recognize software quality as a feature. They acknowledge and compliment it, and they are actively looking for it.

That's the niche. If you are thinking of trying the Windows ISV path, I'd aim there.

        --

By the way of introduction - I'm in my mid 40s. I've been a programmer for my entire life, mostly on the sysdev side of things - firewalls, network stacks, VPNs, etc. - which is one of the reasons I still like things to be as small and as fast as possible. I'm also the original author of Hamachi VPN, there's a chance you might've heard of it.

Any thoughts or comments on the program itself, would appreciate to hear them. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them if I can as well.

        --

[1] [https://bvckup2.com/wip](https://bvckup2.com/wip)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for creating Hamachi. I used it for older games that didn't have internet play, but had LAN functionality, with friends online. I never knew it was a solo project before LogmeIn bought it (and made it buggy/unreliable). What a joyfully simple program that was!

<comment><USER3> Oh wow, I've used both Hamachi and Bvckup, but never realized they were made by the same developer. Two great pieces of software.

We used a couple of alternatives after LogMeIn bought Hamachi and retargeted it at enterprise users, but none of them were ever quite as good. And as games have continued to strip out LAN support and/or gotten better at working through NATs, it's been a while since I needed anything like it.

No longer using Bvckup (my photo library doesn't live on my Windows machine anymore) but it was a nice change of pace to run something where it felt like the developer actually thought about the interface. With most utilities on Windows that's really not the case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hamachi had its place back in mid-00's, but I agree that a need for zeroconf LAN bridging has gone down substantially since then.

I do think however that extracting its p2p tunneling bit into a separate service could be a good thing to do even now. Its NAT punching was server- driven, which was (and still is!) a superior way to do it. Better timing, tighter port prediction. Heck, it could even establish _TCP_ tunnels through the simultaneous open trick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Original Show HN from 2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027405)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm trying to wrap my head around the use case here. I love to support well crafted native software so don't take this as a negative question. I often use a tool such as Arq or Veeam to create snapshots in time of a folder or set of folders that then get uploaded to a remote storage location or repository, to recover files or documents from that time. I also use cloud storage providers to keep a copy of data that I am working on in sync between devices.

I can't seem to tell but this product seems to be missing any additional features to really fill a role that I lack. It doesn't appear to make incremental copies of the data set to allow me to roll back in time, it does track deleted items but interim changes are not kept or tracked, so it's really just a capture of the state of the folder at last run time.

It's compared to robocopy but the tool assumes an empty initial destination directory, there's no facility for copying data into a directory with content in it already, so it's can't be used as a general file transfer tool.

It seems the best use case is for say transferring a directory of tarball dumps to a remote location over SMB?

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been a huge fan of the UI design of _bvckup_ for years -- the attention to detail is heartwarming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Little OCD goes a long way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1MB executable and a short, simple EULA. Wish more software came like that.

Given the lack of dependencies, have you considered offering an installer-free download? (The way Mark Russinovich does with SysInternals or Nir Sofer does with NirSoft tools?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have, but never got around to doing it. All other utilities (Diskovery, CCSIOBench, etc.) are like that though already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi there, you have my upvote. I have been trying many solutions for a fast deltacopy-based file replication, and yours is really the best. I am a solopreneur too, living on my product in the last 9 years, somehow i "sensed" this little software gem was the child of a similar mind ;) All the best!

<comment><USER9> What is your product, if you don't mind? I'm always eager to hear stories of entrepreneurs that aren't after VC funding or fast growth and are more about the freedom of having your own business and product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've used Bvckup 2 for years and found it the most reliable solution for PC- driven backup and replication jobs on Windows. It has a few high-level feature limitations that have bugged me (splitting a large folder backup across multiple smaller drives, for example), but it nails the core competencies better than anything else I've used.

<comment><AUTHOR> Re: splitting a backup across several drives - this has unique UI requirements that aren't compatible with bvckup2's core Engine/UI model. The engine runs all backups autonomously and the UI merely shows the progress. Conversely, split backups are interactive - eject A, insert B, etc.

<comment><USER10> Sure, though my use case would look more like treating multiple destination devices as one logical AND, and running the backup only when all are present. I wouldn't need any guarantees w/r/t which files land on which device or the order they're written to, only that if sum(destination device storage) > size of folder to be backed up, everything from the folder makes it onto one of the devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, I see. That's a good case, let me think about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "If you are familiar with "robocopy /mir" \- same idea, but on steroids. Lots of them."

Do you have any comparisons and/or benchmarks. Doing the quick 10 second scan of your site doesn't list any. So how do I know this is worth $30 for personal use and a whopping $150 for servers when robocopy does just fine and is free for both?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point. Benchmarks are in the pipeline, will be adding them soon.

Re: how do you know - there's a 2 week trial just for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I tried bvckup2 maybe a year or two ago. But I stopped using it because of a couple of license issues (?).

The thing is, my work machine is Windows but my employer doesn't have a good backup solution (other than OneDrive, which I don't like much because of its speed and restrictions). I wasn't sure if I could buy a personal license and use it to backup my work machine at my own cost, since said employer wouldn't pay for this or reimburse the cost. The personal license terms sounds strict to prohibit such use. I'm not sure if that's what was meant though. The new licensing model since June seems to address this, with no distinction on the kind of use.

But the second issue was the cost of the license itself. It just is high for me (due to currency and other issues), and I couldn't find any discount codes either. Now I see that the prices seem to have increased further since June 2019 (so it's beyond my reach). I don't recall the feature set of the personal license from before, but the new Basic version seems pretty basic, and seems to have too many differences with the Pro Workstation version. Narrowing that gap could make for better tiers, IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct that you would've needed an Professional license for your case. Personal licenses were basically a 50% discounted option for backing up one's photos and music stash.

Re: pricing - it is what it is, sorry. We are trying to move towards pro IT use and the pricing reflects that. Basic license is not really meant for home use, but rather for certain very specific replication scenarios. In fact, I am considering removing it altogether, because it only serves to confuse simpler (read, non-IT) home users into thinking that it's meant for them, while it _is_ quite restricted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The website and application layout gives a sense of ultra high grade solidity. The swiss flag doesn't seems out of place here.

</comment><comment><USER14> Does this support backing up many TB many million file data sets to multiple smaller target disks? I've been looking for a utility which can handle filling a disk with as many complete files as possible, then allowing a new disk to be inserted to continue.

This used to work great with tape utilities, but every hdd based copy/backup utility I've tried assumes your backups will always fit on a single target disk. Most also fail miserably after a few hundred thousand files, so it's nice to see this one supports millions sanely.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it doesn't support this type of usage. It's a very niche scenario and there are some hairy usability issues with it, especially post-backup.

<comment><USER14> That's too bad, the site got my hopes up when I saw the 'unlimited size' capability. It's really limited by the size of the target.

If you have any desire to support this kind of usage, I for one don't actually care what happens after the backup. It would not be an updated backup, just a copy the files to a set of disks fresh every so often.

In addition to the target not being a limiting factor size wise, using independently mountable non-spanned/raided/etc disks can simplify recovery and improve recoverability of files long term. Even if a few disks fail in storage, the files on the others are perfectly accessible without special software or hardware, and if multiple backup disk sets exist, the total number of files lost would likely be very low.

<comment><AUTHOR> So I've been thinking about this scenario. Tell me this - say you have a mix of files of different sizes. Would you expect the program to try and pack as much files onto each drive (to maximize per-disk use) or copying files in order and switching disks when the next file doesn't fit is OK?

If it's the latter, I think I might be able to cook up something command-line for this sort of case. This is still a very niche scenario, but you aren't the first one to ask about it.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for at least considering it! The latter would work in my scenario (just copy until the next file doesn't fit, then pause and prompt for a new target). The files I work with are seldom larger than a few hundred MB, and many are only a few dozen KB. Even in the case where a few GB are wasted per disk due to unusually large files showing up, a few GB is nothing compared to the overall size of drives these days. I routinely waste at least that much when doing similar multi-disk backups manually by selecting files which fit. Simplicity and ease of use are big benefits when it comes to backing up hundreds of TBs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like your landing page. FYI: on the feature comparison page, when you expand a row with the '+', the 'More on this...' links are not working yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the FYI, should be working as expected now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does the tool replicate NTFS extended attributes, reparse points, short file names, hardlinks, timestamps, and other metadata I can't think of at the moment correctly?

