Linode vs. Digital Ocean: WHY CAN'T I ADD CORES? - <AUTHOR>

Had a lengthy debate with Linode over why I can't get more CPU core priority and RAM without buying storage and transfer I don't need. Now I'm left with a need for a more concurrency capable virtual machine provider.
Linode says they simply will not adapt right now, as a matter of choice to offer exactly the packages they currently have available. They claim their infrastructure is so premium and their customer service is so awesome I'll be sad if I go leave to get what I actually need. I'm already sad to be leaving on the customer service side.
I am considering Digital Ocean. I am wondering if anyone in the HackerNews world has a better provider with Pacific Coast based data centers who are concurrency friendly.
Is there an awesome provider of cores and RAM I'm overlooking, compared against Digital Ocean?
Right now, I'm just looking for a powerful dev environment with +8 cores and +8gb RAM, without sinking 600-1200 USD into a physical machine. If I like the provider, I'll move completely off Linode for production too. <comment><USER2> I've been using BigV for this -- [http://www.bigv.io/](http://www.bigv.io/) \-- based in the UK and run by Bytemark (who are one of the few hacker friendly hosts out there -- they support projects like Debian, OpenStreetMap, XBMC and my own Libre.fm)

<comment><USER3> I immediately thought of BigV too - my provider of choice for cloud servers that need to stay up and perform well.

Their cores scale with memory, but they're pretty reasonable on how much - £80 pm for 3 cores and 8 Gb of memory, for example.

<comment><USER4> do you know any other hosts that have crazy scalable memory?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So far, testing Digital Ocean, the ability to spin up a new VM in 55-70 seconds, clone over one of my own "snapshots" created on a lower cost VM and configured to perfection, test it for 5 minutes to an hour and then destroy it with the comparible reverence of used toilet paper, has been extremely invigorating and ridiculously useful.

Messing with VM configuration for half the time rather than directly testing during that time and destroying well before the metered hour seems like a practice from century ago in terms of advancement, after what I just experienced when testing Digital Ocean.

And they detected in my 4-7 sentence questions that I was unsure of their platform and gave me incentives to spend the time to try them out, and it made all the difference. I did spend a few hours trying, and I am impressed. Now, all that's needed is the long term testing process with extremely respectable numbers to start with, even before jRuby/Java warmed up completely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really feeling the CPU caps ( per package ) even at Digital Ocean now, even though the actual packages can scale cores. Would be nice to add/remove resources a la carte. Looks like it'll be at least another 6-18mo before the industry shifts to more concurrent friendly virtual machines.

At Digital Ocean: No ability to add IP addresses, change the RAM, cores ( as I said ) or any other resource without moving up to the next virtual machine. Seems like Linode and DO are not so different after all, but two of a kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recommend getting a dedicated server from Hivelocity. You can find deals on webhostingtalk forums. I have a quad core latest gen xeon with 16gb of ram and raided SSD (128gb and 480gb drives) for $180/month. If you don't need elasticity then its a much better option. You can get new servers in matter of hours too.

<comment><USER4> had a horrible experience with billing. At the time I was with them it was difficult to cancel my subscription (requiring fax and signing to confirm cancel wtf) and deciding to go ahead and bill me for the next month when I told them in advance I would be cancelling.

I really have never been with a host that have made it so difficult to cancel when I needed to. Maybe they changed now, this was a few years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a hosting company, offering virtual machines, the two most contended resources are CPU & RAM. Disk is practically free, even with SSDs these days.

So it makes sense that they'd want you to pay a premium for more cores, and bundle that with things like storage that you don't want.

<comment><AUTHOR> But NONE of their packages go beyond 8 cores, even with higher priority coming with their higher packages.

I am fine with the fact that I'm sharing cores, I just need more of them.

<comment><USER7> can you help us understand why you need more cores on a single box and cannot scale horizontally?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using actor-based concurrency extensively, with multiple actors which stay alive between "requests." I don't hold on to cores for a long time, but I hit them extremely often and let them go. It's a pretty intense mix of fibers and threads.

There are always multiple pools of actors always remaining available, and one request might use multiple pools during the course of creating its response.

If I don't have many cores, a lot of time goes into actors waiting for a core to run on. This means a lot of blocking/suspended pauses. With 8 cores of significant priority, certain operations take 2 seconds that would take 11+ seconds with 4 cores, or more with 2 cores. Looking at stacktraces, the majority of that time goes into purely waiting to resume one actor until another completes a task, then looking further, that actor completing a task is just waiting to get onto a core at all. That isn't supposed to be the case. I need to scale vertically, and I'll end up "using" a lot less than if I scaled horizontally.

I need to get away from using a local machine, specifically my actual development "console" if you will, with my IDE etc, because running all my application on this local machine causes the virtual machine on my local hardware to need to schedule out tasks on its threads.

Because of this real need for actual cores, I can also tell when CPUs have true cores, or "hybrid" cores where there are really 4 cores which simulate being 8 cores.

<comment><USER7> seems to me a refactor to some kind of producer/consumer job queuing is in order? Then you can get N boxes working...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> go dedicated. prgmr.com has some of the low cost options for dedicated servers.</comment>


White House Seeks IP Enforcement Feedback - <AUTHOR> http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/06/25/help-us-shape-our-strategy-intellectual-property-enforcement From the site: "Today my office is starting the process of gathering input for the Administration's new strategy for intellectual property enforcement. The overarching objective of the Strategy is to improve the effectiveness of the U.S. Government's efforts to protect our intellectual property here and overseas. I want to make sure as many people as possible are aware that we are working on this so we can get the very best thoughts and recommendations possible. Part of the process of gathering public input is to publish a "Federal Register Notice" where we formally ask the public to give us their ideas. We will read all of your submissions – and we will make them publicly available so everyone can see them." <comment><USER2> This may not be a productive response, but from my past reading including both of her bio and of her more recent actions, IMO Espinel -- the ostensible author of the post -- is a complete tool of entrenched and over-reaching IP interests.

If the initiative has her name on it, I'm more than usually discouraged.

But... that's just an opinion. Maybe there is nonetheless some point to participating. (Although part of my mind can't get away from the refrain, "It's a trap!" Meaning, into useless action and/or unfavorable categorization for dissenting voices.)</comment>


How to Use Open Source and Shut the Fuck Up at the Same Time - <AUTHOR> http://hueniverse.com/2016/01/26/how-to-use-open-source-and-shut-the-fuck-up-at-the-same-time/ <comment><USER2> Brilliant.

I can absolutely identify with his point, i get such subliminal aggressive messages/questions too, these people tend to need more and more.

They will email you with questions, when you answer and help them they won't even thank you.

They won't donate.

They won't star your project.

They won't help spread the word.

They just use the shit out of your software and rant when a tiny part doesn't work as they expect.

So i've also decided (just about a week ago) to quit answering, i simply close these issues. Fuck them.

<comment><USER3> Regarding the ranting, it's a common thing. Let's talk apps. I've seen people giving one star because the app took 5 steps to initialize instead of one. I've seen people rate movies the lowest because "the last 5 minutes of it sucked". It's unfortunate at best but so far they seem to be a very tiny minority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone compare the level of hate he's describing here with what the average person has to deal with in the enterprise? Maybe it's not bullying, but it's still a high level of stress. Especially on production support rotation.

<comment><USER5> But at least in the enterprise, you're actually being paid to deal with customers. The author of the article is _not_ being paid - he's generously offering his software to the world for free, and ungrateful people are bullying him.

Also, in companies that are bigger than startups, developers don't have to deal directly with customers that often. We have customer support departments who are trained to talk nicely to demanding customers.

<comment><USER4> I get the difference in the situation from a macro perspective. But consider being a lead developer, or the person with the batphone that week during an outage.

Executives breathing down your neck demanding answers and things "just work".

I get being paid, and I get assholes in general. I'm just saying from a pure mentality standpoint, it's not 100% opposite.

<comment><USER5> _" I'm just saying from a pure mentality standpoint, it's not 100% opposite."_

A customer who has paid a lot of money for a software license and a support contract has the right to demand that you fix it if it doesn't work. They're not being a bully; they're just demanding what they've paid for. They have a right to threaten to take their business elsewhere, and to escalate the issue to your boss if you aren't being helpful. As a developer I need to understand that this customer is paying my salary, and their business may be losing money because of a bug that's my fault. I should have some empathy for their distress.