<comment><AUTHOR> It replicates timestamps, attributes, DACL, SACL, group and owner info, as well as alternate file streams. Replication of some of these is off by default though.

It can follow symlinks, reparse and mount points, but doesn't replicate them.

It does not know about hardlinks.

<comment><USER16> I see. Note that normal file attributes != extended attributes. Which one are you referring to?

(For symlinks/reparse points, you'd probably have to provide an option on how to replicate them, since there isn't one clear solution. But it's not impossible to do something sane either. Link Shell Extension may have inspiration on various methods you could use.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Regular attributes.

Extended attributes have been deprecated by Microsoft quite some time ago in favour of ADS. It's not hard to add support for replicating them, but there's literally no demand for that.

<comment><USER16> Not sure where you got that idea (link?) but EAs are used in WSL, among other things. Meaning you won't be able to copy WSL file systems properly right now.

As a general rule, you should avoid any information loss regardless of anyone's opinion on the matter. No one is going to think "ah well, Microsoft/etc. doesn't like this feature so it's ok my backup is messed up".

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a link ready, but this was explicitly mentioned in one of TechNet articles on the subject dating back few years.

EA being used for WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) - not much of a surprise, really. It is a square peg in a round hole in many aspects. As I said, there's zero demand for replicating EA, WSL or not.

<comment><USER16> I think you'll find you're making a mistake, but up to you...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I used this back when I was on Windows - an absolute delight to use. As a developer I hope to someday create something as useful and well-designed as this tool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, it's a very nice compliment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been very happily using Bvckup for my personal and work files for a number of years now. Thanks very much for your pristine work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Support for SAMBA quirks" As someone who has worked with a lot of NAS products, i can relate to this a lot.

</comment><comment><USER20> How does this integrate with a synology nas ? I've been thinking about picking up a synology nas.

<comment><USER21> I have been using Bvckup 2 to backup primarily to my Synology Nas. It correctly identifies that the destination directory is a SAMBA v3.1 mount, and treats it as NTFS.

I actually love using it for my Synology as it has the ability to do Delta Copying. Some of my folders contain VM's and VeraCrypt drives, and it is very fast when it comes to sending delta copies. It still has to read the file on the destination to determine what to write, but that only becomes apparent on large files. I think you may lose some features since it is a mounted network drive(mainly limitations to SAMBA), but I have had no issues with it.

Scanning remote files is fast, if the contents or timestamps haven't changed I've seen it scan over 600K files in a couple of minuets (duplicacy backup, in the process of moving to a new hard drive and need to store it temporarily on the Nas).

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been playing with doing file change detection based on NTFS journals. There are some caveats, but it looks very promising. It's O(1) basically instead of O(file-size).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hello from a fellow Windows mISV! I'd like to say that there are only two of us remaining, but RSDN forum "Shareware and business" is still alive and kicking.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are quite a few small ISVs out there. From the top of my head and in areas related to my own - Arq backup, SoftPerfect, Syncovery. I don't think Macrium and Glasswire are terribly big either. Ditto for 2BrightSparks. HexRays. Boatload of smaller shops in the 3D tools/plugins domain. Lots and lots of examples, they are just hard to notice because they look and feel bigger than they actually are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love the focus on the UI/UX and performance. Looks like a solid, highly- efficient application, something that is sorely missing (or at least hard to find) on Windows

</comment><comment><USER24> Does the website say whether it can be used for backup to S3/Azure/GCP/etc? I looked and couldn't find either yes or no.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bvckup 2 operates at the file system level. It has no API-level integration with cloud storage providers.

It can be used to backup onto any virtual drives emulated by the cloud client software, which is, obviously, not the same thing, but a workaround.

Direct cloud storage integration _is_ on the dev plan, and it's possible it'll be a separate (sister) product.

<comment><USER24> Separate product seems like it makes a lot of sense. I suspect for most it is an either/or situation and you could keep each tool's user cognitive complexity lower by shedding the unused stuff from the other destination configuration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Congratulations! I bought this in 2015 and happy to see the license is still valid!

</comment><comment><USER26> Not sure why but your domain is being blocked by one of the default pihole lists.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lovely. Do you have any details?

<comment><USER26> Sorry, not a default list. However, it looks like it's in this list which has not been updated for some time. This list blocks websites that use canvas fingerprinting.

[https://gist.github.com/CHEF- KOCH/2dea75d43b2184f228ae94b168...](https://gist.github.com/CHEF- KOCH/2dea75d43b2184f228ae94b168d275b1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, OK. There were some issues with fraud back then, so had to resort to using cookies that were initialized client-side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Love the UI. Did you use some off the shelf UI library or is that custom?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, it's custom. It's simpler than it looks. Except for fade-in/out transitions. It's absolutely ridiculous how much effort it takes to make them flicker-free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Was just wishing I had a tool like this tonight. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER29> Any chance you'd be willing to share some revenue numbers?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Huh. Why "Bvckup" and not "Backvp"?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an upside down A... or at least that was the idea, which frankly wasn't the very best one. I still wonder how many sales we routinely lose because of the name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hello old friend :), wheres the DMG download ?? :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Once Jobs is back and Macs are put back in order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What you think about aucalc.com?

</comment><comment><USER33> Free alternative freefilesync.org</comment>


Opera 12.10 with better extensions, SPDY support and more - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/11/06/out-of-beta-operas-new-desktop-browser-12-10-with-enhanced-os-integration-and-new-apis/

<comment><AUTHOR> Still no Metro version for Windows 8 ( at least a preview? ) That's disappointing.</comment>


Ask HN: Is RubyMine worth it? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering if RubyMine was worth the cost/getting to know the IDE in terms of building Rails apps? I downloaded the trial but ended up just using Sublime because it was easier.<p>What are the pro/cons of RM? <comment><USER2> I say yes, but I also use both Sublime and RubyMine.

I use Sublime when im mostly working on front end code, but i'll use RubyMine when im working on backend mainly because I get to use object inspectors, break points and step by step debugging.

Of course, if im just working on the front end of my web app, then I prefer Sublime as it has a much lighter footprint.

If you've ever coded in C# and used Visual Studio, then RubyMine will feel more comfortable when you really need to dig deep and debug something.

It's cheap enough, just get it, one day you'll be up to your elbows in spaghetti code and it will save you heaps of time, then you'll be happy you had it.

<comment><USER3> I do the same (I also use TextWrangler because of its awesome file search/replace features). Sublime is certainly a better editor and feels more lightweight, but the debugging tools in RubyMine are absolutely invaluable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't used sublime that much so I can't really compare them.

RubyMine has helpful things like auto-complete, cmd+click to see function/class code (works for things like locales and gems too), generators without going to the command line, and a console for autorun unit test results off the top of my head.

On the negative side its a memory hog and costs money (though they seems to have sales every once in a while so you could get it slightly cheaper).

</comment><comment><USER5> I've used the Jetbrains products for a few years, and in general they all work well when your codebase is small and manageable.

Unfortunately, if you have a monolithic code base, you'll see the memory consumption climb and it will slow to a crawl pretty quickly. This was true in Visual Studio/C# and I've found it to be true with Ruby/Rails apps too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cons: \- Lots of features (may look intimidating at first) \- Memory consumption if higher than e.g. Sublime

Pro: \- Code navigation is really quick (e.g jump to definition, inline view of implementation, including gems) \- Debugging experience is great (e.g. setting breakpoints, stepping into and execution code within breakpoint context) \- Git integration is very good (e.g. review your code side by side before pushing/sending for review) \- Great support for running tests within the IDE, also supports having a rails console within the IDE \- Navigating through projects and multiple files is really fast/efficient \- Auto- completion, code inspection

All in all, I'd say it's really worth it if you're the type of person that enjoys using productivity tools. As others mentioned, it's somehow similar to using VisualStudio with C#.

</comment><comment><USER7> I really like RubyMine. The code navigation features are awesome.</comment>


Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/dwarf-fortress-ten-hours-with-the-most-inscrutable-video-game-of-all-time/ <comment><USER2> Great explanation of DF's bodily combat damage modeling: [http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/95316-complex- dama...](http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/95316-complex-damage-model- considerable-for-dayz-no-suggestion/)

> DF's damage system is just as complex and oftentimes difficult to keep track > of as the rest of the game. Instead of simple health points or separate body > parts DF simulates each individual by the sum of it's parts. This starts at > the single parts of a body, then adds layers of tissue, muscle and fat to > each part, connects all parts by joints and finally stuffs a share of vital > and nonvital organs into the whole thing. Every part of this construct has > several states it can be it, reaching from healthy over bruised, torn, > mangled, nonfunctional, broken and missing...