However, someone who has paid nothing for open source software has no right to the developer's time. They're trying to get something they're not entitled to by bullying a developer. The developer should have no problem telling the user to fuck off.

So it seems to me that in these two situations, both the user and the developer are in very different mental stances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, can't say I disagree. There is no way I could be a maintainer of a reasonably popular project like Hapi. People are just too terrible. Especially software people.</comment>


NASA: Mars rover Curiosity finds bright object - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-mars-rover-curiosity-makes-first-scoop-detects-032812764.html <comment><USER2> So the picture doesn't really make it obvious, but I believe they are talking about the item emphasized here[0]. I might just be dense, but why would NASA think that is a part of the rover, it really doesn't seem like it to me. As an aside, it also doesn't seem particularly "bright".

\---

[0]: <http://i.imgur.com/NOnPK.jpg>

<comment><USER3> <http://postimage.org/image/ouvupuniz/>

<comment><USER4> For those that don't click on the image, there is a hole in the rover where a screw would normally be found. Does anyone here know if this is intentional?

<comment><USER5> It seems to be intentional. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEgTuCFLU4&t=0m37s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEgTuCFLU4&t=0m37s) (if it's the same hole as in that video, I'm so bad with moving objects in my head to different angles)

(Edit, fixed a typo)

<comment><USER6> Nice find! I watches the video and I believe you are correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've seen this story on a few sites now, and _none of them_ bothered to show just where exactly in that image the part is supposed to be. Very helpful.

<comment><USER8> They don't actually know where it is, they're just quoting NASA to jump on the page views.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Link to the latest (raw) ChemCam images : [http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=62&camera...](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=62&camera=CHEMCAM_)

<comment><USER10> Have you seen a picture of the "bright object" this post references? Unless it's in that picture and I'm just missing it.

<comment><USER11> A reddit user[1] enhanced a closeup: <http://i.imgur.com/99jDI.jpg>

This was taken from [http://www.universetoday.com/97774/curiosity-finds- something...](http://www.universetoday.com/97774/curiosity-finds-something-on- martian-surface/)

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/116q6s/curiosity_fi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/116q6s/curiosity_finds_something_on_martian_surface/)

<comment><USER12> As a casual observer, I would think that it is just some bit of material that fell off of the rover.

<comment><USER13> Which I'd imagine shouldn't ever happen, and that's why they're taking a very cautious approach to using the robotic arm until they can rule that out.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't worry. As anyone who has dismantled technology can tell you, usually anything up to 90% of the small screws in any piece of equipment are entirely unnecessary, and in many cases seem to have manifested themselves spontaneously out of the vacuum. Or possibly the hoover.

<comment><USER15> The best theory I've seen is that it's a piece of foil tape that's crumbled in the harsh cold. Hopefully that's all it is.

<comment><USER13> There does appear to be a screw hole with a missing screw, though: <http://postimage.org/image/ouvupuniz/full/>

<comment><USER16> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEgTuCFLU4&t=0m36s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEgTuCFLU4&t=0m36s)

<comment><USER13> Nice find!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Its amazing to view the surface of _Mars_ from my browser

</comment><comment><USER13> Really, really hope this is a shard of a meteorite or something, not a piece of the rover's arm.

</comment><comment><USER18> This reminds me that the HN spoof page a few days back really needed a "NASA: Curiosity moves three inches to the left" item.

<comment><USER19> While that post was very amusing, I don't believe this can really be compared to your example. If this really is a piece of the rover that has fallen off it could spell disaster for a hugely important and expensive mission.

<comment><USER20> True but you have to agree that opening HN and seeing, "NASA: Mars rover Curiosity finds bright object" is a bit humorous on several levels. The dichotomy makes it so:

1\. Big impact: Science and our understanding of the universe is being explored in new and very promising ways.

2\. Big impact: Billions of dollars and years of time spent are on the line.

3\. Generally tiny impact (except for this situation): What is often seen as a child-like curiosity: Look, shiny object! What is it!?

Which also makes it humorous that we see the title and think, "that sounds interesting".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here is how you can find this object with Mathematica: [http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/11819/help- fi...](http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/11819/help-find-a- bright-object-on-mars/11822#11822)

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's hoping it's the Martian equivalent of an arrowhead. :-)

Or at least, let's hope it's not some critical piece of the rover itself.

<comment><USER23> The first thing that struck me when reading the headline was, "That's exactly the kind of thing we'd do. Drop a shiny thing in front of the foreign lifeform and see what it does with it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find it impressive that they can find that tiny thing. I imagine it is some image processing algorithm that identifies anomalies in the texture. Or do they have humans scanning through each full res picture?

<comment><USER25> Maybe hoards of undergraduates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> oh boy you gotta love Yahoo, even now under Mayer. Spent 10 minutes looking at the photo and realized that photo caption is layered over it... good job Yahoo team!

<comment><USER27> Yeah, come on, CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. Stop pandering to stock holders, board directors, and senior management, and go look at a line of text on your photos!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> ooo shiny thing! #ADD

<comment><AUTHOR> "The rover team's assessment is that the bright object is something from the rover, not Martian material," mission team members wrote in an update today. "It appears to be a shred of plastic material, likely benign, but it has not been definitively identified."

[http://news.yahoo.com/bright-object-mars-actually-plastic- cu...](http://news.yahoo.com/bright-object-mars-actually-plastic-curiosity- rover-200931416.html)</comment></comment>


Photographers from seventy-six countries in competition for Prix Pictet - <AUTHOR> http://manojmunna.blogspot.in/2012/04/photographers-from-seventy-six.html

<comment><AUTHOR> very good site for photographers in search of opppurtunity</comment>


Seven ways to gather market intelligence on your competitors | Venture Itch - <AUTHOR> http://www.ventureitch.com/?p=238 <comment><USER2> Summary: "Tell blatant lies". Bleagh:-( Probably effective though.</comment>


2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics) - <AUTHOR> http://acidcow.com/pics/17678-futur-imagined-23-pics.html <comment><USER2> They weren't so wrong... sure their form factors were way off but they had all the ideas down...

1\. Electronic Books 2\. High speed aerodynamic trains 3\. Computer aided manufacturing 4\. Motorized personal transport 6&7\. Ok no one is letting a robot cut their hair or do makeup, but we're using robots for surgery 9\. Aerodynamic motorcycles 10\. Webcams 11\. Where's my flying car! 12\. Tanks 13\. Electronic news etc. etc.

If you look at the concept alone, for 100 years ago they weren't THAT far off. Personalized flight on the whole was really the only big miss.

Edit: I understand the horse one now. Back then horses were used for everything... but by 2000 they predicted everything would be machines, so seeing a horse would be a curiosity, not the daily norm. You would take your kids to see a horse, petting zoo anyone? Pretty prescient to me.

<comment><USER3> _Personalized flight on the whole was really the only big miss._

I think the main reason that isn't more mainstream is that even with small planes, we chose to emphasize safety far more than with road vehicles. I don't know why that is; I'd gladly trade some amount of safety if it meant I could afford to own and operate a plane.

A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car. It costs $275,000 due to regulation and low volume, not because it's inherently more expensive to produce than a car.

<comment><USER4> _A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car._

Not trying to sound snarky here, but have you ever piloted an airplane? The pre-takeoff checks take a little while, require a good bit of technical expertise, and are absolutely required if you want to be pretty damn sure that your airplane won't fall out of the sky. Safety is, at times, overemphasized, but then again your car won't fall from the sky when it stalls.

<comment><USER3> Well, there was this time when I was two and I was sitting on the pilot's lap....

I've spent a lot of time as a passenger in small planes and I have a good idea of what's involved in a preflight. I'm not against safety in general, but I think lawsuits and government oversight have really held back general aviation. A plane should be more reliable and therefore expensive than a car with a similar level of sophistication, but it doesn't need to cost 15 times as much.

Edit: based on khafra's comment, a possible reading of my earlier comment is that it's no more complicated to fly a plane than drive a car. I intended to say that it's no more complicated to _build_ a single-engine propeller-driven airplane than to _build_ a car.