> How does that play out in the actual game? Depending on what kind of injury > a creature suffers it tracks the damage to individual body part and the > results of it. Slashing damage will cut through tissue, muscle and fat, > might even separate body parts, blunt damage will pass through protective > clothing and only bruise upper layers, but shatter bones and joints > mercilessly. Piercing damage will effortlessly penetrate all layers and has > a high chance to damage.

A dwarf is graphically represented by a smiley face, so you can't see any of this happen. All of it is conveyed by descriptive text.

It's also recommended to pick up a freshman textbook on geology to understand the game's many types of rocks, which is apparently pretty realistic following Tarn's personal interest in geology/mineralogy. The depth of this "game" is breathtaking. The only thing I can think of comparable might be high-fidelity but consumer grade flight simulators like X-Plane, or those put out by Russian developer DCS (e.g. [http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/series/black_shark/...](http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/series/black_shark/#22728) )

<comment><USER3> The UI in Dwarf Fortress is completely indefensible. Even when you do understand how to play the game it's a kludge. Let alone the fact that AN ASCII GAME CAN BRING AN 8 CORE DESKTOP TO A CRAWL. (The ASCII is actually rendered in OPENGL for performance which is a joke in and of itself because 99% of the system resources are spent poorly simulating stagnant blocks of air rock and dirt with nothing happening to them).

There are many amazing and laudable aspects to DF. Tarn has a physics background and in this regard the game is well thought out. It has unmatched emergent gameplay and behavior due to the physics and complexity of each dwarf.

What isn't well thought out at all are both the 'design' of the software and interface. This is the most beautifully complex game with endless unique and hilarious morsels of awesome (the naming of geographic features and depictions engraved on items) Yet absolutely no effort is spent on conveying that to the user. It's like the game itself is autistic in its savant level complexity and all that beauty is hidden behind an utterly unusable interface and horribly inefficient software design.

Dwarf Fortress is a perverse decent into a single brilliant yet mal adjusted person's 'ideal' game. It's wildly capable and meticulously tended to in all the wrong areas while the glaringly obvious flaws go unattended.

It's like a brilliant mathematician who shits on the floor and writes earth- shattering proofs on discarded fast food bags leaving them strewn about homeless shelters. The hobos (DF fans) all rightfully commend his genius and defend the antisocial idiosyncratic behavior as "part of the creative process" or that anything else would detract from 'the experience' of reading a revolutionary proof off of a shit stained McDonalds bag.

The main problem is Tarn's inability to work with anyone else or compromise. The poor quality interface and software design is a perfect metaphor for the developer behind it. The smallest improvement such as rendering more ASCII layers at once from an isometric perspective would vastly improve the usability and likely expand the userbase by 10 fold yet no effort is made to make ANY UI adjustments.

Minecraft is the perfect example of the level of success DF is capable of. Their premise is quite similar, but where Notch's effort went into a simplistic usable UI with simple physics, Tarn went without a UI and devoted his effort to a bewilderingly complex and amazingly inefficent engine with no reasonable way for anyone to experience it. Tarn could be a multi millionare if he simply would take some damn advice about sofware and UI design.

Seriously, With two more people helping him, one person focused on optimizing the codebase and another focused on improving the UI this would literally be one of the greatest games of all time.

Until that day DF will remain an obscure oddity, like a model train set with a revolutionary efficient engine whose owner steadfastly refuses anyone to use it in anything except a toy which actually causes physical pain to all who attempt to play with it.

<comment><USER4> Maybe he just wants to make his game, perhaps not a game for you or many other people - but his game. For him. Not everything has to be simplified and dumbed down. We have plenty of those kinds of games.

Also, I'm confused by your shock that an ASCII game can bring an 8 core desktop to a crawl. Just because most games spend most of the system resources on displaying pretty graphics, doesn't mean that DF has to as well.

<comment><USER3> Regarding the inefficiency of the engine. There is something seriously FUBAR with the design when you must choose the size of simulation (the rendered rows and columns of ASCII representing the playable zone in the window not the physical dimensions) at the beginning of a game before embarking. The performance of the game is directly proportional to the number of blocks in this zone + the number of dwarfs and NOT the actual stuff happening to them.

The bad part is that you have to completely start over and embark with new dwarfs if you decide that your system can/can't do a bit more and you wish to adjust the size of the zone.

<comment><USER5> Current hypothesis on the forums is that he uses some simplistic variant of A*; in extreme situations everything pathfinds to everything else once a tick in a totally serial program. The player base sometimes resorts to weird hacks and layouts to reduce the branching complexity of the path finding, but ultimately the more loose stone and objects you have to pathfind off and the more things you have pathfinding the worse everything gets. You don't even have to have a large number of dwarves for it to crop up; sheep are capable of bringing your machine to its knees if you don't ruthlessly cull them, or notoriously the catsplosion problem.

<comment><USER3> I would love to see a bunch of hard hitting engineers focus on optimizing DF with multithreading and GPGPU stuff. It would probably require a full rewrite. Having some experience with AI and pyopencl physics simulations I have no doubt that DF could be many orders of magnitude faster and capable of sooooo much more. That's really where my angst stems from.

<comment><USER6> > [...] focus on optimizing DF with multithreading and GPGPU stuff.

You should probably start with algorithmic improvements.

<comment><USER3> It could go either way IMO, GPGPUs are super great for naively simulating a bunch of different blocks in parallel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
      > There are instructions within the game, and without in the form
      > of wikis and forums, but I wanted to begin at the most basic
      > level, if only to come at the game from a recently trendy (if
      > controversial) design paradigm on discoverability that's flowed
      > from mobile apps to many new indie games: "if you see a UI
      > walkthrough, they blew it".

Some of the author's other points are valid, and DF definitely has some (just some!?) problems with the UI (my personal nitpick is that there are multiple ways to draw rectangles) but I get the impression that she set things up planning to fail. Not R-ingTFM isn't really a reasonable way to review this game. DF doesn't have a team of people behind it, and there's no UX designer to figure out how to make things beautiful and intuitive. On the other hand, the game is _free_ , and the developers have supposedly turned down at least one relatively large buyout offer in order to keep working on their dream on their own terms.

It's cliche, but you get out of DF what you put into it. If poring over fan- made wikis, taking notes of all your findings, winning tiny victories like successfully getting your first workshop running, and losing in spectacular fashion only to retell your loss to friends doesn't sound fun, maybe stick to Skyrim.

<comment><USER8> "Not R-ingTFM isn't really a reasonable way to review this game." This. If the author had spent half as much time bothering to do research as he did coming up with florid expressions about how this screen was like a bunch of "Greek symbols" impervious to the casual glance, then the reviewer may have had more fun Fun.

<comment><USER9> It's almost as though you're saying one has to put effort and motivation to derive pleasure from something!

Spoonfeeding is the way of the future, and anything else is second-rate design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> DF is a fantastic game, and one worth taking some time to explore if you have a weekend to burn when friends and family are out of town, or you're just feeling like being a shut in. It is an excellent example of a "forever project" and one that has gained some quite a fanbase, but as you get deeper in, you will be frustrated by some things.

The game is designed by 2 brothers, and coded completely by one of them. This has led to a game with immense scope, and tons of features, but with most of them lacking polish. Its also led to performance problems, as adding new features is vastly more important than optimizing existing ones. The game is single threaded, outside of some of the gui, and processors aren't really getting any faster. Eventually you'll get frustrated and kill your fortress due to FPS slowdown. This could happen from your fort growing to a large number of dwarfs, or you playing too much with things that flow (lava, water), etc.

There have been quite a few offers by fans of the game to help with the code, but Toady One is adamant about keeping the source closed and being the only developer.

So play, enjoy, and be impressed with what one guy and a lot of Mountain Dew can accomplish, but be aware that you're playing in what is essentially someones (amazing) lifetime art project.

PS: Dwarf Therapist and DfHack make the game much more playable and get around a lot of the interface quirks. If you're going to get started playing I'd recommend them.

</comment><comment><USER11> In the recent threads on armor and armor piercing on the Bay12forums, the game calculates and checks for fracture stress and impact stress when crossbow bolts impact armor.

So for example the game will test to see if the impact_yield, and further research in the threads below reach conclusions such as :

" the IY (impact_yield) deflection mechanism is related to armor density, armor thickness, bolt size, bolt impact yield, bolt contact area, and the difference between mail and plate at larger contact areas."

Armor density takes from armor material - Iron/Steel/, as does impact_yield.

Here is the thread where the initial !!Science!! on whether bolt weight made an impact on their lethality - [Dwarven Research: The Effect of Bolt Weight on Crossbow Performance](<http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115683.0>)

The results were converted on reddit into a LaTeX PDF, which is excellent reading - <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study.pdf>

This led to the follow up: A Comparison Study on the Effectiveness of Bolts vs Armors

LaTeX - <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study%202.pdf>

Thread - <http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0>

The underlying algorithm for impact_yield deflection on page 11 was:

" Algorithm: 1\. The projectile is hitting the creature on a body part protected by a piece of rigid armor (i.e. bolt hits steel breastplate). 2\. Multiply the armor's LAYER_SIZE by the projectile's CONTACT_AREA, and round the result down to the nearest 100. The exception is that you round up to 100 instead of rounding down to zero if the result was less than 100 (i.e. 20x2=40 -> 100). 3\. IMPACT_YIELD = (800/157) * ARMOR_SOLID_DENSITY * (step #2 result) / PROJECTILE_SIZE "

And thats to test if a bolt deflects on impact with armor. Penetration causing severing of tissue, blunt damage causing bruising are also possible depending on the Armor vs Bolt combination.

And this is a minor sub part of the game which most people don't see.

<comment><USER12> This means, essentially, that the strategist can't build an Excel model of the game and win that way, the way many games are played and won. Excel would blow up...

<comment><USER11> Good God.

At some point Toady will add an economy module.

I... shudder at the thought of the processing required for that.

Each site will have its own produce, production rates and ability to transmit goods, (the current build is already deciding on how much transport succeeds based on banditry and so on).

Man. It just painful to consider how much processing is going to be required ><.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps DF will be the first game that requires an actual mainframe to run on...

<comment><USER11> One hopes to be the first to see the post.

"So I had some time and a cray... Also some refactored code"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I actually got bored towards the end of my first game of DF because it was too easy.

The interface adds a lot of illusory difficulty, but that's not an issue for people used to reading manuals. On the other hand, when you're not wrestling with the system, there's not much fair challenge. When your underground fortress is filled to the brim with traps and completely self sufficient, no one is ever going to touch you unless you handicap yourself.

Once I had my base built out the way I wanted it, there wasn't much left for me to do. Kind of reminds me of how Minecraft feels once you've built a satisfying shelter, but I think that Minecraft's music and FPS perspective can motivate people to keep playing for the sake of creativity. With DF: sure, it's fun to imagine my fortress and all, but then I might as well move away from the keyboard and just do the whole thing in my imagination.

<comment><USER11> I played in a similar manner, and had 0 fun after a point.

Which is when the entire "losing is fun" part of the motto clicked for me.

After yet more introspection I personally drew a parallel between me playing safe and how I approached many other things in life. And in this game, the result of playing things that way were directly clear - utter boredom.

All I had left were mega challenges. So either I play to build something vast, such as a new Morul, or I forego all those cheesy advantages and just let my fortress run and fail, and see what stories come out of it.

edit: of course my experience may have little value to helping you find any fun with the game, I strongly recommend playing without cage traps and danger rooms.

This drastically increases the challenge and the resultant successes and failures are usually enriched for it.

<comment><USER14> Wait, so which direction did you go in real life?

<comment><USER11> I find myself trying desperately to return to utter boredom.

<comment><USER15> This is an amazing reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm really glad that this game came out after I was an adult with a full-time job. Otherwise, I would not have the excuse to _not_ dive into it and inevitably be sucked in. As it is, I can walk away, justifying that I just don't have time to figure the game out. I liked DF when trying it out, but I think I enjoy just reading about it more.

<comment><USER17> Given the current UI, you'd have all the excuse you need. I gave it an honest shot but I just can't get too invested in a game that requires a few hours of reading wikis and watching YouTube.

<comment><USER18> This image is pretty relevant. <http://i.imgur.com/omJfhlt.jpg>

If you walked into dwarf fortress fully knowledgeable about the UI and game mechanics, you'd have a relatively dull experience with very few surprises.

Being such an expansive game, you don't need to know every single command or hotkey just to get a fortress started. The fun lies in not knowing what you're doing, encountering something unexpected, then adapting to that unexpected situation, either by learning something else about the game, or applying your previous knowledge in a creative fashion.

Remember that people don't write stories and comics about dwarf fortress because they knew exactly how to handle every hurdle the game threw in their direction.

<comment><USER19> That's what I loved about Minecraft for the first few months too. People keep whining about putting the "recipes" in game and making it easier, but the whole process of researching, looking up YouTube videos, reading the wiki, etc, was what made it fun because it felt like you were learning something useful, despite just being a game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The author's problems all have solutions:

You need to dig stairs to be able to go up and down levels. You need to dig an "up stair", and then a "down stair" below it. Or you can dig "up/down stairs" which combine both functions into the same square.

The lack of stone is probably due to embarking in an area that has clay, soil, or sand layers on top. If you tunnel down a few levels, you should find stone.

If you have an axe (which is one of the default starting items if you didn't customize them), you can (D)esignate (T)reecutting areas to chop down trees and build things out of wood (assuming you're in an area that features trees).

<comment><USER21> _The author's problems all have solutions_

Well, no, those are symptoms, not problems. The problem, as explained by the author, is the sheer improbability of discovering how to play Dwarf Fortress by trial and error. (I say that as a big fan of the game... I've put in a few dozen hours over the years, which I feel is just barely enough to put me at the high end of "beginner").

<comment><USER22> Is that a problem?

Chess is inscrutable via trial and error too.

<comment><USER21> Not sure I agree... give me the most basic computer chess program and 15 minutes, and I'll have (most of) the rules figured out. And that's assuming no tutorials or hints such as highlighting legal moves.

Getting good at it is a different matter entirely, but figuring out how to play is relatively simple.

<comment><USER23> But Chess is a game that you're already familiar with - unless you're going to be changing the absolute foundation of the game with these altered rules, your familiarity with the original game is what allows you to come up with an altered set of rules.

Compare that to Dwarf Fortress, short of 'Sim City' (which is a dubious comparison at best), there is nothing out there that remotely comes close to the myriad of gameplay concepts that have been shoved into this single, mildly coherent package.

<comment><USER24> I'd say that Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius come pretty close to DF's style of gameplay. But yeah, DF still has far more above what those offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Dwarf fortress is difficult for two reasons 1: Unintuitive interface. It takes some time just to learn how to do basic things and find the information you need. 2: Complexity. Once you know every possible command you can give you need to figure out what to do.

It's hard to get into but immensely rewarding and satisfying once you do, with some amazingly detailed epic stories coming to life.

<comment><USER26> My brother plays this constantly, any pointers where I can start playing?

<comment> lost-theory Following the Captnduck tutorials [1] and using the Lazy Newb pack [2] got me pretty far.

[1]: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHVZtRdtPdo> [2]: <http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0>

<comment><USER27> If you are on mac you can use MacNewbiw instead of the LNB: <http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106790.0>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The game dwarf fortress most reminds me of is git.

<comment><USER29> Ah, that's actually a pretty good analogy! Very powerful once you get to know it, but with a baffling interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> For a Dwarf-Fortress-like experience with a much more friendly UI and reasonable learning curve, try Gnomoria (<http://gnomoria.com>)

The developer is awesome and releases an update (mostly) every week. It made it through Steam Greenlight but hasn't been released there yet. It is well worth the 8 bucks.

As a person who hates repeating himself, my biggest problem with DF and its difficulty curve was that I often would make a small mistake early in the game, like expand too fast or forget to close off an entrance to a cavern, and have to start all over, and repeat the same X steps to get a basic civilization going, which gets tiresome. Gnomoria is no different, but it is much more forgiving in the early going and leads to fewer short-order restarts. Also, graphics!

</comment><comment><USER31> I've noticed a lot of people in this topic complaining about graphics/UI. I'll give you that the UI does need an overall badly, but there's a reason for the graphics: the sheer complexity of the game, and the fact that his last game's development stalled because of graphics.