<comment><USER5> People often underestimate how important regular car maintenance is for safety. Just because it statically holds on ground or casual speed doesn't mean it'll grip in a quick wet corner or handle safely in an emergency situation. Hence (partly) car death+accident rate is abysmal compared to flying vehicles. In addition to weekly maintenance checks, I personally always run quick pre+post drive checklists on my car, but then that may be because I received flight education :)

<comment><USER6> Care to share your pre+post drive checklists?

<comment><USER7> Like the parent, I had an informal "pre-flight" inspection that I'd execute on my motor home on travel days. Hatches closed and locked, hoses and cables and steps and awning retracted and secured, ceiling vents closed, LP gas shut off, tires aired up, engine fluids nominal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Paleofuture has – as always – at least some context: [http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2007/9/10/french-prints- show...](http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2007/9/10/french-prints-show-the- year-2000-1910.html)

I wonder to what extent these prints are just jokes. Will someone in a thousand years look back at Futurama and think it was a serious prediction of the future?

<comment><USER9> Yeah I'm not sure they were really predicting that police would fly around in hang-glider suits. The image was probably just comical then, as it is now.

<comment><USER10> Comical?

Well, no hang-gliders yet, but have you seen those cops on their segways? Just saying...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This page doesn't give any context for the images.

This is a series of Villemard postcards from 1910. There's a set of 24 on flickr (with titles): [http://www.flickr.com/photos/amphalon/sets/72157615623434624...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/amphalon/sets/72157615623434624/) , but I think their origin on the web is from the BNF (National Library of France) exposition here: <http://expositions.bnf.fr/utopie/feuill/index.htm>

</comment><comment><USER12> I love that the one with the room being lit by what appears to be an electric light in the fireplace is captioned "Heating With Radium"

This was obviously in that period after radium was popularised and before all those girls' teeth fell out.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls>

</comment><comment><USER13> The one thing they totally failed to predict was the trend toward much more casual clothing. Partially due to technology becoming available to all the classes but even upper class people would find this level of dress over the top for current times. How long before we end up in the stereotypical white space jump suit?

<comment><USER14> One reason for the "casualization" of dress were the world wars. Rationing and general mood (and having your country ripped apart) made it kinda impossible to dress extragantantly as a rule anymore. After the war ended, it kinda stuck (just like the daily shaving thing).

<comment><USER15> That sure sounds plausible, but is there any evidence that this was actually the case? I'm always looking for excuses to dress extravagantly and not shave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think that our future is actually _more_ impressive than anything that they could have even possibly imagined then:

<http://thingist.com/t/pageview/1674/>

What's interesting is that these illustrations are only 100 years old. The things we have right now, smart phones, robots, the internet, MP3 players, etc. seem _far_ beyond what the futurists of the last century were imagining.

Honestly, the things we have now seem beyond what people were imagining even 50 years ago.

I wonder if we'll see this large of a technological revolution again in the coming 100 years (or an even bigger one [check this video out: <http://vimeo.com/2319926> for an interesting take on this])

<comment><USER17> _MP3 players, etc. seem far beyond what the futurists of the last century were imagining._

Yes; the servant carrying a wax cylinder for the gramophone device was a huge miss.

It missed electronic amplification and loudspeakers, it missed miniaturisation of audio players, it missed room sized personal libraries of vinyl/tapes/CDs, and of course it missed digitisation of music and electronic or wireless transfer of information, and it potentially missed the ubiquity of cheap music such that he's more likely to have music playing in the background while doing something else than to sit down and listen to it as an activity in itself.

(and now that I think of it, why do they have robot builders, robot barbers, robot makeup machines, but still a servant to carry a song to him on a silver platter?)

<comment><USER18> _Yes; the servant carrying a wax cylinder for the gramophone device was a huge miss._

Yeah, I don't get that one. What was the advance here supposed to be? I would have imagined that's what rich people did in 1910.

<comment><USER19> My interpretation is that the wax cylinder is being used as a calling card to announce a visitor. If so, it's a miss for at least two reasons: 1. Why would you choose to listen to a calling card rather than read it and 2. social customs changed, eliminating the custom of leaving calling cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's an interesting pun in this one: <http://acidcow.com/pics/20110225/future_11.jpg>

The label next to "concierge" reads "descenseur". It's a reference to the French word for a lift, "ascenseur", from "ascension", "to go upwards". A descenseur would then be the exact opposite of a lift - an apparatus to go downwards. :)

<comment><USER21> I simply read that straight as being "a lift moving downwards", can you explain the pun?

<comment><USER20> Well, this _is_ the pun; although I guess a better description would be "a made-up word with a meaning that might not be instantly clear to non-French speakers" rather than a "pun".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well, not "so wrong". For example pic 10. Today we call it skype with webcamera. And it doesn't even need a footpedal. :)

<comment><USER23> They even got the helicopter and humvee right (sort of).

The people in 1900s have over-estimated the usage of robotic arms. We don't have that kind of arms working on human yet, but we do have them on automotive manufacturing.

<comment><USER24> Yes, they were in the age of mechanization and the easy prediction was "everything will be mechanized"

<comment><USER23> The projector thing is really a very accurate prediction. Since there is no such concept at that simply a light bulb could produce a clear imaging of some remote users, without using any prerecorded films.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looking back at old visions of the future, they always seem to imagine the obvious things, e.g. flying cars and nuclear power. What I haven't ever seen is anything close to modern computers, which arguably have just as profound an impact on our lives and are probably more impressive technologically.

<comment><USER26> Another well known phenomenon in old science fiction is the utter lack mobile phones. Flying around space, shooting at each other with laser rifles. And then they hop into a phone booth to have A VIDEO CALL! (Yes, I'm looking at you, Blade Runner.)

(And before anybody mentions Star Trek - Those were actually more like small and fancy Walkie-Talkies. Deal with it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> the artist clearly isn't a union member, replacing all the jobs with robots

<comment><USER28> Except for videophone operator, and pill waiter, and record butler.

I love the way the futuristic technology is placed into a 1910 social context!

<comment><USER29> Reminds me of a quote I saw on Twitter somewhere:

Any vision of the future involving buttons, or humans, is a vision of dystopia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My favorite is that they've got some gadget upgrades, but they're all dressed about the same. So comfy!

</comment><comment><USER31> Well, they were right about 1 thing: mutton chops will never go out of style!

</comment><comment><USER32> Whatever happened to predicting the future? We should make predictions for 2100 for them to laugh at our naivety.

</comment><comment><USER33> It is 2011 and I _still_ don't have a flying car. What a shame!

<comment><USER34> As somone who lives in Boston, I think it's just as well that our drivers are limited to two dimensions.

<comment><USER35> In other words, the reason we don't have flying cars is the same reason we don't have nuclear powered devices that run for decades or centuries without recharging. We can't trust the general public to be responsible with them.

Thinking of this article that was on the front page of HN a couple days ago:

<http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/02/07/67/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The surprising thing is what they totally got wrong.

1\. For instance, the backdrop of trees and green at the railway station. The intensity of urbanisation over the century sees every piece of land getting built over.

2\. The mass availability of high technology. For instance, we were shown imaginings of servants bringing musical pieces for the phonograph.

3\. An unpredictable technology - the age of electronics - totally transforms machines.

</comment><comment><USER37> half of them already happened. I should start working on the other half

</comment><comment><USER38> Anyone know of some modern equivalents? What do we think the year 2100 is going to look like, for instance?

<comment><USER39> I believe you'd have to turn to science fiction writing these days. Well, that or the futurist movement.

But for the most part, I think the public has lost its thirst for knowledge about the far off future. We're much more of a "want it now!" culture. I find it very sad.

<comment><USER12> I think this is because people have gotten so used to rapid innovation that they no longer look to the far future for the arrival of new tech, because it now arrives week on week.

As a consumer, why speculate on the next 100 years when you _know_ from experience that you will have some undreamed of tech next year?

I don't see this as a bad thing. As long as those in society that actually _do_ the innovating don't completely succumb to a similar myopia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What's interesting is that they weren't really that far off with a lot of their predictions. They just couldn't get past their current level of technology, their imagination was restricted by what they were familiar with.

</comment><comment><USER41> Hm, for some of them I couldn't even see which part is supposed to be so two- thousandy, e.g. the fifth from the top. (Edit: Got it from paleofuture - it's the "phonographic message")

<comment><USER24> Perhaps some things weren't every going to change?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> They had airports, bikes with farings, tanks, videophones, wireless news all down.

Apparently fashions weren't ever going to change!

<comment><USER12> _> Apparently fashions weren't ever going to change!_

It is very sensible of them not to attempt to predict fashion IMO, because it is by its very nature unpredictable, and possibly irrational and random, depending on how you look at it.

Imagine how much more ridiculous these would have been were all the people depicted in one-piece silver jumpsuits or something.

<comment><USER42> Also, using fashion from their own era enabled the artist to describe the social contexts. So you know who are wealthy people, who are servants, policemen etc, because they wear the stuff you expect them to. Otherwise you'd have to explain "the guys with the red jumpsuits are police, the yellow..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> A lot of the concepts are correct, but the surprising thing is the lack of advancements in materials. The images use cloth, soft metals, wood and canvas for everything. It's almost impossible to state how big an impact plastics and high quality metals have made on our day-to-day lives.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm with those that think these were supposed to be comical.

BTW, related: the 1905 French time-warp house

[http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/02/18/france.timewa...](http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/02/18/france.timewarp.house/index.html?hpt=C2)

</comment><comment><USER45> Glad I didn't live in that future. As has been said by others, predictions of the future often tell you more about the society making the prediction than what will actually come to pass.

</comment><comment><USER46> I love this kind of stuff. Requesting more links if possible.

<comment><USER17> Must tomorrow's man look like this?

[http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/PopularScience/11-1963/t...](http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/PopularScience/11-1963/tomorrows_man/tomorrows_man_0.jpg)

( Taken from <http://blog.modernmechanix.com/> which is full of old science magazine clippings )

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Does the 8th pic say that 'dinner shall remain dinner';the way of eating would be unchanged?

</comment><comment><USER48> Today's 'Steampunk' is yesteryear's 'Sci-fi'</comment>


The Most Overused Negotiating Tactic Is Threatening to Walk Away (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-most-overused-negotiating-tactic-is-threatening-to-walk-away <comment><USER2> well, i think i need to do it anyway.</comment>


Ships start plying a less-icy Arctic, thanks to climate change - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russias-suez-canal-ships-start-plying-an-ice-free-arctic-thanks-to-climate-change/2018/09/08/59d50986-ac5a-11e8-9a7d-cd30504ff902_story.html <comment><USER2> The article is from September 8. The Venta Maersk reached Saint Petersburg on September 28 so she didn't gain any time despite the shorter route.

[https://www.maersk.com/en/news/2018/09/28/maersk- concludes-t...](https://www.maersk.com/en/news/2018/09/28/maersk-concludes- trial-passage-of-northern-sea-route)</comment>


Staying Sane in Academia - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/308 <comment><USER2> Interesting to contrast this with Richard Hamming's advice:

      Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about
      people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have
      the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and
      you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know
      quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort
      of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of
      interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and
      what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence
      because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't
      know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work
      with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although
      people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work
      on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.

PG has posted the full essay at <http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html>

<comment><USER3> The source article is one of my absolute favorites. But CS department != industrial research lab...

<comment><USER4> The main difference probably being hundreds of undergraduates?

<comment><USER3> And also grad students. Everyone who stops by has a legitimate reason (need signature on some random form, question about a homework, etc.) but the cumulative effect is to prevent coherent thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds right to me, except maybe #1. I'd add:

9\. Keep organized. My experience has been that young people who do well in academia are exceptionally good at keeping on top of things: correspondence, deadlines, juggling different projects, etc. This is especially true the less you work collaboratively. If you're on your own, it's very easy to become a chaos.</comment>


Ask HN: Was your App ever rejected or pulled from the App Store? - <AUTHOR>

If yes, then have you tried to fix the problems and resubmit it? What were the lessons learnt from this kind of an experience? In case the app was pulled - did you tried to persuade or negotiate with Apple to allow you to host your app in the store? <comment><USER2> My app was rejected for too little functionality. The reviewer thought I was loading a UIWebView and just pulling content into it. Never mind that that's a totally accepted practice, but I actually had everything done in native code (using TabBarController, CollectionView, TableView, NavigationController, etc).

Although I was told I could probably just resubmit it and get through with another developer I took the free advice and added more features. It's not sitting happily on my hard drive unsubmitted to the app store with 20 more hours worth of work into it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've had almost all of my apps rejected at least once; and in every instance is was an app update that was flagged for violating a guideline or rule it passed for on the initial release. Each time I responded with a simple "Why did this get approved the first time and now it's suddenly not ok?" type message and the updates were approved in short order.

This was one of the reasons why I stopped bothering with iOS apps. It's luck of the draw with your reviewer and the time between submitting a new binary and hoping you get someone else is irritating.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes. I had the first edition of a fun little game I wrote on the iPad for cats rejected for being too simplistic. Of course, it was a cat game, so it didn't need levels, menus, scores or GameCenter integration, just fish the cat could swat at.

I ended up adding all of that stuff to the game, which took way longer than coding the game logic in the first place. Because that game is just a hobby project, it took another few months for me to get everything coded, tested, and submitted to Apple again. It got approved on the second try, which was fine.

</comment><comment><USER5> I got my app rejected (about 4 times) because the reviewer could not connect to a remote system with my app.. Each of the times I was rejected, I sent back a note spelling out how a firewall on the reviewer's network was probably blocking access to my remote system (communication is via telnet), but every single time, the only feedback I got was the same screenshot from my app with the message "unable to connect"..At this point, I have pretty much moved on.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've had it happen once, so about 6% of all apps/updates submit to them. It was for a button in an app that dials a number, and not checking if the device was telephony enabled. Which shouldn't matter because an iPod/Pad can't dial out, but whatever. Add a line of code, resubmit, and then it was added about 4 days later.

</comment><comment><USER7> I built and published an app for a client (a local band) - their requested features were quite minimal and Apple rejected it.

It took about 4 more major features to be added to the app before Apple accepted it.

Lesson learned, some projects might be too small to take on.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of our apps was rejected for poor UI design. We reworked the UI a bit and we got in.</comment>


SQL Injection Pocket Reference (Google Doc) - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZNlBave77hiZGNjanptbV84Z25yaHJmMjk&pli=1#Allowed_Intermediary_Character_30801873723976314

<comment><USER2> Noticed a small mistake in the MySQL section:

        Error Based:
            AND (SELECT * FROM SOME_EXISTING_TABLE) = 1

Unless SOME_EXISTING_TABLE has no more than one row, that query will fail. See [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/comparisons-using- sub...](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/comparisons-using- subqueries.html):

" _For a comparison of the subquery to a scalar, the subquery must return a scalar._ "

It's easy to fix: just add _LIMIT 1_ to the end of the sub-select.

\---

This document is very useful. I've been doing web app security for a while and I haven't run across some of these techniques before (eg: PROCEDURE ANALYSE()). I didn't realize that PDO_MYSQL allowed for multiple queries by default either (although it makes sense, since historically other RDBMS have supported it).

<comment><USER2> There's actually another issue that I missed before. SELECT * returns all of the columns in the table: you can't compare that to a scalar.

Tested on MySQL 5.5 on OS X:

        mysql> use test
        Database changed

        mysql> show tables;
        Empty set (0.00 sec)

        mysql> create table test (id int(10) unsigned not null auto_increment, name varchar(10), primary key(id));
        Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.13 sec)

        mysql> insert into test (name) values ("Bob");
        Query OK, 1 row affected (0.02 sec)

        mysql> select * from test;
        +----+</comment></comment><comment>+
        | id | name |
        +----+</comment><comment>+
        |  1 | Bob  |
        +----+</comment><comment>+
        1 row in set (0.00 sec)

        mysql> select * from test WHERE (select * FROM test) = 1;
        ERROR 1241 (21000): Operand should contain 2 column(s)

        mysql> select * from test WHERE (select 1 FROM test) = 1;
        +----+</comment><comment>+
        | id | name |
        +----+</comment><comment>+
        |  1 | Bob  |
        +----+</comment><comment>+
        1 row in set (0.00 sec)

        mysql> insert into test (name) values ("Frank");
        Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

        mysql> select * from test WHERE (select 1 FROM test) = 1;
        ERROR 1242 (21000): Subquery returns more than 1 row

</comment><comment><USER3> HELP! I don't 'get it'!