In the "sheer complexity" department, imagine trying to depict any of the following well graphically: randomly generated artifacts made of random materials, the ridiculously intricate damage models, and completely randomly generated titans (which do start with a base creature, but have random materials/bodyparts galore). While you could just do essentially what he does for the ASCII and have one symbol that represents all these, he doesn't seem to want to go this route. Which is insane, but hey, insane seems to be the normal for DF development.

The second part is that his last game died partly from his trying to implement graphics too early. Notice how the full title is "Dwarf Fortress: Slaves to Armok"? Armok was the game before this. Similar in overly ambitious scope, but with an early 3d style graphics. However, for some reason or another, it became to difficult to support its development after graphics, and it collapsed under its own weight. Hence the switch to ASCII: he could continue implementing hundreds of features without as much regard for performance or implementation. It's easy to add in dozens of new creatures, random titans, genetics and randomized traits when you don't have to actually worry about representing it. I highly suggest reading his devblog (<http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html>) just as inspiration for what one crazy ambitious man can do.

As for why he doesn't enlist more help, make it open source, etc, the answer is even simpler: this game is his bread and butter and both he and his brother live off the donations. Yes, part of it is that he wants to maintain control of the project, but if a program was literally the sole means of supporting you and your sibling, I think you'd be wary of giving away its code too. He has said it will likely be open sourced when he dies however.

<comment><USER32> It is not just the ASCII. He could write a more useful GUI. With buttons and better mouse control, it would be much appealing for the crowds.

<comment><USER33> Writing better mouse control isn't fun. If he were to start writing such things, I bet he'd either scrap them anyway or just get bored of writing DF all-together.

The "boring" tasks are purposefully programmed to the minimum requirement so he can spend more time on the interesting tasks, to ensure his motivation stays high.

Admittedly, he could just outsource the GUI stuff, but for better or worse, he clearly wants to keep the code close to his chest.

<comment><USER15> He has played with outsourcing work--all the SDL conversion was done by a third party. He hated the experience. Which goes back to the "he's a programmer, not an engineer" thing. I would personally love for this project to be tackled by a group of highly experienced engineers dedicated to the same vision, but that's complete fantasy dreaming, there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Ahhhh Dwarf Fortress...I really wish I had the patience to overcome the insane learning curve, but I barely have enough patience to learn Civilization ><. Some of the stories people have created with the game are incredible. My favourite site for this is <http://dfstories.com/>

Also, the New York Times article linked in the above article is quite insightful I found: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the- brilliance-of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance- of-dwarf-fortress.html?_r=0)

</comment><comment><USER35> IMHO, NetHack is the king of clunky, quasi-graphical-but-really-text-based games. In many ways, it is probably the greatest computer game of all time. Is Dwarf Fortress in the same league?

<comment><USER36> If you think NetHack is the greatest computer game of all time, may I suggest Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup? Supposedly, it was modeled after NH, but in attempt to fix several of its problems: [http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy- pas-d...](http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-de-faq)

<comment><USER37> My roguelike of choice is Brogue (<https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/>). Whereas Nethack was made to satisfy the creators' interest in complexity and simulation, Brogue satisfies the creator's interest in design and elegance. Brogue simplifies a lot of the redundancies in Nethack and condenses it down into the core elements of dungeon crawling. While it's a much less complex game, it doesn't sacrifice much in depth. You still get loads of interesting emergent stories.

Brogue is probably the most accessible amongst the text-based roguelikes - it's interface is excellent, it manages to be very visually appealing without straying from the ascii aesthetic, and the design of it is streamlined and elegant.

<comment><USER38> Thanks for the link. I like that game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think the author of the article made a critical mistake by not installing a friendly set of tiles (e.g. Lazy Newb Pack). There is really no drawback, all it will do is get you to enjoy the game faster.

</comment><comment><USER39> I played DF quite a bit a few years ago. Sometime later I read Reamde, by Neal Stephenson: [http://www.amazon.com/Reamde-A-Novel-Neal- Stephenson/dp/0062...](http://www.amazon.com/Reamde-A-Novel-Neal- Stephenson/dp/0062191497)

I only just realized, reading the comments here, how much the description of the game in Reamde is patterned after DF, with simulations of geological and even planetary processes driving mundane scenery and resource distribution. Although of course in the novel it's a MMORPG because that's cooler. b^)

</comment><comment><USER40> The creators of DF could partner with some game studio to create a nice GUI for playing, or create an API that could allow for beter interfaces to evolve, the tilesets are great, but custom tutorials would be awesome. I tried playing DF once but was overwhelmed with the information and didn't try again, and i used to play nethack and adom.

I also recommend ADOM for those who like nethack and redrogue that is a roguelike meets platformer, very nice !

</comment><comment><USER41> If you play Dwarf Fortress without side help under the presumption that a games UI that isn't immediately obvious is bad then "you're gonna have a bad time."

Not that I'm defending DF UI because it is horrendous but the game underneath is magnificent and there are many external resources to help one dig down far enough to get to that magnificence.

</comment><comment><USER42> Succinct explanation of Dwarf Fortress as fun: [http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110522180205/vsrecom...](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110522180205/vsrecommendedgames/images/a/a5/Dwarf_Fortress_fun.png)

</comment><comment><USER43> <http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57557.0>

Here is a nice tileset that can make the game far more approachable. :)

</comment><comment><USER44> I really like this article. The phrasing is so good that I can imagine myself sitting at the computer and staring at the weird ASCII characters.

</comment><comment><USER45> What would be the best way to play DF on a not-so-powerful machine? It seems that rendering the ASCII art is a serious CPU dwell...

<comment><USER41> It's not the art rendering it's the massive amount of calculations about dwarf feelings and cat mating the simulation is doing underneath that make it slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I never played DF, but... _wouldn't his be way cooler and maybe motivate more people into learning it if it was a MMO?_

<comment><USER5> Good god isn't it addictive enough?!

More realistically there are things you can do in DF like bathe the world in lava or crack the Maximum Fun Chamber that would be kind of obnoxious for your neighbors. A bit like playing Minecraft with IC2 and accidentally leveling half your neighbor's house because your nuclear reactor melted down. Just because you are even worse off does not make people any happier about it.

<comment><USER41> But losing is fun.

And if it were an MMO then the motto could change to

Losing is fun for everyone!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is very beta/alpha an should be treated as such.

The dev is focused on depth of gameplay before all else.

</comment><comment><USER48> It looks like a SIMS variant played in "ASCII".

</comment><comment><USER49> Falcon's eye, I miss you...

<comment><USER50> It's called "Vulture's Eye" these days and I think it's still in development... <http://www.darkarts.co.za/vulture>

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> It uses ascii symbols?

<comment><USER52> ...and it uses text in an annoying way. It renders the text in OpenGL, which is one of the reasons why a 'text mode' game is so resource intensive.

<comment><USER53> > It renders the text in OpenGL, which is one of the reasons why a 'text mode' > game is so resource intensive.

No, that is not really resource intensive. The massive simulation behind the graphics is resource intensive.

<comment><USER51> I guess I'll have to check it out, though anything so involved might be too time intensive for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Everyone loves Grouper's Challen - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/11/15/challen_from_grouper_how_the_online_dating_site_mixes_character_with_technology.html

<comment><USER2> Having had the chance to work with Challen a few times outside of going on Groupers, I can attest that she is, indeed, a phenomenal person.

But Michael's right -- there's something magical about the experience of having a combination of a crowd and an algorithm, where you get the best of scalable, automatic responses and a personal connection when you need it. It also lets Challen manage friendships with thousands of people at once. She's MySpace's Tom for the new generation.</comment>


Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/27/google_mocks_microsoft_online_infrastructure/ <comment><USER2> Congratulations for Microsoft. They are currently in the #2 in the four step Gandhi scale:

1) they ignore you 2) they laugh at you 3) they fight you 4) you win

Let's hope they never get beyond 2.

<comment><USER3> They're walking down those steps, though, not up. The next step is 1, not 3.

<comment><USER2> I genuinely hope you are right

<comment><USER4> Why?

<comment><USER2> Because Microsoft's monopolies are hurting competition and the evolution of our practices. We certainly don't need them pushing a new search engine through MSN Messenger or Windows updates.

<comment><USER5> No, that's Google that has a search monopoly at the moment, and seriously needs a challenger.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps, but is Microsoft, a convicted monopoly abuser, the right challenger? Microsoft has already a powerful grip on the whole industry (why do you think multi-processors and 64-bit computing took that long to catch?) for us to feel too comfortable with them gaining more power.