Looking at that list of SQL injection attack techniques, I don't see the threat.

Or: Yes, I'm building a Web site, and the server will be running SQL Server.

Some of my Web pages have users enter data in text boxes. So, they could enter a SQL command in a text box.

Then when the Web page is returned to my Web server as a 'post back', my software reads the data in the text boxes.

I have the page built, have code for extracting the data from the text boxes and putting it in, say, string variables in Visual Basic .NET, and now am writing the code for looking at the data in the strings from the text boxes.

So far, I see no threat.

So, I intend to look at the data in the strings and see if it looks anything like a SQL command. Anything that looks like a SQL command will get rejected as bad data and not get near my SQL Server database. Maybe I will write the bad data to my log file.

So, I'm checking the input data from the users. I am assuming that the input data could be anything at all until my code establishes otherwise.

Doesn't everyone do such checking?

With such checking, where is the threat of 'SQL injection'?

If SQL injection is a threat, then why? Just from people not checking input data from users? Some other reason?

<comment><USER4> First, just checking the data is often not enough and can be hard to do right. The better option normally is to paramaterize the query which makes it very difficultto prevent it.

And no, not everyone paramaterizes or validates their data at all.

I wrote about some of the defensive techniques at [http://www.simple- talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/sql-injectio...](http://www.simple- talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/sql-injection-defense-in-depth/) a couple of months ago.

<comment><USER5> Normally i hate "This" posts, but HN does not display my upvote, so i'm writing this comment to reiterate how important this is.

This is the right way to do it. Paramaterize your queries, do not _ever_ use string concatenation to generate SQL queries. If you try to sanitize the inputs yourself you will fail at some point.

<comment><USER3> Let me be more clear here by what is meant by 'parameterizing' a SQL command.

So, looking at some of my old code I see in Visual Basic .NET, I start by 'declaring' the types of, and allocating storage for, three identifiers:

        Dim my_SQL_command_string As String

        Dim my_SQL_INSERT_command As New SQLCommand

        Dim new_instance_values_sum As Long

Then I build the 'command text' of a SQL command string:

        my_SQL_command_string = _
          " INSERT Instance_Value_Averages " & _
          " ( Instance_ID, Instance_Values_Sum, N_Instance_Values ) " & _
          " VALUES " & _
          " ( @Instance_ID, @Instance_Values_Sum, @N_Instance_Values ) "

In this string are three 'parameters':

          @Instance_ID
          @Instance_Values_Sum
          @N_Instance_Values

Then I assign my command string, with its three parameters, to the property CommandText of my SQL command:

        my_SQL_INSERT_command.CommandText = my_SQL_command_string

My SQL command has a property Parameters which is an instance of a collection class with a method Add. So, I use the method Add to add a value for parameter

        @Instance_Values_Sum

to the collection:

        my_SQL_INSERT_command.Parameters.Add( "@Instance_Values_Sum", _
          SqlDbType.bigint, 8 ).Value = new_instance_values_sum

I continue with such uses of the method Add and assign values to the other two parameters

          @Instance_ID
          @N_Instance_Values

Eventually I execute the SQL command via:

        my_SQL_INSERT_command.ExecuteNonQuery

For the value I give to parameter

          @Instance_Values_Sum

it is 8 bytes of binary and, thus, could have anything that could be in 8 bytes. So, presumably my SQL query is fully safe from any data at all and also from 'SQL injection'.

Is this what is meant by 'parameterizing' a SQL query?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Iterators: Signs of Weakness in Object-Oriented Languages - <AUTHOR> http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Iterator.html

<comment><USER2> While C++0x will have proper lamdbas and closures (I've said this how many times in the past few weeks?), I think it's worth noting the "proper" way to emulate a closure in C++ is with a function object. Example:

      struct Summation {
        int& sum;
        Summation(int& s): sum(s) {}
        void operator()(int n)
        {
          sum += n;
        }
      };

      vector<int> numbers;
      int sum = 0;
      // give numbers some interesting values
      for_each(numbers.begin(), numbers.end(), Summation(sum));
      cout << "sum of all numbers: " << sum << endl;

C++0x lambdas will generate code very similar to this. The need to explicitly define a named struct/class and function object is an obvious weakness of this technique.

Although I do agree with his overall point, which is that the need to use iterators for all sequences is a code smell. It forces the programmer to work at a lower level when they often just want to say "Perform this operation on my data."

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Your comment about C++0x closures inspired me to look it up on Wikipedia.

The verbosity of the fragment above is greatly reduced. You had to write 'sum' or 's' lots of extra times ('Summation(sum)', 'sum(s)', 'int& sum', and 'int& s'), and you won't have to do that anymore -- according to wikipedia your function will change in C++0x to:

        for_each( numbers.begin(), numbers.end(), [&sum](int n) { sum += n; } );

Which is semantically much less to think about. It also still has the feature / annoyance (?) of having to specifically identify which variables to capture from the environment ('sum', as a reference; it seems you can capture variables by value too).

Fortunately, it seems the C++ people even thought of that annoyance, and allow you to write:

        for_each( numbers.begin(), numbers.end(), [&](int n) { sum += n; } );

capturing references to all variables in the enclosing scope. Neat!

<comment><USER4> Of course, C++ already has std::accumulate, which is basically the same thing as a general fold or a summation, depending on which version you use. So, there isn't really much of a reason to write sum manually at all. :p

<http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/accumulate.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Conveniently ignored Smalltalk, which at the time, would have been seeing a lot more use than it does now.

I missed the date of the article at first, it wasn't until I looked at the C code and had to double take it, because it wasn't ANSI C, and my initial reaction was "hang on wait a minute" then checked the date on the article.... yeah.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's worth reading the Abstract Heresies' entry that turned my attention to this paper: <http://funcall.blogspot.com/2010/05/c-vs-lisp.html> (After giving it a thought I posted this entry to HN too, as I probably should have done in the first place... :))

The date is interesting, 1992 - it would still take years for Java to implement it...wrong.

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems odd that he complains about lack of local (modifiable) state while at the same time talking up the advantages of pure functional programming. It's painful to have to explicitly capture state instead of depending on a closure to do it, but you can do it, and somewhat nicely using objects in C++.

Also, is it not right that iterators were introduced in C++ largely to allow generic functions across arrays and other data structures?

Finally, do iterators necessarily imply statefulness? Doesn't seem like it. Taking + 1 as "successor": double sum(const double* start, const double* end) { if (start == end) { return 0.0; } else { return *start + sum(start + 1, end); } }

</comment><comment><USER7> PDF version - [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=D07...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=D0759C8E59B0FC3EF23C2E6ED17A88F3?doi=10.1.1.25.1018&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> Something about the writing style in the Introduction section reminds me of this classic Dilbert strip: <http://tomayko.com/writings/that-dilbert-cartoon>

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems these are lessons we must perpetually relearn.</comment>


Amazon wins "one-click" purchasing patent appeal - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/23/us-amazon-cordance-patent-idUSTRE78M4JI20110923

<comment><USER2> With all due respect to the judge, crap like this shouldn't have been patentable in the first place.</comment>


The Doom of Multiple Storage Engines - <AUTHOR> http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2010/05/08/the-doom-of-multiple-storage-engines/

<comment><AUTHOR> Couple of months ago one of my DBs was migrated to another box where the skip- innodb flag was left turned on in my.cnf by the admin. Unfortunately, Mysql only generates warnings when you use non-transactional MyISAM tables in transactions, and those warnings are only visible from the console, so the problem went unnoticed for months.