Google has a monopoly on search, but Microsoft has a couple at least as valuable as Google's.

<comment><USER6> Competition between giants is a good thing. And a sense of urgency in the marketplace is good for third party companies, as it places pressure to buy rather than build.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Actually, Microsoft uses Hadoop. But that's only because it recently purchased the semantic search startup Powerset. Not only is open-source slow to reach the Microsoft back-end, but so is, well, the cloud._

Actually, Microsoft's Dryad project is significantly more sophisticated than Hadoop. Using Hadoop is not exactly a compelling example of how technically sophisticated your organization is or how much you utilize "the cloud", anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> Of course, Google's infrastructure is great, whether MapReduce or GFS.

However, if Bing gets to a point where their search results are clearly better, then Google will be in trouble, and no amount of screaming "we have a better infrastructure!" will help. Users want the best results, and that's why Google originally won against other search engines.

I don't know if that's ever going to happen. Probably not, but I would not bet on it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is the talk available online or at least, is there alternative coverage? The Register conveys the message "Google thinks Microsoft infrastruture sucks", but they don't seem to understand the arguments (or at least, I can't understand their coverage without guessing a lot).

</comment><comment><USER10> To be honest I don't think google is being entirely fair here.

Google provides me with a _service_. In that respect I don't care how that service is provided and on what technology that is based. It could be a giga- cluster of retrofitted Commodore 64s thrown out in orbit to save on real estate costs, kept in place by a reinforced fiber back down to Google HQ. As long as the service works, I wouldn't care less.

This gives google complete freedom in their implementation, so they pretty much built up their own infrastructure from scratch, for a very specific purpose.

Microsoft on the other side delivers software, general purpose platforms which you can deploy and build your own solutions on. Granted, they got the whole internet thing a little late, but I can't blame them for trying to exploit the technology they already posses instead of ditching it all and starting from scratch.

With Microsoft's solutions, I know I can make them do whatever I want, on pretty much any x86 hardware, and I know it will work. "Google OS", for a lack of better name, I doubt would be particularly useful for the general public.

I don't think it's surprising for a platform tailored for one specific goal to perform better than general purpose platforms in that specific area, but that hardly means that the other platform is worthless.

<comment><USER11> I understood the article to be focusing on Microsoft vs. Google in terms of their approach to the same set of challenges in the web sphere. (" _Google has questioned Microsoft's entire approach to online infrastructure_ ")

In this respect, it would seem that Google's "horizontal" infrastructure stack makes it more adept at handling web-scale problems across multiple domains (versus Microsoft's "vertical" problem-by-problem approach).

<comment><USER12> Agreed. This debate was in the context of cloud computing. After working with Google App Engine and their datastore API, I more fully appreciate the willpower required by their developers.

Some queries that would be relatively easy (and not super-scalable) have to be reformulated so computation is done on write and not on read. An example is writing an app that uses ranking and decay: <http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/overheard.html>

There's a different set of tricks to learn, so in the context of cloud computing, if you aren't willing to confine your approaches to those amenable to truly distributed cloud computing, you're not addressing the basic problems. Of course, there will be apps that can work effectively without web- scale, but are you talking about the "cloud" at that point or just hosted apps?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Can this work? - <AUTHOR>

How can someone go about building a local search service in a country like Nigeria where most information can not be found online? The local search service would be accessed via sms messages. I was thinking along the line of social search/crowdsourcing, i.e. when  a request is made to the service via sms, that same sms is sent to the whole community and the responses is ranked and the highest ranked response from the community is sent to the requester via sms. My question is, can this work? is it scalable? I know this is something that is useless without a community but becomes more useful exponentially as the community grows. <comment><USER2> Ranked by who? As the community grows this ranking body is going to become more burdened. If the community is doing the ranking as well as the answering you are talking about X sms messages per question where X is the size of the community that responds to the message. I really can't see someone going along with answering some question then dealing with voting on 200 responses for very long.

It could work but I don't see it working as posed. You probably need some way to limit the scale and have some sort of incentive.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be ranked by the system, all responses from the commnuity are collated and ranked using an algorithm and the highest ranked is sent to the requester.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> this may be a dumb question, but what kind of information is this? "local search" feels commerce- or service-centric.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Information" here refers to any kind of information and when i say "local" i mean information relative to the country i.e. Nigeria. Nigeria as a country has very little information on the web, so i would say this service can be likened to Google local search but with a wider perspective.</comment></comment>


Gigantic quasar supercluster challenges cosmological status-quo - <AUTHOR> http://thespacereporter.com/2013/01/exclusive-quasar-supercluster-challenges-cosmological-status-quo/ <comment><USER2> Open access:

<http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.6256>

</comment><comment><USER3> What are the chances this 'structure' is just the unusual coincidence of a large number of quasars in (relative) proximity? Not unlike a seemingly impossible run of "heads" in a stream of coin flips?

<comment><USER4> I'm just guessing, but it's probably more akin to a seemingly impossible run of the coin landing on its edge.</comment></comment>


Stealth Mode is Stupid: Why Your Ideas Don't Matter  - <AUTHOR> http://www.waxman.me/posts/14

<comment><USER2> _The concern is that sharing the idea is more dangerous than not sharing it_ presumes that the sole and only reason for being stealth is for the ideas.

Regarding Google starting up with an idea that had actually already been done, there was still a bit of "stealth" there, if you will bear with me. The stealth was that none of us thought that search, which was regarded as a solved problem in certain ways, was at all interesting. We (or at least many of us) were quite surprised that search indeed became very interesting. That they hid from us.</comment>


I'm new here what's this site all about? - <AUTHOR> Signed up because the website has little to no css which is kinda funny but genius in a way. <comment><USER2> A long time ago, this site was called "Startup News" and it focused on topics related to tech startups... so, basically, computers, programming languages, the Internet, etc., + business topics: sales, marketing, fundraising, etc., but with a heavy focus on stuff like "how to raise a round" and how to negotiate VC terms" and things of that nature. There was also plenty of general business news, focused mainly on SV companies and famous/big tech companies.

Later it became "Hacker News" and the focus seemed to largely stay mostly the same for a long time, with a slight widening of focus to include maybe more general science / tech stuff, not just stuff related to startups.

Over time, the focus has broadened even more to where some of the early stuff is pretty de-emphasized (you don't see as much fundraising advice now, for example) and you get a lot more general news, politics, world events, etc.

What's "on topic" is described pretty broadly in the guidelines[1] as "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

OTOH, the guidelines also say "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

But yet we still get a fair amount of political content here, and more than a little bit of stuff that probably is covered on TV news. But we still manage to avoid "cute animal picture" and generic reddit/4chan style memes and shit at least.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News)

<comment><AUTHOR> The almighty "you're an idiot here's a wikipedia link learn to google reply." Still don't know what this place is all about

<comment><USER4> Actually, that reply was very much typical of HN culture. In fact, it was quite kind for HN. There was no "you're an idiot" aspect to it. (By that I mean he gave you information, minus much in the way of warm fuzzy social stuff. If you are looking for lots of gushy personal contact, you are in the wrong place. If you are looking for intellectual stimulation and high level discussion, you may have found your new home.)

The site is a discussion forum aimed at tech people and potential entrepreneurs. It is part of the business model for YC in that (last I checked) you needed a handle here to apply to YC, a start-up incubator that provides seed money and all kinds of education and what not for nascent companies wanting to hit it big who have the potential to be the next AirBnB. YC is, in fact, where AirBnB got its start.

Last stats I saw: It is predominantly male, sometimes thought to be as much as 97% male, though I think that is probably an exaggeration, and the bulk of the members are mostly in their 20s and 30s, though ages range from early childhood to at least 80s, last time I saw an onsite survey.

The intent is to discuss things that are intellectually engaging. It has a few other aspects, like Show HN, that support the general interest in supporting web-based businesses just starting out.

I suggest you look around, do some reading and not jump to conclusions about people replying to you.

Edit: YC is short for Y-Combinator, if you want to google the name of the incubator and get additional info. I don't seem to have spelled that out at any point, though I had intended to do so.

<comment><USER5> >Last stats I saw: It is predominantly male, sometimes thought to be as much as 97% male, though I think that is probably an exaggeration, and the bulk of the members are mostly in their 20s and 30s, though ages range from early childhood to at least 80s, last time I saw an onsite survey.