Conclusion: if your data is important enough and you're forced to use Mysql because you're at a Mysql shop, write test-cases to test the sanity of the Mysql environment.</comment>


GroupOn implemented my suggestion today - <AUTHOR>

Two weeks ago, I sent a suggestion in to GroupOn in regards of a direct referral model to compensate the user. Allowing the user to market directly within their own social circle and receiving compensation for their contributions.
Today, GroupOn implemented the Referral-A-Friend compensation type plan for a limited duration.
Original message (February 22, 2011):
"Social Peer Marketing --
For each GroupOn member, allow them to share today's deal with an incentive, users who purchase from their link result in the posting GroupOn member receiving compensation -- a % of the savings to cost ratio, etc. can be in the form of credits or GroupOn dollars.
This will allow GroupOn to tap in to a buyer market in which otherwise haven't heard of GroupOn (rare case these days) or a buyer in which originally would not have purchased.
Instead of allocating marketing funds towards another ppc/google campaign, this allows the GroupOn member to leverage their own social circle through Facebook, Twitter, or their personal blogs -- which can be very effective nowadays"
Message GroupOn sent out today --
"Hi [GroupOn Member Name], It's always been easy to refer friends to Groupon. Now it's more rewarding, too. For a limited time, refer friends and you'll earn $20 Groupon Bucks for each friend who buys their first Groupon.* That's twice the normal reward! Here's how it works: ...
Your personal referral link: http://www.groupon.com/r/uu1500####"
It'd be naive to say this was implemented solely due to my suggestion, but I thought it was neat nevertheless.
However, the simple response with no follow up after "Hi Michael,
Thanks for the suggestion! If you'd be interested in sharing additional suggestions you can share them here: firstname.lastname@example.com.
Regards,
Jordan-Leigh email@example.com
Please, rate my reply here:
http://www.nicereply.com/groupon/6397436/###2849" is discouraging for further suggestion input.
If anyone is working on a group-buying type start up, knows someone who is, etc.. and would like suggestions, I have a couple which I believe would be cutting-edge in which the larger sites do not even have implemented yet. <comment><USER2> It's actually "Groupon". I don't know how this "GroupOn" thing got started.</comment>


US Air Force destroys ISIS HQ building after spotting it through social media - <AUTHOR> http://defensetech.org/2015/06/03/us-air-force-targets-and-destroys-isis-hq-building-using-social-media/ <comment><USER2> Could the mods remove the blogspam link and link to the source?

[http://defensetech.org/2015/06/03/us-air-force-targets- and-d...](http://defensetech.org/2015/06/03/us-air-force-targets-and-destroys- isis-hq-building-using-social-media/)

> _"The guys that were working down out of Hurlburt, they're combing through > social media and they see some moron standing at this command. And in some > social media, open forum, bragging about the command and control > capabilities for Daesh, ISIL. And these guys go: 'We got an in.' So they do > some work, long story short, about 22 hours later through that very > building, three [Joint Direct Attack Munitions] take that entire building > out."_

As with many things, the devil is in the details...in this case, the "long story short" part. And I don't see what the big deal is; social media is just another way that information gets accidentally leaked...because it came from a "selfie" or whatever, doesn't make it inherently less "truthy"...it just may require different levels and methods of verification before discovered information becomes actionable information.

And honestly, I don't think this kind of information is much more inherently flimsy than information that comes from a paid informant, or through tortured confessions.

<comment><USER3> Even worse is that the photo at the top of the article is clearly a photoshopped image of a plane over the desert. The landing gear is down. It makes the entire thing sound like US military propaganda.

<comment><USER4> This is the image from the original article, completely different airplane too.

[http://defensetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ISIL- Airst...](http://defensetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ISIL- Airstrike-490x331.jpg)

It's all stock images either way, nothing I saw even mentioned what kind of jets were deployed.

<comment><USER5> Also of note is that the airplane pictured in the original article (a F-35) is not used in combat yet, nor is it likely that the limited numbers delivered by now will be rated for combat any time soon unless the US gets into a serious peer fight and actually need all their planes.

<comment><USER4> Those are F15E aircraft.

The F35 has some signature green lights that really stand out at night (I assume they'll be turned off during combat): [http://www.edwards.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/2013/0...](http://www.edwards.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/2013/05/130521-F-ZZ999-009.jpg)

Here is a picture of 2 F35s being refueled at the same time: [http://breakingdefense.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/3/2013/0...](http://breakingdefense.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/3/2013/06/First_dual_F_35C_aerial_refueling.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So let's ask the question: why did they announce this to the press? That sounds like a whole series of classified things.

It sounds more likely to me that the US wants to weaken ISIS' influence on social media, and by planting the idea that posting pictures results in buildings exploding, they'll be less willing to show off images of anything interesting.

<comment><USER7> Alternatively, the guy in charge of releasing things to the press gains points for doing this, and the guy who loses points by having it released to the press is someone else who didn't have control over it. As with all organisations, there is politics and point-scoring and competing agendas and just plain incompetence.

<comment><USER8> Well I guess that ISIS selfie guy won't get that promotion after all ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's worth noting that the US Air Force knows _exactly_ where _all_ of the command posts are for ISIS but due to situations beyond their control (political, civilian populations etc.), they cannot engage.

These media stories are cute, but are a mere snapshot into a very complicated world of engagement.

<comment><USER10> It's probably more accurate to say that the DoD has a _reasonable level of confidence_ for the location of _most_ of the ISIS command posts. The "situations beyond their control" would also include those confidence intervals. These things are dynamic and complex, like you pointed out. As such, it's unwise to declare absolutes about things like this in warfare.

<comment><USER9> You're right - I won't edit my post but I agree. I went overboard to contrast the article which might make it appear as though the US military lacks this intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So based off of the article, they bombed a building based off of a selfie accompanied by some text... am I the only one that sees this as a horrendously awful idea?

<comment><USER12> Even if more went into it, it looks awefully gameable, a more extreme version of swatting.

<comment><USER13> This was a serious problem in the early stages of the Afghanistan campaign, when people realised that they could settle longstanding neighbourhood disputes by denouncing their enemies to the Americans. That was partly why the US bombed a number of wedding convoys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> During 2nd Iraq War, some newly arrived Apache helicopters were mortared while they were in hangar area and destroyed. US commanders were mystified because they were in the middle of a huge base and the insurgents couldn't have know the exact area they were kept in.

And than they discovered that some troops has taken selfie with Apache in the background. The photos unfortunately has GPS location embedded. Insurgents found the photos on social media, figured out the GPS data, and figure out exact location of the Apaches.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if they used something like Hunter to find it. Seems unlikely that someone just recognized what the building looked like.

[http://www.sri.com/work/projects/hunter](http://www.sri.com/work/projects/hunter)

<comment><USER16> Where's the open source alternative :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does it make sense that the USAF will reveal their true tactics and sources of intel to ISIS, or do they want to help ISIS along by showing them where they are making mistakes?

The whole story seems plain stupid.

</comment><comment><USER4> Did anyone find the tweet or a screenshot of it?</comment>


Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow - DanI-S http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/R-D/Tiny-Farms-Edible-insects-will-be-be-mainstream-in-future <comment><AUTHOR> The article capitalizes on a popular foreboding about resource limits with a thrilling "ick" factor, but it's premise is unsubstantial.

I once met an ancient Jewish gentleman who, due to poverty, had been forced to eat lobsters as a youth. In that day they were considered on par with rats as a food source (not to mention they were forbidden by his religious culture) and he had never recovered from the experience, and still considered them revolting.

I can relate: if it became popular with the youth of tomorrow to broil rats and serve them at market price, I'd probably never get on board.

Like insects, Lobster was once a cheap and common food resource. Money could be made by packing and shipping it of to places where it was exotic and unheard of to the majority of people, and so it's image was specially crafted to make profit.

But unlike insects, lobster had the advantage of a fresh market. It was only viewed as the food of impoverished immigrants in port cities where it was common.

The vast majority of the market, at least in the USA, considers insects icky to look at our touch, let alone to eat.

More substantially, I think any serious study would find that people's eating habits rarely change based on broad, even minded assessment of future resource limits. Current rates of meat consumption are a good example: we know it can't last, but few people change their diet so that their great grandchildren can eat more chicken.

I do think insects will be a food source in the future, but that will be because a clever marketer discovers the killer bug that is both exotic and delicious. In general I think it will be a very long and slow process by which everyday insects like crickets become palatable to the status quo.

<comment><USER2> The article is about cricket flour, not eating whole crickets. Cricket flour products are already on sale in hundreds of stores. The key is to mass produce the flour as right now it's quite expensive. That's what's specifically addressed in the article, not the issue of convincing people to eat it in the first place.

<comment><USER3> I understand that Cricket Powder contains protein and other nutrients. But is it more efficient than just using plants as a source of those things? Surely the choice is not steak vs crickets but crickets vs soya?

<comment><USER2> Plant protein is subpar because of its amino acid profiles. I'm not being anti-vegetarian here, it's the basic truth and it's why strength athletes etc. don't count plants as significant sources of protein.

Basically, bugs are better, comparable to any other animal source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I grew up in Zimbabwe, Southern Africa. I speak in general that eating insects is a delicacy and is favoured as a snack most of the time.An example, the [1] _mopani worm_ is an excellent source of protein and is increadibly cheap in Southern Africa.The guts are removed, cleaned and dried in the sun before being packaged for sale. They also taste delicious once fried in butter and mixed with vegetables.

It might be a novelty right now in the western world but its been years of tradition in African or Asian countries.

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

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure most things are delicious once fried in butter and mixed with vegetables.

Incidentally, I'd love for microlivestock to be more widespread in the US--it _could_ be such an affordable protein source!

<comment><USER4> It will be a interesting perspective as it becomes more common to eat insects in Western countries. The main barrier to break down would be the 'ick/ew' factor, which has been mentioned in this threads comments, that is usually cultural.

But judging from the way some domestic animals are treated by some farms, the ick/ew factor of eating insects becomes less of a barrier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd try it. I eat raw fish, urchins, rare eggs, rare-ish meat of mammals and fowl. Who knows? Who would know if I would like it better than me?

I've eaten whole insects including crickets and the flavor was whatever. The texture of the legs was like trying to eat the tail of a shrimp - impossible. I'll be interested to see what the processing is like as I'm not sure about the utility of a flour that includes fine grains of exoskeleton. Proteins turn into magical things during cooking and shells don't do quite as well. Flour hints at baking, but I don't think it would function nearly as well.

From the first link on google, the baking results look like it doesn't form anything that can trap air or steam, so dense and mushy seems likely.

<comment><USER7> I've had cookies made with cricket flour, they tasted normal; wouldn't have been able to tell you anything was different from the taste/texture alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> People have been publishing this article every few months for as long as I can remember.

They may well be an efficient form of protein but... squick. Basically.

<comment><USER9> It's just unfamiliarity - you would have the same reaction to a prawn if you hadn't grown up with it. And many outsiders would have a similar reaction to squid cooked in its ink (Spain), half-rotted herring (Scandinavia), or even just strongly flavoured blue cheese (everywhere). For that matter, lots of people feel icky about fresh tomatoes.

It's not likely to become something which is mainstream overnight, but there are large parts of the population in the West who actively seek out different experiences. Or, to put it another way, the food market is heavily segmented by interest, class, age, location (national, regional, and metropolitan/rural), and so on. In the short term, you're likely to get movement into early/adventurous adopter parts of the market.

<comment><USER10> Or any kind of meat -- just a fuckin chuck of animal muscle, tendon, gristle, sometimes even skin.

I think there'd be a lot more vegetarians if everyone had to do their own butchering.

<comment><USER11> I suspect there'd be a lot more carnivores if people had to grow their own veggies, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't cricket feed mostly corn and soy? Seems like it would be more efficient to eat the raw ingredients rather than the crickets.

<comment><USER13> Crickets are less metabolically demanding than humans. We need tricksy things like fiber and animal protein, but crickets can get by on simple sugars and cellulose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Don't think so. We'll rather have lab-grown meat.

<comment><USER15> I'm looking forward more at Soylent[0] than lab-grown meat.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_%28drink%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_%28drink%29)

<comment><USER16> Enjoy! [http://www.meghantelpner.com/blog/the-soylent- killer/](http://www.meghantelpner.com/blog/the-soylent-killer/)

<comment><USER15> That article is attacking the current implementation, but I'm looking more at the idea and want to see where it goes. Implementations can be made better.

<comment><USER17> Like ensure or enfamil?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Am I the only one bothered by the sheer amount of killing this means? You might have to feed poultry 2lb to get 1lb of food, but you kill only one living creature. With insects, how many living creatures are you going to kill to get 1lb ? (even though that would only require 1lb of feeding). Yes I know, they are not conscious at the same level, and are killed in a way so that they don't suffer, but still.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure you're not the only one, but you're pretty unusual.

Eating meat doesn't bother me, but if I imagine myself attaching more moral value to nonhumans, I would rate insects a lot lower than chickens a lot lower than pigs, and switching to insects being a net gain morally.

Does it bother you to eat plants? Things made with yeast? Do other activities that kill lots of insects bother you?

Not trying to needle you and I hope I am not setting off your scrupulosity, I'm just wondering how far it goes. I am also curious if this is a "thing" in the West now, I know something similar is sometimes practiced in India.

<comment><USER20> I have had the same reaction as him.

I know insects and plants are not "at the same level" as mammals or birds, but I always have the thought that squashing insects or eating plants is still killing living beings and I can't help being bothered by it. Yes, I also _do_ have a thought for the yeast I'm using when baking bread, waking it up from stasis just for baking it in the oven soon after... but unicellular beings seem much less important as they're mostly clones, they don't have the same individuality.

I grow plants as a hobby, and having a few small trees that have grown from seeds, in pots where they entirely depend on me for their life, makes me really see them as individuals - especially since the genetic variation that comes with growing seeds also means they have observably different behaviours.

On the other hand... I _do_ eat some meat, and for some reason I don't have a single thought for the pigs that have to get killed to make the dry sausages or cured ham I eat. I guess that is because I am just so used to eating these, and they are less recognizable as animal parts than, say, chicken wings.

In the end, you just can't live healthily by only eating things that don't harm any living being, so I just live with it, knowing that I have to kill things to eat.

About the India thing, I have thought like this for a very long time, I remember in kindergarten trying to stop other kids from stomping on ants, and (a bit later of course) my parents being amused when I talked about plant being like ununderstandable aliens. So I don't think this has much to do with trends, it's just a thinking you can come up with on your own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can say that bee larvae taste like raw almonds and cow milk butter and I eat on sight.

<comment><USER21> I'm going to be seriously disappointed if bee larvae in my region taste differently than raw almonds and cow milk butter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If I agreed that edible insects were a novelty today I might be persuaded that they'll be mainstream tomorrow. Since I believe that edible insects are a source of revulsion to most Westerners (at least) today, I'm doubtful that they'll be mainstream tomorrow. There's a general principle of argumentation here: if you want me to believe your apodosis, make sure we're on the same page with your protasis.

<comment><USER23> I'm a Westerner and just don't understand the revulsion, except from a vegan. Yes, I wouldn't chomp down on a raw cricket from the backyard, but the same goes for a rabbit, only more so -- a rabbit seems more conscious.

I gave a friend some cricket bars and he thought I was joking about the ingredient until after he'd tried it. Well, that's one answer to the ick factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> That article was fascinating but ignored the branding factor. I realize that was intentional, but it is an important factor. What's considered food is basically a cultural/fashion issue, and can be explicitly changed by marketing (e.g. rapeseed can sound horrible in the US but was made acceptable by rebranding it "Canola", and likewise the Chinese gooseberry was much more successful as the Kiwi Fruit).

This is different from passive shifts of food from scorned to fashion, such as lobster or oysters, or how açai briefly swept the Whole Foods set -- that's more of a Veblen issue. Once the technical issues are worked out, someone's going to make a killing (literally I suppose) by rebranding ground up mice and crickets as "Natural Field Protein"

BTW I enjoyed this quote: > "Journalists always ask me what do you say to people that can't get over the psychological hurdle of eating insects?", said Crowley. "I say, 'nothing' \- we're not targeting these people. We're targeting people that are receptive to our message, that will be our early adopters."

Good for him!

</comment><comment><USER25> When will crickets NOT be $40 a pound? And then I'll consider it...

</comment><comment><USER26> Which is sushi, novelty or mainstream? Or tofu, or non-wheat flour?

Or maybe there's a middle ground where things are neither.

<comment><USER27> Sushi in Vancouver or Tokyo? Mainstream. Boise, Idaho? It's all relative to where you are.

Eating insects here is currently novelty. But in many parts of the world, it is a part of daily life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Kind of interesting how many people would rather eat bugs than not eat meat at all.