Is there a place to find these surveys?. I was lurking on your blog a bit:)

<comment><USER4> I am terrible at finding things on HN. There is a search function at the bottom of the site and there have been surveys performed in the past on site that asked for things like age (and sometimes other things, like religion). I have provided all the raw data I know of regarding gender on my blog (linked in my profile, as you likely know). I know of nothing formal, rigorous, etc. But I believe I have seen more than one age survey over the years.

I have been here on and off something like 6 years. This is just what I remember seeing off the top of my head at various points in time. And my memory is certainly not 100% reliable (it used to be a lot better than it is these days, nearly but not quite "photographic" for some things, but that was some years back).

<comment><USER5> Oh Ok.. Thanks.

<comment><USER4> If you are still paying attention, here is an old poll regarding age:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039)

And here is a google search with related results that may or may not interest you:

[https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=strict&q=news.ycombi...](https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=strict&q=news.ycombinator.com:+poll+age)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ruby – Method Chainable - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/abhisheksarka/method_chainable <comment><USER2> An interesting alternative to traditional semantics, [https://www.sitepoint.com/a-guide-to-method- chaining/](https://www.sitepoint.com/a-guide-to-method-chaining/)

<comment><USER3> This is mostly inspired by linux piping</comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs, Patagonia, and the Mysteries of "Business Casual" - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-and-off-the-avenue/goldman-sachs-patagonia-and-the-mysteries-of-business-casual <comment><USER2> This essay is trying to take something pretty simple and extrapolate a whole bunch of deep metaphysical meaning.

The simple thing is this: up until about 25 years ago, investment banks were overwhelmingly populated by Ivy League grads who went to private high schools in the Northeast -- i.e., preppies. This cohort is still _way_ overrepresented on the Street, but in the 80s it was literally like 70% of the warm bodies in bulge-bracket investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms. Thus, the fact that people on Wall Street still dress super-preppy is largely a function of the basic "dress like your boss" phenomenon. The people running large firms learned sartorial norms from their bosses in the 90s when they were analysts, and analysts today are learning from them.

Fashion groupthink pervades pretty much every career field. Military officers are keeping the braided leather belt industry in business through their demand for appropriate civilian attire; engineers in SV dress like slobs; people in the apparel industry wear tight black things. The observations in the essay strike me as a bunch of "so what".

At least he quoted Matt Levine, I'll give him that.

<comment><USER3> > SV dress like slobs

Fair, but I'd say most (at least more than other industries) people in tech dress how they want. Businesses everywhere are trending toward more casual wear simply because, given the choice, most people would rather dress down. Tech just jumped right to the logical conclusion faster: dress how you want and how you're going to be most productive as long as you're not disrupting others.

<comment><USER4> Nah, the dress code in SV/Tech is a pair of dark jeans and a plaid button down in muted weft patterns (ie. not a yellow base), no ties, clasp belts (if at all).

<comment><USER5> Hahhhh. In LA tech there's a similar look with a muted pattern print button down, but maybe a short-sleeved work shirt with ditsy prints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the book "Bill Gates Speaks" there is funny old story about negotiations between Microsoft and IBM.

In the first day of the meetings Bill Gates and others from MS show up wearing casuals while IBM guys come in with black suit and tie. Next day MS guys all have suit and tie while IBM guys are wearing slacks and cotton shirt to blend in.

<comment><USER7> That remembers me of the one occasion I showed up at meeting with a supplier in shorts and flip-flops. Things is, that was during summer at 30+° C the office dress code up to Directors. And than I forgot the meeting. When I was reminded by outlook it was too late. Still kind of funny to be there in the meeting room and sitting opposite a bunch of guys in suites and ties sweating their a __ __of.

One side of me always wanted to do something like that. I just would have never done it intentionally. But in the end, nobody cared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of all those articles I've read about Silicon Valley hoodie as some sort of way for techies to declare their tribe.

Then I went to Bay Area. And guess what? One really needs a hoodie there! It is the most versatile thing to wear for the local weather. Covers 90% of what you need!

Suit doesn't keep one warm one as warm as vest. I, and many colleagues, often wear a vest in the office because AC makes it too cold otherwise. I think the author here is overthinking it.

That said, I don't know what Wall Street is like these days. Maybe they do consider it some sort of status symbol.

<comment><USER9> I don't dare ask why you can't just change the A/C!

<comment><USER10> Two challenges: building AC systems are often surprisingly poorly designed and installed, especially if your building has ever had internal redesigns, so you're picking which areas are either too hot or cold rather than getting the entire place the same temperature. Developers tend not to be high-status enough to get the building set for them — that tends to be the suit-wearing executive suite or, at many places, sales.

The other factor to consider is that people who are too cold can layer up but someone who's too hot doesn't have an option other than working from home.

One thing which increased environmental concerns is leading to is reconsidering both of these given how expensive AC is. Getting people to dress appropriately for the season would lead to a big reduction in peak electrical load in much of the U.S. In some cities like San Diego where distribution capacity is constrained that's the difference between having brownouts or not.

<comment><USER11> > The other factor to consider is that people who are too cold can layer up > but someone who's too hot doesn't have an option other than working from > home.

While true in the abstract, the real reason why most office buildings are "cold" is because indoor climate regulations are based on empirical thermal comfort models that were developed in the 1960s, and thus mostly based on the metabolic rates of men instead of women.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2741](https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2741)

<comment><USER12> I very much doubt that the people responsible for temperature control are aware of the empirical thermal comfort models from 1960. My prediction is that almost none of them have any idea that the study exist or what it says.

I contrast I suspect those people to be fully aware of the cost of running the temperature control system and if the CEO/manager of the company want it to be right now warmer or colder in their room. The resulting temperature is then the balance between costs and the willingness to make the CEO/manager happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like the article and totally get it, agree with it to the extent that agreeing makes sense here.

I do want to defend patagucci real quick. These puffies are legitimately incredible over a wide range of temps. I can comfortably wear my down hoodie from 25F to 65F. At 25F I probably have another layer depending on conditions, and at 65F I'm probably looking to get rid of it if possible, but in either case it's manageable. These bros might be wearing it for culture, but the product is high quality.

Patagonia appears to be a great company. The founder and company seem legitimately interested in fair wages and treatment of all humans involved in the process whether they're in the fields, on the floor, or in the office. They appear to be serious about fair treatment of animals and the environment. Repairability and longevity of the products is a priority as well.

I think the comparison to clothing with BROOKLYN printed on it in some distant nation is unfair, the owner named the company with the intention of saying "this is what you would wear in that environment", which he spent a lot of time in. Conditions vary wildly, clothing will get beat up. Will most of it get there? No. Will most of it end up in some corporate office and never see adverse weather, probably.

I feel guilty wearing their stuff (and I buy all of it on their past-season 50% off sales, their mailing list is literally worth it) because it does scream a certain kind of preppy person. But at the same time, the products I have from them (not tshirts and caps, but legit technical garments) are the best I own, full stop.

Would have been nice to see the author at least nod towards that instead of smearing them with Wall Street.

<comment><USER14> At least of the people I know, Patagonia is more considered an upscale outdoors brand rather than patagucci or fratagonia. Depends on the use case and contact with those stereotypes. It is legitimately good gear (at least for my level of intensity of outdoor activities).

<comment><USER15> It's both. They make some serious outdoor gear, some more casual wear, it is high quality, but it's also Patagucci. I've seen people who take it on week long hikes (as you said, it's high end outdoor wear), and you see bros wearing it downtown.

<comment><USER16> Around here is all The North Face over Patagonia.

<comment><USER17> TNF doesn't have as good of a reputation for serious outdoor equipment. They're more focused on casual clothing in the style of serious outdoor gear.

<comment><USER18> TNF makes serious mountaineering gear. I mean gear for people trekking Lhotse or Annapurna or Aconcagua. I've had one of their sleeping bags too. Not exactly a Western Mountaineering bag but it was quite respectable to a relatively serious backpacker.

That said, I don't wear their clothing so I can't comment on their apparel lines.

<comment><USER19> They have a limited amount of very good apparel. (I have one of their jackets for winter hiking which replaced a prior TNF I probably had for 20 years or so.)

With the exception of some boutique manufacturers (Western Mountaineering, Feathered Friends, etc.) all of the outdoor companies tend to lean on serious outdoor adventuring for their brand but, especially as they grow, they're more and more about selling clothes for people to wear around the city.