<comment><USER29> Not really, considering the nutritional profile of insects. There are some nutrients you can't readily get from plant-based foods, or only in poor amounts, like DHA/EPA, carosine, lysine, etc. Not to mention all the things you'd normally miss out on with traditional meat, because we're not used to eating the bones and innards of large animals here, but that you get from insects cause you'd eat them whole, so you'd get plenty more minerals, vitamins, and rarer amino acids that way.

I recommend reading this book if anybody's interested in more specifics about insect-based nutrition, and why it's actually more unique and useful than most people realize:

[http://www.amazon.com/Edible-Adventure-Eating-Insects- Planet...](http://www.amazon.com/Edible-Adventure-Eating-Insects- Planet/dp/0544114353)

<comment><USER28> Beans are full of lysine and, for ovo-lacto vegetarians, so are eggs.

(I don't consider dha/epa and carnosine to be essential nutrients.)

<comment><USER29> > I don't consider dha/epa and carnosine to be essential nutrients

We're at a point where we don't even know what we don't know about nutrition, so it's fair to have "beliefs" like this I suppose. But there is substantial evidence for DHA's impact on brain development if nothing else, including the brain development of children birthed from mothers low in DHA stores. Not much significant evidence suggests equivalent impact from ALA/plant-based fatty acids, nor do they convert predictably in the body to forms the forms that are actually directly useful. I will grant you that EPA is more debatable, but DHA is pretty solid. And while I don't trust speculative 'evolutionary' evidence, it does make sense that human brain development (and thus human development in general) supposedly started to take off once they migrated near the coasts where there was an abundance of seafood to hunt.

Not to mention that plant fats/oils are the largest contributors to the problem of having imbalanced omega-6 to omega-3 ratios to begin with:

[http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000141000000000000000-w....](http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000141000000000000000-w.html)

Either way, "essential nutrients" and nutrition in general aren't things that we can assume as being settled, because much of what we "know" about all that will almost certainly become outdated in a few short generations. In the meantime, I think moderate diversification of nutrients isn't a bad idea.

Edit: I also made no mention of vegetarianism/veganism, I simply referred to plant-based food sources specifically, because many animal-derived products (including eggs as you mentioned), most certainly still have the benefits I was describing. It's not about lifestyle or ideology, it's about finding quality sources of things that promote optimal human functioning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I suspect it won't be terribly long before we have genetically modified plants to produce a more complete fat and amino acid profile, and this will essentially replace meat in most cases. Probably this will happen before anything like cricket eating goes mainstream. I wouldn't bet on this at all.

</comment><comment><USER31> Japan got over the ickiness of insects a long time ago: [http://aeon.co/magazine/society/why-the-west-fears- insects-w...](http://aeon.co/magazine/society/why-the-west-fears-insects- while-japan-reveres-them/)

</comment><comment><USER32> You can buy some on Amazon today for $40 a pound: [http://www.amazon.com/JR- Unique-Foods-Cricket-Flour/dp/B00OM...](http://www.amazon.com/JR-Unique-Foods- Cricket-Flour/dp/B00OMCTODQ)

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't know how much of the process of raising and making flower from insects is proprietary, but some kind of open source knowledge base might provide appeal for people to refine production and innovate on consumption.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why is there a push for crickets, grinded-up-bug-meatballs and insect flour when there's one that people aren't actually disgusted by -- escargot?

</comment><comment><USER35> Cricket bars are yummy. For me, they pass the taste test. Not a lot of real kick factor. Hope they get the price down with mass production.

</comment><comment><USER36> If anyone wants to get into this game, I'll sell you edible-insects.com and [https://twitter.com/edibleinsects](https://twitter.com/edibleinsects) :)

</comment><comment><USER37> And you thought chicken farms were disgusting...

<comment><USER38> I definitely think chicken farms are disgusting (and I've been a vegetarian for 21 years for that reason among many others). Cricket farming, on the other hand, I've considered trying. I'm not entirely confident of the ethics of eating bugs, but it's so vastly superior to the environmental disaster and suffering caused by eating meat, that I think making bugs a part of the average human diet is a net win.

If it tastes good, is healthy, requires less land/water/resources to products, and leads to lower meat consumption, I don't see how it can be a bad thing.

Unfortunately, costs are still very high. I'm not sure why that is, given all the hype about "bugs are a low cost protein!"

<comment><USER39> > Unfortunately, costs are still very high. I'm not sure why that is, given > all the hype about "bugs are a low cost protein!"

My guess is that while bugs are more efficient than most animals at converting energy, the equipment and methods to raise the bugs and convert them into human-ready products have not had the centuries of optimization that mainstream animal husbandry enjoys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Insects might be more economical, or at least eventually when their production is more mainstream. But food is relatively cheap today anyway; what is expensive is rent/or mortgage. Food for a single, working person doesn't really make such a dent in the budget that they are forced to thin "damn, there has to be some alternative to this", compared to what they spend on their rent. So I don't think it's that much incentive to eat insects, from an economical perspective.

<comment><USER39> If this were the case, why does Coke contain cheap corn syrup instead of good- tasting cane sugar?

Even if there's not enough of a difference for an individual to choose one over the other it doesn't mean companies with huge economies of scale won't choose differently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> As with bacteria, human living conditions will get quite ugly near our population's stationary phase.[1] Exponential growth does not last forever.

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

</comment><comment><USER42> Unlikely. They are icky, unappealing and do not have the "man" quality one gets from real meat.

Food is mostly about taste and convenience today, because we have access to enough of it - insects doesn't really give you either.

In short it is highly unlikely that I will wake up tomorrow and eat insects, nor that the majority in the developed world will.

And yes shrimp may technically be insects. Technically correct does nothing for the ick factor.

<comment><USER43> Lobster is a bug; it used to be 'ick' and now its 'yum'. The ick factor is cultural. No reason the OP can't be right - if bugs are tasty, and some people start eating them, and then more people, they could easily become a regular thing.

<comment><USER8> I have a friend who is an entomologist, a doctor of entomology no less. He doesn't eat lobster, or any other type of mollusc, on the basis that they filter-feed and will quite happily chow down on faeces, just like any other insect.

Mind you he finds the texture of boiled eggs repulsive too, so it might just be him.

<comment><USER44> > lobster, or any other type of mollusc

Lobsters aren't molluscs, they're crustaceans.

Not even the same phylum.

<comment><USER8> I didn't say _I_ was a doctor of entomology :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mary Meeker's 2018 internet trends report - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2018/5/30/17385116/mary-meeker-slides-internet-trends-code-conference-2018 <comment><USER2> Old news. See the discussion from 4-5 days ago here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17189406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17189406)</comment>


Ask HN: Accounting Software for SaaS Products? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any SaaS product specific accounting applications on the market? All popular accounting applications revolve around the idea of either inventory or invoice/payment style systems, neither of which apply to SaaS apps at all.
All I'm looking for is a way to track payments coming in and expenses & salary going out without the mess of invoices and all that stuff that doesn't apply to SaaS companies.
Any options you guys know of? <comment><USER2> I very much disagree with your claim that invoices don't apply to SaaS apps.

Without an invoice being issued, it's a pain for my company to account for handing over money to you. In fact, it's enough of a pain that I won't use any SaaS app - or company for that matter! - that doesn't issue invoices.

I've also had people contact me, asking to pay on an invoice basis. I generally only do so for annual subscriptions, but doing so has brought in extra money I'd otherwise have missed out on. When you have a system that automatically generates invoices, it's not much of a pain to do so.

<comment><USER3> This. It is always a good idea to invoice even if you are charging for a SAAS app on monthly basis. Sure it might sound like an overkill for very small SAAS apps or businesses, but invoicing is a good idea in terms of record keeping which will help accounting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use www.xero.com ...it's awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was taking a deep look at Xero when I submitted this thread actually...it just seems to me that 90% of the features of Xero are unnecessary for a SaaS app and the remaining features you need don't really address what is unique to a SaaS.

Care to share any specifics of your workflow? Are you tracking each individual payment as a transaction/sale? Are you creating customers in Xero that match up with your customers in your own app and then attaching their monthly payments to their Xero customer record?</comment></comment>


Building a Scalable News Feed Web Service in Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/software/architecture/oss/clojure

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a blog of a recent learning project where I constructed a news feed web service using clojure, postgresql, cassandra, solr, redis, and kafka. Then I set that up on AWS, ran a load test on it, then analyzed the results.</comment>