Some of them do maintain their original roots. Others not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had to laugh at the J. Press anecdote at the end. I actually remember when Casual Fridays came in. It basically meant that sales/marketing/business types didn't need to wear jackets and ties (if not suits) on Friday any longer. People in engineering tended not to wear ties and when "official" casual Friday's came in, the response was to dress down another notch--including dressing down further on Fridays--to the point where the CEO made it known that the dressing down had gone a bit too far.

It was around the same time that IBMers switched from suits to the now ubiquitous polo shirts at trade shows. Cue great sigh of relief from booth staffers at the myriad of other companies who could now follow suit [pun not intended].

<comment><USER20> > dressing down further on Fridays

I remember some engineers went from polos and khakis M-Thu to board shorts and birkenstocks Fridays. Some people can go overboard.

<comment><USER19> Yes. That's exactly what happened and it was a bridge too far for an east coast computer company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What a loss in an otherwise nearly informative article, it's all based on how to look yet next to none of the images were of what to wear

</comment><comment><USER22> Of course tech companies have their own unwritten dress codes, which is also unfair to people. If you wore a suit to a Google office you'd a get similar reaction of 'this person doesn't _get it_ ' as you would wearing the wrong thing at Goldman Sachs. The situation hasn't really improved in terms of making expectations plainly understood.

<comment><USER23> Two of my colleagues (both developers) had a phase where they unironically showed up in a tailored suit to work. I still don't know why, I mean I guess the one guy had more of a CTO role but the other one was just a regular developer like me, and the suits didn't make them come off as more important - just more uncomfortable.

<comment><USER24> A tailored suit with a well made dress shirt is literally one of the most comfortable things you can wear. Plus you look really good.

<comment><USER25> Ugh, I disagree. I'm an investment banker, I wear tailored suits to work every day. Suits are uncomfortable and high maintenance. Give me jeans and a comfortable hoodie any day of the week!

<comment><USER24> High maintenance I'll give you (and expensive), but I non of the jeans I own are as comfortable as a nice pair of suit pants and despite the fact that no one would care if I wore a hoodie to work I still wear a dress shirt basically every day because it's just so much nicer.

<comment><USER19> TBH I don't find jeans terribly comfortable and don't wear them very much. In my opinion--and maybe it's just because I'm used to it--the traditional Friday casual Khaki/Button-down shirt hits a sweet spot for office wear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I work for a Fortune 100 company. I've never seen anyone from CEO/president down to whoever wearing anything more fancy than jeans and a button down shirt. During the summer nearly all 10,000 employees on campus are wearing shorts and t-shirts everyday. I can't imagine wearing a suit, or even a tie, to work.

<comment><USER27> Surely you mean button up shirts, shirts with a placket and buttons closing the front and not button down, shirts with collars that have buttons. Button down is a subset of button up. Button up is the opposite of pullover

<comment><USER28> Button-down shirts are a staple of business casual wear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I always had a rule of turning down interviews at a company on Fridays. For me, onsite interviews are a chance to see what the company is like ie. stiff or relaxed. Dress-down/casual Friday masquerades that.

Anyway, I always practised dress-up Friday. I always wear my loudest flowery Hawaiian shirt I can find on Fridays. Every Friday.

<comment><USER30> > Anyway, I always practised dress-up Friday.

I don't mind Casual Fridays, but I wish we also had Suit Mondays (or even better, Formal Mondays with morning jackets & dinner dress). Dressing down is fun, but so is dressing _up_.

And honestly, I don't think fashion has come up with a better look than white tie: waistcoat, bow tie, tailcoat. Flatters the figure rather more than a hoody and sneakers.

<comment><USER31> I'm a very tall man. Any piece of business clothing I buy ends up coming from a big or tall, costing an extra arm and a leg. I'll never be able to purchase from a thrift store, and any suit I've ever tried to buy costs enough to make my eyes water - I'll never be able to get anything from any discount rack. Formal Mondays sounds like my version of expensive hell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Patterson is a stellar wordsmith. I still miss his advice column in Slate. The commenters saying this doesn't distinguish finance (eg. "fashion groupthink pervades pretty much every career field") are missing the point. The thesis is not that bankers all dress the same - it's that they _don 't_, and this is somehow an integral part of their job.

> "Goldman's dress code is that you should dress the way you're supposed to > dress at Goldman. If you have to ask, etc. _The difference between a > middling banker and a great one is this sort of tacit knowledge._ "

This would be hilarious if it wasn't so disturbing.

</comment><comment><USER33> I used to work at a big bank, and would just wear nice dress shirt/dress pants. Whenever I saw a "vest" guy I would think 1) you guys really all look the same, and 2) aren't your arms cold and your torso hot?

I now work at a SV fintech, and it's impossible to figure out what to wear to meetings. Do I wear biz causal? Shirt tucked or untucked? Jeans and t-shirt? Sneakers, loafers, leather sneakers? Can I wear shorts? Does it matter if you're in SF or NYC?

The dress code is way harder than in banking.

</comment><comment><USER34> This was the topic of The Submarine

paulgraham.com/submarine.html

</comment><comment><USER35> Once in a rare while we come upon such a lavishly adjective-laden expression of literary peacockery wrapped in the unassuming guise of a common news item.

I'm not up to the task of measuring the ratio of adjectives to words in this article, but I'm certain it is significantly higher than most content we see these days. I think there was a point in the article beyond the author's literary exercise, but after wading through a few paragraphs the drag was so high I became stuck.

<comment><USER36> This is _The New Yorker_. It's not news, it's social commentary.

<comment><USER37> > it's social commentary.

It's curious that rich people (at least some of them) still obsess over brands and relatively expensive stuff that can be purchased, my feeling was that for the past 5 years or so the cultural zeitgeist (for lack of a better expression) was to focus on "experiences" (for those that have the material means to do so) and generally speaking to treat the purchase of stuff for the sole sake of buying stuff as "tacky" (again, for lack of a better expression).

I admit that I may be wrong on this one, either way, I do feel that consumerism has dialed down a bit compared to the '90s and the early 2000s (the pre-2008 times).

<comment><USER38> Keep in mind that much of the article is discussing a Patagonia-brand fleece vest. It retails for $79, and it actually _is_ a useful accessory when going on long hikes in the Andes or whatever. So yes, there _is_ more of a focus on experience over luxury goods, and one of the ways you can see that is in the elite wearing relatively cheap clothes that (hopefully) imply that the wearer does cool expensive things.

So I think you're right; while there's still a focus on brands, the brands being discussed are _relatively_ reasonably priced. For Wall Street, I guess that counts as progress. :)

<comment><USER39> I have really never been understood the utility of such a vest. If you want to stay warm, wouldn't you want to reduce loss of heat by air moving in and out through the armpit holes? There are literally zero times I would want this over a) the same thing with sleeves or b) no vest at all.

<comment><USER24> _If you want to stay warm, wouldn 't you want to reduce loss of heat by air moving in and out through the armpit holes?_

Vests are designed to be worn with/under some sort of outer jacket to provide an extra layer of insulation, without adding an extra 'layer' of sleeves that will just be too bulky or hinder mobility.

Another useful aspect is that they pack up a lot smaller and are thus easier to shove into the bottom of bag when you're not wearing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is this article based on an April fools joke?

</comment><comment><USER41> Patagonia. Named after a region where nobody wears the brand.

Reminds me of cheap textile made in the Far East with some kind of generic blurb about New York on it.

<comment><USER24> To be fair the company exists to make the sort of clothes you actually would wear if you where going to Patagonia.

<comment><USER42> I spent one month in Patagonia this year. My Patagonia gear held up extremely well while trekking, climbing a mountain, and sleeping in tents and cars.

<comment><USER24> Yea, as much as it's easy to make fun of fashion conscious bankers wearing Patagonia as a status symbol, let's not forget that their products are also really good at what they're supposed to be used for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Did the New Yorker just quote the New York Times that quoted an April 1st joke tweet [0] about Patagonia no longer making vests for bankers?

Is this a comedy piece?

[0] [https://twitter.com/binnaskim/status/1112727524675592192?s=1...](https://twitter.com/binnaskim/status/1112727524675592192?s=19)

<comment><USER44> But this was not April Fools: [https://twitter.com/binnaskim/status/1112800424543780864](https://twitter.com/binnaskim/status/1112800424543780864)</comment></comment>